It always rains in Nuln

This is it, the final chapter of my favorite character series. I'm not gonna lie, these posts were a joy to write, and this particular one is especially dear to me. Of all the Classic World of Darkness games, Hunter: The Reckoning is my personal favorite. Yeah, I know it's an underdog and the red-headed stepchild of the whole setting, but to me it's one of my favorite RPGs of all time. One day I will write a full review of this title, but for now let me just tell you that some of my best role-playing memories came from playing Hunter with my close friends years ago. The chronicle, the atmosphere, the props that we were using during our games, and finally... the characters. The characters were simply epic, and since HTR was the game in which we've played a single, longest campaign of all, they took a lot of time to develop, mature and evolve. Seeing their progress, their journey - it was pure joy. As much as I love WFRP, it is Hunter: The Reckoning with which I have, ...

Allow me to take you on a journey into the grim and dark future of endless war, blind zealotry and cynicism - the dystopian world of Warhammer 40,000 awaits. Even though WFRP is my default go-to game, I do play other titles as well... occasionally. One of them, and one that I enjoy a lot, is the Fantasy Flight Games' 1st edition of Dark Heresy. Now it wasn't always that way, as those who read my blog for some time, know already. I used to dislike DH a lot, but that was a long, long time ago. Currently I only have fond memories of this game, and would very much like to run it in the near future. Anyway, my players created quite a few and interesting characters during our times together, when we were discovering the many and varied dangers of the 41st Millenium. I want to tell you about a few of them. 1. Solomon Victus, a ruthless and ambitious arbitrator (played by Martin) Sometimes you just find the perfect artwork for a character. This picture just screams ...

Those of you with eyes of a hawk no doubt noticed that I used the singular term "character", in the title of this post. That's because it's going to be about a single hero - one that I've RP'ed almost 12 years ago. If you're reading my blog for some time now, you know that I'm not particulary fond of participating in roleplaying games as a player. I'm the forever GM-kind of guy. I like the creative control, the world building possibilites and, of course, the power of life and death over my players... Errrr... I mean, the chance to see them evolve and become the heroes that they were always destined to be! What I want to say is that I'm not too fond of playing RPGs. The last time that I was a regular player, was in 2017, back when I've participated in a Vampire: The Masquerade game as a Brujah DJ with a thing for baseball bats. Since then it was only a couple of one-shots, but nothing too serious. That said, back in 2008 when I've...

Gotta say, I really enjoy these trips down the memory lane. There is something incredibl pleasant about remembering the coolest, most interesting player characters that one had a chance to encounter, during his years as a game master. Today we continue our journey through time and space, visiting yet another batch of my favorite Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay heroes. This time we take a look at the original characters created by my Roll20 group, and how they've managed to leave a lasting impression in my mind. 1. Lukas Kohler, a hardcore survivalist from Talabecland (played by Andy) Lukas Kohler (artwork by Jason Brisken) If there ever was a "hero" who defied death time and time again, laughing in its ghastly face, it was Lukas Kohler. A syphilitic charcoal burner from the rural province of Talabecland, Lukas decided to leave his small hovel to pursue adventure and gather riches. What he found was death and danger at every corner. From rescuing a little girl fr...

My trip down the memory lane continues with even more, memorable WFRP characters! Let's take a look at a few of them, and enjoy the tales of their deeds. This time we're covering the heroes of my first playthroughs of "Terror in Talabheim" and "The Thousand Thrones", as well as the Polish-written campaign - "Lord of Winter". There are quite a lot of them, so I will describe the most interesting ones, the ones that I still think about to this very day. Let's take a trip down the memory lane, shall we? 1. Lukyan Aleksandrovitch Yakov, Kislevite spy master (played by Martin) To this day one of my favorite PC's of all time. A ruthless Kislevite Checkist (posing as a Imperial merchant) with low moral compass, and a low tolerance for fools, Lukyan survived 6 chapters of "The Thousand Thrones", one of the hardest WFRP campaign ever written. His task was to find the miraculous child and asses the threat that it posed to Kislev ...

