THE WFRP STORY XXXIX: WARPS

This post continues my history of WFRP1, which started here.

With new writers came a new name. In June 1986 Warhammer Role-Play was given the new, grander title of Warhammer Advanced Role-Play System (WARPS).

Just what exactly is WARPS? Staff at Games Workshop’s Design Studio in Nottingham seem to be obsessed with WARPS these days, and the disease has spread to engulf several other illuminati from the gaming world. Paul Vernon and Graeme Davis are engaged in long-term projects to do with this strange entity – which is probably why White Dwarf is advertising for new contributors.

What are they up to? And why are Rick Priestly [sic], Richard Halliwell, Jervis Johnson and others continually disappearing into corners to mutter blood-curdling phrases about Aztec frogs. [sic] WARPS, maybe, but warped, definitely.

– ‘Fracas!’, White Dwarf 78 (June 1986)

Development of the roleplay version of the Warhammer game is now proceeding at a frenetic pace now that new writer/editor/coffee monitor Graeme Davis has been chained to the GW Amstrad. The system is based on a complex, though easy-in-use[,] character generation system, which provides a pre-adventuring background for the characters and a series of “advances” which must be fulfilled to rise to the next “level”. The combat system is fast, bloody and suitably chaotic, as you would expect from Rick Priestley, who wrote the critical hits table after watching late-night re-runs of [The] Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Although it will be fully compatible with the Battle game, there are a number of new developments which will make for exciting and bizarre adventures in a dark and brooding earth-like world. One small thing. Not everyone is convinced GW have come up with the mega-knock-’em-over title of the century in Warhammer Advanced RolePlay System, so WD readers are invited to send in their ideas. We hope this doesn’t lead to the same flood of Samantha Fox rpg entries as last month’s caption contest. Let’s hurry up with this, guys ‘n’ gals, the game is supposed to be out in November.

– ‘Fracas!’. White Dwarf 79 (July 1986)

It is notable that this comment picks up on the careers system and “dark and brooding” setting. GW seems to have been well aware that they were some of the new game’s most distinctive features.

The new writing team set to work preparing the draft role-playing rules for publication.

… Faced with the tons of stuff already written, and under pressure to get the thing finished and published, Jim and I focused more on giving the rulebook some structure, fleshing out the guidance for new or inexperienced GMs….

As I recall now, the bulk of my work was editing and tweaking, rather than generating new material. I worked hard to make the rules as clear and unambiguous as I could – but feared the thing was going to be, basically, impenetrable!

– Phil Gallagher, interview on Realm of Chaos 80s (20 October 2013)

Some substantial changes were made to the system at this time. Two new characteristics, Dexterity and Fellowship, were added, and most were switched to a percentile scale.

Jim and Phil joined the team shortly after I did, and went over the mechanics and attributes. For a long time, the character stats were identical to WFB2, and things like percentile attributes, Fellowship and what have you were very much last-minute changes.

– Graeme Davis, interview in Warpstone 5 (Spring 1997)

As the weeks went by, the system shifted. Character stats started out being identical to Warhammer Battle, but we found that a 1-10 scale didn’t give us the resolution a roleplaying game needed, so many were switched to percentile.

– Graeme Davis, interview on Realm of Chaos 80s (10 June 2013)

I can’t remember if [the switch to percentile attributes] was down to any one individual, but it was soon very clear an rpg needed way more stat flexibility than WFB. It was an easy decision to make, since the thought was always there that a ‘3’ in WFB was ’30’ in WFRP terms, so it wouldn’t jar….

In reality, the attributes in the two games (WFB and WFRP) were very different systems for obvious reasons, but we didn’t establish enough clear water. The same with adding extra stats. We needed Dex and Fellowship to make any sense of what we were doing.

– Paul Cockburn, interview on Awesome Lies (16 January 2022)

The move to percentile characteristics was a natural one. Percentile mechanics had for some time been widely used in RPGs like RuneQuest and Call of Cthulhu. Richard Halliwell, Rick Priestley and Bryan Ansell had used them previously in Reaper, Combat 3000 and Laserburn (see parts II and III). Priestley had also written them into GW’s Judge Dredd RPG (1985).

