Warhammer Fantasy Battle 1E had rules for "RPG" play

[raisin]

[if this goes somewhere else, apologies, wasn't sure where to post this]

Reading the first edition of WFB (back then, it was just "Warhammer", too) it's pretty clear that the game could also be played the D&D way, with players assuming the roles of individual characters going on adventures. The original rules focus on small-scale skirmishes that fit medieval battle AND small groups of fighters, book 2 features character generation rules for men, elves, dwarves of the "regular" (fighter) and wizard types, while early citadel compendiums indicated that one commonly requested character type was the vampire(!). There are rules for generating starting talents such as "Captain", "Acrobat", "Trapper" and so on which feels like a proto-career system, each being accompanied by some simple notes on potential special rules to be used for the career. Characters have a simple characteristics profile like units do, but don't get hit points - indeed, they begin with one HIT and that's it (although later in the book, one can find an optional "injury" table which can be used instead of straight-up death at 0 Hits for long-term, campaign play).

Some Interesting Bits & Random Ideas

1. Nothing indicates that the Psychology (morale, stupidity, hatred, frenzy, and so on) rules don't apply to PCs. The Citadel Compendium vol.1 even clarifies that characters with Int 1 are subject to Stupidity (like Trolls do) and so on. That means the morale rules are a built-in system to emulate bravery/fear, lovecraftian madness and all the other funky trappings of Warhammer Fantasy.
Except, you know, in about 40 pages per booklet and simple enough to be built upon by prospective referees.

EDIT: the modifiers for morale rules specify that being wounded modifies morale checks for "individual characters" as opposed to units, too.

2. You only need d6s! There is no mention of other types of dice (in fact, everything is just called dice, no mention of six-siders either, which makes sense). The initiative system indicates that characters engaged in a melee each get a chance to try and kill the other - that means you can lose initiative, get attacked, missed, then get an opportunity to kill your foe before your turn begins!. You roll d6 on a table that compares fighting capability of opponents, and armored opponents get a save to cancel a hit (chain and shields are indicated as potential armor types, the combination of both giving you the best chance to avoid hits).

3. While there is a possibility for heroism, with experienced characters getting more hits and eventually an additional attack or two, this is a very gritty system, fit for low fantasy play. The injury table might be one of the earliest "death & dismemberment tables", too!

4. Want to make it Heroic? Treat characters as "hero units" and have them be able to face off against groups of enemies as individual units. Adjust scale as needed.

I'm re-writing it on paper as some of the wordings are a bit awkward, will post more thoughts as I read through it all again.

Here's one bit I absolutely love, which definitely confirms that this was intended not only as a wargame but as an adventure game (also note the particular tone already established this early):

Encounters should be enacted by the GM and the Players. For example a party of adventurers mostly of 'evil" alignment encounter a group of 6 Elves. This is particularly unfortunate as the adventurers are returning from a successful mission to murder the Elf King.........(sic)

Elves: 'Just a minute...stop!'

Adventurers: 'What, us?'

Elves: 'Yes, you...explain yourselves, what business have you in the kingdom of the Elves?!'

Adventurers: 'Oh! Sorry, we thought it was just another wood. Didn't mean to intrude, we'll be off then.'

Elves: 'What's that?'

Adventurers: 'This err...'

Elves: 'Yes, that head.'

Adventurers: 'Good grief! Where did that come from?'

Elves: 'I recognise that. Its Rathiel!'

Adventurers: 'We...err...found it.'

[derv]

WH Fantasy Battles was first published in 1983. It was quickly followed by a 2nd edition in 1984. Eventually a separate WHFRP game that utilized the same stats was published in 1986. All pretty late publications in comparison to D&D or T&T. I really like the original game for it's simplicity. But I doubt it could be considered the first game to include an injury table. By this time we had Holmes, Moldvay, and Mentzer Basic Sets already published for D&D and roleplaying is in full swing.

[raisin]

Maybe "first game that includes that as an official rule" as opposed to Dragon Magazine introducing the Good Hits/Bad Misses (which is a critical hit system)?

But to me what's interesting about this publication is more the notion that WFB used to be a perfectly fine RPG, and yet with all the following of both Warhammer Fantasy Battle and RPG, nobody is talking about WFB 1E as an RPG product.

[derv]

You would need to look at issues of White Dwarf during this period instead of Dragon. WH had a bigger following in England than the US. The appeal with WH, like many other RPG's, is it's implied setting and feel of play, which seems to be more gritty than D&D.

[Starbeard]

I love Original Warhammer. It's a wonky beast. I've mentioned it a few times here and there, and so far it's the only game I've seen prior to the OSR retroclones that really captures the feel of the OD&D box set, right down to the presentation. It even came in a white box!

I think there's a case to be made that roleplaying in the UK stayed tied to miniatures longer than it did in the US. Wargaming and toy soldiering always had more ubiquity there, and my impression from conversational anecdotes is that the crossover in player base stayed higher for longer. In the US there was that brief period in the late 70s where game companies didn't seem to "get" this new RPG thing, and their rules sets read more like wargames; but Warhammer is a testament to how much longer that crossover lingered in the play style of some UK circles—and that this wasn't just people "not getting it," but taking their wargames into a whole new territory.

