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| Image via RPGGeek.com |
This year's challenge begins with a game that didn't quite make the cut last year. As I mentioned in my previous post, one of the strategies I'm using to keep this project from taking over my life this year is to make groups of characters for a single system, so my first four posts for 2023 are going to be a party of WFRP adventurers. I'm not really a Warhammer guy; you can't spend a lot of time knocking around this hobby without absorbing at least some of the lore (mostly 40K, really, but some of the fantasy stuff as well, since they're connected), but to call my knowledge of the Warhammer world "shallow" would be rather an understatement.
HOWEVER. I remembered the buzz (both positive and negative) when Fantasy Flight released their licensed version of Games Workshop's classic (and my own experience of noodling around a bit with 2e back in the '90s), so when I found a used-or-remaindered copy at a local Half Price Books a few years ago I figured it was worth fifty bucks to see what it took to fill a box that size with a single core rules set. (You can see what it took in the photo above, though it doesn't really show what all those cards are actually for.) I got it home, poked around the contents a bit, then put it away as I had more pressing matters to deal with at the time.
Until now. I didn't really have time to get far into the gameplay part of the rules (just like last year!), but character generation is actually pretty simple once you get your head around its elements (and the role of the cards in the whole thing). (I'm also not going to spend a lot of time on setting stuff here, except to note that it's a lot like D&D except somewhat darker, grittier, and lower-to-the-ground than contemporary D&D. Renaissance-adjacent not-Europe, with Tolkien-derived non-humans, among other things that I didn't read deeply enough to talk about.) The actual character sheet is quite small--a little larger than a 4"x6" index card--but you're going to build on that with cards from the various decks.
The core set offers four races for player characters: Humans of the Empire, Dwarves, High Elves, and Wood Elves. There we go, party of four right there. I'll take these in order even though I'm giving the humans-first, everyone-else-alphabetical presentation a little sideye. So the first character in our group will be a Human. As in most D&D-esque fantasy, humans are more or less the default all the other species are measured against, but they get some goodies of their own as well. Humans are adaptable (with a lower cost for changing careers) and Favored by Fate (so that once per session they can add extra dice to a check). In addition they get 25 character creation points to other races' 20. Their Wound Threshold base is 9, plus Toughness score.
The second step after choosing a race is to select a career for your character. The default is semi-randomized: there is a deck of career cards, and you draw three cards from it (after shuffling, of course), discard any for which your race is not eligible, and continue drawing until you have three to choose from. Humans are eligible for most things, and my initial draws were all fair game: Burgher (i.e., respectable townsman), Coachman, Hunter. I was drawn to Coachman, thinking that it would offer a good party-creation hook (PCs traveling together by coach are thrown into adventure when disaster strikes), but eventually the idea turned out to be more challenging to implement than I had anticipated, also I wanted to see how the magic systems worked, so I tossed all three, and I chose Apprentice Wizard over the priestly Initiate for this character. (Divine and arcane magic use very similar mechanics, so I figured six of one and flipped for it.)
The career cards provide relevant mechanical information (and a character illustration) on the obverse and setting/fiction information (aka "fluff") on the reverse. Right below the career name on the Apprentice Wizard card are four Traits: Academic, Arcane, Basic, Wizard. These keywords can interact with other rules in various ways, most generally when a player contemplates changing careers.
The box below that provides relevant information for character creation. Intelligence and Willpower are the primary characteristics for this career, and I'll want to buy those up when I get to that part of character generation. My skill list consists of the basic skills Discipline, Intuition, and Observation, which I can use untrained, and the advanced skills Channeling, Education, Magical Sight, and Spellcraft, which cannot be used untrained (and which cost a creation point to access at rank 0, so you're an advance behind where you would be with a basic skill). I'll have to spend creation points to gain ranks in skills.
Most careers also begin with a stance meter, a line made of of green Conservative and red Reckless tiles that indicate how you're approaching a given encounter. Your stance allows you to add green or red dice to your checks, but the more committed to a stance you are (and therefore the more dice of that color you can add), the more effort it takes to change course. The Apprentice Wizard's stance track depends upon the College they belong to, which we'll determine later.
Below that box is another detailing the options for advancement that come with experience. Since we're creating beginning characters, we can skip that, stopping only to note that each career allows you to buy each type of advancement only a few times, often only once or twice, and that once you've earned all the available advancements you are considered to have completed the career.
Now, to the right of the character illustration (which depicts a "typical" member of the profession) there are some slots for Talent cards, indicating the type that may be applied. The Apprentice Wizard has a slot for an Order (the college of magic to which they belong) and a slot for a Focus (which is usually an intellectual or knowledge-based benefit). Buying Talents also costs creation points, though if I have read the rules correctly you don't have to pay for your Order. (Also there are some skills you may get for free; it's not 100% clear to me.)
Now that I have a Career and some idea of what I'll need to pursue it, it's time to spend those creation points. Characteristics default to a value of 2, and each one-step increase costs a number of points equal to the new value--so bumping a characteristic up to the human average is going to cost 3 of my 25 points. There are six Characteristics, three physical (Strength, Toughness, Agility) and three mental (Intelligence, Willpower, Fellowship). Some of these are going to have to stay below average, and since I'm a wizard here those will be Strength and Toughness. And, since I'm beginning to see this character as a bit of a sheltered naif, we'll keep Fellowship at 2 as well. Raising Agility to 3 costs 3 points; bumping Intelligence and Willpower up to 4 each will cost 14 (three each to make 3, four each to reach 4). That leaves me 8 creation points for skills, talents, wealth, and action options.