Percentage dice – D100s if you like – imply a mathematical profundity and precision that I believe we found appealing at the time [we wrote Reaper]. They give a feel of a serious and proper game – something more realistic than could be achieved with a D6. I still maintain that D100s give that feel to a game, though I would also suggest that it is a ‘feel’ only and in fact such mechanics are neither more realistic nor more accurate in terms of simulation. D100s can be remarkably unhelpful because of the even spread of probability, making fluky scores rather more common that you might wish. I would go on to use a D100 system for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, but we had to ameliorate the fluke element with ‘fate points’ to protect players from erratic dice swings.

– Rick Priestley, interview on Grognardia (16 October 2020)

Curiously, however, Phil Gallagher has expressed his dislike of percentile mechanics. I presume Gallagher either was overruled or felt that a percentile system was the best option available to the designers within the time constraints and compatibility requirements.

I wasn’t a fan of percentile-based systems, and found the combat system a bit clunky for the kind of fast-paced roleplaying games I was used to.

– Phil Gallagher, interview on Realm of Chaos 80s (20 October 2013)

Not everyone was in love with d100 resolution….

– Paul Cockburn, interview on Awesome Lies (16 January 2022)

Another notable change was the introduction of Fate Points.

After the first few playtests showed how deadly combat was, Jervis [Johnson] came up with the idea of fate points.

– Graeme Davis, interview on Realm of Chaos 80s (10 June 2013)

I remember in particular that when we played as a group the more experienced role-players thought the combat system was too dangerous, which is why we came up with the idea of “fate points” to add some “ballast” into player survivability.

– Rick Priestley, interview on Grognardia (13 November 2020)

Although the careers system had been in place for some time, there appears to have been some further development of it in this period.

Hal [Richard Halliwell] seemed to come up with two or three new careers every day, often based on people he’d seen around Nottingham: some got very silly indeed, some were no more than half-formed ideas, and we only used about half of them in the end.

– Graeme Davis, interview on Realm of Chaos 80s (10 June 2013)

I remember writing a few careers and skills, though, to be honest, I do not remember which.

– Graeme Davis, interview in Magia i Miecz 38 (February 1997)

… We didn’t need scores of careers, we needed a solid core which contained good character progression. The tiered careers (or whatever we called ‘em) was a late effort to make that happen.

– Paul Cockburn, interview on Awesome Lies (16 January 2022)

There was an overhaul of the magic system, introducing mechanisms to restrict magic use, such as spell ingredients and perhaps the system of penalties for necromancers, demonologists and evil or Chaotic wizards.

I’d been putting the magic system off, because it looked complicated, so when [Jim Bambra and Phil Gallagher] showed up, they took care of that.

– Graeme Davis, Mud & Blood podcast, episode 31 (26 January 2019)

I… insisted [the WFRP rulebook] have a bare bones magic system…. WFRP was a tight deadline job, and there was an enormous amount to do. Though there was some magic in the draft, courtesy of WFB, it wasn’t a playable system. Jim, in particular, didn’t think we had time to craft a magic system within the scope of a ’son of WFB’ game, but I felt we had to have something, and pushed hard on that, knowing we could put things right in the planned Realms of Sorcery supplement.

– Paul Cockburn, interview on Awesome Lies (16 January 2022)

The magic system, in particular, seemed to me to be much more about mass battles than for small parties of adventurers, and I worried that, in the draft we were faced with, wizards would have too much power too easily.

Jim and I focused … on … making the more powerful magics as hard for player characters to get as we could.

– Phil Gallagher, interview on Realm of Chaos 80s (20 October 2013)

The outrageous spell ingredients came mostly from Jim and Phil. When they arrived in the Studio, the magic chapter was the big outstanding task (I’d looked at it, scratched my head, and set it aside for detailed attention after the rest of the rulebook was finished, so that the typesetters and layout artists wouldn’t be twiddling their thumbs) and Jim and Phil dove into it when they arrived. The ingredients were definitely a way to control the availability of the more powerful spells.

