Where the other Gideon reads Warpstone

[Robin]

So, over on RPGnet, the other Gideon (not the one behind the brilliant Awesome Lies blog) is currently posting a read through of Warpstone from issue one onwards. He's posting it bit by bit as he reads sections of each issue, but I've got his permission to assemble the bits and post them here. The read-through is currently up to issue six, but I'm not going to dump them all at once.

Here we go...

Warpstone was a fanzine for WFRP. I don't really know much about it, especially the early days, when I wasn't paying too much attention to RPGs, but I have all the issues, so I feel like I can do a Let's Read for it.

Issue One - Spring 1996

Issue 1 is a classic old-school A4 folded down to A5 and stapled fanzine (it got a lot more sophisticated later). It's For Warhammer RPG and subtitled 'Reports from the heart of the corruption.'

The cover is printed on a beige sort of paper, whereas the rest of the booklet is white. And on the cover we are promised a Full Index of the WHRPG rule book, Prosthetics in the world of Warhammer RP, Persecution - A brief scenario & more.

I note the use of WHFRP instead of WFRP, not sure when this sort of became standardised, but these days WFRP aways refers to itself as WFRP, although I've seen lots of variations like WHRPG, WHFRPG, etc, on the internet, but Warpstone adopts the standard WFRP by the next page.

The cover art depicts a dwarf adventurer and a human adventurer in or near a cave, while a sinister pair of eyes looks on from the darkness. The dwarf has just picked up what looks like some sort of skaven-symboled disc.

The contents page has the quote 'In all chaos there is a reason, in all disorder a secret order.' by Witch-hunter Carl von Jung. Which is, of course, a paraphrase of Carl Jung.

Then we have an editorial, presumably by the editor John Foody.

It suggests the re-emergence of WFRP under Hogshead is a good opportunity for a fanzine, and says that Warpstone should act as a forum for debate and communication despite the internet. It says that WFRP's future and the gaming industry in general looks healthy and points to Arcane and Valkyrie magazines and the Virgin games stores. It reminds of the huge potential of a game based on the Warhammer world (to be fair, a potential we are still being reminded of today). It also mentions the Journal of Interactive Fantasy, which I don't know anything about, but seems to be Hogshead's own organ.

It gives us the submissions policy, 'if you have any ideas articles or points please communicate them to us.' Extraordinarily, to me now that I'm living in the future, and have forgotten all about this sort of thing, it says include your text on a disc in ASCII format.

It then goes onto a Brief History of WFRP, telling us that it's a great game, and then bemoaning that 'Space Marines boarded the good ship WFRP from the cruiser HMS Profit.' Then tells us that Hogshead took over the game in 1995, and wonders in the light of, eg, White Wolf revolutionising gaming, whether WFRP can still cut the mustard.
Reviews

Next section is Reviews. The first one is the Hogshead edition of the corebook. It says they have fixed a few of the errors and added a new character sheet. And suggests it would have been a good opportunity to revise the rules.

Next is the Hogshead edition of Shadows over Bogenhafen, which bemoans the fact there is no added section on how to deal with the big failure that could occur at the end of that adventure, and gives us an ic insight into how the author's (John Foody?) SoB game went wrong at that stage.

Next: Apocrypha Now, Hogshead's first collection of disparate pre-published WFRP articles. Like a true old-school WFRPer the author bemoans the random magic items therein and the new Elven Wardancer career. And dismisses the Effective Initiative rules as too much hassle.

Dying of the Light, Hogshead's first big multi-author scenario. This gets a generally positive reception but the author is concerned by the linear nature of the adventure which affords little freedom for the players. He says that he hasn't played it as it doesn't fit into his current game, but, fwiw, as I have, I can confirm, the players absolutely do have to buy into the adventure's figurative, and actually literal, linear format for it to work. (I'm still not sure whether this was a knowing joke from the designers.)

A quick review of Hogwash, which was Hogshead's newsletter. Istr James Wallis (Hogshead's head hog) saying they liked doing Hogwash coz it took them back to their earlier fanzine days. I have had a look in my pile for Hogwash Issue One but it's not there. Istr I kept a few Hogwashes back in the day, but I can't find any now.

And then a review of Valkyrie Vol 1 Issue 10.

Archive

In a section called Archive we are given various Skills, Spells, Creatures, Gods, Herbs, etc, that appear outside the corebook and told the book they appear in.

The Travellers Tale

In such a small font I had to fetch my painting glasses, The Travellers Tale is a very WFRP short story which tells of a character who has lost both his hands in a tunnel fight with an ogre, and serves as a precursor to the Prosthetics article, coming up later in the zine.

The Usual Suspects

The Usual Suspects announces itself as a regular column, and iirc, it did continue pretty much all the way through Warpstone's run, featuring detailed ready-made NPCs. This issue we have Sard the Skaven Hunter of mysterious parentage (and race), and having been chronically tortured by the skaven, is left with unnatural abilities and mental illness, but a potentially crucial source of info on Skaven.

And Lu 'Knuckles' Gatter, a 'Mr. Fixit' fence, a bit of a wideboy who knows everyone, and can actually be trusted to keep a secret. Both are fully stat-ed, interesting NPCs and useful contacts, and handy for a GM to have in their back pocket.

Recommended

And then suddenly, out of the blue, we get a recommendation to watch the movie, La Reine Margot. I kinda like this idea of being recommended WFRP-ly media, but don't recall it being continued.
Scenario: Persecution

There was a thing, back in the day about Warpstone's version of the Warhammer World. Some loved it, and felt it reflected their Warhammer World well, but some, I think, didn't like the grimness or lack of 'fantasy'. Personally I always felt at home in the Warpstone Warhammer World. This scenario fits squarely in the Warpstone World, which, presumably written by John Foody, was a reflection of how he viewed the WW.

The scenario is well written and short and sweet, setting up a potential flashpoint between a local authority, some visiting witch hunters, and the PC party. The sewers, the cynical view of authority, and the themes of power and deceit are all derived directly from Shadows over Bogenhafen and other WFRP adventures. And this feels like exactly the sort of thing Warpstone fans might expect from the zine's first scenario.

Index

Interrupting the scenario is the Index. This is an index for the Hogshead edition of the corebook, and seems long and exhaustive. It takes up the centre spreads of the zine so that it can be removed and used separately. This is a worthy and genuinely useful pull-out, though I'm glad no one removed my second hand one.
The Order of the Dark City

Next is the Order of the Dark City. This is an unusual order of knights who have been called by strange dreams depicting the end of the Empire. The members are haunted by images of destroyed cities, cloaked figures, and triangular devices, and their hierarchy is based on the number 13.

The exact nature of their calling is left to the reader to decide, but it clearly has something to do with the rise of the skaven. And towards the end, the explicitly half-elven Sard (from The Usual Suspects) turns up with some useful information for the order. I like this sort of continuity, and it establishes a bit of a theme for the issue.

The order feels like it can work as a patron for the PCs to do a bit of digging into rat-folk on their behalf, or even as the basis for a campaign where all the PCs are members.

Recommendation

And we get another recommendation, this time for Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast Trilogy.

Prosthetics

For a game that glories so much in critical injuries and lost limbs it makes sense to put a bit of thought into prosthetics and this is the longest article of the issue.

After a brief history of prosthetics in the real world, we get a table detailing the sorts of penalties a character with lost limbs, etc, could be subject to.

Then we get details of prosthetics. They are put into five levels, level one being simple stuff which are hardly prosthetics at all, like crutches, up to level four which is things like sophisticated articulated hands, and then effective replacements at level five, like magical solutions.

This all feels a bit niche and perilous, but I suppose it would be vital to a character who actually loses a limb, or a nose, and a player prepared to play on in the face of such disadvantage should be given all the mitigation they can find.

