I'm sure this has been asked before but my search results haven't been favorable so I will just ask it again.

Which 2e warhammer fantasy roleplay books (not novels) would you consider highly beneficial from a background info perspective. I know there are some that many folks praise highly and would be interested in what the community feels are the real gems of the stuff that is out there.

Sigmar's Heirs is nice basic background on Empire with the odd adventure idea etc. It has minimal "at odds" stuff due to the Storm of Chaos etc.

Tome of Salvation has lots of good background on religious things and Tome of Corruption (I may have name wrong here, I mean the wizard book for 2d not the WFB book) lots for magic. If your campaign has either much preisthood focus or much magic focus they can add lots of flavour etc. Once again, generally consistent 3e.

I find the Old World Bestiary nice for more fluff on critters and ideas for variants and new ones. I like its format for folklore and education information about creatures and use it as model for information rolls about monsters in game. It's not quite as much content as the first 3 above.

I also like the Game Masters Pack for the floor plans/layouts it gives of several "standard Old Word buildings" from Inn to farmstead. I've used those several times as quick aids in games.

I think you can get all of these as pdfs from rgpnow etc.

* Sigmar's Heirs - This is simply a must-have.

* Witch Hunter's Handbook, Grudgelore, Life and Times of Sigmar

* Death on the Reik artbook (I'm visually motivated)

* If you're going to go to Kislev or Brettonia, then look at those (same for Tome of Corruption and Norsca)

I think its crucial to have the Wood Elf warhammer fantasy battles book. You can pick up used copies really cheap.

jh

As people have said above;

Sigmar's heirs for info about the empire, Realms of Sorcery for wizards, Tome of salvation for priests, and my personal favourite the tome of corruption for all things chaos.

the latter two are amazing books, every time I go though them I find something I have not read before. The Tome of salvation covers far more than just priests going though just about about every aspect of religious veneration in the old world, while the Tome of corruption goes from mutants, bestmen, cultists, norse, kurgan, chaos warriors, daemons, dark elves to chaos dwarfs, and even gives ideas or examples to what the chaos wastes are like. Both are simply wonderful.

Nights Dark Masters for vampires was pretty good and gritty, and the Skaven book- Children of the horned Rat was a good read, but somewhat spoiled by dozens of errors.

The knights of the Grail I felt was a little lack luster covering the brets, I just felt it needed more to it, opposed with realms of the ice queen covering Kislev in which I felt they crammed too much in but with out enough detail.

Shades of the Empire is a good read, covering secret societies in the old world which was a bit different from the other source books.

For detailed info on some of the Empires major cities the paths of the damned series along with Terror at Talagheim go into a fair amount of detail, making them worth picking up even if you have no plans to run the adventures contained within.

Crimsonsun

valvorik said:

I second all of these.

Very useful stuff. Most of V3 material is a shortened version of the content of these books.

Second Edition books are wonderful! I agree with opinions listed already. I didn't read any outside of the Empire, but even if you are not playing with priests, for example, Tome of Salvation brings so much information about the sanctioned religions that you must read it - worship being an important part of everyday life in Warhammer world. And Realms of Sorcery brings a lot of the way the "physics" of the world works, the relation of the chaos energy with the material realm.

I would only add the simple Companion, which brings great material on the trade, and fluff fun stuff like atrological signs for character - something to conduct nature and demeanor of each character. And what has been said about each city: second edition had a great way to create adventures that passed on great cities and, before the adventure per se, bringing a lot of descriptions about the city. The Path of the Damned trilogy talks about Middenheim, Altdorf and Nuln, and Terror in Talabheim... ahem...

I had Sigmar's Heirs, but that was the only one that I had. I settled upon Tome of Salvation, Old World Bestiary, and Realms of Sorcery all for a combine price of about $30 including shipping. Not bad really.

Tome of Corruption is cost prohibitive in physical form as is Grudgelore, and the Witch Hunter's Handbook.

I have Life of Sigmar as part of the old 1st edition crate I inherited from an old gaming buddy, but honestly, I couldn't make myself read it. I will at some point but I dropped it to pick up Libre Necris. Liber Chaotica is a good fluff set of books from my understanding as well.

Sigmar's Heirs is excellent, but keep in mind some of the data there (especially for the northern provinces) will be incorrect, as in WFRP 3, the storm of chaos has not yet occurred, so many cities and villages are wiped out or greatly reduced due to events that will (or won't?) occur in the future when Archaeon attacks.