After breaking the news that Cubicle 7 has acquired licensing rights for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, there's been a lot of threads across other forums asking what the community would like to see in the next edition. So, I thought I'd start the conversation here as well.

Assuming there is a new edition:
What I really want to see in a new edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay is to revisit the Age of Three Emperors. The man vs man conflict has always been more interesting to me, than simply man vs roving bands of mutant hordes. I also hope to see a return to the d100 system. For all of Fantasy Flight Game's fun narrative mechanics, the 'fiddly bits' made setting up a continuing weekly game difficult. Finally, I would also like to see a more open-ended career system, removing the career path limitations of previous editions.

Assuming they keep the old edition:
I'd love to see the Career Compendium and the main rulebook combined together. I'd also like to see more softback options with perfect binding. The last run by Green Ronin wasn't the best when it came to binding. I'd also love to see The Enemy Within 1e adapted to the 2e edition rules. That would be a major, major draw for me.

In the meanwhile, I'm hoping that ZWEIHÄNDER Grim & Perilous RPG can be the community's bridge between editions, as it's been designed as a Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay retroclone.

Skip the fourth edition and go straight to fifth. The number four is cursed. The number four is death.

Quote from: Cave Bear;943263Skip the fourth edition and go straight to fifth. The number four is cursed. The number four is death.

Hah! Fair point.

On a somewhat related topic, I wonder what WFRP would look like beneath the lens of D&D 5th edition rules? Cubicle 7 seems to have their development focused on those mechanics (The One Ring, as an example). I am unsure if it would work, given that career movement is one of the hallmarks of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. Is there a multi-class equivalent in 5e D&D?

Well, I've said it elsewhere but fewer wounds than second edition.  The whiff factor and ten wound average can make combats very slow.

I like second edition mechanically for the most part but I'd use the 40k version of critical hits where it's just the number of excess wounds that's looked up on the chart.

I'd like magic to be less rigid than it is in second edition.  Probably have the colleges just have specialized lists they teach but allow the learning of anything you can find a teacher for.  Learning individual spells rather than full lists I guess.

Tone wise I think it would be nice to roll back towards first edition.  A little more black humour and a little less angst.

I ran WFRP 1E for years back in the 80s and early 90s. The main issue is how the career system generally didn't work well past the first couple of advances. As a character generation tool is was fantastic. Players got to pick a general class, but got a random career within it. People shuffling to their desired career was a nice story driver in the early sessions of a campaign. It was a perfect balance of choice and randomness.

The problem is that careers are really short. For the guy who wanted to be a wizard, that was fine. There was a whole track of careers (Apprentice -> Wizard 1 ->Wizard 2 and on). For the guy who wanted to be a burglar, he run out of road really quickly. He was stuck just moving through careers that had little to do with what he did, simply to pick up advances that were helpful to a burglar. Something that added a lot of flavor to a game early on began to feel arbitrary, artificial and constraining.

I don't want the career system demolished. It is a great for character generation, but they need to tweak the way if works for advancement.

I'd also be fine with reducing the whiffs in combat. That won't necessarily make the game more heroic. As it stands, a back-alley knifefight in WFRP is something where it takes a lot of time an effort for someone to get seriously wounded. Cutting down on the whiffiness could actually make the game closer to the grittier mood that is aspires to.

I haven't run the game since 1st edition, so while I remember the combat was fun but wonky in places, I can't remember specifics. I also don't know what was fixed or further broken in the 2nd edition.

I'd most like for it to get the tone and humor right. It's promising that it is being done by a UK company. WFRP calls for a distinctly British sense of humor, and while I like American humor too, Americans can sometimes go very wrong when they try to imitate a British sense of humor.

There's no indication yet that there will be a 4th edition. All i see so far is opportunistic linkage - must be Monday.

If there is, you C7 guys know where i am.

Quote from: Baulderstone;943272The problem is that careers are really short. For the guy who wanted to be a wizard, that was fine. There was a whole track of careers (Apprentice -> Wizard 1 ->Wizard 2 and on). For the guy who wanted to be a burglar, he run out of road really quickly. He was stuck just moving through careers that had little to do with what he did, simply to pick up advances that were helpful to a burglar. Something that added a lot of flavor to a game early on began to feel arbitrary, artificial and constraining.

That's true, but it seems a little like a self-imposed limitation by the player. The Advanced Careers - (if I'm remembering the term right - it's been a couple of years since I've owned WFRP1, and probably 15 years since I last played it) - were all higher-status, movers-and-shakers. Or just had a lot more influence among NPCs or in society. The expectation seemed to be that eventually the characters would develop in that direction. That they wouldn't be content with just being a Rat Catcher, or Burglar for their entire careers.

If a player sets out to have his character be a Burglar throughout his lifespan - and there's aren't options for advancement into becoming a Master Burglar (or whatever) - he's kind of cemented that character into a lower social class role in society. And as a result, closed off opportunities for skill growth and development.

