RPG Retrospective: Remembering Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play

Whilst I dived into a big retrospective concerning Dungeon & Dragons I ended up omitting a game that I had a lot of fun with back in the day. Being a Games Workshop fan it was natural that my group would dive into Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play too.

My time with this particular roleplaying game, originally published by Games Workshop and then Hogshead Publishing started when I was part of a Warhammer Club at my secondary school. The club was set up by one of our rather cool teachers who made sure that we had room to paint models, play games and also enjoy a bit of roleplaying too.

Odd Introductions

Our first session didn't exactly last for very long; played out on one evening during the week. I believe we made our way into a tavern somewhere within the Empire and got into a bit of a brawl (how apt). We ended up killing a lot of things and I'm fairly sure someone got thrown out of a window and ended up smashing into a nearby building where the found a pesky goblin wrapped up in a baby's cot. Yep, it was weird.

We even played another rather short adventure where I played as a character called Ronan Bane. He was an Empire Soldier and I had grand thoughts for his future. We were travelling through the wilds and came to a cave which was filled with snakes. Alas, my valiant soldier, Ronan Bane ended up getting poisoned and dying in a hole very ignobly. It was made all the worse by my friend who was playing a Beast Wizard who had the ability to charm animals! If he'd simply read his character sheet, Ronan Bane would have lived on!

Despite this somewhat odd introduction to the game we did end up picking up the book ourselves and playing it as part of a longer campaign. My brother and I went to a store in Birmingham called Wayland's Forge and ended up buying two copies of the book, one for each of us, and a set of dice.

We then had to work out who was going to become part of the group and what kind of stories we were going to tell!

Our first campaign played out very much in the vein of a classic Fantasy adventure. The group consisted of my friend Tom playing the Wizard Drago, my brother Adam taking on the role of the Norscan Pitfighter called Conan (nice and original) and finally my friend Richard playing as the Warrior Priest known as Brother Guilbert.

We ended up diving into a pretty fun campaign, a few moments of which stand out in my mind. I remember once that they were travelling up the river trying to escape from pirates and ended up getting attacked by a massive swamp squid which surged up from the bottom to drag them away. Conan dived into the river to fight it and Drago shocking it with lightning that was channelled through his staff. Naturally, as Conan was in the water he also got a bit of a shock. Surprisingly he was ok and just came out a bit frazzled but Brother Guilbert soon healed him up.

The campaign went on for a very long time. I remember us sitting and playing it across a few months in various people's bedrooms and eventually Conan turned into a mighty Warrior Of Chaos! He became blessed by the gods and faced off against Brother Guilbert in the Chaos Wastes, battling each other to see who could come out on top. Drago did a little bit of a Gandalf The Grey/White where he came back as a more powerful Wizard and went to live in a tower in the Chaos Wastes too. It was rather fun and I still have my brother's character sheet somewhere, tatty and battered, but a good reminder of the time spent playing that 1st Edition of the game.

2nd Edition Beckons

Later on, we dived into the 2nd Edition of the game under the stewardship of Black Industries. This is where our time with the game really exploded and took on a life of its own. I can tell that I had a great time with this campaign, run by my friend Tom because I still remember the characters very fondly.

I played an Empire Soldier again by the name of Leopold. I had rolled for everything I could for this character to create a very random and interesting hero, or so I thought anyway. He was a coward who had run away from the Storm Of Chaos which was raging across the Old World and left his comrades to die. But, after running into the other members of the party in the depths of the Drakwald he was determined to put things right.

My friends were also playing some fascinating characters. Richard and my brother Adam played a pair of Dwarfen cousins called Ungrim & Storri. Our friend Jack was also playing the role of the Wood Elf called Urdifine.

The focus of our campaign was the introductory story from the back of the 2nd Edition Rulebook. We absolutely loved it, following the narrative and getting shocked by the wild revelations which pop up during that adventure. The revelatory ending to that story involved someone that we affectionately remembered as 'Granny' even ended up having an impact later on down the line as well.

Much like with 1st Edition we ended up having a lot of fine moments with Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play. For example, there was the time that we were making our way through a dark cavern and had to cross a sickening crevasse. We all made it across but as Storri/Adam made his way over and failed a check or two, nearly following off, both Urdifine and Leopold had a little chuckle. In a brilliant moment of roleplaying, Ungrim/Richard turned to us and uttered the immortal lines "No laughing at my cousin...I'm the only one allowed to do that!"

