So...you want to talk grim and perilous? Obviously reading Rolemaster Classic and desiring a more realistic and gritty game, I am going to have to talk about two of today's dark fantasy greats. I ordered both of these and they are coming, so I will be able to compare them soon.
What follows is what I read about them and my though processes on why I chose one over the other.
Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play: 4th Edition
This was the game I went looking for, because I know Warhammer, own the 1st (and third) edition games, and when you are talking a dark, violent, and realistic game you immediately pick up a classic. And I heard they had a new edition out, how cool! So looking I went for this, and it led me down a path through a dark, twisted woods full of shadows and lurking eyes upon my soul.
And over there in the "customers also bought" section of the product page was barely the sign of another path off the main road towards Warhammer 4th Edition. Some game called Zweihander I never heard of? Nah, it mustn't be anything much. That path looks barely traveled, best to stick to the main road and keep heading towards what I know...right?
Games inspired by are rarely as...good...
Right?
Zweihander
So I peeked down the path, read reviews, and learned some dark secrets. This was developed as a OGR retro-clone of the Warhammer 2nd Edition "style" of game - but even darker. Even more brutal. Unforgiving. A world that not only hates you, but scars you, changes you, and twists you into a dark shadow of yourself. The reviews were glowing, but then again, I heave read lots of glowing reviews of games I own but never play. What makes this so special beyond healing being more difficult and it not being Warhammer?
Many said they would keep using Warhammer Fourth to play Warhammer, because why stray from what works? Some said Zweihander does it just fine. But one review in particular caught my eye. Zweihander can do all that, plus modern gritty fantasy such as countless novels, films, games, and other worlds. It doesn't feel like a Warhammer with the serial numbers filed off of Game of Thrones, The Witcher, or Final Fantasy Tactics. It feels...like a dark and gritty version of those places, worlds, and peoples. It is those places of darkness if you want it to be. You make it into a dark place of your own.
It is dark like Warhammer, without the Warhammer feeling or world. Without the call to battle. Just the darkness. And the despair.
And that opens up...options and possibilities.
Oh...really?
No Armies of Plastic Figures
I love Warhammer - both worlds. The dark and gritty one in the role playing game. And the one filled with giant formations of painted figures standing proud on the field of battle. It always felt to me like the world existed in two realities: a dark one with death and hopeless fear, and another brightly painted and lined up in formation. This always bit our roleplaying campaigns in this world, since we played the tabletop wargame, the roleplaying game saw its share of dwarves on motorcycles with a gunner firing a crank-fired black-powder chaingun on a rear pintle mount. The dark elves showed up with their metal battle garter-belts and whips. Chaos always fielded a massive army like the Soviets in East Germany.
Our games felt like Warhammer Fantasy Battles: The RPG.
They were fun, but grim and perilous went out the window. Those crazy mohawk dwarves showed up, with no fear, and whirled like two-axe wielding dervishes through formations of Skaven. I guess we were still kind of high on the paint fumes of all those figures we had to paint, or in some way we wanted to see those figures come to life in the roleplaying game. We were kids, we didn't know better, and it is a natural urge when the wargaming hobby and the RPG are so closely connected.
And yes you may have started out peasants and rat catchers...but...I am going to be one of those army figure heroes someday, hold a giant banner, hold a heavy bolter, wear my power armor, and...wrong game but you get the idea. We weren't even in the right mindset. We were heroes in a world filled with armies.
With Zweihander there is none of that. You build the world as a dark reflection of your nightmares. You pick the setting. There is no invisible contract that the world can't end as it is consumed by chaos because that would mean hundreds of hobby shops would go out of business and the next version of the rules couldn't be printed. Your world can end. This is your story.
Go Anywhere, Do Anything
The Zwiehander "it can be anything in the darkness" feeling appeals to me. That do-anything, go anywhere, explore the darkness within draws me in. Warhammer with its iconic monsters and setting is always kind of like D&D's cosmology to me now, the Skaven, Chaos, Empire, Elves, Dwarves, Dark Elves, and other icons of the setting are so well-known and set in history they feel like D&D's beholders, Tiamat, displacer beasts, ropers, intellect devourers, mind flayers, and other "product identity" copyrighted creations at this point. I am a fan of them all like I am Luke Skywalker or Iron Man.
But what if I wanted something of my own? Where would I go? It is hard to use Warhammer for generic fantasy because the urge to have the Skaven (tm) show up is too great when using that book. If I wanted to have the "rat people" to be the result of some mad experiment of a alchemist in a campaign my players would smile, say "okay", and roll their eyes because the referee is changing things again and this is a "not Warhammer" using Warhammer rules. Those are really Skaven haha. You know how it goes.
With a set of rules without that established, any monster in any campaign is what I want it to be. Are the rat-people the result of demonic magic? A failed experiment? Pollution? Genetic manipulation? They came from the dark magic jungle of evil across the ocean? Are they ship rats who evolved because of a cursed island and now copy those same sea pirates,. but insane with funny hats and parrots?
My next campaign they may not even show up. They may be something different. They may change size and be tiny rat people. They may be the enemies of the dwarves in another game. The players won't know and they don't know what to expect.
The game is mine.
The darkness is infinite and unpredictable.
A Choice to Make
That appeals to me, because in the true darkness you don't know what terrors lurk - and the nature of the darkness you face is unknown. As a GM, that appeals to me greatly. This is why I went with Zweihander first, and I will look at Warhammer 4th mostly for nostalgia. I love the Warhammer world, but mostly for nostalgia at this point. It will be fun seeing them like old friends.
Also Warhammer 4th is about 360 pages where Zweihander is over 600 - so Warhammer 4th sounds like the tighter rules set for a game, while Zweihander sounds like a novel in RPG form. While I enjoy both, there are times when a concise set of rules tightly put together appeals to me in a mechanical and play sense. I will hold my final opinions for when I see both, but it should be an interesting comparison.
Also, Warhammer was - and still is uniquely British. Zwiehander as I hear is an American author, but a superfan of the dark fantasy genre with new ideas to add into the mix. An interesting contrast.
Especially against the retro-80's Rolemaster Classic standing over there looking like Don Johnson playing Robin Hood. Gotta love that hair and those pastels.
Well, both books are in the mail and more soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment