Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Is It Good?

Question

I'm a pretty large fan of GW, especially the fantasy world. I've been glancing at the books for Fantasy Roleplay but haven't bought them because of price. Does anyone know about the system? Is it functional? Realistic? How easy is it to power play? I'm a rather large fan of GURPs for it's open-ended ness and I try to avoid D&D due to the fact that all players are just numbers. I love character/story development. What's your experiences, is it worth it?

Answer 1

My experience of WFRP (both editions) is that it's an excellent platform for exploring the Warhammer world.  It isn't as open-ended as GURPS and is very much designed for its environment but, as long as roleplaying in the Warhammer world is what you want, that shouldn't be a problem.

It's main distinction over D&D is the near-impossibility of power-play.  Demi-god-like characters just aren't possible.  This is partly due to the inherent limitations imposed by the career structure, but more significantly limited by the Insanity system: the Warhammer world is a horrible, mind-wrenching place to live in and adventurers get to see the worst of it.  Adventurers who face the undead, the daemonic and the mutated and who survive cannot escape the effects upon their sanity and players need to be prepared for characters to eventually become so uncontrollably insane that retirement (in the compassionate hands of the Cult of Shallya) is inevitable.