News Round-Up

Lots has happened in the WFRP world over the last 1+ week. But before I get to that…

JUST THREE DAYS LEFT ON IAN MILLER’S KICKSTARTER

I posted about this on Tuesday, but now there are just three days left on this relatively short, two-week KS for a deck of tarot cards illustrated by Ian Miller. So take the opportunity to pledge here now before it ends this coming Tuesday!

A recent update showed what the backs of the cards will look like:

And now on to the WFRP news proper… Continue reading

Ian Miller’s Grim Tarock

WFRP grognards like myself know how important the art was for drawing us into the world. One of those artists was Ian Miller, and he currently has a Kickstarter running for a tarot deck featuring his art, including some that was used in WFRP. The campaign has already achieved several stretch goals, including offering, as an add-on, an A5 signed print of ‘Farewell to the River’, the piece that was used as the cover to Death on the Reik.

The Kickstarter can be found here and ends on Tuesday, 26 November.

Making the Lore (Law) Skill Interestingly Useful

This is the third post in what has apparently become a series on how to make skills interesting and useful. This discussion is something I wrote up a long time ago, back in the days of 2e. I thought the three-tiered approach to skill progression introduced there, and now continued by Zweihänder, was interesting because it reflected the medieval guild levels of apprentice, journeyman and master. I felt that some more use could be made of those levels, which I called Mastery, other than just +10% success.

I also felt that in an unjust society like the Empire, skill at Law would not determine the outcome so much as who was doing the judging. I therefore concentrated on the usefulness of the skill in getting a favourable jurisdiction or set of laws. The actual outcome of the trial would be determined by charm, connections, bribes and the like.

I’ve updated the discussion somewhat for 4e, but the basic assumption of three Mastery levels remains. In the case of Lore (Law), this could in the new system be reflected in levels in the Savant (Law) Talent.

Continue reading

Simplified Damage in WFRP 4e

In my first post on TobCon 3, I mentioned we ran into problems with the damage system in 4e. On the surface, it’s cleverly done: you add the Success Levels of the attacker to the damage, and subtract the defenders’ and that gives you a number. Simple, elegant, and reflective of how things went in the round.

But the same system also gets rid of the dreaded whiff of 1 & 2e by deciding a successful hit by an opposed test, so that it can happen even if both sides fail their rolls (the one with the worst Success Levels loses). Unfortunately, this makes calculating damage very complicated very quickly if you are dealing with multiple combatants, as we were. Continue reading