– Graeme Davis, interview in Strike to Stun 2 (January 2002)

Overall, the whole thing was done in rather too much of a rush, and I think it shows especially in the magic system.

– Graeme Davis, interview in Warpstone 5 (Spring 1997)

While Bambra and Gallagher worked on the magic system, Davis focused on expanding the brief Warhammer pantheon of the second draft. He created Esmeralda, Grungni, Liadriel, Manann, Mórr, Myrmidia, Shallya and Solkan; developed the description of Verena; added Malal and Arianka from the Kaleb Daark strip (see part XXXVI); and incorporated Jes Goodwin’s Kháine and Phil Gallagher’s Sigmar. He was also responsible for most of the writing on Druids, and for adding the system of divine favour and disfavour.

WFRP Rulebook… I was especially happy with the work I did on the ‘Religion and Belief’ chapter.

– Graeme Davis, interview on Random Wizard (15 November 2013)

My biggest effort … went perhaps into the chapter dedicated to religion. I came up with the hierarchy of cults, blessings, etc. I wrote the majority of material regarding druids, using ideas taken from shamanic practices of Native North Americans (what I mean here are guardian spirits, of course).

– Graeme Davis, interview in Magia i Miecz 38 (February 1997)

Manann: … I made him up to fill out the ranks when I was writing the ‘Religion and Belief’ chapter.

Morr: came out of a discussion I had with Jes Goodwin over coffee one day. I can’t remember how the subject came up. I wrote him up for the rulebook, and developed some further ideas which found their way into Apocrypha 2….

Myrmidia was mine…. Creating Myrmidia inspired me to develop two semi-parallel pantheons to reflect cultural tensions in the Old World: the “town gods” or “southern gods” like Myrmidia and Verena were more classical, and the “country gods” or “northern gods” like Taal and Ulric were more Celtic-Germanic.

Shallya was just a random sound I came up with that seemed to fit the nature of the goddess.

Verena is mine again…. I think I have a vague memory of something about her in the pre-Davis draft, perhaps under another name.

Grungni, Liadriel, and Esmeralda were all me. The original draft of WFRP included no gods for the nonhuman races, so I rushed in one of each just to show willing, and hoped to have a chance to fill out the nonhuman pantheons later: sadly, opportunities were rare.

Kháine was created by Jes when he did his big revamp of the Dark Elves in ’86.* I extended his domain to include assassins of other races.

– Graeme Davis, comment on Awesome Lies (7 March 2017)

The thing, all these years later, I’m most proud of, was coming up with the idea of a hero who, in the distant past, was credited with uniting a bunch of warring tribes to found the Empire.

– Phil Gallagher, interview on Realm of Chaos 80s (20 October 2013)

Sigmar was indeed created by Phil and Jim when they were developing the Empire for TEW.

– Graeme Davis, comment on Awesome Lies (7 March 2017)

I added Sigmar to the history section after Phil created him for The Enemy Within.

– Graeme Davis, email (26 June 2023)

I put in Arianka along with Malal, trying to be complete.

Solkan was… derived from Solomon Kane. I guess I was feeling obvious that day. I was frustrated by the abstract (and, quite frankly, boring) nature of Alluminas and wanted to add at least one Law god who was more relateable [sic], and a patron of witch hunters was an obvious antagonist for the Chaos gods.

– Graeme Davis, comment on Awesome Lies (18 March 2017)

I did my best to fold everything together and develop a new draft, filling in any gaps with systems I had designed myself – like the section on divine favour and disfavour, for example.

– Graeme Davis, interview on Realm of Chaos 80s (10 June 2013)

He also worked on the bestiary, either expanding the existing draft or creating one de novo (cf part XXXVIII).

