Fantasy Flight Ends Warhammer License

By GrimAndPerilous.com, in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay

Rumor has it that Fantasy Flight Games has officially ended the licensing rights for Warhammer with Games Workshop. With the announcement of Runewars Miniature Game at GenCon, one can only speculate if this was a planned move. As we all know, Fantasy Flight Games stopped producing products for their WFRP Third Edition line sometime ago. This leaves open a question of whether or not Games Workshop plans to relicense Warhammer – specifically the fan-favorite Old World – to another company.


Check out this link over at EnWorld, and help us spread the word about ZWEIHÄNDER Grim & Perilous RPG as a retroclone/OSR/loveletter/heartbreaker/successor to Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: http://www.enworld.org/forum/content.php?3751-Who-Will-Pick-Up-The-Warhammer-Licenses-Next

Edited by GrimAndPerilous.com

Sad to hear Fantasy Flight Games gives up on it, but maybe some good will come from this and a company giving Warhammer Fantasy a higher priority takes over the license.

Edited by Gurkhal

Sad, but not surprising, given where FFG is moving as a game company. It is sad, because despite all the bad blood, WFRP3 was an interesting experiment and elegant dice system that just got bogged down by too much stuff around it. Personally, I am thankful for FFG experiment with WFRP3. It was my coming back to RPG after a big hiatus, as was WFRP1 my entrance into RPG.

Hope that Zweihander, while a fan based work, will be able to sustain WFRP during these new dark times. As for whoever pick-up the license, if it is even taken (GW could well kill WFRP RPG at this time and not many would care), I hope they experiment as well. RPGs need innovation.

AAAARG !

I expected "The Enemy Within" to be translated in french for years, but gave it up recently. I was planning to buy it on DrivethruRpg soon, now it's impossible ! I'll have to find it now on ebay or resellers. But taxes and port are so high...

Sad to hear Fantasy Flight Games gives up on it, but maybe some good will come from this and a company giving Warhammer Fantasy a higher priority takes over the license.

Someone needs to give WFRP the D&D5e treatment because 3e was basically Warhammer's D&D4e (i.e. use some bits from WFRP3e that were good, but otherwise return to basics and do it so well that further editions are unnecessary).

Sad, but not surprising, given where FFG is moving as a game company. It is sad, because despite all the bad blood, WFRP3 was an interesting experiment and elegant dice system that just got bogged down by too much stuff around it. Personally, I am thankful for FFG experiment with WFRP3. It was my coming back to RPG after a big hiatus, as was WFRP1 my entrance into RPG.

Hope that Zweihander, while a fan based work, will be able to sustain WFRP during these new dark times. As for whoever pick-up the license, if it is even taken (GW could well kill WFRP RPG at this time and not many would care), I hope they experiment as well. RPGs need innovation.

I absolutely loved the dice system, and FFG's Star Wars made it far more elegant. This is something we are trying to back into ZWEIHÄNDER's development, but it isn't easily done.

I absolutely loved the dice system, and FFG's Star Wars made it far more elegant. This is something we are trying to back into ZWEIHÄNDER's development, but it isn't easily done.

I think the symbol dice have potential, but not necessarily as a core task-res mechanic. There's nothing especially cool (or realistic) about being able to fumble and crit at the same time; it's not something you see happen in movies or books. If there was a truly Narrative layer to the game, symbol dice could be used to drive that to good effect IMO, in conjunction with percentiles for basic task-res. There's a lot of extra bells & whistles in 3e, many of which serve primarily to justify the symbol dice.

I absolutely loved the dice system, and FFG's Star Wars made it far more elegant. This is something we are trying to back into ZWEIHÄNDER's development, but it isn't easily done.

I think the symbol dice have potential, but not necessarily as a core task-res mechanic. There's nothing especially cool (or realistic) about being able to fumble and crit at the same time; it's not something you see happen in movies or books. If there was a truly Narrative layer to the game, symbol dice could be used to drive that to good effect IMO, in conjunction with percentiles for basic task-res. There's a lot of extra bells & whistles in 3e, many of which serve primarily to justify the symbol dice.

I guess you never saw True Lies when Jamie Lee Curtis drops the sub machine gun

I absolutely loved the dice system, and FFG's Star Wars made it far more elegant. This is something we are trying to back into ZWEIHÄNDER's development, but it isn't easily done.

Are you scrapping the d% system that was apparent in the preview materials or is this just something that you're considering for a future edition?

You know there is zero evidence it was FFG and not GW that dropped the license.

I guess you never saw True Lies when Jamie Lee Curtis drops the sub machine gun

That was a silly gimmick scene, not the sort of thing that happens in most fiction, and not connected with character skill level or stance, just a pure fluke. Those kinds of fluke events could be generated using a separate narrative mechanic outside normal task resolution.

