Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd edition cover
|
|
| Designer(s) | (original) Richard Halliwell, Rick Priestley, Graeme Davis, Jim Bambra, Phil Gallagher (FFG Version) Jay Little, Daniel Lovet Clark, Michael Hurley, Tim Uren |
|---|---|
| Publisher(s) | (current) Fantasy Flight Games |
| Publication date | 1986 (1st edition) 2005 (2nd edition) 2009 (3rd edition [Fantasy Flight Games version]) |
| Genre(s) | Fantasy |
| System(s) | Custom |
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (abbreviated to WFRP or WHFRP) is a role-playing game set in the Warhammer Fantasy setting. Over the years, it has been through a number of phases and different publishers, most of which were related in some way to Games Workshop.
The 1986 first edition of WFRP spawned a campaign known as The Enemy Within. These five episodes were bound and collected. The first three episodes generally received the most praise; a rewritten version of the last episode, Empire in Flames, was to be issued by Hogshead Publishing under the title Empire in Chaos but was never released.
For the 2004 second edition, another campaign, entitled Paths of the Damned, was followed by standalone adventures, such as Barony of the Damned and Terror in Talabheim, as well as shorter adventures in country sourcebooks and rules supplements, such as Ill Tidings from the Bretonnia supplement Knights of the Grail and A Brutal Finish from the arcane magic supplement Realms of Sorcery.
Fantasy Flight Games released a third edition in November 2009. This edition brought a substantial change to the system; few mechanics of the original system were retained. In this edition, the Storm of Chaos – during which the Empire is invaded – is about to happen, rather than having already been repulsed, as in the second edition. This means it is set a year before the time period of the second edition.
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay shares the same Germanic, doom-laden background as the Warhammer Fantasy Battle (WFB) wargame from which it originates. Since it is a game devoted to individual characters rather than to entire armies, WFRP depicts the setting in much closer detail than its wargame counterpart. This change of focus also transforms WFRP into a more grim and perilous game than WFB.
The primary setting of WFRP is the Empire, a region of the Old World based loosely on the Holy Roman Empire, with a number of baronies, counties and dukedoms fashioned after the fiefs of elector counts and dukes. Other prominent regions include Bretonnia, based on medieval France with strong Arthurian mythology themes; Kislev, based on medieval Poland and Imperial Russia; and the Wasteland, whose sole city of Marienburg is based on the Low Countries. Other lands not explored as thoroughly but still frequently mentioned include the fragmented lands of Estalia and Tilea, fashioned after Spain and the city-states of Renaissance Italy respectively, and Araby, a mixture of Arabic Caliphate and Persia. Other lands with real-life analogies include Cathay (China), Ind (India), Naggaroth (northern North America), Ulthuan (Atlantis), Lustria (Mesoamerica), Norsca (Scandinavia) and the island of Albion (British Isles); however, very little official information has been released for these locales.
...
Wikipedia