I still like this game. The setting-agnostic, unhinged, OSR Warhammer-like game is free from the Games Workshop Old World setting. It isn't Warhammer, and the 4th Edition of Warhammer is a beautiful game - if you are playing in the official world.
This game has mature concepts, so it is only for some. It delves deeper into horror concepts like a 1980s movie, making magic more difficult and wounds more deadly. It does not seem as clean as the new Warhammer version, designed to not upset a general audience. Yes, you can put whatever you want in your game, but I am an adult and not triggered by much.
I don't want to be sanitized in Grimdark, just like I don't want to watch sanitized in a horror movie. I get the game is a little upsetting to general audiences, and I hear this is being addressed in future releases. I don't hold this against them, this was an artistic choice when the book was made. Was this a good choice? Probably not in today's sensitive climate and the demands of retailing. But I give them credit for sticking to their dream, and then adjusting course later.
Change isn't easy, and we all need to recognize that and be accepting.
Also, I have played in the Warhammer world for decades and am tired of it. It is a beautiful and tragic place, but there isn't a spot in that world my group hasn't been to. The new version of WHFRP trades highly on nostalgia, and it is time for me to make my own interpretation of that world. It is a beautiful and incredibly high-production value game, but I have seen it for years, and the entire collection seems enormous. This feels like a set of books I would collect and never play.
I also have a few problems with the 4th Edition Warhammer FRP art. Most of it is excellent, but the characters sometimes have this smug, happy, and relatively modern 'too cool with attitude' facial expression. That smirk is cancer on fantasy art these days, especially for a "grim and perilous" fantasy game like Warhammer. We see it all the time in 5E and many other games.
Nobody should be happy to be in a grimdark world. I sound like a spoilsport or petty, but it makes a big difference that some professions look like a Planar 5E character dropped into the game. This is that messy Western modern fantasy style, and I like games that break from those safe conventions. Yes, some pieces do something different (some are humorous), but they all do something different, and the consistency and gritty feeling are lost.
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| AI Art by @nightcafestudio |
Zweihander does a better job with a generic setting and darker world mood. Crafting a horror series is much like creating great horror movies. I want everything to feel connected. I like the book to follow a common thread and theme. I want an eerily familiar human-centric world where magic is superstition, the unfamiliar is the norm, nothing is cute, no easy magic, and everything seems grimly normal.
Sometimes, if I play Warhammer, everything feels known and expected. I can make new things up in a more generic system, omit large parts of the book, or run a game against a chaos monster like John Carpenter's The Thing without anyone screaming about Warhammer canon.
I also love to house-rule, and Zweihander supports that much better.
That said, Warhammer FRP is still a fantastic game. Art-wise, it is all over the place for a game that needs a consistent presentation. Everything else is an A+ game and presentation. I just need more freedom, a single book, and no default setting.
I want the freedom to craft horror and not play to nostalgia or the familiar.
Everything looks normal.
And then things start to go sideways.
The suspicion and paranoia are high.
Like classic horror movies, pure evil's twisted and brutal nature shows its face, warps, and twists ordinary people into madness and hideous creatures of darkness.
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