In 1986 Games Workshop published their in-house FRP game, Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play: A Grim World of Perilous Adventure. Like many RPGs, WFRP as it came to be known is built upon the foundations of what has came before, both in terms of previously published FRP systems and in the authors utilizing lore from Games Workshop's own The Old World fantasy setting.
Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play is a percentile based tabletop game system utilizing both class and skill mechanics. Typical of many systems written in the 1980s, WFRP's character generation is designed with a heavy dependence on random dice rolls. Playing the character one roles is part of the appeal - to some even today! The Old World setting is dominated by humans and this is reinforced through the extremely low probability of randomly rolling a character of any race except human. While the player may choose which of the four career classes their character will pursue warrior, ranger, rogue or academic, the specific career occupation their character will start out with is subject to a random die roll - for in a grim and perilous world, fortune will ultimately have the final say. (If one finds this last statement unappealing, it may be that much of WFRP will not be to their liking.)
This randomly determined, unpredictable and somewhat harsh approach to the fate of our paper protagonist from start to finish is one of the best aspects of this or many other RPGs in my estimation. I instantly fell in love with the grim tone of this game and the perilous conditions that will face our band of low-born adventurers. Adapting and looking for any way to "even the odds" is a big part of play in a "grim & perilous world". There are plenty of decisions players will make during a WFRP campaign, but they are not necessarily the same type of decisions one makes while playing any version of The World's Most Popular Role-Playing game. Coming to that realization has taken me many years.
Regular readers of this blog will note that I rather enjoy and prefer a game that can feel like it could be "for real" - a game that engages my imagination on an immersive level allowing me to temporarily suspend my disbelief in the fantastical elements and experience the adventure through the eyes of my/our characters. This "realism" factor together with the friendships and the stories that develop during play is why I enjoy our hobby so much.
In my last post I wrote about a struggle with the concept of hit points and wounds in The World's First Role-Playing Game. WFRP takes a very different approach to weapons and wounds. The combat mechanic in WFRP seems to borrow a bit from the Warhammer Fantasy Battle miniatures wargame, a bit from Chaosium's RuneQuest and of course it is also influenced by the first ever RPG published by TSR - Games Workshop had sold all of these games prior to publishing WFRP. The folks at Games Workshop came up with their answer in the form of a roll under percentile mechanic using strike and parry, hit location and critical damage and gave one the feeling of being witness to some very bloody combat as limbs are lopped off, bones broken and bodies bleeding out. Once armor is pierced, the character suffers a critical hit effect, which often produces incapacitation or a roll on the table of sudden death. The character's "Wounds" statistic represents their ability to avoid real damage or as the rules state:
A target can absorb damage up to its Wounds total without penalty. This characteristic represents a 'buffer level', and only once this has been destroyed is real damage incurred.
I appreciate that the authors (Richard Halliwell is listed first in the credits) of WFRP take the time to spell this out about "Wounds" thereby removing some of the confusion produced by the use of the term. Once we get to the Sudden Death Table, it's likely to be a grim fate. (Can't say we aren't warned as it does say "Perilous" right there on the cover!)
To be completely transparent, I have no idea how the authors of WFRP envisioned the game being used at the table. From my perspective today, it seems that investigations and solving mysteries are the game's forte, not combat. Of course that's based on hindsight and not a little bias acquired through familiarity with the game's premiere adventure - The Enemy Within!
The difficulty is that a combat resolution system that feels both realistic and deadly inevitably leads to a lot of inglorious character deaths when "hacking & slashing" is your go-to response to every challenge the game throws your way. It took me and my friends quite a while (and a host of dead PCs) to figure this out. Perhaps we were just exceptionally slow to catch on? Today I observe that the authors of WFRP were not entirely helpful in fomenting our understanding of this little fact when they lead right off at the beginning with a lively description involving a first rate combat action narrative set in a dungeon crawl type of environment, implying this is what their game is all about.
This game remains one of my top favorites and has been extremely influential in my realization of what I like best in my fantasy. I don't think it's any exaggeration to say WFRP changed how I approach and play every other role-playing game. On the rare chance that I get to actually sit down and play WFRP these days, I have a much better idea just what to do with it.
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