And we get another handy NPC, this time Dr Prosther of Nuln university who would probably fit the characters up with a level four prosthetic should they need one, except, this being WFRP, he’s a reclusive paranoid drug addict.
Next Issue we are promised Warhammer on the internet.

There is an attempt to kickstart correspondence with the Altdorf University Debating Society, offering the topics, should Fate Points be kept secret? and Are Trollslayers good player careers? Plus ca change. I will be interested to find out whether anyone responded.

It also asks, interestingly, does Warhammer have a future or does it deserve to be sucked dry by the new breed of game (Vampire...). I wonder whether this was just click bait or that was genuinely what early 90s gamers were considering.

So that's issue one. Going back to it after over ten years I was surprised by how meaty this first issue was. 48 pages small type and pretty packed. And it was quite serious stuff, though there were WFRP style jokey references, there was none of that laddishness of some fanzines, or affected amateurism that the format sort of complements. There are only two credited people, John Foody who I imagine did nearly all the writing, and John Keane who did all the art. There wasn't much art, the cover, and an NPC character portrait, mostly.

All in all a pretty impressive first issue of a niche game in a niche field. I don't know how much it cost at the time, but it's a bit of a collectors item, now, and iirc I paid 70 quid for one and two together about twenty years ago to complete my collection.



Regards,
Robin and the other Gideon

[Robin]

So, quite a lot of views, but no comments.

Do I continue with this, or not? Is there any interest?

Regards,
Robin

[Capitaneus Fractus]

(I have nothing to comment, but I read with interest. Thank you very much.)

[Robin]

(I have nothing to comment, but I read with interest. Thank you very much.)

Thanks for replying. I'll keep going!

Issue Two

This is dated the Summer of 1996. The same Warpstone graphic is used, and it is actually quite pixelated. It still says For Warhammer RPG and Reports from the heart of the corruption. The cover is printed on slightly thicker paper/card than the previous issue.

And as well as some of the contents, the cover also gives us a Voltaire quote, ‘If we do not find anything very pleasant, at least we shall find something new.’

The cover illo is by Steven Punter and depicts an Ulrican warrior with a wolf-head cloak.

The Editorial is by John Keane so I may have been wrong about my assumption in the previous post that nearly all the writing was done by John Foody. But this issue does say all the uncredited text is his.

The editorial thanks us for our feedback and bemoans a necessary price rise, as it was not viable to keep the price at £1, though I don’t know what the new price is. It mostly is just telling us what will be in the issue, and says that they have reduced the font size to fit more in, so I guess I will be getting my painting glasses out again (this issue was also 48 pages).

Then it makes the point that WFRP career changes can be roleplayed through, or they can just be a shopping list of power-ups (which I recall was a common topic of debate among 1st ed players) and asks us for our views and makes the point again about the fanzine being a forum for discussion and debate.

Submissions

And then it discusses submissions and suggests regular articles would be:
Cameos, short scenario ideas
The Usual Suspects,
Scenarios,
Short stories,
Reviews,
My campaign, 1000(ish) words on your campaign (I don’t recall ever reading one of these).

And payment is a free copy of the zine! (But as everyone knows, the real payment is seeing your stuff in print.)

News

We have the hot news that Doomstones: Fire and Blood should be in the shops as you read this, and Death on the Reik is scheduled for August. Less successfully, they say Hogshead are hoping for a pre-Christmas release of Realms of Sorcery (for the record RoS was promised by GW with the first raft of WFRP stuff, and it never happened. But even with this Hogshead announcement it doesn’t get released for another five years!)

Down in the Sewers

With a twist on the ‘Recommended’ feature they give ten films with good sewer action.

Careering Ahead by John Keane

The quote below the title ‘A man can only attain knowledge with the help of those who possess it...’ is from George Gurdjieff, the philosopher and mystic, keeping up the rather high brow level of quotees we’ve had so far.

This article discusses the contentious issue of career changing and refers to the Skills and Careers article in Apocrypha Now which already discusses this. And it asks whether game play should be sacrificed for realism.

It discusses advantages and disadvantages of requiring any career change to depend on a suitable teacher being found. The adventure and roleplay opportunities being the primary advantages as well as grounding the game in some realism. The main disadvantages are putting the desired play on hold, and suffering xp bottleneck.

Email Address

And then we are given Warpstone’s email address, but in a very 90s comment, it asks that you allow some time for replies because of infrequent access.

Reviews

The reviews section mentions that there are no WFRP releases this quarter and so makes do with brief looks at Valkyrie and Arcane magazines.

Energy Criticals by Lloyd Carroll

This is a table of critical hit results especially for magic attacks. The author says his group made up these criticals when their wizard character started throwing fireballs and lightning bolts around. They complement the existing weapon damage crits and, in a similar spirit, include some decently gruesome results.

Usual Suspects

This issue’s first usual suspect is Jake Olricson by Martin Oliver who is the character depicted on the cover art. He is a warrior with a colourful and very violent past but no aim in life, who turned to Ulric after being nursed back to health by them. He lost his hand in a fight with a dragon, and now has a carved fist, and a flail attachment, which fits nicely with the previous issue’s article on prosthetics.

Sigfried Vanderhausen by John Keane

This is an orphan who became a cleric of Ranald and who follows the god very strictly. But he is travelling the Empire searching for his mentor who went mysteriously missing.

Daedalus Kreiger by John Keane

Daedalus is a frustrated member of the Dwarven Engineers’ Guild. He has an inventive mind but that just brings him up against the more traditional and staid members of the guild. He really wants to want to leave Middenheim and embark on a life of adventure, but hasn’t had the courage to follow that through, yet.

Scenario

The Cannon Ball Run by John Foody

This is described as a short scenario but it’s not that short (14 pages). It starts off with a great hook, a severed hand holding a brooch and wearing the seal of a local stage coach company. The PCs will need to investigate a bit to get to the bottom of a convoluted criminal scheme that has already gone half wrong.

Despite it being a short adventure, it requires the sort of investigative digging that is required in Shadows over Bogenhafen, even if the conspiracy is a lot less high-status. There are a number of ways to thwart the scheme which includes a classic warehouse showdown, but the one the GM should aim for is clearly the spectacular ambushing of the titular coach.

I really like the adventure, and it makes good use of what we know about Nuln, with a nice call back to the Deutz Elm of the Oldenhaller Contract. We get our first mention of Hofbauer Bodelstein which is a trading house that comes up a lot in John Foody’s stuff. This feels like exactly the sort of scheming that might be going down on Nuln’s streets, and uses the classic WFRP adversary, semi-competent everyday folk.

What’s in a Name?

The scenario is interrupted by a pull-out What’s in a Name? by John Foody and Martin Oliver. This is part one, dedicated to the Empire, and is a huge list of male and female first names and surnames to help with naming characters in your game.

Subscription Form

And this in turn is interrupted (they are nested for ease of pull-out-ness) by the handout for the scenario and a subscription form. They are offering 4 issues for £9, which a, sounds very cheap, and b, shows a significant commitment to their endeavour. And again, I’m very pleased whoever owned this before me didn’t actually pull anything out.

Cameos

This cameo, Rough Justice, by Martin Oliver describes a pretty typical WFRP scene. Two rival witch hunters are vying to punish an innocent (if you call having different coloured eyes innocent) man, when the PCs are expected to step in and bring some sort of sense to the situation. The witch hunters follow Aluminas and Solkan, and the witch hunter from issue one was a Solkanite. Not sure if that is a reaction to the ubiquitous Sigmarite ones.

Specialist Weapon – Net

The author apologises that this isn’t as thorough and detailed an article as he had hoped and, as he had no internet connection himself, he had to rely on internet cafes. All the sites he pointed to, I’m sure are long gone, but it’s kinda interesting to see the dawn of the popular internet being reviewed here.