I scoured old Warhammer products and Citadel catalogues to make sure the Bestiary contained every possible monster….

– Graeme Davis, ibid

It was decided to set the new game’s first campaign in the Empire, so the background information on this area was enhanced.

Jim and I had already decided to develop The Empire as the setting for the campaign we wanted to publish, so I expanded the description and background of the Empire in the rulebook, and tried to sow some seeds that we could use in what became The Enemy Within.

– Phil Gallagher, interview on Realm of Chaos 80s (20 October 2013)

Otherwise there were only minor changes to the world guide.

I do remember changing a couple of placenames, but that was about it.

Miragliano in Tilea was originally Gauno (“guano”), and Gisoreux was originally Oisillon (named for the River Ois, from “wazz”). Praag was added from the Kaleb Daark comic; I placed some of the Dwarfholds I’d invented for various ads and back-of-the-box text….

– Graeme Davis, email (26 June 2023)

The dwarfholds Davis refers to may be Karak Ungor and Karak Kadrin, which appeared in an advert for Imperial Dwarfs in White Dwarf 80 (August 1986).

Advert in White Dwarf 80 (August 1986), p7

I believe the appendix of building plans in WFRP1 might have been added to the book at this point. Similar plans had been characteristic of the Pelinore articles published in Imagine 16-30 (May 1984-September 1985) and GameMaster Publications 1-5 (October 1985-February 1987).

Extract from a typical Pelinore article, from Imagine 18 (September 1984)

Although the plans in the WFRP1 rulebook were drawn by a different artist from the Pelinore ones, they reflect a similar interest in urban buildings and similar style. In fact, two of the plans are direct copies from TSR publications. The typical coaching inn is almost an exact replica of the Ford Inn in Imagine 17 (August 1984), and the typical farmstead very closely resembles the Sukiskyn map in B/X1 Night’s Dark Terror (1986).

Map of the Ford Inn from Imagine 17 (August 1984) (left) and map of a typical coaching inn from WFRP1 (right)

Map of Sukiskyn from Night’s Dark Terror (left) and map of a typical farmstead from WFRP1 (right)

These resemblances encourage me to believe they were added to the WFRP rulebook by ex-TSR writers. Paul Cockburn had been instrumental in developing Pelinore, and both Jim Bambra and Phil Gallagher worked on Night’s Dark Terror.

The new writers were not, however, able to add everything they hoped for.

I desperately wanted the rulebook to have a usable index and helpful cross-references (all my manuscripts were always littered with “(see page XX)”). However, the printing process we used in those days meant we had no way of knowing what the page count would be and what would be where, until the thing was well into production. So the index was dropped, many of the “(see page xx)” were excised, and some of those that remained never got an actual page number inserted instead of the xx!

– Phil Gallagher, interview on Realm of Chaos 80s (20 October 2013)

In September 1986 the game was given another new name, one that this time would stick.

Strange, gibbery conversations can be heard echoing down the corridors: “Who’s got insanity?” and “Where’s the poison…”, not forgetting “AAAARRRGGHHHHHH!” WARPS is proceeding to plan, although the name has been changed to WFRP (pronounced WOOF-rup) – Warhammer Fantasy Role-Playing [sic].

– ‘Fracas!’, White Dwarf 81 (September 1986)

The reason for the name change has to my knowledge never been explained publicly. I believe, however, that it may have been connected with Warhammer 40,000. GW’s proposed futuristic wargame had for a long time been known as Rogue Trader, but the name was changed to WH40K to avoid confusion with GW’s licensed 2000AD board game Rogue Trooper.

By the time the game [Rogue Trader] was ready for editing in December 1986, Games Workshop had decided to produce Rogue Trooper. The ensuing confusion was incredible with people talking about Trader when they meant Trooper and Trooper when they meant Trader. Gurgling quietly often became the only option.

A new title was needed, and some bright spark (whom I shall hate for the rest of my life) came up with Warhammer 40,000.