I guess you never saw True Lies when Jamie Lee Curtis drops the sub machine gun

That was a silly gimmick scene, not the sort of thing that happens in most fiction, and not connected with character skill level or stance, just a pure fluke. Those kinds of fluke events could be generated using a separate narrative mechanic outside normal task resolution.

Not really, in other games pass or fail are the only option or varying levels or degrees of fail or succeed, they don't have the options that the Warhammer /Star Wars dice mechanic give.

I think allot of fiction has events play out where the hero does something great but triggers an something that adds a complication, witch in dice mechanics might be a success with a chaos star or two, I understand for you this may be undesirable but does help some people tell a better story.

Not really, in other games pass or fail are the only option or varying levels or degrees of fail or succeed, they don't have the options that the Warhammer /Star Wars dice mechanic give.

Agreed, I was mainly responding to the idea of incorporating symbol dice into Zweihander. WFRP3e has extra bells & whistles to justify the dice (coded action cards, stance tracks, stress/fatigue etc.) so without those mechanics you'd just be adding the ability to fumble and crit simultaneously.

I guess you never saw True Lies when Jamie Lee Curtis drops the sub machine gun

That was a silly gimmick scene, not the sort of thing that happens in most fiction, and not connected with character skill level or stance, just a pure fluke. Those kinds of fluke events could be generated using a separate narrative mechanic outside normal task resolution.

Star Wars examples off the top of my head:

Han runs down a hallway and intimidates a bunch of stormtroopers, and then runs into an even bigger gang of them.

Luke pushes into his anger to take out darth Vader in combat but ends up tapping into the dark side.

The Millenium Falcon escaping from the second Death Star barely gets out of the flames as they wash over its hull.

Han Solo gets several direct hits on darth Vader that are deflected.

Han Solo evades the empires search but is tracked by Boba Fett.

And so on.

Back to the topic - whats gonna happen to this forum?

Back to the topic - whats gonna happen to this forum?

That's a very good point which I hadn't considered :(

Star Wars examples off the top of my head:

1. Han runs down a hallway and intimidates a bunch of stormtroopers, and then runs into an even bigger gang of them.

2. Luke pushes into his anger to take out darth Vader in combat but ends up tapping into the dark side.

3. The Millenium Falcon escaping from the second Death Star barely gets out of the flames as they wash over its hull.

4. Han Solo gets several direct hits on darth Vader that are deflected.

5. Han Solo evades the empires search but is tracked by Boba Fett.

And so on.

These aren't examples of scoring a crit and a fumble at the same time; they're either natural consequences of the action (2,3), NPC counter-actions (4), or separate encounters unrelated to the action (1,5). I've numbered them above for easy reference.



With the announcement of Runewars Miniatures Game , one can only speculate if this was a planned move. As we all know, Fantasy Flight Games stopped producing products for their WFRP Third Edition line sometime ago. This leaves open a question of whether or not Games Workshop plans to relicense Warhammer - specifically the fan-favorite Old World - to another company.


That being said, ZWEIHÄNDER Grim & Perilous RPG - WFRP's spiritual successor/retroclone/loveletter/heartbreaker/OSR - lives at GrimandPerilous.com . Call it what you will, but ZWEIHÄNDER will feel familiar to players of WFRP 1e and 2e. We funded over at Kickstarter @$61K , were featured on Forbes.com and are accepting late pledges at CrowdOx until October 31. You can even get a taste of our adaptation of Warhammer 40K in the GM section with our Dark Astral expansion!


Warhammer's not dead; it's world lives on through its fans and it can easily be adapted to ZWEIHÄNDER Grim & Perilous RPG ruleset. Come see what the community is doing over at http://grimandperilous.com/

Edited by GrimAndPerilous.com

Well, there we are then.

Where is that strange zealot guy that wrote a hundred walls of text guaranteeing us that FFG would release a 4th edition using the rules for Ars Magica? If I recall the bet correctly he owes a few of us some donuts in the shape of narrative dice. :)

Anyone know if there will be a way in the future to get PDFs for this? I bought the players guide, but never got the GMs guide.

Sad to see it go, But all god things come to an end. I do hope they continue the 3 Axis Narrative Dice into L5R. For me it's the Old World setting with those dice that really captured me.

Hi all,

Well the inevitable has happened. Lessons learned:

1. The dice mechanic is extremely good but not necessary for Warhammer. Having played Star Wars a lot, I can honestly say that 3rd edition is far too clunky and the card bloat was terrible and badly managed. I have been GMing 2nd edition and really enjoying it again.

2. The Old World is where it should be set, the Age of Sigmar has no roleplaying value whatsoever, nada, nil, zippo!

3.Unfortunately the Star Wars RPG's are what 3rd edition should have been.

4. Maybe GW will look at RPG's again, but I wouldn't hold out much hope. The only question is whether anybody can afford to take on the license fees and come up with completely new products to make the fees worthwhile. A big ask in my opinion!