[Starbeard]

One of the things that I like about the original Warhammer rules is how man-to-man and mass combat are treated under exactly the same rules. You can have your figures running around the table in a D&D adventure and it works, and if you want mass combat then you just stick them together in formation. The rules don't change at all, yet they work just as well for battles as they do for skirmishes and even dungeon crawls. Moreover, if you want to increase the figure scale to 5:1 or 20:1, then you just say so, no changes needed.

[Deleted]

Aug 26, 2019 11:02:15 GMT -6 Starbeard said:

I think there's a case to be made that roleplaying in the UK stayed tied to miniatures longer than it did in the US. Wargaming and toy soldiering always had more ubiquity there, and my impression from conversational anecdotes is that the crossover in player base stayed higher for longer.

The idea of skirmish level wargames was native to the UK. Guys like Tony Bath popularized the genre in the late 60s IIRC. So there already was a wargame tradition of man-to-man combat in the UK that wasn't as common in the US. These skirmish wargames were often run as narrative campaigns, with each player having a character that goes from wargame to wargame. With the Old West Skirmish Wargame ('70) and a dark ages game called Heroes (recently reprinted) being popular early examples.

So, I don't think it's fair to say that the UK didn't "get" RPGs, just that the Warhammer RPG rules were really just a continuation of a style of gaming that was invented earlier than RPGs and one that was still hanging around by the 1980s. It's a style of gaming that, from I've seen, continues to be popular in the UK. It's probably because the wargame club and convention scene is much stronger in the UK than the US. With conventions in the US being little more than cosplay fashion shows.

As far as White Dwarf goes, I have scans of the first 100 issues (give or take a few) and the earliest ones, from '77, are indistinguishable from the types of articles you'd see in Dragon Magazine.

[Starbeard]

Very well put. I get a little disappointed when I listen to a podcast or read a review about some late 70s RPG from the likes of SPI or FGU, and they invariably use descriptions like "transitional" or "hybrid" rules, and that the designers must have been "wargamers who didn't understand this new RPG thing." Games like Warhammer and mags like White Dwarf show that many people simply saw no need to create a division between the two.

It's also a style that's had staying power in the UK. While I was living there, I played in several historical wargame campaigns that were exactly as you described, plus large mass battles with our characters as generals. They had all the trappings of an RPG: games were run by an impartial umpire, players maintained a persistent character or set of characters, and the outcomes from session to session were driven by player input. Many actions would simply be roleplayed out, like trying to convince our division HQ to send us more supply trucks while explaining why we haven't crossed the river yet like we were supposed to.

What I found most interesting was that these umpires each would resolutely deny that we were playing a roleplaying game; the campaigns we played were always historical or Imagi-Nations pseudohistorical, and to them, the RPG term was strictly for fantasy and sci-fi. If I ran a Napoleonic game in the style of Sharpe or Flashman, without miniatures and using D&D rules, they'd still call that a wargame campaign. So something happened in the 70s or 80s where a number of Insular wargamers saw the division in game theme rather than play structure.

[derv]

Citadel was/is a miniatures company who likes to sell miniatures. I honestly think they were originally just tacking on the idea of roleplay because of it's mass popularity. We are really talking about D&D/AD&D's hey days. For the UK we'd probably also be talking about Runequest. Eventually the idea, because of it's popularity, would spawn the separate WHFRP in 1986.

You need to look at White Dwarf post 1983. Supposedly the Dragon pissed on the first edition in a review in issue 85.

[Starbeard]

You could very well be right, but I don't think that it's necessarily an issue of 'just' tacking it on. By the same token, you could say that they were just tacking on the mass battle rules because of their popularity. Their miniatures didn't rely on a game system back then, nor did their game systems rely on people buying their miniatures. They offered rules they thought people would want.

But I do think it was more than an afterthought. The books are pretty neatly organized, the battle magic rules almost require a certain amount of roleplaying, and the two game scenarios provided are a narrative man-to-man skirmish around a ziggurat and a fairly sandboxy mini-campaign. The first is pretty traditional wargaming, but the adventure is 100% roleplayed wargame.

[derv]

Aug 27, 2019 9:30:22 GMT -6 Starbeard said:

You could very well be right, but I don't think that it's necessarily an issue of 'just' tacking it on. By the same token, you could say that they were just tacking on the mass battle rules because of their popularity. Their miniatures didn't rely on a game system back then, nor did their game systems rely on people buying their miniatures. They offered rules they thought people would want.

We are talking about a game system though, and it was originally produced by a miniatures company whose bread and butter business was the sale of miniatures. Miniature companies still use this strategy by producing house rules to go with their production line.

Could you really conclude that the mass battle rules were tacked on? I guess a person would have to ask if WH 1e is first and foremost a set of roleplaying rules. It wasn't marketed that way. But, neither was D&D for that matter. Still, I'd be comfortable saying it was primarily a set of wargaming rules. There is a marked difference in the 1e & 2e battle game rules and what later become WHFRP. Remember we are only talking about 2-3 years of time between these products.

