Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay conversion to D&D/Pathfinder?

My first foray into fantasy gaming was via Warhammer and associated games in the early/mid 1990s, although when 3rd edition 40k/6th edition WHFB came around I didn't like them and stopped playing. I then went to university where, through my love of fantasy, books, and gaming, I got into D&D (3rd edition then 3.5). D&D 4th edition came out, but my group didn't like it so we stayed with 3.5. Eventually, I came back to Warhammer too.

A few years later I moved to the USA and it was hard to find a 3.5 game but there were a lot of people playing Pathfinder (its spiritual successor) instead. I'm fortunate enough to have a couple of really good groups of people with whom I play regularly, and I like the Pathfinder mechanics a lot. One of these groups are also Warhammer fans, and I would like to step up to the plate and do some GMing at some point, as up to now I've only been a player.

I think you can see where this is going. I like the Pathfinder mechanics, but am not so familiar with its core setting (much more familiar with the Forgotten Realms/Planescape etc D&D stuff, and the Warhammer setting). GW have put out Dark Heresy 40k roleplay, but that's a totally new system for us (I've only played a couple of sessions), and I think we're all more Fantasy fans at heart. So I'd been thinking: how about taking the old Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay adventures and setting (which I have heard lots of good things about), but transporting the mechanics to Pathfinder (which is a ruleset we all know already)? It could be a win-win with both mechanics and a setting I love. What I'd like to know is, has anyone else attempted a ruleset transplant like this? How did it work out?
 

ardyer

Member
Why? WFRP 2nd is damn near perfect! And I have almost every book for it too! Plus quite a bit for first edition :grin: Sorry, I better stop now before I start ranting about the clunkyness of D & D and it's variants...
 

Erny

Member
The joy of TEW campaign is the social interaction, the investigation and the real fear of sudden character death at any moment. If you have stumbled into an actual fight then you have got yourself in more trouble than was needed.

Pathfinder is all about the tactical use of feats and powers, stacking buffs and enemy debuffs to produce awesome combos of death. I think it would be hard to replicate the out of your depth paranoia of a good run through TEW using Pathfinder.

That said with some major rework and perhaps ditching most of PBtT it would be perfectly possible to ditch the paranoia and play the campaign as a series of combats. It would be a bit like buying a new playstation 4 and using it to play pong but what ever floats yo9ur boat.

WHFRP is such a simple system, not like 3.5, there isn't a huge amount to learn so I'd give it a go, either 1st or 2nd should work. You could be up and playing with your own generated characters after an afternoons read.
 

Masterwork

Member
I'm DMing a 3.5 D&D game based in Greyhawk-esque world, where a rift into a plane of chaos has opened up and demons of Tzeentch, and character changing greenstuff is beginning to appear throughout the world. I rewrote some of the tables in Realms of Chaos into D&D terms (and added a bunch of own effects). Now every time a chaos sorceror appears or they encounter greenstuff, they have to roll on my 'effects of chaos' table. It's working out a bit like a deck of many (many) things. But some players dislike the randomness level that means their character can be nerfed in a single roll or that they've been given +4 intelligence when they are a cleric... There's a balance between giving the player something unusual and progressing it so it gets more effective, and giving the player something unusual, and the next session replacing it with something else...

I also tried to run a few encounters as the players being 'proto demons'. Explained it was just a bit of fun as I wanted the opportunity to use my chaos effects tables more and see how characters turned out. Anyway, I made the mistake of asking them to be Chaotic Evil and there were too many opportunities for killing each which meant they didn't actually progress.

I was also thinking of creating a Warrior of Chaos/Sorceror of Chaos character class. However the sorceror ended up being very similar to a Warlock.
 
Erny":2s55tzau said:
The joy of TEW campaign is the social interaction, the investigation and the real fear of sudden character death at any moment. If you have stumbled into an actual fight then you have got yourself in more trouble than was needed.

...

WHFRP is such a simple system, not like 3.5, there isn't a huge amount to learn so I'd give it a go, either 1st or 2nd should work. You could be up and playing with your own generated characters after an afternoons read.

Thanks for the tips. I didn't realise the simplicity of the system, maybe it's not too ambitious just to learn WFRP then! Our group do spend a lot of time in the roleplay aspect rather than dice rolling, though, even when we do try to play dungeon crawls, so that's nice that TEW is mostly non-combat.

I have the 1st edition main rulebook, looking online it looks like you can get both the 1st edition and a 1990s reprint by Hogshead (which I guess could be 2nd edition? Not sure?) of adventures online. Does anyone know if the ruleset in those printings is the same? Is there a general consensus about 1st, 2nd, or 3rd being better, and how different are they? (Right now I'm not sure exactly which products I'd be best off getting.)

Masterwork: yeah, to start off with, if I reskinned it in Pathfinder, I'd probably restrict people from playing 'weird stuff' like Chaos characters. Thanks for sharing your experience.
 

treps

Member
To me a level-based, combat oriented system like D&D/Pathfinder does not seems the best choice for a WFRP adaptation...

A better choice would be, in my opinion, an adaptation to the BASIC RolePlay System (the system used in Cthulhu, Runequest, etc.), or very similarly to Legends, the OGL version of the Runequest rules published by Mongoose.
 

ardyer

Member
Re: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay conversion to D&D/Pathfinder?

"Roll under the number the GM tells you on 2d10." There. Now you know how to play WFRP.

The hogshead reprints are still first ed. Second ed. was done by Green Ronin under the black library imprint. The current edition is third ed.

I personally like 2nd better as they cleaned up a lot of stuff, and 3rd is stupid. Otherwise, 1st and 2nd are pretty similar. You can still get most of the 2nd ed. range from drive through rpg. I can also let you borrow some of it, but only if you promise to let me play ;)

Since I'm typing this on my phone, I can give you a much better description through a phone call. Although hopefully someone else will do that with for me ;)

EDIT: I'm not a great GM, but I'd run an intro game of 2nd fir your group you want.
 

Erny

Member
treps":kw8eozup said:
To me a level-based, combat oriented system like D&D/Pathfinder does not seems the best choice for a WFRP adaptation...

A better choice would be, in my opinion, an adaptation to the BASIC RolePlay System (the system used in Cthulhu, Runequest, etc.), or very similarly to Legends, the OGL version of the Runequest rules published by Mongoose.


I would agree completely except if you're using BRP you may as well use WHFRP.

Magos if you want a feel for the game I tried running TEW campaign by blog post (though the players made me start with the oldenhaler contract). It worked well from one point of view, the posts and the RP were great. From another, the progress was so slow and with a family issue occurring I ran out of steam. Would consider running it on roll 20 though. The blog format means the first posts are the last so scoot to the first posts to do a proper run through.

http://theernywithin.blogspot.co.uk/
 
Thanks, all. People on this board are so knowledgeable! I talked with my group about it, maybe we'd just try using the WFRP system directly if it isnt' too complicated (less effort doing a conversion for a bit more effort initially). We probably won't get around to it for a while though so plenty of time to decide. I read through the Oldenhaller contract and it seems a pretty straightforward way to dip your toes in it.

ardyer: I will let you know if it happens! :)

erny: Thanks, I'll read it. Nice blog name, too.
 

Donpimpom

Member
If you are able to play AD&D 3.5 you are more than ready to catch WFRPG 2nd very fast.
The work to conver WFRPG to AD&D will be massive, not to mention some of the funniest things in the game are part of the game mechanics.
Another discussion would be the cost, after the release of the 3rd edition the less frequent 2nd edition books on evilbay have been meat of speculators
 
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