Grimdark Reloaded - A Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd Edition Review

 

Cubicle 7

Developed by Green Ronin Publishing and published in 2005 by the short lived Black Industries, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd Edition revived a grimdark classic. As far as second editions go, it's hard to beat. More than a simple clean up, the designers incorporated 19 years worth of improvements while making a game that was still recognizably WFRP. 

It's a familiar story, with humble adventurers, including the likes of rat catchers, woodsmen, and scribes, facing off against the horrors of a fantasy world threatened by the Dark Gods of Chaos. But even vicious adversaries like Orcs, Goblins, ratmen, daemons, and worse, often pale in comparison to plain old human cruelty and injustice.

Like its predecessor, WFRP 2E combines straightforward rules with a heavy atmosphere, defined by hard fought victories and often short lived characters.

Even with a successful 4th edition, WFRP 2E is still the go-to for those looking to explore the Old World. Personally, I don't think it's the automatic improvement over 1E many see it as. But I can't deny it's a strong game that kept the light burning for this grim world of perilous adventure.

All Too Familiar

It's easy to see 2E as mostly being a streamlined update of the original system. The core rulebook is only around 250 pages, compared to 1E's mighty tome, but both books offer a comparable amount of content. Most importantly, the career system is almost entirely intact and still takes up a big chunk of the page count.

A huge part of 1E's appeal was that the players were taking control of normal people in an unusual world. Even if Warhammer's fantasy tropes were very familiar, drawn from the pillars of the genre and real world history, WFRP stood out by exploring it with more relatable, mundane characters. 

Cubicle 7

Once again, players have to randomly generate their career from a list of dozens. The roster is largely the same, though more species specific options have been added for Elf, Dwarf, and Halfling players. A few have been modified or removed entirely. Bawd and labourer are missing in action, though I'm hardly sad to see the back of the tasteless "Slave Trader" advanced career. Beggar has been recast as the more scavenger like "Bone Picker." Torturer has been laughably sanitized into "Interrogator," without any changes to the actual career.

Through hard work, quick thinking, and dumb luck, players can see their adventurers end up as the likes of knights, Slayers, and other influential figures.

A few options are fun but strike me as impractical outside of very specific campaigns, like innkeeper.

A big change is that the characteristic advances offered by careers now come in increments of 5% instead of 10%, adding some much needed longevity. Game masters are still encouraged to make sure that players give compelling story reasons as to why they've entered a career. Unfortunately, the Career system is still plagued by one glaring flaw: the often arbitrary and unwieldy rule that you need every required item to enter a career is still in effect.

Changes aside, the spirit of WFRP is still there: players aren't demigods from the start and they don't get much say on their origins besides the option to reroll on the chart once. Much like the characters themselves, they've been thrown into this world and it's not a very fair one (but if they were going to accept that lying down, they wouldn't be adventurers!) 

Beyond the careers, Characteristics have undergone some much needed cleanup. WFRP still uses a D100 percentile system, and the redundant categories have been merged. The awkward "wargame compatible" elements have been dropped, as well as the unhelpful Alignment chart. All in all, it's a much cleaner character sheet.

The Skill system has also been entirely overhauled. Rather than the grab bag of 1E, Skills are now split between Basic and Advanced. The weird one off mechanics and stat buffs have mostly been removed for a more modern approach.

Skills also play a much bigger role: performing a task without the relevant Skill, such as gossiping, intimidating or searching, now forces you to test at half the relevant Characteristic. Advanced Skills can't be performed at all by unskilled characters. It changes the way WFRP plays considerably and makes the game more difficult outside of combat, while putting more emphasis on careers.

Cubicle 7

Talents have also been introduced, mainly covering the Skills that were just one off characteristic buffs. A few more characterful ones are slipped in as well. Offsetting 2E's emphasis on Skills is the updated Fate Points mechanics. At the start of a session, characters generate Fortune Points equal to their current Fate total. These can be spent in game for re-rolls, bonuses, and the like. It's a great mechanic, both tempering some of WFRP's infamous difficulty while also making the loss Fate points even more noticeable in regular play.

Most importantly, WFRP 2E finally has a functional magic system, based on the new "eight winds" and other background developed in the nearly two decades between editions. Mechanically and thematically it all works  much better, though a wizard and even priest character definitely exists on a different level than the other Careers. Of course, they have to survive their training, as magic is now accompanied by the Curse of Tzeentch; the spooky consequences of miscasts, at their worst leading to death and possession.

War Without End

Combat is largely similar, even keeping optional rules for a clumsy, ultimately unnecessary battle grid system for tables that want one. There's a roster of more defined actions and more straightforward mechanics for dodging and parrying. Though the Attack characteristic was kept, players don't benefit from the additional attacks without specific actions. Damage dice are rolled with D10s instead of D6s, making critical hits- now thematically called "Ulric's Fury" -even less common since a roll of 0 is required.

Though more in depth, it doesn't do much to solve WFRP's "whiffing" problem, in which two opponents spend multiple rounds of combat missing each other. It's a slightly larger problem in 2E, with rarer critical hits and the removal of the wargame style resolution mechanic, where inflicting more wounds than your opponent would give you a bonus on your next check. The neutered Critical Hit chart doesn't help matters, which is both shorter and less characterful. That's not to say 2E's Combat mechanics are bad, they're more than functional but it's hard to call it a straight improvement or downgrade over its predecessor.