Recommendation

The Elizabethan Underworld by Gamini Salgado

Interview: James Wallis of Hogshead Publishing

This is a good interview of James Wallis, who had not so long ago taken over WFRP with his company Hogshead, so I guess it benefited both parties to have an exchange of views.

There is some interesting stuff, and a few bits that stand out is that Hogshead did not pay the bills and James had returned to freelancing again (as a journalist/writer) for about a year.

He talked about the launch of FRUP, which I recall being mentioned a lot back in the day, but never made it to publication. When asked if it was a one joke game, James replied yes, but it was a very good joke.

He says Hogshead sold about 6,500 WFRP rulebooks in a year. He mentions that GW have to approve everything they do but says they are a pleasure to work with.

He mentions a Marienburg sourcebook, a Bretonnian one, Realms of Sorcery, and a Realms of Chaos, which GW rejected because they did not like the idea of Chaos PCs. He talks about Carrion up the Reik which he says will either replace Power Behind the Throne, or come before it. Aficionados will know which of these things came to pass.

He is sort of pessimistic about the state of British gaming and associated publications but has a vision for the British games industry and says if you are starting your own company to come and talk to him, because he’s tired of seeing the same mistakes being made over again (And fwiw istr hearing that some successful companies did take him up on this).

Recommended: Ran, Akira Kurosawa

Short story: No Way Out by John Keane

This is a one page story about Daedalus from this issue’s The Usual Suspects as he finally manages to leave Middenheim for a life of adventure. Or does he?

And that’s issue 2 done, apart from an offer to buy the last issue for a pound and some late news that you can get stuff from Caliver Books at 10% off if you mention Warpstone. (I buy from Caliver, occasionally, so I might try it.)


Regards,
Robin

[Hyarion]

Being a (comparative) newcomer to WFRP and having missed out completely on the 1e and post-1e (Warpstone/pre 2e) era, I'm finding this a fascinating walk through.

I've read through the 1e core book, but I'll confess it means that much less to me because I never had to make it work for me, as it's the only edition I haven't played.

[Chuck]

I have all the Warpstones except the first 4 issues. It’s interesting finally getting a peek at what I’ve been missing for the past few decades.

[Robin]

I have all the Warpstones except the first 4 issues. It’s interesting finally getting a peek at what I’ve been missing for the past few decades.

I'm just missing one and two. I had a couple of others missing until last year.

I'm using the other Gideon's read-through to motive my own reread. I've been very impressed by the thoroughness of Gideon's coverage, and all the amount of content in the older issues.

It's not triggered much discussion over on RPGnet. Part of my reason for reposting here is to bring it to a more dedicated audience.

Regards,
Robin

[Jadrax]

" It also asks, interestingly, does Warhammer have a future or does it deserve to be sucked dry by the new breed of game (Vampire...). I wonder whether this was just click bait or that was genuinely what early 90s gamers were considering."

The idea that Vampire was just going to kill all other RPGs was strong. It was massively attuned to the zeitgeist of the time, which I think has hurt the WoD in the long run, while the fact that WFRP is essentially grounded in dad jokes makes it pretty timeless.

[Hyarion]

In the Hilarious Darkness of the Far Future, there is only Dad Jokes....

[Robin]

Issue Three

The third issue is A4 size, with a stiffer card cover, in white, and now 32 stapled pages. It suddenly looks much more professional. The logo is the same (but bigger) but doesn’t suffer from the pixelation of the earlier issues, and it has the same sub titles.

The cover art, by Steven Punter, is of a fighter-type looking like he is regretting his life choices as a dragon breathes over him. And the quote is from Napoleon, ‘When soldiers have been baptized in the fire of a battlefield, they all have one rank in my eyes.’

The inside quote is ‘This weapon will become your tongue, and soon you will write your poetry in blood.’ This is from Jarmusch’s Dead Man, and I’m not sure why I’m bothering to write out all the quotes, but it feels like they have a bit of relevance and some gravitas.

Editorials

John Foody’s editorial talks about Lazarus like return of WFRP under Hogshead, and I think at the time (or really a bit later, for me) I sort of took it for granted that WFRP did have staying power, but looking back, there was no real imperative for it, and no reason why we might not be looking back at a game that was big for a few years in the eighties, and then disappeared without trace.

Martin Oliver’s editorial talks about the creeping inevitability of Chaos, which foreshadows a later article, and asks whether it is time to do away with ubiquitous Chaos. But I think, so far in Warpstone, there has been almost no mention of it.

Reviews

The reviews are an interesting bunch. The first is of Garett Lepper’s Book of the Rat, an online fan work guide to the machinations of the skaven, and it looks forward to the book being expanded to more completely cover skaven PCs. It does say that some of the ideas in BotR are a bit too WFB, which is a thing that old school WFRPers have said about practically everything, and I say it nearly every day about 4th ed. Interesting it should be said about a fan-work this long ago. I guess it’s just an inevitability.

Then we have Fire and Blood, Hogshead’s new release of a combined Doomstones 1 and 2. The reviewer (John Foody) is not too enthusiastic about its ties to D&D and the dungeon bashy feel of the campaign.

Then Pour la Gloire d’Ulric, reviewed by Martin Oliver. This is part one of a campaign set after Empire in Flames. I was under the impression that this was in French, but he reviews it without mentioning that, so I might be wrong. In any case, he is not too enthusiastic, bemoaning its linear nature, the insistence on pre-made PCs, and its divergence from Hogshead’s Warhammer World.

Hogwash Issue Two contains some news about WFRP and the new career Exorcist, written by Graeme Davis.

Le Grimoire is reviewed, Martin Oliver tells us it’s a french warhammer fanzine up to issue 15, and that GW are ‘officialising’ it. He says this feel a bit dodgy, but I guess, it’s sort of ironic given Warpstone’s later ‘officially unofficial’ status. The issue has over a hundred new character classes (I’m not sure whether he means careers) and ‘snow elves’, but while he says the production quality is good, he doesn’t make much use of the content.

Then ‘Warpstone Fragments’ has the news that Hogshead have a skaven sourcebook in the works (hindsight makes this pretty risible) also a WFRP book based on Realms of Chaos (see above) and news Realms of Sorcery won’t be released this year (obeying the comedy rule of three).

Fighting Chaos – Why Bother, by Timothy Eccles

This one page article suggests that Chaos is just too powerful to deal with. It cites a TPK in Something Rotten in Kislev, and power ups from Realms of Chaos. And in the end suggests that there is no point even bothering to fight Chaos because it is just too powerful.

This is plainly a bit tongue in cheek, as Chaos is the central theme of the game, and Tim went on fighting Chaos in his campaign (and contributing to Warpstone) for many years, but I think it is here to aid debate on precisely what place Chaos should have in your games.

Mentioned in Dispatches by Martin Oliver

Mentioned in Dispatches is a new regular feature reflecting the buzz in the WFRP email list on that internet thing discussed earlier. (fwiw I was a member of the list a few years after this article.) This issue is all about two weapon fighting, and Martin summarises the ideas offered and debated online around two weapon fighting. There were lots of different ideas put forward that a WFRPer of the time could use in their games. But as someone who still gets headaches trying to work out 4th ed’s two-weapon rules, I’ll leave it there.

Holy Knights, Pagan Days by Peter Huntington

This is a longer article and the first of a two-parter dealing with knightly orders. The Templar advanced career in the first ed corebook is very generic and has more of a real world historical description, which makes me think the Warhammer World did not have any of their knightly orders established when first ed came out. And I do not know what the Empire army lists looked like in 1996 and how many knightly orders there were but I suspect not many because the article creates orders for itself, but we do get the Order of the Fiery Heart.

