Over the past month and a bit I have been trying to get into my blog to write about the games that we have been having in Warhammer Fantasy Role Playing. They are great fun. But I had this plugin enabled to prevent too many login failure attempts! Every time I went to write it would tell me there were too many incorrect logins and to try again in 20 hours! So someone loves messing with the site – would not be surprised if it is the hosts with the grief they have visited on me. Anyhow, I have found a way around that so I am ready to let you know about all the fun that we have been having!
The Starter Set
We started playing the Warhammer Fantasy Role Playing Game with just the core book. We played a fair bit of it before I even looked at the published material. Then when I was out and about in a game store I found the Starter box set for the game. I am not normally a fan of these – I really have only ever bought the Pathfinder one that I liked and the D&D one which I did not like. This one was pricey, but it felt heavy. I was in another city for work so i decided to buy it so I could read it in the hotel room. Good decision.
I am not going to say too much about the unboxing but this is a great set and well worth picking up. I have used a lot of the materials in the box for our full on game. The rules in it are a bit light compared to the main game but they do give the feel for what you are doing.
Playing the starting adventure
My players were relative experienced when it came down to starting off the main adventure in the box. But it still felt natural. The way the adventure starts does not presume that the players are green and I am very thankful for it. It dovetailed nicely into the last adventure we had run and it did not feel forced. Which is a bit strange because the initial encounter has them all arrested! Regardless, this adventure, combined with our story path cards have given us hours of fun.
That makes this adventure a good quality one. It is not linear and is quite resilient to the story path cards ability to spring surprises on the plot. In fact, there is so much material that we are playing through that came from the players use of those cards I think it would make their head spin if they knew the amount. I use those cards to create interest and buy in, then I add in extra content from the adventure book.
The system
We are beginning to get comfortable with the system. It is crunchy but we are now familiar with a lot of it. Sure, magic has hardly been touched because there has been little interaction with it, but a lot of the bread and butter material we have nutted out. That means that we are really progressing in a role playing sense and the players’ characters are really advancing in leaps and bounds.
I am even coming to terms with the advantage system that I was worried about. Last game we had the players’ copped an absolute pounding from a group of thugs and a sadist at a den of disrepute. I watched the ebb and flow of the advantage and kind of came to terms with it. In fact, it is even something I am warming too because it means I get to learn more and more with each combat. It makes the story more interesting when the pit fighter just can’t bring down some basic street rabble after defeating a troll the week before. It makes the players’ characters have more depth when they factor that in this swinging fortunes and gives the game the grittier feel that I like.
Overall
Just know I am still here and it looks as though I am now going to be a bit more active now I have worked out how to get around my own security safeguards! I am soon going to be running a second game using the Degenesis system (which is actually called Cartharsys) so fans of post-apocalypse hold out for that one. I will also be continuing Warhammer for the foreseeable future as we are having a great time! Keep rolling…