Another time we were battling against Goblins who were harassing a patch of farmland. Arrows where whizzing towards us through the air and as Ungrim brought one of the Goblins low, he picked up a Goblin shield and used it as cover! Sensible thinking I hear you say, but Dwarfs in Warhammer are very particular and I remember Storri being deeply upset by his cousin using a Goblin shield to keep himself alive. No self-respecting Dawi should use something made by a Grobi - it was another moment of grumbling roleplaying awesomeness.

One of the key moments of the campaign came when we were fighting in a burning city against a band of mutants. We were adventuring alongside a band of mercenaries and found ourselves tackling a massive Nurgle daemon down in the sewers. After defeating this foe we ventured back to the surface where the town was ablaze.

Ungrim wandered through a collapsing building and found a little girl who was clearly very odd (tainted some might say) but was convinced he needed to save her. After believing he had managed to cure her with his words and prayers we just had to drag her along with us. We, therefore, had to do everything we could to keep her alive, including selling our lives to make sure she and our mercenary friends got out of the town alive. I distinctly remember us lowering the girl in a bucket whilst holding off hordes of mutants in a desperate flight to escape.

"If you're watching my back, who's watching my front!?"

This is where Leopold and Urdifine died. Leopold met his fate at the hands of the man he had abandoned on the battlefield months before whilst Urdifine was cut down by a band of mutants. Even though we had fallen, we really didn't want to give up playing these characters. That's when our Games Master had a great idea.

The next session both Jack and I had made our new characters, or updated versions of Leopold and Urdifine and sat down to play. Both of our character's bodies were entombed within great stone coffins by Ungrim and Storri as they transported us home to be buried. We then had to convince them, with our ghostly voices, that we were still alive and they should really let us out! It was one of the funniest sessions I've ever played, with Ungrim refusing to believe Storri when he said that he could hear our voices coming from the tombs. Both Dwarfs were convinced that there must be terrible spirits following them around. Thankfully we did end up getting loose, born anew as a Warrior Priest and Wizard respectively thanks to the winds of magic and spirit of Sigmar.

Our campaign did continue for a really long time. Ungrim went down the route of the Dwarf Slayer whilst Storri developed into an Ironbreaker of sorts, clad in heavy armour. Leopold made his way down the path of the Warrior Priest and whilst tackling all manner of strange evocations, Urdifine did end up as a good spellcaster.

We had a lot of fun and found ourselves back in the Drakwald trying to defend a town from a herd of angry Beastmen. The town was besieged and the people were on their last legs. They had been told a great Warrior Priest from their Sigmarite Chapel would protect them but they had not seen him in many weeks. Leopold tried to rally the people to the cause in the town square but we thought it was a losing fight.

In the final battle we played out, the wall was breached and Ungrim fought to his last breath defending the gap, his cousin Storri dragging him away from the melee. Urdifine fought from the barricades whilst Leopold rallied the people and got stuck in with his bloody warhammer. The priest of the town did eventually come to our aid as things got dire and we banished the Beastmen, for a time.

Sadly, we never found out what happened next. I like to think that we ventured out into the forest to hunt down the Beastmen and their leader, laying them low and freeing the town from those terrors. But, I guess we'll never know. It did end on a rather heroic note at least, right in the midst of battle.

Later Editions

We never returned to Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play after that really. I believe we took a few moments to try out something new but we were much more enamoured with World Of Darkness by that point.

3rd Edition from Fantasy Flight Games never appealed to us with its mass of different tokens and such. We also just didn't have the money to afford a new edition and had plenty of other stories to tell in the aforementioned World Of Darkness as a pack of Werewolves. Maybe I'll tell some stories from those days too soon.

4th Edition has reignited my passion for the game once more and you can find out my thoughts on the Starter Set from Cubicle 7 right HERE. It's well worth checking it out as it is a perfect introduction to the world and is packed with options once you're done with its guided opening. It really does draw on the best of the 2nd Edition of the game whilst also ironing out a lot of the kinks.

Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play continues to be one of my favourite tabletop games and really was a great way to help learn more about a world which was until that point relegated to the battles we played on the tabletop using miniatures.

Please, tell me your stories in the comments too!

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