just wondering how many people still own/play the very first edition of Warhammer Fantasy RPG. I know i have to answer yes to both of those questions because, 1 I am an old school person. 2 never got around to looking at them. 3 just to lazy to go buy newer versions.

in no way am i saying the newer editions are bad, please do not take it that way. I just like good discussions.

so does anyone still play the older editions?

I still have my 1st edition book and I often look through it and generate ideas from it. Sometimes, just holding it is all I need to do for inspiration…as weird as that sounds, but it's true. In fact it is open right now to the Beastiary to the page about Fimir because I am going to introduce them in my 3rd edition game. I don't play it anymore, but it is still a resource for me and the book that brought me to the Old World. After all these years I can still flip it open to various sections with lightning speed while I fumble through the newest like an thumbless mummer..

hereticmarine4321 said:

The answer is yes, but you may want to go to:

www.strike-to-stun.net

Cheers

Sparrow

Similarly to Grayzen, I only use the books of the 1st editon as inspiration, to look for background and /or to re-use the adventures. In my opinion, in its time the 1st edition of WFRPG was a revolution in the RPG world. Now, we face a very much needed revolution which comes thanks to the 3rd edition of WFRPG.

Wow, the 1st edition was the 1st RPG I owned. I can still recall getting into the Game Workshop store, and picking up this brand new RPG (It just had came out in France in 1994). I GMed the Ennemy Within (and mini-adventures in between) for 4 years afterward.

I still have it, but no, I don't play it anymore, not with the 2nd and 3rd edition out. I agree on the inspiration though, whether the adventures or the sourcebooks/bestiary.

I have recently started playing 2nd edition, as I couldn't find a group for 3rd edition. So now, I am playing both, and happy to be playing WFRP again.

Cheers
Ceodryn

I own and still use both 1st edition and 2nd edition, although only for reference at the moment. I would happily play in any of the WHFRP editions and love them all as a system / environment that I truly enjoy.

I am like Ceodryn, as Warhammer was the first system I ever purchased, but have dabbled a bit with Dragon Age, Palladium, Beyond the Supernatural, Shadowrun, Starwars, Startrek, MERP, Stormbringer, Elric, etc. The one system that I never really took to was D and D, although the source material is very inspirational. I have always played warhammer and always will.

Alp

I still own the 1st edition of WFRP and in my opinion it is better than the 3rd edition - but hey that is just my opinion. I am not saying that the 3rd edition is bad - in many ways it is superior to the 1st edition - but overall I liked the 1st edition more. I am not even sure if FFG is to blame. They certainly gave WFRP a more modern look and the layout and graphical style of the 3rd edition is just awsome. What sucks is that Games Workshop changed the Wolrd over time… the 1st edition presented a world that was less shiny and less heroic. It set itself apart even more from systems like D&D or MERP.

I adore v1, but I vastly prefer the mechanics and systems in V3. However, my players inhabit the V1 world…

good to see i brought some of you back into the olden days.

so what are the major changes from 1st to 3rd I know about talents already.

Warhammer 1st ed. was the first roleplaying game that mesmerized me. The artwork, the theme, everything… it's a love that has lasted to the present day. I am, by personal history, a first edition player, no doubt.

My first edition book looks like it's been to war - scorched from candles and cigarette burns, tea- and soda-stained, grubby and with a broken back. I think I've GM-ed for 8 years with it in the 90s, once a week. And I still use all my 1st edition stuff from time to time. Certainly the scenarios and source books. I tend to go back to the 1st ed. core rules for the druids and the old faith, as well as the Fimir; The Celtic influences that Graeme Davis put in there. They are part of the Old World, regardless of whether or not the 3rd ed. mentions them.

To me the edition we use to play is almost irrelevant. It's merely the window through which we enter the Old World and that has not changed at all. Warhammer Fantasy Battle has changed the theme bit by bit, but well, that's WFB, not WFRP. The WFRP world is the same that it was in 1987.