Even so, it's a lot easier to survive in WFRP 2E. Armour has been overhauled, with less of an obsession with stacking different types only to get a negligible bonus. Plate armour gives the resilience you expect it to and its now genuinely worth the time and expense to acquire protection. To offset that, detailed sections on disease and poisons are provided; not every danger can be held off with a shield.

Cubicle 7

2E has a much more expanded equipment section, particularly for weapons. Thankfully that's mainly to provide more specialist options and especially varied ranged weapons. The simplicity of the approach is still in tact: swords, maces, and axes are all grouped under "hand weapons." 

The bulk is taken up by non-combat resources however: food, board, and transportation, the sorts of practical considerations that flesh out WFRP's setting and its surprising believability. An amusing half page of rules are provided for alcohol consumption and becoming very drunk. 

Most helpful is a brief section on many forms of replacement limbs and similar aids, describing the cheap and expensive options in the setting. It's something an infamously limb chopping game like WFRP really needs, while adding a lot to the character of the game.

Unfortunately GMs will have trouble providing decent adversaries for their sessions. The bestiary is restricted to a very small selection, aside from the detail given to the sorts of horses available and several pseudo-careers to make elite enemies.

Iconic foes like Orcs and Skaven receive a single profile, with slightly more offered with human adversaries. Even so, it's a very sad showing and any long term campaign ends up needing the (admittedly excellent) Old World Bestiary.

Insanity rules are still in place and prove to be one of the more developed parts of the book. Though the conditions adventurers risk developing have suitably grimdark names, it's easy to tell what their real world counterparts are. The handling isn't the worst I've seen but still falls short of the mark. The book makes an effort to explain that mental health is poorly understood in the Old World, with some fanatics claiming its a sign of daemonic possession. 

There's an explicit effort not to reduce humanity to some fun quirk for the players to toy with but rather a serious burden. Even so, the section undermines its own point by making one of the ailments literal daemonic possession.

Sanity mechanics are falling out of fashion for a reason and while some good efforts were made in 2E, it's one part of the game that shows its age.

But at What Cost? 

With a shorter page count, it's the background section that ends up taking the brunt of the damage. Luckily what is there does more than enough to convey the setting and its most important elements, as does the game master section. Quite a bit is dedicated to explaining the various human gods of the Old World, along with their respective worshipers. 

Maybe the world guide and other background elements could have benefited from the space but frankly explaining the gods and how the people interact with them in day to day life is more valuable. The drawn out explanation for holy days makes it much easier to visualize the setting and gives Game Masters more to work with.

Cubicle 7

Art wise, it's a mixed bag. Some of the classic Games Workshop roster of artists show up and a few older pieces are recycled. But for the most part it's new material. Most of it is up to snuff, though it bounces in quality. Nearly all the art is in color, barring the career portraits which are rendered in sepia tones and done by a number of different artists. 

The book ends up offering clashing visions of the Warhammer World: the more exaggerated, skull infested one of Warhammer Fantasy in 2005 and the more grounded one of prior editions. Most fall somewhere in between and I'll admit beyond the excellent Geoff Taylor cover and some other pieces, it's far from my favorite Warhammer publication when it comes to illustrations.

The actual formatting of the book at least makes up for it, dramatically rendered in a fake parchment look with rough, archaic illuminations of familiar Warhammer icons. It could easily look tacky but instead adds to the atmosphere.

2E does at least feature more women in the art than the original, especially in the career section. That extends to the writing to the writing as well. Admittedly, Warhammer Fantasy had a much easier journey than its peers, especially its male dominated Sci-Fi counterpart. Even so, it's good to see, though 4E one upped them by adding meaningful racial diversity.

The Last Battle... For Now

My quibbles aside, WFRP 2E is thankfully a game that understood its predecessor and its appeal. The game master section gives good advice, albeit with campaign ideas that focus a little too much on combat. The opening prose, something I usually find clumsy, is penned by Dan Abnett and perfectly captures the system: struggling adventurers in Chaos plagued ruins, terrible secrets, monstrous adversaries, and demanding battles.

But that's offset by distinctly human motivations, once the main character reveals he ventured into this nightmare to return to his now slain family's cobbler shop, in the hopes of retrieving his father's tools. The other passages don't come close quality wise but they don't need to, as this opening encapsulates what's given WFRP such longevity, how it pits gonzo fantasy against the remarkably human. 

Cubicle 7

As successful as 2E was in updating the game, I can't help but feel some of the magic was lost along the way. 1E's mechanics, as clumsy as they were, had a certain simplicity and charm to them that 2E mostly removes. Though most of those changes were for good reasons, the more awkward parts of the original fit the tone. More notable though is the shift in presentation. 2E retains the sense of humor found in older editions of the game but it still suffers from the increasingly poe-faced and simplistic story lines of the wargame. There's even the forced inclusion of the near-apocalyptic Storm of Chaos, something even the designers didn't want to touch on. 

Beyond that, there was a certain punk feeling 2E lost. It occasionally reminds the reader the Empire isn't supposed to be just or fair but it seems to play into their mystique and claimed purpose a little too easily. 1E also let players take on the roles of callous nobles and ruthless witch hunters but was quick to point out their hypocrisy and other moral failings, and regularly mocking them for good measure.

If you can't stomach older systems, WFRP 2E is the pick for you. But 1E still has a place with its unique, capricious tone. That's not to put down 2nd edition though. I genuinely believe this was the best possible continuation Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay could have received and led to some of the best published material ever to grace the property.