The first part of the article gives us a quick history of the historical order, and then it goes onto creating the knights of Sigmar, or the Order of Sigmar’s Temple, and makes an interesting in-game history for them with a cynical Grand Theogonist being the villain. But good triumphs and establishes the order. Now the Templars of Sigmar are split into the Order of the Fiery Heart and the shadier, Order of the Fist.

And we are promised part two in the next issue, which will deal with Ulrican and Myrmdian orders. I think after asking for contributions in issue one, and having this long, detailed and useful article appear by issue three suggests that the magazine could already count itself successful at its stated goals.

Templars of Sigmar, Structure and Advance Scheme by John Foody

This gives us a more play oriented treatment of the order, with five different tiers, Guard, Knight, Master, Marshal, Grandmaster, and an advance scheme for each, even if the top two tiers are marked ‘NPCs Only!’

Paired Weapon Skills by Roger Kay

This is a short article, complementing Mentioned in Dispatches, discussing how ambidextrous characters might use two weapons in a fight and it gives three new skills (which would be called Talents in later editions) opening the ability for double weapon strikes, parries, and feints.

Scenario One Hour (to) Morr by John Foody

This is a pretty complete adventure, although described in the text as very short, I think that means the time it covers rather than the length of the article. It involves classic incompetent villains, though few villains will be quite as incompetent as these who have summoned a daemon to destroy a PC, only for the daemon to turn up to inform the PC that the summoning has gone wrong and he’ll be back in an hour.

The PCs are therefore involved in a time critical investigation and a mad rush across town to prevent the second summoning. The trail given in the adventure is specific and I imagine reflects the route the PCs took when the adventure was originally played. But it seems straight forward enough for a GM to ad lib their own trail if the PCs should veer off a bit. The cult involved is a good one, too, and could be used by the GM almost anywhere.

Much later, this adventure was included in Corrupting Influence, the Greatest Hits from Warpstone’s early years, and I did mention to John Foody that I thought he could have included better adventures (I’m a big fan of John’s adventures). He replied that this was the scenario his group had had the most fun with. So that makes sense, and who’s to say running around in a mad panic after daemons isn’t the funnest part of WFRP. In fact, I suppose this scenario resembles the mad dash at the end of Shadows over Bogenhafen, while incorporating the SoB style investigation distilled down to one hour.

Letters Page

And we have a pretty packed letters page, showing that either Warpstone has already taken off, or the editorial team badgered their friends to write in.

The first letter is from Martin Oliver of Warpstone, saying how disappointed he was to read in the James Wallis interview that PbtT might be replaced (Spoiler: it wasn’t in the end, and is now generally considered a classic) and extolling its virtues.

Sam Stockdale tells us magic isn’t to be trusted, encouraging us to treat is with scarcity and mystery. (aside: if he thinks it was bad then, he should try it now in the light of College magic, more WFB, several editions of WFRP, and several Realms of Sorceries.)

Phil Campbell, in reference to Careering Ahead, has thoughts on how to stop PCs becoming career hopping power gamers.

Zeno Collins has a very long letter, for which he apologies up front which is essentially a detailed review of the first two issues, which is mostly constructive praise, and his own thoughts on career hopping.

As well as a few more letters we have a letter from Phil Gallagher who was big at GW at the time, saying he hadn’t really read the first two issues, but he thought they were great, anyway, but mostly talking about a US lawsuit that iirc was mentioned in issue one, with a what sounds like a pretty comprehensive refutation.

Recommended

Tales of Mystery and Imagination, by Edgar Allen Poe

Life Among the Pirates by David Cordingly

The Bunny Period by Francis Plunder

This is a thing I have read about in a number of places, and I wonder whether this is its original mention. The Bunny Period is an antidote to players moaning that they have too much to do facing constant danger and adventuring, etc. The GM should just have everything be lovely for a while, until the players are desperate for something bad to happen.

Usual Suspects

This issue’s Usual Suspect is Barreltum Burrfoot by Justin Curtis and Martin Oliver. He was mentioned, and promised, as a colleague of issue two’s Jake Olricson. Burrfoot is a thief who has had an interesting past, and managed to acquire a number of magic rings. I particularly like the idea he had to fake his own death to get out of washing up for the assassins’ guild. While he would make an interesting contact or patron, as with his friend Olricson, it does feel like we are reading about someone’s PC.

Cameos

Flea Circus by John Foody

This is a nice little encounter with a champion of Nurgle bringing a travelling show, ostensibly warning about the dangers of Nurgle, but bringing Nurgle’s Rot and other diseases to the people

I Hired a Contract Killer by John Foody

This is a riff on the movie of that name by Aki Kaurismaki. Having hired an assassin to put him out of his miserable life, Henri soon regrets it when he unexpectedly falls in love. The PCs can be brought in as either assassins or bodyguards, a hilarity, and/or grim peril, ensues. This feels like the sort of darkly humorous farce that could work in almost any WFRP game.

Next is the Forum, separate from the letters page, talking about the issues specifically offered in issue one. It says they only had a few replies. But they managed to fill a page.

For the question of whether to keep fate points a secret from the players, everyone who expressed a preference preferred to have these known to the players (and to be fair, I thought this was a bizarre idea when I read it, although iirc at the time there was more of a tradition in some games of keeping as much as possible under the purview of the GM).

The question of whether trollslayers are good player careers. Imo, it’s sort of ironic that (arguably) the most iconic career of a cooperative, party oriented RPG should be one that undermines (to a variable degree) that cooperation and party oriented play. And the answers were just the sort of mix that you still get today in that debate. Though, I did like Francis Plunder’s comment that you should not start off as one, but can become one through the game play.

A Bard’s Tale by Ricard Gelabert Peiri

And finally there is a two page short story which is a version of the Headless Horseman legend. This was quite fun, and well done, and inspiring enough to base a WFRP encounter on. (There's a subtle joke in there, I only just noticed, that the bard is actually Mike Oldfield.)

That’s issue three, but a word about the art. I don’t think I’m a very visual reader so it’s not really my instinct to focus on this, but there is a lot more art in this issue, and the quality is improving, especially some very atmospheric bits, by Steven Punter, in the Cameos section.


Regards,
Robin

[hallucyon]

Thanks for reposting, Robin. Very seldom do I visit other roleplaying websites and I have not the first nine issues of Warpstone.

[Jadrax]

And I do not know what the Empire army lists looked like in 1996 and how many knightly orders there were but I suspect not many because the article creates orders for itself, but we do get the Order of the Fiery Heart.

The 4th/5th edition Empire Army book came out in 1996 and had Knights of the White Wolf, Knight's Panther and Knights of the Blazing Sun. Of course, you also had the Reiksguard who dated back to 3rd ed.

The Order of the Fiery Heart is actually one of the three example orders of 'Temple Ritterbruden' from the 3rd edition army list, along with the Templars of the White Wolf and the Templars of Myrmidia.

While the Imperial Guard (i.e. mounted Reiksguard), High-helms, Knights Panther and Gryphon Legion are all 'Hohensknchtes'.

[Robin]

Issue Number four, Winter 1996/97

This is the ‘Horror and Supernatural Special.’ and has the quote, ‘Listen to the children of the night, what music they make.’ which is from the 1931 Dracula movie. The cover has an Ulrican style warrior, with a big hammer, fighting four zombies in front of a precipitous castle, by John Keane. And the issue is the same size and shape as the last one.

Above the editorial we have a creepy quote from the Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula le Guin. And the editorial is looking back at the first year of Warpstone’s existence, and interesting in that it seems to be looking at things in a similar way I am, now. ie what it set out to achieve and how it has gone. John Foody talks about it as a forum for discussion, and of a way of reflecting the broader Warhammer World and pointing out he isn’t interested in advancing his version of the world. He also talks about their desire to improve the zine as they go on and as resources allow, which is plainly being achieved, And he says that although they are interested in debate, they are not interested in arguing over rule minutiae.