Quote from: K Peterson;943283If a player sets out to have his character be a Burglar throughout his lifespan - and there's aren't options for advancement into becoming a Master Burglar (or whatever) - he's kind of cemented that character into a lower social class role in society. And as a result, closed off opportunities for skill growth and development.

2e addressed that to some degree with added advanced careers like Master Thief, Champion etc. It gave people who wanted to remain in their 'niche' somewhere to go that gave them better advances whilst retaining their character concept. Still didn't quite work (the career system is both the best part and the slightly wonky part of the game) but improved on v1 in that regard. 2e also made advances 5% instead of 10%, so it took more advances to get through a career anyhow.

I really don't need or want a new WFRP. The one I've got isn't broken.
A sourcebook on Lustria... in its earlier incarnation, with space toads, pygmies, amazons with laser pistols... volcanoes and dinosaurs... THAT would be nice to have. Ain't gonna happen though, so... meh.

Quote from: K Peterson;943283If a player sets out to have his character be a Burglar throughout his lifespan - and there's aren't options for advancement into becoming a Master Burglar (or whatever) - he's kind of cemented that character into a lower social class role in society. And as a result, closed off opportunities for skill growth and development.

This was my number one issue with WFRP 2e. I eventually 'unhitched' the arbitrary career paths, and let players go the direction the story took them - damn the game balance. Although it did create some math oddities, players were far more happy with the end result. It was also critical for development in ZWEIHÄNDER, when we began to evaluate the need for career paths.

WFRP2e with more explicit throwbacks to the vibe of 1e.

In fact, what I hope more from the WH licence is a WH40K RPG that is line with WFRP2e i.e. capable of playing a variety of character types and games at that level of complexity.

Make Only War's streamlining of the system standard, add in Black Crusade's alignment sub-system, make point-buy standard, wounds calc'd based on chars, make critical damage table a proper random roll instead of a "build-up" (and also make 10s instant death across the board)...

Essentially, make it not shit and completely broken outside of proscribed gameplay.

Quote from: K Peterson;943283That's true, but it seems a little like a self-imposed limitation by the player. The Advanced Careers - (if I'm remembering the term right - it's been a couple of years since I've owned WFRP1, and probably 15 years since I last played it) - were all higher-status, movers-and-shakers. Or just had a lot more influence among NPCs or in society. The expectation seemed to be that eventually the characters would develop in that direction. That they wouldn't be content with just being a Rat Catcher, or Burglar for their entire careers.

If a player sets out to have his character be a Burglar throughout his lifespan - and there's aren't options for advancement into becoming a Master Burglar (or whatever) - he's kind of cemented that character into a lower social class role in society. And as a result, closed off opportunities for skill growth and development.

It's not that he didn't ever want to move up, but it is a really short path to the advanced careers, and he still had a lot going on in the game. A lot of the Advanced Careers are the equivalent of moving to a desk job. Instead of being a burglar, he could move to being a fence. That didn't fit at all with the ongoing plots he had going on, but he took it anyway, and then it doesn't take too long to exhaust that. Then you just spend your time going back and grubbing through basic careers for advances you can use. The game really didn't support playing administrative characters anyway, and none of the supplements and adventures gave any impression of it as a style of play.

Granted, we were in high school and had a lot of gaming time, but it only took a matter of months before you hit the "bouncing around careers nonsensically" stage of play unless you were a spell caster.

I would be one thing if reaching the end of the "burglar" path meant you were a peerless expert at it. Then it would make sense for the PC to move on to a new challenge. But the player still had advances they wanted to improve, and they had to shop around randomly to do it.

Just to be clear, it's not like the system was completely broken. We got buy with it. I was just inelegant, and felt like the kind of thing worthy of fixing in a future edition.

Topic Creep!

First thing I'd like C7 to do with the license is make all the old stuff available through DTRPG.  WFRP1, 2 and 3 if they can.  

Sell All the Warhammers!!

After that, if they are doing to do WFRP4 they need to...
1. Make sure Jay Little is nowhere on the continent when they begin.
2. Don't make some kind of New School game with lots of OOC Thematic Story Mechanics (or really any at all)
3. Don't make it a TOR hack.
4. Don't make it a 5e hack.

As far as specific mechanics, more on that later...

Quote from: CRKrueger;943308Topic Creep!

First thing I'd like C7 to do with the license is make all the old stuff available through DTRPG.  WFRP1, 2 and 3 if they can.  

Sell All the Warhammers!!

After that, if they are doing to do WFRP4 they need to...
1. Make sure Jay Little is nowhere on the continent when they begin.
2. Don't make some kind of New School game with lots of OOC Thematic Story Mechanics (or really any at all)
3. Don't make it a TOR hack.
4. Don't make it a 5e hack.

As far as specific mechanics, more on that later...

So, you want the Warhammer Fantasy Battles game?  Don't they already have that?