I'm impressed that the core books doesn't show a direct reference to the Storm of Chaos events of the Second Edition. The obvious path was to set the Third Edition after the attack of Archaon, but there is only one or another reference about "the last Chaos attack, the greatest one since the time of Magnus" (I actually thought that the Storm of Chaos was worse and bigger than the Great Chaos War).

So, what happened to Archaon? Is he still hiding in the Middle Mountains? Is the Third Edition going to simply pass through it, without greater reference?

They rewound time to just before the Storm of Chaos. So, currently he's building a massive Chaotic horde ready to attack the Empire.

Pedro Lunaris said:

This is one of the interesting aspects of SoC - What happened to Archaon? Would have been easiest to kill him at the end, but no. I dont why Archaon needed to survive. First idea that comes to mind is new campaing against the Empire. But I dont think he is coming back again. He had his change and that was that.

But if GW leaves that unsolved forever (like it now seems), then there is great and epic possibility to end some campaing that ends post-SoC. Players will face Archaon himself at the end at some remote location (Middle Mountains or some other place). Well, do people really have any change with this champion? Probably not, but you also have to remember he has failed and this could have taken some powers away from him.

As for WFRP3 - It starts before SoC. I'm very interested to see will there be adventure-campaign based on the war.

After Grimgor kick Archie's but. Archie retreated to Brass Keep in the Middle Mountains and that is the last we have heard of it. In truth it seems GW is forgetting the SoC ever happended. I think that is a good trend to follow.

As I've said many times, it is my firm belief that GW has retconned the Storm of Chaos out of the setting. There is a fluff entry in the ToB that references an event that took place on Hexentag, 2522. With this date firmly set in the "past" of whatever the "current" date is in WFRP and Archaon having attacked the Empire in the summer of 2522, it seems doubtful that FFG/GW would have chosen to place the "current" date mere months before the events of Storm of Chaos. That leaves little "time" for events to unfold in any campaign before the setting has to deal with a major setting-changing event. Chris Pramas has stated that he disliked being shackled to the post-War setting in 2nd ed because it was a constant backthat had to be dealt with. The Empire, facing constant threats from within and without, is a much more flexible setting to work with. It appears that GW has unshackled FFG and in the alternate reality that is the current game's setting, the SoC never happened.

Warhammer 7th edition retconned/rewound the Storm of Chaos out too.

It also went back to including special characters who are "no longer" alive, which is likely why Archaon didn't die in the Storm of Chaos - under 6th edition Warhammer GW (mostly) only including "living" special characters in the army books. Archaon had to be alive, as he was listed in the Chaos army book.

Also, the 2521 timeline is just before the Age of Reckoning (as an alternate to SoC) spun off; rewinding and leaving it open allows either end-times setting to be possible.

I suspect that WFRP 3e is confined to the Warhammer Age of Reckoning timeline, and that Archaeon isn't the big bad, rather it will be revealed that Tchar'zanek is going to be the force to be reckoned with.

...but with that there is the very likely proposition that I'm full of crap too.

My understanding was anything that happened in Storm of Chaos has been retconned out of the setting to provide for a less "bleak" play experience. Not sure how that applies in a Grim, dark, gritty setting like WFRP.....

I liked the fact that PCs were kind of forced onto the path of adventure by having their villages and towns sacked by Chaos. It gave people a believable reason to have left their former professions. In the current setting, it's a little harder to convince a Barber-Surgeon to leave his lucrative shop in downtown Altdorf to go on an adventurous romp through the Reikwald. Much less dangerous to stay at home too.

Being survivors of a razed village? Now that's a reason to go out and adventure. You're former life is gone after all.

Has anyone decided on their own to keep Archaon and the Storm of Chaos in the picture still?

Starting play after the Storm of Chaos was anti-climatic in my opinion. The Big Bad already passed and it was conquered.

The mystery of Chaos is gone. You'd have to be an utter fool to discount it, an even greater fool not to rally behind the powers that be. The Storm of Chaos is like a world post-9/11, where every resource is marshaled towards exterminating the perceived threat. I just don't buy that anything would continue as it was before and the zeal and vigilance would not disappear until many years later. I found some of the views in 2e to be almost farcical, and it made WFRP too much like WH40k.

I much prefer the current setting where zealous priests are seen with as much suspicion as the cultists they decry. Where merchants are all too willing to trade in illicit goods. I much prefer the gradual slip into chaos, through small lapses in judgement.

Villages have been destroyed before the dawn of the Empire and they will continue to be sacked and pillaged by Skaven, Beastmen and hordes of Chaos. The Storm of Chaos only increased the incidence of this. If anything, removing the Storm of Chaos makes the PC's plight all that more poignant. They're no longer one of hundreds of thousands displaced and left homeless.

I play Dark Heresy, so the bleak outlook and fanaticism appeals to me.

I do agree that sacked villages would have occurred prior to the Storm of Chaos though so a similar beginning to 2nd Edition can still be obtained.

Good point Lexicanum!