– Rick Priestley, ‘Marginalia’, White Dwarf 94 (October 1987)

The name WH40K would not appear in print until January 1987 (in the fourth Citadel Journal), and the last reference to the game as Rogue Trader was in May 1985 (in the first Citadel Journal). Priestley implies that the name WH40K was settled on in the later part of this window, around December 1986. However, there are reasons to believe that a change of name perhaps took place earlier. In June 1986 WD78 made exactly the mistake Priestley mentions, announcing the Rogue Trooper game as Rogue Trader. In the very next month WD79 reported the need to change change the WARPS name. The decision to change the name may therefore have been taken at this point, necessitating a change to the role-playing game’s title so that the fantasy setting could be distinguished from the futuristic one.

There are several ways the July 1986 and December 1986 dates can be reconciled. Priestley’s language could be interpreted as meaning the change took place at an unspecified time before December 1986, but this would be an unnatural reading. Priestley could have made an error, though since he was writing shortly after the events, that seems unlikely. The most plausible explanation is that a decision was made in July 1986 to apply the Warhammer name to Rogue Trader, but the specific form Warhammer 40,000 was not fixed until December 1986. This would be consistent with other comments made by Rick Priestley, in which he suggests a number of variant names were considered before WH40K.

Because we’d actually said we were doing this game called Rogue Trader we had to use the title for the new game…. But by then we had the 2000AD licence for Rogue Trooper and it was felt that this would be confusing – so we had to call RT both Rogue Trader AND Warhammer ‘something’ to avoid confusion. And the something ended up being 40,000. It looked like an awful mouthful at the time. I remember Bryan said we’d call it Warhammer 3000 or some such – which wasn’t unlike any number of SF games in style – and I said, “Well – it’s set 40,000 years in the future so we can’t really call it Warhammer 3000“. So it ended up being Warhammer 40,000 – though it settled down to 40K fairly quickly.

– Rick Priestley, interview on Tales from the Maelstrom (25 September 2011)

The rulebook was finalised under the new name and went into typesetting in September.

WARPS/WFRP is being produced by (in their words) “the cream of the Games Workshop intelligentsia”, and only now can it be revealed that the character generation system includes over 100 skills and 100 possible careers (is this a record of some kind?); that there are eight different sorts of wizard, plus clerics, druids and runesingers who can all use different sorts of magic; that there are millions (I think they are exagerating [sic] a smidge with this bit) of new and slightly used (in Warhammer Battle) monsters; that there will be two campaigns – background packs and lots of module-sized adventures – released almost immediately, one by Paul Vernon and the other by Graeme Davis, Jim Bambra and Phil Gallagher; that the 100mph horses have been taken out of the game (boo!); and that the WARPS/WFRP book will contain ‘The Oldenhaller Contract’, a starting adventure by Richard Halliwell…

WARPS/WFRP is currently on schedule for a November 1st release date, and as this is being written it’s just starting to go to typesetting and production.

– ‘Fracas!’, White Dwarf 81 (September 1986)

There were, in fact, only five types of wizard; Runesingers were never included, but were described by Graeme Davis as “an Elf career I was working on – sort of an AD&D style bard with magical songs”; and Paul Vernon’s campaign never got the go-ahead. But the rest was accurate.

Between the three of us we got the thing out in time for Christmas 1986. Far from perfect, but on time.

– Graeme Davis, Mud & Blood podcast, episode 31 (26 January 2019)

By November 1986 WFRP was finished and printed, and gamers finally got their hands on the long-promised rulebook.

‘The WFRP Story’ continues here.

FOOTNOTE

* New Dark Elf miniatures were released in August 1986, though the associated background material would not be published until Ravening Hordes (1987).

CHRONOLOGY

This timeline follows on from that given in part XIII, and describes the period covered by parts XXI to XXXIX.

The following chart summarises the chronology of this post relative to others in this section of ‘The WFRP Story’.

Title art by Les Edwards. Internal art by Geoff Wingate and Dave Andrews. Used without permission. No challenge intended to the rights holders.