If you are instead making a distinction between skirmish and mass combat I would completely disagree. The game works well without boogering with the rules regardless of scale. But, it is a game designed with playability in mind.

[Starbeard]

I think we're saying the same thing, but my understanding is that you are taking it with a dose of skepticism, whereas I find it a positive thing. I'm not saying that the mass combat rules were tacked on, I'm saying the RP rules are present because they felt that would help the game sell, just as the mass battle rules are present because they felt that would help the miniatures sell.

Really what I'm talking about is the baseline assumption that there will be an aspect of roleplaying in a miniatures battle game. It's even in the name of the game: "Warhammer: The Mass Combat Fantasy Roleplaying Game." Some wargames from the time called themselves roleplaying games, some didn't; the ones that did always included rules or systems for statting out persistent characters, and the major of conceit of the game is that players would engage in sandbox play on a campaign map, turning to miniatures to fight out skirmishes and large battles that occur during the campaign. You see that format in Heroes of the Dark Age, Odysseus, Swordbearer, etc.

[Starbeard]

Here's an interesting interview with Rick Priestley about the origins of Warhammer: juegosydados.com/2016/08/26/interview-with-rick-priestley/

Here's the relevant bit:

Juegos y Dados – How did Warhammer come about?

Rick – One of the reasons why Bryan Ansell wanted to get me on board at Citadel was because I already had a track record as a games designer, having co-written and produced a fantasy wargame called Reaper and a Science-Fiction wargame called Combat 3000. Both of those games were written with my friend Richard Halliwell, who was also working intermittently at Citadel as a mould-maker at that time. Bryan wanted to produce a new tabletop wargame to support the Citadel range of models, which was mostly a mix of historical ranges and role-playing miniatures in those days.

Most roleplayers would only buy one or two models to represent their characters and maybe a handful of monsters such as goblins or skeletons. What Bryan realised was that Citadel could sell a lot more models if there was a battle game that would enable players to field dozens or hundreds of models at once. Bryan asked Richard Halliwell to come up with a game, and because we always worked together on projects, Richard and I came up with the game that would become Warhammer. I did the production work with our artist Tony Ackland – who was the chap who used to draw all of the miniatures for the mail order flyers and catalogues – there being no photos of the new models in those days – just little drawings.

Juegos y Dados – I have heard that Warhammer began like miniatures for roleplaying at late 70s. Could tell us any details?

Rick – When the first version of Warhammer came out Dungeons & Dragons was at its height. It was quite a phenomena. Any number of role-playing games and fantasy board games sprang up as a result. All the toy and model shops were selling these new role-playing products from America. Of course, Games Workshop was the distributor for D&D in the UK, and the company had really been founded off the back of this new and exciting hobby, importing and distributing American made games. In those days everyone wanted role-playing games. To launch our new ‘battle game’ we had to make it a role-playing game too – after a fashion.

If you look at a first edition of Warhammer you’ll see that it’s described as a ‘mass-combat fantasy role-playing game’. The rules are very much based on individual models, heroes and characters that you could bunch up into units too. There was a simple system for character progression as well as random generation and the sorts of things that were common to role-playing games in those days. We also had an adventure scenario with briefing notes for the players, much as a games master would brief players and lead them through a dungeon adventure. So, Warhammer as it was conceived had a lot of role-playing elements to it. Over time players developed an enthusiasm for the battles over the role-playing part, and the game evolved into a more conventional wargame, but its roots are in role-playing as much as in historical ancient and medieval wargames.

It's an interesting viewpoint coming from one of the designers. He doesn't come across as being having been aware at the time that there were other wargame and/or minis companies in America and the UK that were also trying out the same twist, in several cases going back into the late 70s.

[derv]

You're probably right, I'm being a skeptic.

This was a nice interview with Priestley from 2016. I enjoyed reading it. Thanks for sharing the link.

Still, Priestly is specifically a wargame designer and self admittedly states in the article to not really be a roleplayer. Odd.

And this little quote also seems to support my original point:

"In those days everyone wanted role-playing games. To launch our new ‘battle game’ we had to make it a role-playing game too – after a fashion."

[Starbeard]

That does support your argument. From what I've read, Priestley has always been a bit of an alien to role playing games. He was put on the board of the Society of Ancients, which almost precludes any enthusiasm for fantasy and RPGs.

But then he also seems to be saying that the original intent of the game was to market directly to roleplayers, giving them an RPG that requires many miniatures, rather than providing wargamers with a fantasy outlet. Also, I believe he's a big fan of injecting narrative and role playing into his own games.

I think this goes into what I mentioned earlier, how a strong divide sprung up in the UK between wargaming and roleplaying, but the divide seems to be across thematic lines rather than in mechanics. A wargame with fantasy miniatures might practically be an RPG to someone like Priestley, while he might see an RPG scenario set in WW2 as a skirmish wargame.