Lexicanum said:

I see things very differently than this picture, Lexicanum, as much as I appreciated your view on things. probably is just that, a matter of point of view, but let me share it:

first, I'm not sure the 3ed will really ignore the Storm of Chaos. if I'm not mistaken, they describe a great attack of Chaos Hordes on the north, the greatest one since the time os Magnus. they even say the name of the guy controlling the army, and states that are gossips around saying that attack was just the vanguard of a larger one. that's right, isn't it? and, again if I'm not mistaken, the hordes Archaon united in the 2ed were greater even then the hordes that attacked the Empire during the times of Magnus...

that said, I just see things different about what happened in the Empire after the Storm of Chaos had passed. to begin with, I don't think the Empire saw the end of the Storm of Chaos at all. a great contingency of Chaos troops just disbanded to the Middle Mountains, and Archaon himself went there as well. even if weakened, he did manage to win against the Empire's champion, Valden.

there were a lot of misteries going on about what happened after the undead ended Middenheim's siege. why did they do it? is one of them. and how exactly the High Theogonist, who everyone thought as being dead, manage to convince the Vampire Court to go back to Sylvania. it could be because it was a High Theogonist who ended the after-life of the first Vampire Count to challenge the Empire, and he did it just like that. but it could also be because Volkmar had turned undead himself...

but the greatest mystery to me was the dead of Valden. I just loved the way it all seemed a conspiracy right under the wing, and maybe even the protection, of the otherwise thought as a just and great Emperor. maybe the greatest politician the Old World had ever seen, actually.

so, I thing that were plenty to explore in that setting. the forces of Chaos were still all around. villages were still getting burned.

as to the shades of mystery that surrounded Chaos itself... well, I do agree that the current edition seems to be taking a greater care with it than the previous one. but I also imagine that the fact the Empire had seen the greatest wave of Chaos attacks, in the form of a huge army with every type of demons doesn't mean that the shroud around Chaos fell. I do love the idea that even the soldiers who fought it couldn't explain or even remember exactly what they experienced. those who did dive into madness. a lot of people saw the Chaos army, but most of the common folk were killed by it or had runned away before it arrived.

the vigilance of Empire organizations sure got to the point that everyone was watched. but I also think that the news about the Empire winning the struggle would make a lot of people relax. a lot of people would even get to a sense of superiority that would shroud things even more: after all, Chaos was fought, and the Empire won! maybe that ancient threat had simply fallen! and that would leave a great opening to every type fof cult.

watch would continue, probably in a greater scale than ever. but also the arrogance of the victory, also some relaxation. so what I see is a very, very complex enviornment, where all this things come together. and that is a great scenary for many genres of roleplaying...

that's why I miss the Storm of Chaos.

The beauty of rewinding, I think, is that it's now up to the GM to pursue any iteration of WFB they want; the oppressive and looming evil of 1st edition or the post Storm of Chaos world of ruined villages and a battered Empire. It even supports other variations, like running the Storm itself as a backdrop, or replacing it with Tchar'zanek and the Age of Reckoning for a more heroic, epic version.

It's just about the maximum amount of flexibility for what is a fairly fixed background.

morskittar said:

This is pretty much my view as well. The Storm of Chaos as a base setting made my life as a GM harder. Destroying an entire province is incredibly simple from a GM's point of view, but populating it and adding towns and hooks is not as trivial. So I prefer settings that have great potential, the Storm of Chaos had already expended a lot of this potential.

Take Sigmar's Heirs from 2e for example. You look at the chapter with the provinces completely destroyed by the Storm of Chaos and from a fluff point of view they are next to useless. The gazeteer has no info on the towns as they were all razed, so I can't place a pre-Storm of Chaos adventure there. Yet, if I had the info and I wanted to run a Storm of Chaos event I could just ignore all that data as everything is in ruins. And I'd also have additional information I could use for flavor: "you step into a desecrated town, you notice the vast wood mills still in flames, this was once a town famous for its woodwork." Flavor I'm missing in the 2e Sigmar's Heir gazeteer as all entries for the destroyed villages are devoid of info except for name and population.

And of course, the story doesn't stop after the Storm of Chaos, but there's a loss of innocence that goes along with it. Sure there was the Great War and Magnus. All very lovely and heroic and so buried in the past as to be mere legend. You could talk to me about the US Civil War, how brutal it was and what not, but it's not going to affect me. It's causes seem so foreign that I have no reason to fear it happening again. That's how I imagine humans view the Great War, with a naive innocence. Only the Dwarfs remember it clearly.

But after the Storm of Chaos that was all gone. That innocence lost and changed, replaced by reality, despair, conviction or fear.

Storm of Chaos would make a great supplement or epic campaign, in the spirit of TEW. But as the base for the setting I think leaves a lot to be desired.

For me Storm of Chaos is no different than starting WFRP 4e with all the Dwarfholds destroyed and overrun after some massive Orc campaign, sure there would lots of intrigue and action to follow up after the fact. But it would rob me of all that Dwarvish setting.

I'm glad they retconned it, yet I'm glad they also have material for it so that we can play through it if we want to.

GW has essentially frozen the 'official' timeline at just before the SoC. The 'core' GW timeline is unlikely to advance any further. This then allows them to licence out variant SoCs to different companies. Age of Reckoning can have a completely different SoC to that of the original or any we may see in WFRP 3. A GM can create his own SoC without having it invalidated by official material - all SoCs are as valid as any other.

Lexicanum said:

alright, got your point. I still thing that campaignig just after the Middenheim's siege gives a good and complex scenario, but sure flexibility is a greater achievement for the ambientation of an RPG world. I personaly get inspired by the 2e Sigmar's Heirs names of towns and missing population, but sure, that is extra work to a relatively simple description. if we can get more descriptions, we can deal with them as we like, and place our campaings anytime and anywhere we like them.

so, let's see how FFG will work with it.

This interview with Gav Thorpe speaks to the Storm of Chaos and Archaon some. Interesting stuff!