Zweihänder: Better for Me

I love the Warhammer world, the RPG is good, but the collector's market has ruined the game. I recently learned some of the books for WHFRP are out of print for good. I missed my chance. The Warhammer books are excellent, collector's items, and beautiful works of art. But that is their problem.

The game is good, but the books have this collector's mentality. Like Traveller, the library is vast and high-quality, but its usability suffers. Sometimes a game can be too big and too much, and I feel that collector's urge coming on. I know I should stop.

So I will.

This is where the more open-license, community-focused games will always win. Zweihänder wins this battle since the game is an open community, meant to be played instead of collected, and its adventures will always be in print for people to enjoy. This is not sour grapes. All these "collectors' games" will be out of print someday when the investment starts trailing off. Also, what good are they if the license changes? Sure, collectors will have games, but the average person won't. Will you find anyone to play with 10 to 20 years from now?

Community games?

They stay in print forever. I can still get a hardcover of Labyrinth Lord, 16 years after it first hit the store. I know the print copies of Zweihänder first edition have stopped being produced, but the revised edition is coming. I doubt this game will ever go out of print, and it (or games like it) will always be in POD.

Games with open licenses will always win out. Just give them time.

Zweihänder is a complete game. Even with the reloaded edition coming out, the game is complete without collecting a shelf full of books. I am not in the collector's market. The game is what it is, and it is more my creativity and the community's than a licensee's. Lots of creative people publish for this game. That is a good thing.

Another reason I like Zweihänder is the corruption system and the fact that it feels normal. This nicely sets up the horror aspect of the game. With Warhammer, I think the world is filled with 3,000-point armies of dark elves and chaos lords, and it is far too high in magic and fantastical to have a feeling of dread and horror. The corruption system in Zweihänder is less "wow tentacles" and more subtle, tied to character morals and actions.

For slow corruption and horror forced upon actions the characters do not want to take, but have to, Zweihänder does a better job telling those stories.

Spiritually, the game reminds me of Lamentations of the Flame Princess, and I am drawn to the entire "terror upon the exploiters of the new land" horror genre. Having ships of explorers and colonists show up in "lands that never were" and trying to settle in nightmare-filled lands is an underserved horror genre.

This is a good genre and niche to be in, and gaming woefully underserves this era. Lamentations proves there is an audience, and when that game focuses more on colonial horror, it shines brightly. Tall ships coming to a new world nobody understands, and that may never be on a map, is a mixture of Call of Cthulhu and D&D, along with the feeling of original sin of being those who take, pillage, burn, and loot lands that should never be ventured to.

And I like creating my own world. Despite how rich and detailed Warhammer is, I would rather create my own things.

Grimdark vs. Modern Style

There is something to say about a game that inspires you to create great things. I don't get the same feeling with Warhammer FRP either. Low magic, rare monsters, sparse healing, and the ever-present force of corruption twisting souls and changing the land. Anytime I open the Zweihander book, I am in this game. The mood is there. It inspires me in a way very few games do.

It is a great death metal album that transports you to another world.

Warhammer FRP is well-made, but it has a different feel for me. The game feels silly in parts, and it panders to the self-insert crowd a little too much. The danger of "seeing yourself in the game" always leads the game down a path of player protection, since no one wants to see their alternate identity avatar die. We were warned against "putting ourselves in the game" in the 1980s, and that logic has not changed. It is dangerous, especially for those who need an excellent grasp of the difference between fantasy and reality.

Player protection is easy healing, abundant magic, and fast resource recovery. There is also an emphasis on "fun combat," like a video game, where the players are meant to win every fight. Once you get player protection, you get the strangely cute player races since no one wants to see their Pokemon-humanoid talking animal hybrid PC die.

And the entire game slips into this planar haze of the multiverse, and nothing is relatable or means anything anymore. Nothing seems grounded in reality. The game is a snarky young-adult cartoon, safe for everyone, and doesn't reflect anything relatable in reality.

You get JJ MacGuffin plots like, "The Planar Stone is missing!"

Who knows what it does, and who cares?

In ten years, all this cute-multiverse cartoon stuff will look dated, just like all the rule-of-cool stuff they made years ago looks dated. Time to rebuy a new edition.

The classics will always look in style. Dark elves will always be extraordinary. Dwarves will always be themselves. High elves reflect a part of who we are. Halflings are always great. Evil humanoids are a symbol of hatred and violence. I don't need an alien fantasy race to express relatable traits; I have them all with the four or five classic fantasy staples - and the standard types of monsters.

The classics reflect our nature.

You can't escape that, no matter how cartoonish the facade becomes.

