The Warhammer world is a grim place of perilous adventure. It's a little like Europe at the time of the early Renaissance, with all its corruption, villainy and opportunities for adventure; but this is a world of inhuman races, wizards, mutants, terrifying monsters and the dread shadow of Chaos, which stretches over the entire land. In WFRP, Chaos is not just a force of nature, but a living, malevolent thing supported by demonic princes who will not rest until the entire world has been enslaved or destroyed. It's a dark game with an atmosphere of psychological and visceral horror, and a subtle seam of dark humour at its heart.

Background
The main setting for the game is The Empire, a massive Germanic collection of provinces and city-states at an uneasy truce, under the rule of a puppet emperor, Karl-Franz. The real force in the Empire are the Electors, the rulers of the various states, who scheme against each other in a never-ending battle to climb further up the ladder of power.

Such machinations don't concern most of the inhabitants of the Empire. They're far more preoccupied with trying to scrape a living from the land, and avoiding the attentions of marauding bands of Orcs and Goblins, or the mutated Beast-men who lurk in the heavily forested areas of the land and raid villages and towns; or the rat-like Skaven who lurk under the floorboards of civilisation, brewing their foul magics and plotting the downfall of humanity. And beyond that are the more distant but still real threats of the Chaos Wastes, far to the north beyond Norsca and Kislev, whose hideous inhabitants sometimes flood south in a great wave of living violence, to kill and pillage all they find in the name of their four hideous gods. Far to the east, beyond the World's Edge Mountains, lie the desolate wastelands destroyed by the Chaos Dwarfs, and out at sea merchantmen and trade vessels brave the risk of being captured and killed by the Dark Elves from the great land of Naggaroth, to seek the riches of Lustria, Araby, and far-off Cathay and Nippon.
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Warhammer FRP is a dark fantasy game; not high fantasy. This is no saga of mighty knights in shining armour bringing back the heads of dragons to win the favours of fair maidens. In WFRP, nothing is guaranteed to be friendly or on your side. Allies turn and stab you in the back, people you've never met will try to lure you into schemes you don't understand, and you're more likely to return from a quest to face a warrant for your arrest on charges of treason than gold and glory. Adventuring in WFRP is not a search for glory, it's a struggle to stay alive and one step ahead of the forces of darkness. This is adventuring in the raw, and if you're used to the polite mannerisms and anachronisms of traditional fantasy RPGs, it has a refreshing blast to it like being thrown into an ice-covered horse-trough in the courtyard of a coaching inn, by a merchant who's just found you in bed with his wife. There's no other game like it.

Mechanics
Mechanics-wise, the heart of the game is its system of careers: each character has a profession which dictates how they can progress and improve: not just in their abilities and skills, but also their position in society. A lowly apprentice can rise to be a famous wizard, and a boatman can become a mercenary captain or be elevated to the ranks of the nobility, if they work at it hard enough. Adventures range from the Imperial court in the great city of Altdorf to the pirate-ridden coast of southern Tilea, the dissolute towns of Bretonnia, or beyond. It's a game where your abilities are often less important than your level in society: a rat-catcher may look at a king... but frankly we wouldn't recommend it.

Combat is fast and bloody, with a system of critical hits that removes limbs and smashes in heads with relish. Characters can save themselves with Fate Points, which they can use to bring themselves out of potentially fatal situations - although Fate Points are so rare that there's no easy way out of tricky situations, and foolhardy behaviour is not a good idea. Diplomacy, negotiation and compromise are just as useful weapons as a sharp sword or a fast arrow... unless you're facing Orcs, of course. No point in negotiating with Orcs.

The game has over 100 different character careers, over 130 different skills, seven different types of magic with over 150 spells (soon to be expanded in the forthcoming Realms of Sorcery magic sourcebook), a complete guide to the Old World as well as a bestiary, descriptions and diagrams of all the most common types of buildings, and a sample adventure which leads straight into the classic Enemy Within campaign.

Ultimately, we could talk all night about what the game's like, but the only way to really get a flavour of it is to read it and play it for yourself. There's probably a games club in your area that could give you a chance to join in, or at least lend you a copy, or you could click here to see the list of retailers worldwide who carry Warhammer FRP and our other RPG products.

If you're still not convinced that Warhammer FRP is for you, think about this. Most RPGs go to a second edition with two or three years of their initial release, and some then go on to third, fourth and fifth revisions, trying to get the mix right, and forcing their fans to buy the game over and over again. Sixteen years after its release, Warhammer FRP is still on its first edition, and proudly so. It's not broken; it got it right first time. It's also survived being dumped by one publisher, it was voted the third-best RPG of all time by the readers of Arcane magazine, and as of this writing, it's riding high in the list of the best-selling RPGs in the USA. It may be looking battle-scarred these days, but it's a veteran and a survivor, and it'll be around for a long time to come.