So I'm joining edsan's Tekumel PBP game, and also kick-starting my own Planescape PBeM campaign, and it's given me the bug for starting off something new. I've just finished off a big project and have some time on my hands, and I've been talking a whole lot about Warhammer, so what better moment to dust off the old Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay rulebooks and see if anybody wants to get involved in a PBeM campaign?
The Particulars
The game will use the 2nd edition WHFRP core rules (I actually prefer 1st edition, but don't have the rulebooks) and will be set in the Border Princes. This is a lawless area where colonists from the Empire, Bretonnia, Kislev, Estalia and Tilea mingle with greenskins, dwarves and chaos cultists amidst ancient haunted ruins. The politics are in a constant state of flux, with bandit chiefs, minor princelings and robber barons rising and falling from power with the changes of seasons, and monsters and opportunities for adventure are everywhere. In short, it's like the Wild West of the Old World, and the perfect place for a bunch of adventure-seekers to pitch in and make a name for themselves - and maybe become Prince of their own little domain.
It'll be a sandbox type campaign, in which the players will be free to do what they want to do without railroading, so it'll need people who are happy to take the initiative. But I'll provide plenty of adventure seeds and locations for exploration to get you going. If you want to do old-fashioned dungeoncrawling with hirelings, you'll be able to, but you'll also be able to get mixed up in grander concerns if that's your thing.
Newcomers to WHFRP are more than welcome. The game is simple, and as I've already mentioned, character generation is more or less random, so no in-depth knowledge of the mechanics are required. (I'll do all of the in-game dice-rolling myself beyond character generation anyway.) It's a lethal game, though, and I won't pull punches or fudge rolls, so expect character deaths in roughly equal numbers to those you'd get in OD&D. If you need to know more about the Warhammer setting, take a look at these wikipedia pages. (Although because the campaign will take place in the Border Princes, you don't need to know most of the details of what's going on in the rest of the world.)
If you'd like to get involved, send me an email at jean.delumeau AT gmail.com for further details. I'd like a group of between 4 and 6 players who can commit to mailing something at least once a day on weekdays; any more people than that and things could get unwieldy, though if I'm swamped by dozens of applicants I may consider running with two different groups of four.
I'm a big fan of random character generation. For one thing, I just love randomness. Modern gaming often seems to be a huge exercise in reducing its effects, and I find this trend boring. I want to be surprised by what the dice throw up, the more surprises the better. (This is probably why point-based systems like GURPS, or diceless games like Nobilis, have never been by thing.) And why should the character I'll be playing be any different?
D&D character generation in its 'purest' forms is nicely random, but only up to a point. Once you have your stats, the rest is up to you. Weirdly, D&D characters also arrive more or less fully formed into the universe; you start off with a blank piece of paper, roll 3d6 six times, and hey presto! a 50-year old elven druid appears from the ether. This is a strength of the system, because it's quick and easy, but it's also less fun than, say, Cyberpunk 2020 and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.
In Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, random character generation extends far beyond generating stats. Not only can you roll on a 'starting career' table containing dozens of entries (from Pit Fighter to Zealot to Rat Catcher), you also randomly determine pretty much everything else, including eye colour, star sign, distinguishing features (like 'pox marks'), birthplace, family background and and finally even your name (plus names and careers for your family too, if you're so inclined). I love this process and can spend a considerable amount of time merrily churning out characters. It almost always throws up interesting plot hooks for the game, too: who was this pit fighter born in a hovel in Talabecland, why does he have a missing eyebrow, and what are his 5 sisters, one of whom is an outlaw, doing? Boom: loads of ideas for the GM to use in the game.
It wouldn't be hard to incorporate something like this into a D&D campaign, and in fact it's something I might try. In particular, I think such random tables are fantastic if you're going to be running a game in a non-standard (i.e. not high fantasy) setting: we all know how hard it is to get players to invest in a game set in ancient Akkadia or whatever and how likely they are to come up with stuff that just doesn't fit. How much easier is the process made if you can randomly generate a character using tables that are tailor-made to produce results that fit in with the setting? At a stroke some of the key difficulties running campaigns in Tekumel, Athas or your bizarre homebrew setting are removed.
Of course, the best random character generator of all was Cyberpunk 2020's, with its silly life path and life history tables which never failed to turn up weird and wonderful results. ("I'm playing a Fijian netrunner who likes wearing fingerless gloves but otherwise goes around completely nude, whose favourite possession is a childhood toy, and who has five sworn enemies, seven ex-lovers and grew up in a pirate gang? Cool.")