In fact, once you start embracing the cartoonish, the tremendous variety of human ancestries becomes less critical. In a way, the cartoonish erases cultural diversity. We no longer need to deal with human cultural differences with all these funny animal masks and pastel-skinned planar character options.

It is too easy to pick a cartoon and ignore something based on who we are as people.

I am moving away from the silly and into a more realistic and darker base for my creations. I don't want theme park worlds. I don't wish to equate magic with technology. A campaign world saves me no time if I don't use it. And I don't want cute and cartoony; there is almost too much of it nowadays.

With Zweihander, I don't have a campaign world; I make it all up myself. The world I like best? It is an everyday world with average run-of-the-mill places. Really an Anytown with little danger around.

One of the incredible suggestions in this game is to have corruption spread in the game world as it is accumulated by the PCs and NPCs of the game. In this world, no monsters exist. Humans, Elves, Dwarves, and others live in harmony.

But as different areas of the world gather corruption, evil crawls out of the depths of the earth. Goblins begin coming out of caves. More corruptive forces and dark cults emerge. Animals are twisted into horrible beasts. Even more and an army of orcs builds a fort. Elves fall to darkness and become dark elves. Where did they all come from? Do I need a map saying, "Orcs here, elves there?" No. They come from corruption and nightmares.

Fight the corruption, and you can stop the scourge before it consumes the land. You have a chance of saving a land falling to corruption, but it will take work, and sacrifices need to be made. Fail, and your game world has a new evil kingdom on the borders of others.

I only need some of this Warhammer FRP lore - it is excellent stuff, but I like making my own stories and worlds. Too many times, I will buy giant sandbox campaign worlds and have everything laid out, and I never use them. They feel static and set in stone. Everything has a place and can never really change (until the next edition, please buy so you can keep up).

Zweihander is DIY dark fantasy cool that keeps you on a low-power base. It is not a premade world and setting, it is an incredible set of rules used to craft your own worlds.

Mail Room: Zweihander Starter Set

What is not to love about the era of jam-packed starter sets? Thirty dollars (on sale now for 25 over on Amazon) for a complete starter set for the excellent Zweihander game?

I am glad I took the plunge.

What is in here is not just a beginner version of the game; this is like a "version 1.5" with a vastly improved layout and presentation. More capable characters, ancestries, rules improvements, cleaned-up examples, and system streamlining - all 100% backward compatible with the main book. They even have sections describing the differences and how to "backport" the rules improvements into the main text, making the differences minor but significant in play and flow.

The content and tone are improved as well.

Oh, and that 3 AP system that Pathfinder 2 uses? Done here first, and in a grim-fantasy d100 game. I like the presentation of this one better since it is easier to grasp without knowing special symbols.

Moving On

And this game is moving away from its Warhammer inspiration with the new ancestries and becoming its own thing. That is a significant improvement; the game is starting to mature into its identity. This is not "that other game you can play Warhammer with" - it is beginning to have its unique identity.

That is cool. I support that. Go in your own direction, and I am all on board.

Early OSR games are often content with emulation. When they start doing things differently, they finally grow up and develop their personality. This happened between OSE Basic and OSE Advanced, and I loved their additions to the game. Adding many non-human ancestries is another positive step for the gamers more used to that variety in 5E, and the option to use a more human-centric world is still there.

Also, while Warhammer is a fun universe - let me make my own. I don't want my efforts and creativity judged or measured against official releases and not have that thing in the back of players' minds saying, "Fun, but definitely not canon."

I do not want to compete against a shelf full of beautiful and very official books.

Presentation

And for those who disliked the lovable-Grognard presentation of the original book? This layout is as good as you would get in any 5E or best-in-class OSR game. All the rules are easily presented, with larger text and plenty of white space to make each page readable. You could easily use this as the "main rulebook" and the original giant tome as the expansion book. I am all in if they do a 2nd edition that looks like this. I heard via their discord they were working on a "reforged" rulebook (cleaned up and presented like this) which will be the standard going forward but doesn't invalidate the original tome.

General Audience Efforts

Also, the game seems to be taking on some of the original edition's criticisms with much "edgy" content in the original tome. They are cleaning up the topics and language that tend to upset the more mainstream audience and supporting the first book for those who want an uncut game. I get it; while part of me likes the original "no limits" tone, I get trying to market this game to a more general audience and address those criticisms. They continue to support the original book, which gives the more grindhouse horror fans what they like and then are building a solid base moving forward.

This feels like an AD&D 1e to 2e move, but I get why - they need to appeal to a larger audience and younger players too. VTTs may have content guidelines that need to be met. Bills need to be paid, artists need to be compensated, printing costs a lot, and crafting books is costly.

