Winds of Chaos

Good news everyone! You may remember Dr Tham as the author of the alternative critical effects for 2e that have become deservedly famous in WFRP circles for their detail and accuracy. Well, he has recently gotten re-involved in WFRP and just sent me 3 sets of Critical Effects for 4e: Cutting, Crushing, and Piercing, as well as an informative doc about rule interpretations and intent. You can find them here for now, until I figure out a way to add them to the Downloads page without messing up the formatting there.

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Hey everyone who may still be reading this. The long-awaited Lustria supplement for WFRP was just released and I wrote the chapter on “Quetza the Defiled.” All about the abandoned ruins of the once-great Temple City that fell to Clan Pestilens and other, darker things. I would really like to know what you think, since the supplement to Lustria has been a long time coming.

It even comes in a Collector’s Edition!

For years before the pandemic, I’ve been supporting a little virtual table top system called Foundry VTT, because the main programmer Atropos seemed pretty awesome, and new stuff was being added to the system fairly quickly and regularly. During that time, I’ve seen the system grow by leaps and bounds, and since its official launch it’s become my go-to virtual system. A developer named Moo Man spent a ton of time and effort supporting WFRP4e and came up with a system that covers nearly everything and is just simply gorgeous.

Usually this is about the time a game publisher comes in and shuts everything down. Cubicle 7, however, has embraced the system and even contracted Moo Man to continue WFRP4e Foundry VTT development for them in the future. They’ve released modules for the Starter Set, Enemy in Shadows, and Rough Nights and Hard Days.

I am flabbergasted by the whole-hearted support from Cubicle 7. It may be the reason I finally switch from 2e to 4e. Thank you, Cubicle 7, for supporting the game in the way I prefer to play it, especially in these times of social distancing. Thank you.

The death of Martin McKenna hit me pretty hard. He was my favorite WFRP artist and he was so young. I found him via his website in 2018 and had the pleasure of talking with him over email. I let him know how much his artwork meant to me and how Death on the Reik was my favorite RPG supplement ever, and how his artwork just captured the setting for me in a way no one else’s did. He told me he still had all of the original drawings locked away in his drawer for the past 30 years, so I made him an offer and he accepted. Over the next year or so, I also bought some artwork from Grapes of Wrath, Something Rotten in Kislev and the first Enemy Within pamphlet supplement. He took the time to autograph every one of the pieces individually.

He was one of the nicest, most down-to-earth people I’ve ever met. I still can’t believe he’s gone.

Things are moving along with part one of the Winds of Chaos campaign, slowly but surely, in between episodes of writer’s block. I added a new scenario in the middle, so it’s going to take a little longer, and I just recently got a bunch of finished artwork from Freddy Lopez, Jr, which looks absolutely amazing and has inspired me to push forward through the writer’s block. No ETA yet, unfortunately, but I would like to share a few of Freddy’s pieces to make up for the long wait.

It’s the end of an era — Strike to Stun is closing its doors, and in its absence there seems to be no bulletin board/forum left for fans of WFRP to gather and talk. I’m not a huge fan of Facebook or Reddit, and I’m too old to learn newfangled things like Discord, so I set up a forum here at Winds of Chaos.

While I redesign the site to be a bit more modern and accommodate more links, you can find the forum here: https://windsofchaos.com/forum/

Please head over to register and add your voice to the discussion! And let me know if you have any suggestions. And if you have a moment, drop a post on Strike to Stun to thank Natascha for everything she’s done for our little WFRP community.

So I’ve had this kernel of an idea for a WFRP campaign for over 10 years now, inspired by reading the excellent “Realms of Sorcery” for 2nd Edition. I actually had a fair amount written up in 2007, including a bunch of artwork by TJ Adamowicz, the same guy who drew all the stuff for Noblesse Oblige and Dead Ringer. I tested the first scenario with my group at the time and it played pretty well. But then life got in the way.

Fast forward to early 2018. When I heard that the 4th edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay was in the works I got excited about the Old World all over again. So I dug out my old campaign and began reworking it. The first thing I did was strip out all references to the Storm of Chaos and bring the content in line with the timeline for 4e, which according to the letter at the front of the core rulebook is IC 2411.

The campaign begins with the discovery of a druid’s corpse at the southern end of the Drakwald Forest near Altdorf, and mainly concerns various intrigues within the eight Colleges of Magic, set against the backdrop of political intrigues within the Empire. “Stones & Sigils” is a set of 5 interlinked scenarios, and comprises part one of a two-part larger campaign I call … wait for it … “Winds of Chaos.” The PCs figure prominently, of course, and their actions during the investigative sections determine how much information they have on hand to strategize when it comes down to the final battle. The outcome of that final battle will have an enormous effect on the second half of the campaign — which I have down in rough outline form but does not yet have a title. Right now, the plan is to write “Winds of Chaos” for 4e but to include statblocks that make it also compatible with 2e.

I’ve been running my group through “Stones & Sigils” over the past few months (in 2e) and so far it’s been well received. I’d say I’m about 60% done, but already it’s the largest project I’ve ever attempted for this sort of thing. It needs to be cleaned up and a few areas require reworking, tightening, or some additional material. After I wrangle it into what I think is suitable for outside viewing, I’ll put out a call for playtesting. In the meantime, I’ll be hip deep in writing, rewriting, and then writing some more.

The first time I saw the hardback WFRP book — it must have been in December of ’86 or ’87 — I fell in love with it. The crazy-haired dwarf on the cover, the smiling warrior shoving a huge sword through some mohawked ogre-like thing, the copy on the back:

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The WFRP 4th edition preview has been out for a while now, and I have some thoughts!

First impressions: very good presentation, gorgeous artwork, intriguing new ideas, and an obvious knowledge of and devotion to WFRP history and what has gone before.

THINGS I LIKE
— The Old World. Having skipped 3e, it’s been a long time since I’ve ventured into the Old World and I’m really glad to have it back.
— Advantage in combat. On first glance this seems like a nice nod to “advantage” in 1e, where the winner of the previous round got a +10% WS bonus during the next round. It seems like it will speed combat up a bit in the later stages, as Success Levels keep adding up.
— Success Levels. My biggest complaint about 2e, the “whiffiness” of combat, should be gone. And making such direct use of SL’s opens up interesting possibilities, like rolling multiple dice over multiple rounds to build up enough SL’s to, say, pick a lock. Ingenious.
— No cards, tokens, special dice, or other board-game-derived fiddly bits. Having purchased the 3e rules and a few supplements on eBay over the past year, I finally see what they were trying to do here. And having heard some really positive things about the system and its supplements I think they succeeded. Those extra parts just always struck me as alien to WFRP, and I wasn’t ever able to get over that to actually give the system a fair shake.

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*casts site necromancy spell*

Apparently Cubicle 7 has picked up the WFRP license and is already hard at work on a 4th edition of everyone’s favorite RPG. I am so far out of the loop nowadays I only recently became aware of it. As far as previous editions go, my favorite is v1 for the setting and v2 for the ruleset. I have no opinion on v3 since I never purchased anything for it — although I have to say I have heard some very good things from people who have actually sat down and played it.

As it is, I am cautiously optimistic about v4. Cubicle 7 is certainly saying all the right things, and the new cover is a clever throwback to the v1 hardback that caught my eye around 1987. Maybe it’s time to dust off those dice and get back into a regular gaming group while we wait for the official release.

Good lord. Has it really been 7 years since the site was last updated?