The rules of WFRP4e were never the simplest to begin with, and they’ve been gradually revised over a number of supplements. In order to get my head round the Group Advantage rules in Up In Arms, I made myself a cheatsheet which you can now find in the 4e Downloads section, here.
I noticed recently that a missing update had taken the contents of the blog offline, so I fixed that.
The main reason for the lack of updates is that I’ve not been playing much WFRP, but instead L5R and CoC.
I won’t be foolish enough to promise regular updates from now on, but there are a few posts in the draft folder, so don’t be surprised if there are semi-irregular updates over the next year. But also don’t be surprised if there aren’t…
What the title says. If you picked up the 20% discount in the Rogue Trader Humble Bundle last month, you need to use it this week: it runs out on Saturday, 14 December.
Here’s a link to the C7 store, for your convenience.
Back about 2005, the French roleplaying magazine Casus Belli published a couple of brief articles and a scenario set in Ind. It is, as far as I know, the only fan-made publication for Ind out there. The scans were online for a while, then disappeared. I’ve acquired new scans and have uploaded them here: you can find them under Downloads => WFRP2. Enjoy!
Zweihänder‘s a fantastic game, but one of the aspects I’m less enamoured of is skill assists. When one PC wants to help another complete a task and has a relevant skill, the the latter PC rolls an extra d10 and can replace either of the numbers of their d100 roll. It’s a very simple system which, however, from my perspective suffers from a couple of weaknesses (apart from seeming very powerful):
Firstly, there’s no extra rolling and therefore no suspence as to whether the assist actually worked or not, or whether, indeed, the ‘helper’ ended up getting in the way.
Secondly, and more importantly for me, only one person can assist. There is, in other words, no mechanic for teamwork on a collective task. (With crafting, teamwork only reduces the amount of time required.)
This bothered me when it looked like I was going to be running a maritime campaign with Zweihänder. One of my favourite teamwork mechanics is in the brilliant, but little-known Napoleonic naval game, Beat to Quarters (available as PWYW on Drivethru here; and I can also recommend its infantry big brother, Duty & Honour: here). In BtQ, naval combat is resolved by a single roll (or card draw in this case), just as it is in the Zweihänder naval supplement, Maelstrom. But BtQ allows everyone to participate in whatever way they narratively want: you decide what cool thing you’re doing that round, and every success adds a bonus to the final draw. And it could be anything: maybe you are using your craft skills to repair damage to the ship, or your charm to calm the lady passengers. You tell the story and, if you succeed, your side gets a bonus.
So I started to look at other d100 games to see how they did assist mechanics.