It made quite an impression on me and my childhood friends, since it was so different in look and tone to the other fantasy role-playing games we were used to (MERP and Dungeons & Dragons, primarily). Setting the game in the Warhammer world was a great initial hook, although this ultimately did a lot of damage to the game, since it was then at the mercy, to some degree, of changes GW made to the Warhammer world to suit the purposes of the Warhammer wargame (and ultimately, selling models and rulebooks).
The system is d100 based and is very simple: it is one of the best parts of the game. Nearly all success/failure rolls are based on rolling under an attribute (modified for circumstances) or under 50% (modified for circumstances or attributes). This is true for bargaining, bribery and bludgeoning. Only magic works on a different basis. All of this is very intuitive although there are quite a few individual quirks for specific actions. It is basically a derivation of the system used in Games Workshop's Judge Dredd RPG.
I like the notoriously brutal combat system. It uses the system just described for determining hits. Certain characters and creatures have more than a single attack. Certain characters have a dodge each turn and characters can parry attacks. Successful rolls are reversed to determine hit location, then damage is equal to the strength of the user or the weapon, added to an 'exploding' D6 roll, with the target's toughness and if applicable, armour, subtracted from the score. This score is how many 'wounds' are inflicted. Since starting characters and generic NPCs will often only have 5-8 wounds, and with 1-in-6 hits causing 'exploding' damage, it can be seen that attacks are often very deadly. As might be expected, there are factors which reduce or increase the likelihood of hits, and the damage caused. There aren't too many of them, so the system works quite well.
However, there are some issues of calibration. There is the infamous "Naked Dwarf Syndrome" in which an unarmoured Dwarf can, in some circumstances, be harder to damage than a dragon. This is part of wider system in which "toughness" is over-valued and armour under-valued. There is a problem with the way skills are subordinated to attributes: the attributes are overall much more important than skills. Because skill levels are relatively low, typically, i.e. even skilled human characters are only around the 50-60 mark, then I have found it useful to give lots of automatic successes to skilled characters. So a character with "Law" skill will automatically pass a test, whereas unskilled characters must pass a test against Intelligence, with perhaps a negative modifier.
The magic system in WFRP first edition has been widely criticized. Starting characters start with an average of 5 magic points if they are humans or elves, or 2.5 if dwarves or halflings. However, to successfully cast a spell, the caster must roll 2d6 and score equal to or under the characters magic point score, so Apprentice's are pretty much useless for reliably casting spells. There are a wide variety of Wizards (basic wizards, Illusionists, Elementalists, Demonologists and Necromancers) although the latter two are only marginally viable as PCs since the penalties for being either are steep and death and/or insanity are pretty much inevitable outcomes (some of the spells can be learned by certain types of clerics). Still, having rules for actually summoning demons and wraiths and so on is quite nice. There are a reasonable number of spells, but they get harder and harder to learn so unless the campaign goes on for a long time, the most devastating spells will probably remain out of reach.
The character generation system uses a combination of races, classes and careers. Although most of character generation is by dice roll, character race and sex is player choice. Therefore the power gamers' choice is easy: pick a dwarf if you want to be an armoured close combat warrior, pick an elf if you want to be anything else (although elves make good close combat warriors too: it is a trade-off between extra toughness for resisting damage or speed and initiative for dodging hits and attacking first). There are some penalties for making either choice (probably less fate points, which are basically extra lives, and some in-game prejudice. None of this is remotely important enough to change the choice. Some attributes (basically Speed, Strength, Toughness) are on a nominally 1-10 scale, others are percentile-based. The human average is 2d10+20 for the latter. A character then picks one of four classes (Warrior, Ranger, Rogue, Academic). These classes have entry requirements based on attributes and it is very possible for human characters to have no viable choices because their attributes are too low (the rules don't say what to do in this event).
Each character gets a small number of skills (D4+0-2) depending upon their age and class. The skills are class dependent. Then the characters are supposed to randomly generate a starting career, although the rules do say that a GM might allow players to pick. Both options have their issues because the careers are not even remotely equal. As a further kick, if a character gets a randomly-generated skill which is replicated in the career, then tough, you just lose out. It is thus very possible for a starting character to have literally one skill (Roadwarden, Ride-Horse) or to have something like 15 (the Outlaw). On the other hand, if you allow players to choose, only a small percentage of the careers will ever be taken since they are so unbalanced. Whether this will create interesting role-playing or annoyance is likely to depend very much on the players. Anyway, by allowing some choosing of careers, skills, re-assigment of attributes and re-ordering the stages a GM can create systems where the PCs are more powerful and players have more options. Finally, each character is allowed a free "advance" in attributes, as appropriate to their career.
The characters develop by being awarded experience points which can then be spent on attribute advances, new skills, new spells or in entering new careers. Some careers can (e.g. Templars) can only be entered into and cannot be generated by starting PCs. Some careers, particularly the religious career paths, are more nvolved and may involve undertaking trials and so on. This system does allow a lot of flexibility as players can (try and) guide their characters into who they want them to be as part of the process of playing the game.
The game is quite comprehensive, in that their are more or less workable rules for quite a lot of situations, including disease, insanity and alcoholism. There are some other bits for the gamesmaster - how to handle career progression, some adventure ideas, some (quite D&D-ish) ideas about random treasures and so on.
The world background and the bestiary are okay. I know lots of players love it but I have never found it that great, in that it tries to thrown in lots of very different fantasy tropes to make the world suitable for radically different types of adventuring. Dungeoneering is just as well catered for as more social and political adventures. This comes at the the cost of a certain amount of consistency and credibility. Having genuine kingdoms of Chaos and Orcs makes the basic "Renaissance Europe" setting quite hard to sustain in my opinion and in my own games I have changed the background to reflect that. I guess with enough suspension of disbelief, it can still work well. There is a reasonable amount of the background, enough to easily run games set in the main setting (the mainland of the "Old World", i.e. Europe) although most of the notes on the wider world is only a suggestive paragraph or two. There are some handy details for wahat various buildings and settlements are like. Given the power levels of starting characters, I would have much preferred a wide range of sample NPCs and common creatures to the incredibly over-powered greater daemons that are put in there. How many times are players genuinely going to encounter a Baalrukh or Mardagg or whatever? There is a good amount on religion, with teasers for more (which were delivered on) and they were quite strongly linked to the Clerics and Druids for actual play.
There is a sample adventure and some sample PCs to use in it. It isn't the greatest adventure but it does a reasonably solid job of showing how the main mechanics, and the setting, actually work. What's more, it even shows how WFRP was going to develop, which perhaps isn't very clear from the book: it was going to feature criminals. investigation, cultists. mutants and Chaos monsters...I played this one out recently and here is the write-up.
I really enjoyed the game at the time and still quite like it now. The simplicity and brutality of the combat system, and the mechanics more generally, still appeal. The setting is nowhere near as good as I used to think it was, but it still has much of interest and at any rate, is easily adaptable. The unfairness of the character generation is probably a little bit too unfair, but it is at least quite easily remediable. The magic point mechanic is both bland and skewed and too closely modelled on the battle game, but isn't totally unsalvageable. If the broad setting appeals - which it did to me, whereas I have never had much time for D&D - then give it a go.
For an audio review, check out The Grognard Files. For an amusing review, The Gaming Den is worth a read.
When I get round to writing them up in a usable form, I may at some point put up the house rules that I use.
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