Reviews

Death on the Reik

This is the Hogshead re-issue of the second part of the Enemy Within. The review is pretty basic because the book is similar to the original but now incorporates the River Life of the Empire. It was already a classic, so the reviewer probably feels like he was preaching to the choir. He does say that as his original copy came with ads for miniatures of the various characters perhaps that was the point that GW realised that RPG books didn’t pay.

Borkelby’s Folly (issue 3)

Borkelby’s Folly is a Skyrealms of Jorune fanzine and sounds a bit like their version of Warpstone. The setting doesn’t offer anything for WFRP players. I imagine there is a similar review of Warpstone issue three in Borkelby’s Folly issue four.

Da Book of Goblins by Ian Ward

This is a work-in-progress fan-made goblin-oriented sourcebook for WFRP available on the web. This looks like a fun project, and the reviewer complements the writer on the amount of work that has gone into it, but compares it unfavourably to the Book of the Rat (issue three) if only because WFRP goblins do not have as strong an identity as the Skaven.

Dragonheart

This is a review of the hollywood blockbuster with CGI dragon. The review is pretty luke warm pointing out the movie doesn’t have the WFRP vibe, and that the dragon’s acting is better than the humans.

Warpstone Fragments

The news from Hogshead is that work on Realms of Sorcery continues apace (which wont come out for another four years) and they are starting work on Realms of Chaos (which didn’t come out) and they have a big name lined up for the conclusion of the Doomstones trilogy (which did come true).

Then it says sorry to everyone who had submitted work, and they will get back to you soon, which sounds like Warpstone is getting a lot of submissions already.

Games Day 96

This is John Foody’s account of him helping out at the Hogshead stall at GW’s games day, together with a bunch of other WFRP enthusiasts, recruited from the email group. It’s a fun read, and a little bit cheeky to GW, eg, including the observation, ‘with its imperial eagle banners hanging from the ceiling, I wasn’t the only person to think that the main arena looked like the Nuremburg rally.’

The team demo’ed for over eighty players, and John says he ran four sessions himself, which all ended up blurring into one. That sounds pretty draining, and that is probably the theme of the article, but he says he would be willing to do it all again next year (I guess we will have to find out if he does, or even whether Hogshead is present at Games Day 97.)

I didn’t recognise any of the names of his fellow demonstrators, but I nearly did, and I think that’s because John gets some of them slightly wrong. Eg, Ralph Horsley is Ralph Hornsey here, and this is funny coz (I guess he wasn’t yet, but) he becomes an iconic WFRP artist, and also becomes a regular contributor to Warpstone itself.

Mentioned in Dispatches

Martin Oliver reports on what’s happening on the email list. He describes the tension between those who prefer everything as it is in the WFRP corebook. and those who believe in following GW’s development of the WW, especially in the light of the new Bretonnia book, which was probably the greatest break with WFRP GW did.

There is the suggestion that the WFB stuff only reflects the public face of the nation, or what they would have you believe (btw this is the sort of thing I have also advocated, forever, and yet this compromise has also been resoundingly defeated in the WWWars).

There is also the suggestion of treating the new style knights like you might characters from Monty Python, but that feels like a one-joke game. Then it tells you how to subscribe to the WFRP email list, but I suspect that won’t work any more.

We’re Here to Save the World… Again

This page is uncredited, so that means it’s by John Foody… Again.

The article starts with a bit of atmospheric story which ends with the bathetic punchline of chucking the magic sword on the magic pile. This is GM advice warning against giving the PCs so much magic and power that they just end up chasing more magic and power. "“But players like magic items!” I hear you cry, and that is true. They will like them even more if you don’t give them any."

It also talks about toning down on the non-humans, monsters, and the Chaos for similar reasons, and ultimately on ‘saving the world’ plots. Looking back, I’m not sure whether this fits with my instinctive view of the WW, or John has trained me to view the WW this way.

What’s in a Name?

This issue it’s Bretonnia.

Scenario: A Buried Past by John Foody

The adventure is pretty straight forward. The PCs go to the opera (the Opera is about adventurers fighting cultists!) and guided by her ghost, find the long-dead body of a woman beneath the stage. And once they identify the body, they must talk to the old cast in order to get enough information to pinpoint the motive.

And it works very well. It’s pretty much all interacting with NPCs with practically no dice rolling unless you require Fel rolls to have the PCs ingratiate themselves with the NPCs. There are lots of sufficiently detailed NPCs to talk to, to get a picture of what happened and also a picture of the world. And there is a full page, pull out poster for the Opera.

This is a great little adventure and one that was very influential on me, back in the day.

Recommended

This issue it’s the classics Dracula and Frankenstein, but also Kim Newman’s (who wrote seminal Warhammer books, also with vampires, as Jack Yeovil) Anno Dracula. And also the movies Terminator and Alien. I have run two WFRP adventures based on Alien, so that one definitely works, although Martin Oliver is telling us to borrow the atmosphere, not necessarily the plot.

Holy Knights, Pagan Days

This is part two of the templar series by Peter Huntington, this one concentrating on Ulric’s Templars of the White Wolf. This has a pretty comprehensive history of the Empire in regard to the conflicts between the Sigmarite and Ulrican templars. It’s a pretty bloody history between the two, and probably not the sort of stuff that would be emphasised today in a WFB Empire Army book. And it has the Templars of the White Wolf were formalised as a reaction to the emergence of Sigmarite knightly orders.

Having come together under Magnus, for the War against Chaos, there is still lots of opportunity to have them at each other’s throats in your games.

Templars of the White Wolf Advance Scheme

Then we have a more system-oriented treatment, with a three tier Career comprising Kindred, Chosen Sons, and First Born.

We get some good RPG stuff, like recruits being sent into the forest in winter who must survive for forty days and kill a wolf with their bear hands, which seems a bit harsh. I followed this in my campaign back in the day, and the prospective recruit said he was making a spear from a branch, and I didn’t feel like I should stop him.

An interesting angle is that there is no support at all for old members who have been maimed, they are simply ejected from the order, if they survive being killed by their erstwhile colleagues.

And then we have the almost obligatory section where we’re told that some members are allowed to leave their duties and just travel around doing adventuring stuff, which is lucky.

Letters

Next we have the letters page. The introduction mentions that last issue they asked for thoughts on the Tim Eccles' Why Bother? article. But that was in the Forum. I thought it was a bit strange having a separate letters page and Forum letters page, and it looks like Warpstone came to the same conclusion.

Anyway most of the chat is about the ‘why bother.’ and even Tim writes in to discuss it. I think the main gist is that he is wrong and that Chaos is WFRP and can be included as much as we like (although more scenarios without Chaos would also be good). And even if the triumph of Chaos is inevitable, then that doesn’t stop us enjoying the ride. In any case, istm the original comment was clickbait, and designed to get a debate going, and so it achieved that.

Tim also says that the Scenario and Cameos are too short, and (acknowledging the limitation of the format) suggests publishing them in several parts (the scenarios definitely get longer as time goes on, and one does get published in several parts).

WFRP on the WWW

This is a round up of WFRP on the web by Brent W. Diana and Martin Oliver. They say finding anything on the web involves great amounts of luck and patience so they do the searching for us. It’s easy to forget that that was the case.

As well as a few pages supporting non-web projects, there are a surprising number of pages devoted to WFRP. I do remember scouring the net in the early days looking for bits and pieces on WFRP and I recognise some of the addresses in the article. We’re probably all a bit spoiled, today.

