The purpose of this column is to advocate for a new edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay - not necessarily an entirely new version of the game, but at least a revised and updated version. WFRP has been out for around fifteen years, and the role play industry has changed, I believe for the better, and its important for WFRP to capitalize upon these changes.

A WFRP Second Edition Manifesto

When I first raised the idea of revising WFRP I danced around the subject matter a bit, but the time has come to lay out a manifesto for a new and improved version of WFRP as I had earlier promised. So what I've done is outline some of the changes that I would like to see done for a new WFRP. The following are merely my suggestions of how the game could be improved. Let's start with…

The Cover

Madness! Change the cover? Yes, that cover did generate 95% of WFRP sales. That cover defined (is there any other word for it?) WFRP's attitude. It set it apart from the other D&D clones at the time. It captured people's imagination, got them to pick up the book and look inside.

And its time to say goodbye to our friend now. The market has moved on, WFRP has changed, the feel and atmosphere of the game has altered subtly over the years, its time to refine, to redefine WFRP's attitude. Something dark, something occult, something sophisticated. Not something hack 'n slash but something that hints or suggests of something wicked just below the surface.
Oh, and go ahead and stick the dwarf with the 'hawk on the back of the book if you need to.

Background First - Mechanics Second!

Reverse the order of the book! Put the background first. Bring the world alive, and then show them how to live in it. Putting rules first can suggest what seems important in the game - the world shouldn't be an afterthought.
That said, I'm arguing for the book to be divided into background and then rules, but I do not want it so clean cut - I want the background to be present throughout the rules so that no matter what page the GM turns to there will be something there to evoke the sense of the world. The book can include pictures that convey a feel of the world, little snippets of prayers, a sample menu at an inn, the price of cattle at a country fair, legends and myths, superstitions, adventure seeds on every page - every page using the opportunity at further fleshing out and developing the world.

Scrapbook Approach

Once again games have grown, and they no longer lay their information out like encyclopedias, but they experiment with different ways of conveying information - and GW has recently adopted this approach with their books - turning the way that the information is conveyed into background itself. The information is presented as adventurer's notes, maps, myths, and literature of the era.

Career Rewrite

Every career needs to be rewritten - the advances for all the careers are out of kilter. We can all come up with examples of Artisans and Wizards that are better warriors than your average mercenary or soldier, and its time to look at each career and give them more unique and distinctive schemes. Some are simply erroneous but others can use a bit of revision.

Task Resolution

The mechanics of WFRP are woefully behind. When a character attempts an action, there is no distinction between degree of success and degree of failure. A character with a Dex of 30 rolls a 01 and a 29 and the game does not distinguish between that success. When it comes to failure it does however distinguish failure, a roll of 31 and 100 have different effects (Success and Failure WFRP p. 64). Now some rolls in the game provide for shades of distinction but I'm arguing that for all skill and task resolution the game should take into account the degree of success and failure. This has been implemented recently in the Apocrypha 2: Chart of Darkness in the Divination chapter. For an example of what I propose, merely look at the resolution for "Construct Tests" or "Loyalty". I'm not proposing introducing new rules but rather adapting and extending existing rules to cover the entire game, and drawing the distinctions between failures to successes.