Some may get angry, and some may hold the original game's grindhouse content against them. They are trying to move in a positive direction (while keeping that olive branch for the hardcore fans), and that is a tricky tightrope to walk - but they deserve praise for the effort - and another chance from their detractors.

Please, support positive efforts to make a change. We all benefit!

More Capable

The characters in this set are more capable and have rules to use the new generation methods with the main book. These are more "dungeon-ready" characters at a low level, and I feel the change is good. Some say this makes the higher-level play too easy, but when the reforged edition comes out, this will be addressed, or you can just up the challenges at a high level and balance things yourself.

Healing is still slow and rare, and dungeon crawling and the 5E and Pathfinder brand of "combat entertainment" relies on cheap and easy healing and resource recovery. And while a lot of people derided D&D 4E as an MMO, I see 5E and Pathfinder 2 are even more MMO since it isn't character structure that defines MMO-like gaming; it is that health and mana bar that returns to 100% between combats, just like a video game.

You do this when you give up on balancing fights for a game that relied on resource tracking and dwindling resources and the "go back to town after every fight" crowd Wizards fostered in 3E. Actual D&D? What you have on your character sheet is what you have for the whole adventure, fireball wisely. That is how the adventures were often designed, especially the tournament ones.

Could you mod in better healing into Zweihander? Yes, it is easy. Just make the "Lay on Hands" spell a resurrect, and create a "Healing Touch" generalist divine spell that all divine casters can use (using the original Lay on Hands spell as the template). Remove the once-per-day limitation (or make it increase the casting difficulty by one step per time when used on the same target per day), and you are done. Easy healing achieved. You could build a whole generalist divine list based on the common cleric tropes out of dungeon games and be fine.

The game says, "House rule this game!"

So house rule.

A Solid Basic Set

What don't you get? The higher-level spells and professions are one, and the monster selection is thin. All of this is solved by having the core book on hand, which is 100% compatible. Again, use this as the primary rulebook and the large book as the expansion. The big book has more monsters, spells, gear, professions, etc.

I am guessing the new reforged set will fill in the blanks and form a complete game, but the original book plus expansion is a complete game "plus." I like the more straightforward presentation in the starter set, which clearly presents rules and concepts. The original book is sometimes hard to follow, and the starter set "opens the door" to understanding. This is relatively easy from your standard OSR game.

OSR Style

And it isn't Warhammer, which is done in the OSR style. Use what you want, change things, mod the game, create your own world, and do what you want. Warhammer is a great game and setting, but change too much, and you will run afoul of the lore-sensitive types. I do not feel I have as much freedom there as  I do here. That freedom also allows me to surprise players with something wholly new and unexpected.

Hacker Friendly

I am a hacker and a modder, and a world builder. The rules here are simple, without too many bolted-on subsystems. The fortune point system is improved, and there are fate points as well. The core is extremely simple: percentages, tens-modifiers for each ability, and some leveled-wounding systems (for body and mind) that depend on hitting threshold numbers. Armor raises the threshold number.

I don't want a shelf full of books selling me options - while nice to have - are is not something that comes from my imagination. Fewer books, more freedom, a more open and hackable game - that is what I want. Can I do a hex crawl with Warhammer? Yes. Does a game where you build your own world do it better? Of course, this is one of the classic OSR play styles.

Zweihander is progressing, improving, sharpening its presentation, and upping its game.

It is an incredible time to be a fan.

Off the Shelf: Zweihander

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.

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.

Mail Room: Zweihander

My first thought is if Warhammer FRP, old-school D&D, and Call of Cthulhu produced a mutated spawn of Chaos this would be it. I had a feeling flipping through this book it almost defines a new genre, like how rock and roll came from blues, while staying true to the original source.

And they took special care here, as this game seems heavily playtested and poured over by those who love the genre. I can't speak to many balance issues at this point, but from the attention to detail and effort I just have this feeling care was taken by those who know the influences and those who want something that isn't broken.

And the book is over 600 pages huge. And it feels complete. A monster section 243 pages long. A full sample adventure. Hundreds of professions. Only 36 skills and 72 talents? Amazing. They kept control of the beast of complexity and splurged in the places where splurging is needed. A horn of plenty in choices, but a finely curated meal in places where complexity would mean too much choice and the death of the game.

And I see you, familiar but lovable OGR system reference document monsters of standard fantasy poking your head in and around here and there. The game mixes the best of Warhammer with the standard OGR tropes and standards? This is like getting everything for Christmas I swear, but I don't swear because this is Christmas so I just say, "Thank you, Santa."