The Usual Suspects

Uhngar the Vampire Hunter by Spencer Wallace

This is an ex-poacher who has become a fanatical vampire hunter. He once became enamoured of a vampire and saved her from death at the hands of her vampire enemies. Then they became lovers and although she did not pass on the gift of vampirism, she kept him vital, so that now he is 117 years old. The enemy vampires finally caught up with her and destroyed her. But her dying effort saved him from his wounds and now he travels the Empire hunting vampires. It’s not clear whether he is actually undead, or not, and I guess that is intentional. This could be a handy NPC and a dubious ally in any vampire hunting game.

A Hundred Years of Trade by John Foody

Continuing the theme of the issue, this is a description of a trading house with a twist. For it is run by a vampire. We get a history of an honest and well run trading company, and then it being taken over by the murderous and vampiric son of its owner. We also get a bit of fiction to demonstrate what a villain he is, and we get him stat-ed out as a powerful NPC.

There is a description of the company’s legitimate business operations and its new direction into criminality and slavery, and some advice on bringing it into our games. And we hear about the vampire’s plans to kidnap a supposed son, so he can kill him off and then come back as his own son, when the time comes. I used this in my game, as recommended, as a seemingly legit company in the background, but my players never got to peel away the layers unfortunately.

Scenario

Thicker than Water by John Foody

One way to get the players involved in Hofbauer-Bodelstein is through this short adventure. Through a very convoluted series of events, a good, old-school employee of H-B decides to hire the PCs to guard his home.

The scenario is on the surface a simple and straight forward guarding duty, but with everyone involved having some complex motivations. Essentially the PCs are guarding a Shallyan vampire hiding behind merchant credentials being attacked by vampire hunters in the employ of a vampire hiding behind merchant credentials (and it feels like the vampire hunting party is someone’s PC party). It is not clear how these back stories might emerge in the middle of a big fight (if that’s all there is) but they are there. The adventure includes a complete set of floorplans for the house they are defending.

Short Story

Red Moon Rising by Martin Oliver

This feels like a practical little tale of how to be a werewolf in the WW, but then becomes more tragic as the werewolf learns about his prey.

And that’s issue four, which is consistent with the steady improvement and growth we have seen over the first few issues.


Regards,
Robin

[Toby Pilling]

An interesting read! Warpstone is sadly missed - I enjoyed writing a few articles for it, for sure.

Toby

[Robin]

I've neglected this a bit, so I thought I'd catch up...

Issue Five

The spring 1997 issue format stays the same, with the same sort of cover in the same layout, the cover illo is of an armoured fantasy warrior, perhaps a Chaos Marauder, on an armoured horse, by Stephen Jones. And the quote is, ‘We owe respect to the living; to the dead we owe only truth,’ from Voltaire.

Editorial john Keane

He mentions the steady improvement the magazine had been taking, and that they hope the trend continues, and their hope to recruit more staff, and mentions Stephen Jones as a new artist (who drew the cover). And mentions that John Foody is on holiday for this issue, and that they will be alternating as editors in future. And then he quotes Macbeth’s ‘heavy summons,’ presumably to explain that editing Warpstone is a bit like usurping Scotland.

Reviews

Shadow of the Horned Rat for Playstation

This is for the playstation computer game. I had no interest in this sort of thing at the time, so I googled to have a look at what the review called slick and glorious graphics. We’ve come a long way.

Lizardmen by Nigel Stillman

This is an approving, but short and low key sort of review. I think looking back this was a huge change for the WW, and a big departure from what was generally thought of as Lizardmen in WFRP. It could have easily been ranting about something changing in the WW, but asks, ‘Big Changes? How many have played in an adventure that used Lizardmen?’ And instead talks about how the new background can easily be used to inform adventures in the Old World.

Arcane, Issue 17

The review bemoans the drop in physical quality of the magazine but urges our support, suggesting that the articles on prison life and medieval communications could bring something to our WWs.

Warpstone Fragments

We are told that the first draft of the Skaven sourcebook is on its way from Australia as we go to print. There is no news on other awaited Hogshead products, except the GM screen map is looking good.

There’s something about a Warhammer play by mail game. I don’t recall anything about this, but suggest that the internet would soon make this sort of thing obsolete.

Games Workshop sales are up 43% and they’re opening 4 more stores.

To Fight or not to Fight, that is the question, by John Keane

This is simply going through a list of options and general rules for when PCs are caught in a compromising situation and feel that violence might be the only option. There’s a discussion of the pros and cons of a variety of strategies, ranging from confessing all and throwing yourself on the mercy of the authorities, to fighting to the death.

Rumours

This is simply seven rumours presented out of any context. It’s a simple idea and these can be used for when you need a random NPC to have something interesting to say, or they could inspire encounters or scenarios.

Holy Knights, Pagan Days, by Peter Huntington

This is part three in the series, and this issue deals with Templars of Myrmidia. There is a long history of the order, concentrating on its inception when volunteers from across the Old World heeded calls from Myrmidian clerics to join the defence of Magritta against Arabyan aggression. And they took the Templars of Sigmar and Ulric as a model to channel their martial pride.

The evening before the battle for Magritta all the templars dreamt of a beautiful woman carrying a spear and a shield promising no harm would come to them. And with their victory they found their faith and became a proper religious order and became the Order of the Shield (although to be fair the vast majority of them died in the battle, so it wasn’t much of a dream.

The order seems autonomous, and separate from the general Myrmidian clergy and are respected from calmness and fairness, unlike other orders who seem to inspire fear in the general populace. They go looking for recruits but their standards are high, and they are a perfect PC career in that the templars are often allowed to wander the land, doing what they will in Myrmidia’s name, and gathering intelligence for the order. Men and women were treated equally in the ranks of the templars, and I’m not sure that happened a lot in the WW at the time.

Templars of Myrmidia Advance Scheme, by John Foody

For more practical play, we have four career tiers, Spear Bearer, Shield Bearer, Knight of Myrmidia, and War Marshall which is for NPCs only. We are also given some useful background for Templar PCs including some Myrmidian books. And given a hint of the Singouri Conspiracy where a particular zealous templar was assassinated.

The Warpstone Interview: Graeme Davis, by John Foody

This is an interview with Graeme Davis who wrote Shadows over Bogenhafen, and a lot of other WFRP content (and went on to write a lot more) and also worked for Flame when the WFRP production went to that subsidiary of GW.

He tells us that SoB came about because Bryan Ansell asked him for ‘a bloodless CoC adventure for Warhammer.’ On Realms of Sorcery he tells us that the intention was always to fix the substandard WFRP magic system right away, but it never happened.

He tells us the reason for the end of WFRP was that Citadel took over GW (And not the other way around) and that when WFRP was released it did not result in doubling GW’s sales overnight, like the introduction of 40K did. Flame Publications was a last ditch effort to save WFRP, and despite being only three people and very efficient, GW did not see how it could ever become profitable.

He talks about the decline in RPGs in general after its brief flirtation with the mainstream and says that RPGs might be better off in the hands of smaller companies, in any case, where creativity can be more important than popularity.

He thanks that Hogshead is doing a great job especially for bringing out original stuff instead of just banging out reprints (which they needed to do, as well, of course).

The best thing he likes about WFRP is its tone and its moral complexity. His favourite scenario is Power Behind the Throne, and that there is still nothing like it.

He mentions the in jokes in the writing and art, and says he might put them all together and they might make a decent Warpstone article.

He hasn’t read the new Bretonnia, yet, but doesn’t see anything that damages the WFRP version. It’s all a matter of perspective, and the peasants would not view their world the same way that nobles might view it.

On Realm of Sorcery, Graeme likes the fact that magic is rarer than in some games and would like it to stay that way, but agrees the current system has issues and points out that atm the only organised magicians are cultists!

Says a second edition of WFRP might be worth doing in the future, but the existing system seems to work well enough for most people.

He mentions that Something Rotten in Kislev was never intended to be an integral part of tEW but it made commercial sense to package it as that.

He thinks WFRP has a long term future, citing the three years it had no support but was carried by the fan loyatly. He thinks the market for RPGs is shrinking and thinks they will go back to where they were in the late 70s. With lots of small companies working out of their garages, etc. But he thinks that is not a bad thing and thinks, therefore, WFRP is exactly where it needs to be.

He had a plan for a vampire sourcebook turned down by GW. This was developed back at Flame and influenced by Drachenfels and the Genevieve novels, while GW had turned in a different direction to more Hammer House style vampires, and he didn’t think GW were keen on having vampires who were not completely evil rather than the more grey morality of Anne Rice and White Wolf.

He says he has signed up to edit Apocrypha Too, and he is talking with Hogshead about some other ideas.

Competition

A competition is announced for the best Cameo article. And the prize is the Chromalin (the final colour proof) for the cover of Hogshead’s edition of DotR, which is a pretty cool, and unique, prize, which presumably was donated by Hogshead.

Scenario: The Eternal Guard by John Foody

This is a short adventure set in Marienburg. It fits the Marienburg feel of Sold Down the River very well, even though that book is still in development. It involves the return of an expedition to Araby bringing back a couple of sarcophaguses, the falling out of the owners of the expedition, and the young Arabyan wife of one of them.

It manages to be a hammer style mindless mummy adventure and a legal eagle courtroom drama at the same time. And shows off one strength of WFRP which is that it can accommodate pretty much any genre while still feeling warhammery.

The art for this is good with all the major NPCs illustrated and a great picture of a mummy attack, which gets used again as the cover for the next issue. I played this one back in the day and had a lot of fun with it.

What’s in a Name?

This issue it’s Tilea.

Letters

We have even more on ‘Why Bother?’ article, although it is down to only a single page, this time.

The original author Tim Eccles writes to clarify his position a bit, and the editor, John Keane, agrees a bit. And Sean O’Cachain joins in. And we get down to first principles, debating the precise nature of Chaos, which I suppose is important to knowing whether to bother or not.

Mentioned in Dispatches, by Neil Taylor, Spencer Wallace, and Martin Oliver

Not really sure why this is called Mentioned in Dispatches, as apart from an in-passing ref to the GW website, has nothing to do with the internet. It talks about the impracticality of using the magic ingredients RAW and offers suggestions for substitutions and work-arounds. And it offers a miscast table for those casting without ingredients. (Was this the first WFRP miscast table?) One of those short, excellent, and useful articles that fanzines are great for.

The Greys, by Martin Oliver

A Secret Society

The next sections are all linked by the Greys secret society. This is quite a subversive idea in the WW where a secret society, of mostly Shallyans, has formed to protect mutants. This is a great idea for a cult with a twist and is the sort of thing that might challenge and confuse PCs. I have just been playing a Shallyan in a long-running campaign, and I think more than a little of this article ended up in him.

The first section is a description of the cult

Gregor

Gregor is a mutant who is skulking in the warehouse district killing innocent victims. While this could be played straight as a monster of the week, its inclusion in the Greys sections is an implicit invitation to make it more complex than that, and have this as a problem for PCs who are already Greys, or as a way of introducing PCs to that cult. What makes this more of a challenge is that Gregor isn’t a philosophical mutant who will have a civilised conversation with the PCs, making his humanity obvious, but effectively a mindless monster.

The Usual Suspects: The Greys

Tying this regular section in with the Greys concept, we are given three NPCs who all work for the Greys and who have come to the cult through different paths.

My Campaign by Sam Stockdale

In issue one, we were invited to send in descriptions of our own games. I wondered whether anyone would take them up on that because it’s an unusual premise for an article, but Sam Stockdale has, and there is an intro encouraging others to do the same.

Having WFRP as his go-to system for about ten years he has spent the last two years running tEW. He fleshed out the earlier stages with encounters from Ravenloft, which led to some power creep that he says he will be mindful of next time he runs it.

In his WW elves are more alien and he plays down the existence of Chaos creatures like daemons and even beastmen so they are considered mere fantasy my the vast majority of the populace. He has borrowed spells from AD&D to supplement the WFRP ones, and he describes one of his players’ character, an ex- Giant Slayer, turned Ulrican priest, which is one of the more out-there WFRP career progressions.

Fiction

Two Tales by Francis Plunder

This is a short story about, Jorg, a young inn-hand listening to the tale of the local story teller about a band of heroic adventurers killing an evil sorcerer. He then gets told a similar story, by one of the inn’s customers, an old adventurer, but this one is more deadly, more nuanced, and more morally dubious. And we suspect that this one might be true. But Jorg prefers the other one. Not sure I make it sound very good, but it’s a clever little story.

And that’s issue five.

It’s worth saying that not reading these for a good while and also more used to the later more chunky issues, I had been under the impression that these earlier issues didn’t have so much stuff in them, but feel a bit surprised to find that they are a lot more packed than I remember. This compares favourably to the old editions of White Dwarf that I have also been looking through recently, where I recall them having a lot more in them, and have been a bit disappointed at the amount of content I am still interested in.


Regards,
Robin (on behalf of the other Gideon)

[Robin]

Issue Six

The cover illo is by Steve Punter and is re-used from last issue’s mummy scenario, but is worthy of being a cover illo.

The subtitle this issue, I notice, is ‘Reports from the heart of corruption’ (with the ‘the’ removed). But actually, looking back it was issue three which was changed first. I think this sounds better, anyway.

The quote is ‘The world’s an inn, and death the journey’s end,’ which is by John Dryden.

This is the ‘on the road’ special.

On the first page we have the ‘Like one, that on a lonesome road...’ quote from Coleridge, where it’s pretty clear Coleridge must have played WFRP.

John Keane’s editorial bemoans the loss of Arcane magazine and in the light of Wizards of the Coast buying TSR is not hopeful about the future of RPGs and gaming in general.

He reiterates the magazine’s policy not to simply produce new rules (have they had a load of ‘just new rules’ being submitted?) and again asks again for feedback from the readership.

Reviews

The final issue of Arcane by John Foody

As we have already heard on this thread, they made twenty issues before going under. The reviewer has bought every issue and is sorry to see it go, although he thinks it made itself too generic to appeal to more niche RPers, and wonders whether it ever appealed to D&Ders who had access to Dragon magazine.

He found the encounters generic, and the magazine’s replies on the letters page too patronising. But the last issue contained a WFRP adventure, and article on dark heroes, one on how to roleplay Arabian backgrounds, and one on using fear and claustrophobia, and a WFRP inspired article by Ken and Jo Walton (currently writing Realms of Sorcery) so that feels like it was a very WFRP issue.

John Foody concludes that the British gaming community has lost its focal point.

Inferno!

In contrast, this is the first issue of GW’s new short story mag. There is a Necromunda short story by Alex Hammond who is writing the WFRP skaven supplement (No idea what happened to that). There seems to be a lot of content for a lot of games (40k, WFB, Necromunda, WFRPish, Warhammer Quest, a Gotrek and Felix story. The reviewer says it will be interesting to see how it develops, but does not recommend it for the price.

Recommended

We have the classic graphic novels Watchmen and The Dark Night Returns, and the movie Flesh and Blood by Paul Verhoeven.

Warpstone Fragments

The GM screen and Doomsotnes 2 are on their way.

Still in the works are Mairenburg, Skaven, Realms of Sorcery, and Apocrypha 2 (3 out of 4 ain’t bad).

Due to the chaos of production they are not sure whether they have replied to every potential contributor, so get in touch.

WFRP in the WWW by Stewart Thorpe

This is promoting the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Community (WFRC) site which aims to link all the web based WFRP content from one focal point.