Spending 2 points on Wealth puts me at a "comfortable" lifestyle, which starts me out with two sets of clothes (and a bag for the spare), a basic weapon (such as a dagger), a couple of minor amenities such as candles or a tinderbox, and two gold coins worth of cash, which is actually a fair bit of money. This would seem to be in addition to the wizardly accoutrements listed on the back of my Career card: a notebook of magical writings, robes in the color mof my College, a passport from my master permitting me to travel, and my wizard's staff (or other talismanic item). Not bad. But at Strength 2 it's not clear at all that I can carry all of it. So I'm going to forgo the dagger and keep only one suit of clothes in my bag.
Now let's look at Skills, I have seven career skills, and two creation points will let me train three of them. But that's a hard call, and I'm going to get a School for free in one of my talent slots, so I'll spend three points here for 4 training slots and 2 skill specializations. According to the arcane magic booklet, an apprentice wizard starts with 0-level training in Channeling and Spellcraft before spending creation points, so I can invest in one or two Basic skills as well. Channeling lets you gather the magical energy that Spellcraft lets you shape into actual magic. The other advanced skills are Education (which you need for basic literacy) and Magical Sight (which lets you detect and interpret magical energies, characterized her as Winds). As Advanced skills, each investment in these brings me up to a sort of rank 0 where I can use the skill as if it were an untrained Basic skill. That leaves me with two points, which i'll invest in Discipline (so as to better avoid miscasting) and Intuition (this character is shaping up in my head as a dreams-and-visions kind of wizard, thus providing a lead-in to new adventures).
I also get two specializations; under Spellcraft I'll specialize in the spells of my College (which we'll select under Talents below), and under Magical Sight I'll specialize in locating auras.
Now for Talents. My College or Order comes under this heading, and then I'll choose one more from the Focus deck. The blue-robed Celestial Order handles divination and sky-magic, which is exactly the kind of thing I have in mind for this young wizard. The associated bonus is that I can spend an extra point of power to add a bonus die to any Celestial spell I cast. For a second Focus I choose Instinctive, which provides a bonus die to Intuition checks. (In addition to these, as an Apprentice Wizard I have a career-based ability, also represented by a card, that gives me a bonus die on Spellcraft checks for spells of rank 1 or lower.
Finally (on the mechanics side, that is), I build my Action deck. I'll get a selection of Basic actions to start with (some general, some wizard-specific); my remaining two creation points entitle me to three more on top of that. General basic actions include Assess the Situation, Block, Dodge, Guarded Position, Melee Attack, Parry, Perform a Stunt, and Ranged Attack. I don't meet the minimum Toughness requirement for Block or the minimum Strength for Parry, so I'll have to discard those. As a wizard I'll also get Channel Power and the basic spells Cantrip, Counterspell, and Magic Dart. I'll add three rank-1 Celestial spells with dvinination effects (Fair Warning, First Portent of Amul, and Omen) and that should set me up for action.
The next step is to determine available Stances. For an Apprentice Wizard, these are derived from your College; the initial Celestial Order track consists of three green Conservative tiles and one red Reckless tile, which I guess makes sense for a school that's all about reading the signs and portents.
Okay, so far it's been almost all mechanics up to this point. Who is this kid, anyway? I see him as the son of a comfortable artisan or townie family of Marienburg who packed him off to wizard school in Altdorf when he began having visions and disturbing dreams at a young age. He's not well-socialized, but he does have an uncanny intuition in addition to his magical abilities. He's also a magnet for quests, and a small group of adventurers have gathered around him to protect him and help him pursue the quests that appear in his visions. His name is Hildebrand Silbertasse.
EDIT: I missed the first time around that beginning characters add one to each of their primary characteristics before spending creation points, which gives Hildy six points back to play with. Adding one to Intelligence will cost 5; I can't spend more on skills, but I can beef up his Wealth to Affluent, which entitles him to more equipment than he can comfortably carry, but which also gives him three more gold coins and a healing potion.
Stat block time:
Hildebrand Silbertasse, rank 1 Apprentice Wizard (Reiksmann)
Wound Threshold: 11
Characteristics (trained skills):
Strength 2
Toughness 2
Agility 3
Intelligence 5 (Intuition 1)
Willpower 4 (Discipline 1)
Fellowship 2
Advanced Skills (specializations):
Channeling 0
Education 0
Magical Sight 0 (locate aura)
Spellcraft 0 (Celestial College)
Special Abilities:
Favored by Fate (racial): may add two Fortune dice to a check, once per session.
Apprentice Wizard (career): Add one Fortune die to Spellcraft checks for spells of rank 1 or lower.
Azyr, Lore of the Heavens (magical college--Celestial order): May spend 1 additional power to add a Fortune die to a check for casting a Celestial Order spell.
Instinctive (Focus): add one Fortune die to Intuition checks.
Stance Track: 3 Conservative, 1 Reckless
Equipment: Notebook, wizard's staff, Celestial College robes, high-quality clothes, leather satchel, paper and ink, 2 candles, healing potion, passport from master
Money: 5 gp
Encumbrance: limit 10, carrying 10
Action Deck: Cantrip (spell), Channel Power, Counterspell (spell), Dodge, Fair Warning (spell), First Portent of Amul (spell), Guarded Position, Magic Dart (spell), Melee Attack, Omen (spell), Perform a Stunt, Ranged Attack
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