Enough with the reviews, enough with the fillers. Let's talk buisness - Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay buisness! The analitics don't lie. Aside from various Asian porn sites which seem to really like my blog, and re-visit it all the time, the biggest ammount of hits that I generate, come from people who are all about WFRP. This little slice of internet was initially created as a way for me to rekindle my love for this system (which it managed to do), but over the years I also wanted to write about other stuff. World of Darkness, Warhammer 40,000, Delta Green and many other topics have been tackled by me with mixed results, but they never gained the ammount of enthusiasm and popularity, that my WFRP posts managed to achieve. I'm cool with that, to be honest. There was a time when I was quietly wishing for a more diverse group of followers, but that's in the past now. I am grateful for what I have, for what I was able to build over the years, and I wouldn't change ...

Welcome to the final part of my review of the 4th edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. Today we'll take a look at the final core mechanics of the game. That picture is so fucking metal First there's Corruption which can make even the noblest of warriors fall to the whim of the Dark Gods. It's a bit different to the 2nd edition's mutation mechanics. Simply put if you'll stare long enough into the abyss, it will give you a lot of shit, as well as some tasty Corruption points. Witness a Greater Daemon in all its malefic glory, chug a warpstone brew or stand in a place suffused with Dhar and its Endurance rolling time. Fail that and gain a shiny, new mutation. If you'll get too many of these then your character becomes one of the lost and the damned and you'll need to create a new hero. Nasty, climactic and very grim. What can I say? I love this system! Did I mentioned that you can take Corruption points to re-roll a failed test? Talk about making d...

Let's take a look at WFRP 4th edition's core game mechanics and see how well they work. Is the current iteration of this venerable game better than the previous ones, especially the much loved 2nd edition? First of all we have Success Levels now. What are they? They're similar to succcesses from the 2nd edition, but more important, if that makes sense. Every full "10" that goes above your character's stat is a success. The more of them, the better, and they're especially important during combat. During the fights each opponent counts the levels of successes in a counter test, and then, based on the ammount each of the combatants had gathered, SOMETHING happens. You see, there's no more "I hit you, you hit me back" type of combat, present in this edition. Now even if both of the opponents miss, some damage will be dealt. It's a great way of making the encounters more cinematic and intense, albeit with a lot more tracking and keeping sco...

Now we're getting to it. It's time to take a look at the core rules concerning skills, talents and characteristics, as well as their advancements. On a first glance the 4th edition looks very similar to the venerable 2nd. But wait! There are a few changes. Agility has been divided into three, separate parts, which are Agility, Dexterity and Inititative. It's a very cool concept, as each of these is used for different tests. Dexterity is utilised for complex manual work, while Agility and Initiative will be used more often than not during combat. In my opinion this is a very welcome change and adds quite a lot to the game itself, as it really distinguishes a martial character from, let's say, an artisan of any kind. Nice job C7. Now the party can be really varied and full of unique characters! Attributes and their developement has also been changed. In essence it now costs a lot more points to level your characters, as you always go from level 0, no matter how...

The second part of my WFRP 4th edition review will concentrate on the available classes and their choosing. Will the 4th turn out to be as diversed and interesting as my beloved 2nd? Let's find out. First of all I highly suggest to check out Viluir's fantastic WFRP 4th edition review. It's in Polish only, but if you know the language, then you're in for a treat. The review can be found on her blog, cheekily named Rzuć 90k6! (Roll90d6!). Now for the character creation. The standard races are all here with the small change for the elves - now there are those from the forests, the Asrai, and the ones from Ulthuan - the Asur, the High Elves. I really like that change, as anyone who knows even the bascics of the Warhammer lore, knows that these two factions are vastly different to each other. You can roll a dice to determine which race you're going to play, in lieu of chosing. If you do so, you'll get additional 20 XP. Neat! The non-humans are a bit more s...