Secrets of the Warhammer artists by Graeme Davis

This is Graeme going over what he can recall of the in-jokes and references in the WFRP art. In the corebook careers there are a lot of depictions of the GW staff. He reveals that this was not always done as flattery or taken in good humour.

There are a lot of amusing titles in the books that are often in the background of illos. I have gone through the book and I can’t read most of them, but I guess you just need to know they were there on the original art.

The article is mostly a list of all the people, famous actors, and GW staff, who were the inspiration for NPCs’ faces. So I won’t list them here or I will just be recreating the article. But it is a fun one and great in-the-know-ability.

Rumours by Francis Plunder

Six more rumours to throw at your players. (One, I still don’t understand.)

Low Life on the Highway

Travel on the Empire’s Roads by John Foody

This is a long article supplying ways to add setting flavour by fleshing out road journeys. Unlike a lot of fantasy that involves wilderness travel, the semi-civilised road (and river) journey is a staple of WFRP. It starts with a quote from John Huston’s Wise Blood.

We get a description of the two busiest roads in the Empire, Nuln-Altdorf-Middenheim and even these can be dangerous. The awful state of the empires’ roads were saved by Wilhelm the wise’s reforms allowing taxes and tolls to fund them and the Empire now possesses a solid and efficient road network, that have been enhanced by the skills of dwarf engineers over the years. With the minor roads being maintained badly by local peasants. I enjoyed the passing-place road rage incidents and the middle lane hogging.

Alongs the roads we have descriptions of the coaching inns, way temples, and wayside shrines. There are good suggestions for playing up to the various religions and I think in my games, now, I shall do wayside temples more than I have.

Then we get lots of travelling entertainers, from casual minstrels to an almost mafia-like tight knit community of fairground entertainers. Descriptions of merchant caravans, and then vagrants, pedlars, highwaymen, witch hunters, outlaws and other travellers as well as non human hazards like goblins and beastmen.

We get ideas for the forces of law, hard-pressed road wardens (who often perform summary executions) and travelling magistrates, and we end with a few encounters/plot hooks.

Further reading is given as the wfrp adventures which occur roadside, and The Elizabethan Underworld by Gamini Salgado (which was already recommended in issue 2)

This is a very good article brings lots of useful details to any journey if required and is the sort of low key flavour that can easily be glossed over when expedition is required.

The Usual Suspects by Martin Oliver

Themed with the road article we have the usual suspect, as travelling wood elven minstrel. This one exemplifies everything the GM thinks is alien about elves. He is an ineffectual navel gazing non-interventionist on the page but we are encouraged to add whatever else might annoy or confound the human players.

Krieger’s Toll Booth by John Foody

Continuing the theme we have the back story of the architect responsible for many of the Empire’s toll booths (and also Altdorf’s Cathedral of Sigmar). And a description of one his his booths that could be placed anywhere in the empire. Then we get descriptions of the six toll keepers who run it.

What’s in a name?
This issue we are in Kislev.

Scenario

The Drowning Well by John Foody

Like a lot of the issue, this can be tied to the theme of road travel, as it is set in a roadside inn. And this is similar to some other adventures we’ve had from Warpstone in that there is a complex backstory that the PCs may get some of, but will have to guess to get it all, but it does inform the GM and NPCs.

The PCs are picked on to accompany a murderer. He is the worst sort of murderer because he is a noble. And he’s insane. And the PCs are not taking him to justice but to his family who are supposed to keep him under control (which isn't really the point of the adventure but brings loads of roleplay opportunities, and it might be worth padding the journey out just to make the most of this awkward situation).

The adventure goes down when the PCs have to stop at an inn for the night, in a storm, and the evil of the murderer feeds the spirit of a long-dead beastman champion who was buried at the site of the inn.

There is some leading the PCs to the solution in the adventure as written, but they still need to join the dots. The adventure assumes the denouement will coincide with the attack of the beastmen from outside the inn which might take some contriving.

The adventure tells us that if the PCs tell everyone how they defeated the beastman ghost they will be treated like heroes, but istm, equally, it could simply look like the PCs are all hiding in the well, while the locals beat back the beastman attack.

Saint Helena

Patron of Health, Fertility and Marriage by John Foody

Here’s an interesting saint of Sigmar who is given a background where she protects the people, raises a dead general, and gives the empress a child. She is clearly marching all over the domains of Rhya and Shallya and we are told she is supplanting their worship in some areas of the empire.

Somehow I don’t like this sigmarite doing this sort of thing (why isn’t she a Rhyan or a Shallyan) but I think the note on her replacing the worship of these gods, makes it clear why she might be promoted by the cult of Sigmar. This is an out for the more cynical GM, but also throwa up more theological questions.

And there is a note that acknowledges not everyone buys into the saints idea for WW theology.

No You Can’t Re-roll it

Point based Character generation by Paul Slevin

This is exactly what you might think, and you are given 860 points to construct a character at generally one point per percentage point of starting stat (with the usual mins and maxes) and even going so far as to charge points per yard of night vision. I’m sure there was a desire for this, but for me, the random is the whole point of wfrp chargen.

Mentioned in Dispatches by Stewart Thorpe

This article is a summary of discussions on the WFRP email list about the possibility of non evil daemonologists and necromancers. It gives some ideas for what these characters might do, and offers ways to help them, and also ways to punish them.

I like the idea of summoning a daemon just to get a decent chess opponent. But we are told that daemonologists are almost bound to become corrupted.

Letters

The letters page starts with one from Tim Eccles who is not optimistic about the future of RPGs given the demise of TSR. He also complains about the WFRP list as it isn’t working very well for him, and adds that the techie at his work spent all day trying to sort it out for him and wasn’t amused when they discovered it was for WFRP.

Robert Clark writes to tell us of his proposal for an Orcs and Goblins sourcebook and to ask for collaborators. For the record, WFRP got its first orcs and goblins sourcebook (kinda) a few months ago.

Career

Executioner by Peter Moore

Despite being warned Warpstone wouldn’t be doing many new rules and careers here we have a new basic career. To be fair, the way WFRP1 worked, one of the best things about it was the utility and ease of adding new careers to the spaghetti of existing career paths.

The executioner feels like a very niche one, but some make a sort of travelling circuit to perform their unsavoury duty, and so there is potential there for adventure. They also have a problem with Khaine worshippers among their number.

Cameo

Your Money and Your Life by Spencer Wallace

This is about a band of robbers who are all insane having escaped from the Great Hospice. They are led by a murderous noble (another one) with a robin hood complex. And this will fit the theme too, as they are highway robbers, and merging this with the Drowning Well scenario should be easy enough, too, if the murderous, insane noble survives. And also the toll booth article, as the PCs are hired by the road wardens of a local toll booth. We get the stats and back stories for three of the insane band, and brief descriptions of the other five.

Short Story

Trapper by Martin Oliver

This is a pretty brutal short story of a mysterious, possibly daemonic, creature. The thing is able to trap the unwary by remaking awkward effigies of its previous victims. But the creature is playful in its own way, and that some of the adventuring party survive the encounter, just makes it excited about who might come to try to deal with it, so it can have more fun.
When this is over I will send you an elephant.

Regards,
Robin and the other Gideon

[Chuck]

Thanks for doing this. It's such a time capsule into the 90s, so much nostalgia.

[Robin]

Thanks for doing this. It's such a time capsule into the 90s, so much nostalgia.

My pleasure, I'm very happy to do it. I wasn't involved with Warpstone until it was well-established, but I remain immensely proud of having become part of the team. I still think Warpstone is one of the most exciting and useful supplements produced for WFRP, official or otherwise.

I should just add the reminder that it's the other Gideon doing all the hard work here. I'm just collating the posts and reposting here.

Regards,
Robin