A Story...

Back when my brother and I got heavily into tabletop miniatures, we were devout Advanced Heroquest players. We had two of the Heroquest board-games just for the extra minis. Our characters and stories were woven around a strange mix of D&D figures, Heroquest minis, Warhammer army figures bought as "new monsters" for our games, and all sorts of other random things even down to those plastic farm animals you buy in the buckets at toy stores.

The genesis of our heroic journey was in a strange world filled with everything, but still with the flavor and tone of the world rooted in a Warhammer-y grim and perilous reality. The adventures were crazy and mixed up, but the look was based on Warhammer with a mix of all of the greats from other games and worlds.

Open a door to a room and have a "eye tyrant" type beholder-like monster from D&D show up? Fine! Let's fight, roll initiative and let's hope it has some good treasure hidden in there if we survive. If this world is locked in the dark flows of chaos, that means anything can go, and warped, twisted versions of creatures from other imaginations and realities are fair game.

Our world was very much a bastardized Warhammer Plus and we loved the heck out of it. We never really had much lore, only playing in a place where two competing factions of a wizard named "King Midas" and a dastardly giant of a man "The Black Knight" waged an eternal war over the future of the realm. Both of them were corrupt and greedy to the core, with Midas playing lip service to the races and forces of good as much as the Black Knight pulled in dark elves and the races of evil to his side.

It was a simple setup and sort of an iconic battle of good and evil, where both good and evil were both evil but they at least tried to make an effort to put up a good appearance while they were stuffing their coffers under the table.

Fantasy Heartbreaker?

I see that term a lot in discussions about this game. As if being a game derivative of another is a bad thing. Every version of D&D starting at AD&D has been a fantasy heartbreaker then. Some versions of D&D also broke our hearts, in a manner of speaking, when they dropped support or expanded the game into players begging for a new edition to clean it all up. Again. D&D itself could also be described as a Tolkien, Leiber, and Lovecraftian fantasy heartbraker for that matter.

When does it just not matter what labels you use? I don't really like the term, and I have seen games come along, such as Cepheus Engine, and lay down an OGL interpretation of a rules set a lot better, cleaner, and not changed for the sake of sales and/or change. Versions of a beloved rule set that will now be around forever, just like Basic Fantasy, Dungeon Crawl Classics, or even Labyrinth Lord.

The only heartbreak I feel is not getting on the boat earlier with these games. Not that somehow they are lesser, because a lot of them are love letters to the way we used to play that is long gone and preserving that part of our history is an important part of the legacy and story of our hobby. Yes, in love letters there is heartbreak, but often that heartbreak can motivate us to find the next thing to love and to rebuild a better life and purpose.

So yeah, my heart was broken when they stopped supporting Gamma World. But these days, I have two games to replace what I lost - Mutant Crawl Classics and Mutant Future. Are they what I lost? No. Can I port that old stuff in easy? Yes. Does it matter they aren't Gamma World?

In some ways, they are better than what they replaced. Be careful of idolizing the past too much, because you can get stuck in it easily. Would I love a Zweihander version of Gamma World - like THIS Oh I would be on that like a Barl Nep to radioactive slime. And then I would have three games. I think I can find a way to deal with that heartbreak just fine, thank you, and in some ways, I appreciate the motivation to craft newer and better games.

And This Game is It

And now, the game and world we came up with in our heads has a set of rules inspired by the rules we used, with the "make your own world" and "use anything you want" feel to it all. And it is long. The art is serious and consistent. The books binding is incredibly professional - certainly to the level a collector's book would be printed and bound. Seriously, make a giant version with gold leaf pages, color plates, and metal parts on the cover that looks like a bible (and printed by a bible company) and I would buy that at three times the price. The book is drop-dead beautiful, especially if you get hit by it - it is that heavy.

It will take me months to read through and pour through this. It is like getting gifted a part of your past, one you forgot and put long away, and realizing what you once had was a part of the dreams and games of many others like you who you never knew.

Do I like this more than Warhammer 4th? That depends. Warhammer 4th is still missing a good deal of the content I already have in my collection of WH3 books, and I want to see more before I judge that game and give a final opinion. WH4 is pretty and laid out well, but it feels incomplete. This game is much more complete and the depth is there to dive into.

And this is without taking the Main Gauche supplement into consideration.

The bible comparison feels right. This game is such a love-letter to the genre it feels like a religion and not a game. But a game it is. I have a long, but wonderfully dark and exciting, road ahead of me reading this.

Game Shopping: Zweihander vs. Warhammer FRP 4th

 

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.