The identity of Warhammer lies clearly in the story and the theme and that hasn't changed at all in the 3rd edition. When I prepare an adventure, I need a good plot seed and an interesting setting. It doesn't matter if I use first, second or third edition stats for that and in fact I don't even convert the stats mechanically. I take a rough glance at what makes this NPC special and assemble some quick stats and abilities- the toolkit-character of the third edition makes it very easy.

That said, if you play 1st ed. and it runs smoothly with your group, then stay with it. Never touch a running system. In WFRP, the edition is merely a means to an end.

In fact, you can play all the new campaigns for the same reason. To quote Graeme Davis on the new TEW campaign: "The story is a wfrp story, the plot is a wfrp plot.". You'll find the interview here, the part I mentioned starts at 61:30.

http://www.d20radio.com/sbv/
Small but Vicious Special 4 : The Writer Within

You can play the campaign with any wfrp edition, how your players roll their attacks is nearly unimportant.

So you have plenty of equally-minded people here on the 3rd ed. forums. We all love the grim and perilous world of Warhammer and that hasn't changed with the editions.

I'd say, stick with 1st ed. and play some of the new campaigns!

Johannes_Tippmeister said:

so your saying that if my group is fine with 1st edition i should stay with it? me and my group are fine with first edition. I am also wandering if there are any good major changes that have happened, have there been? from the people around here they all still love 1st edition, only a few play 3rd.

I'm in a bit of a rush, but for now I'd recommend watching TheOutsiders68's review of it:

In short, I'd say the dice pool system is the major strength of this edition. They really nailed it. Normally, you always have to decide between narrative conflict resolution or rolling the dice and using the rules. In the third edition, the results of the roll tell you something and good role-playing and good ideas on part of the players can be directly represented by adding dice to their dice pool. They managed to find the golden in-between.

And as I said, yes, if your surroundings are such that the first edition is going strong, then why invest a big chunk of money? The good thing about WFRP is that we don't define ourselves by editions, such as the D&D community, but by the fact that we play Warhammer. I sort of restarted my group, so I could change the edition without any collateral damage and I also thoroughly enjoyed reading up on the 3ed stuff, but changing editions in 2012 is merely an option, not a requirement.

Webhead123 provides a sober and detailed description of a sample fight between a Dwarf Slayer and an Orc:

This is the bare bone mechanics, without any narrative actions by the players (via the 'perform a stunt' action), so it nicely illustrates the actual 3e engine.

Heck, while we're at it, here are the rest of his videos on WFRP 3ed, too:

The Setting (to whom it may concern):

Character Creation:

Dice and Core Mechanics

Skill Checks

Action Cards

Talents

As you wrote, it is a very “sober” demonstration. It helps to explain the rules, but it does not bring the dice to life.

To me, the narrative aspect of using these dice is what makes 3rd edition so fantastic. Let’s say you roll a standard melee attack, one deep in reckless stance with ST 4 and weapon skill trained against a foe with a defense of one. You also add a fortune die.

The result is:

1 Red: success and fatigue

3 Blue: three boons

1 Expertise: one success

1 Challenge: two banes

1 Misfortune: one failure

1 Fortune: one boon

You can roll an attack and then actually see in the roll that for example the armor almost deflected your reckless blow (because the black die canceled one of your two successes), but that your skill with weapons (a success with the expertise die) overrode these problems. At the same time you see that you were so reckless that you fatigued yourself in the attack. At the same time your general strength is good enough to confer enough boons on you to counter the inherent difficulty of attacking. Finally, of course, you throw a fortune die into the pool which comes up as a boon adding with the other boon from your stat dice: You feel that destiny is on your side! This feels so good that you to take a deep breath and recover a fatigue.

This is all in just one row! I think it is incredible. (Even though I do not always take the time to come up with such an elaborate interpretation – and if you use for example fantasy grounds it is a bit more difficult to do this, because you loose track of the individual dice to some degree.)