WFRP

Well, I finished reading the book, and I must say that I'm impressed. Before I go on, I should note that I have no experience with previous versions of this game, although I do have a good deal of knowledge about the setting, from days of yore when I collected Warhammer armies, from White Dwarf, and from a familiarity with the source material (more on this later).

Warhammer is a rules-lite, roll-low percentile system. I am led to believe from the Designer's notes (although Gary contests this) that the old edition made use of all the different dice types; this version is almost certainly superior. Basically, you have to roll less that the appropriate attribute on d% to succeed at most tasks (and so, my characters will kick ass!). There are a couple of exceptions: damage uses a d10 roll + modifiers, and spellcasting requires you roll a number of d10's equal to your magic attribute and get over a target number, but these are rare.

Character creation is simple, although it's a bit odd that you choose your character's race, and then roll for a starting career. One of the options listed is that the GM allow players to choose their career - I think this is probably a case where your better rolling - that seems to be one of the quirks of the game, and something to keep.

Skill and talents work in a fairly simple manner - each skill is tied to an attribute, so to use a skill you roll d% and get under the attribute. Easier and harder tasks apply a modifier to your attribute (think I would have preferred modifiers to the roll, but then an easy task would give a -30% bonus, which doesn't seem quite right). Buying a skill twice gives mastery, which applies a +10% bonus to all rolls with the skill. Talents are just like feats in D&D - each one gives you some ability you didn't previously have, and they can't be improved.

Speaking of D&D, there are a lot of similarities between game elements in D&D and WFRP. Advanced careers seem to map to prestige classes (actually, it's the other way around - advanced careers came first), talents map to skills, and most of the combat options map directly to options in D&D. The major difference is attacks of opportunity - the only time when these occur in WFRP is when characters withdraw from combat. Oh, and it's just not possible to fire most missile weapons while in melee range, rather than the D&Dism of them provoking AoOs.

Combat in WFRP is quick and simple. There are rules for a more complex system, and also a more complex armour system, but it strikes me that your better off just using simple and fast systems.

Allegedly, the magic system is the most overhauled part of the game. I wouldn't know. What I do know is that it's quick, easy, and matches the magic system from the miniatures game very well. All of these are good. Sadly, the spellcasting system does not match the rest of the attribute checks (since you have to roll Xd10 and beat a target), which is probably a weakness.

The book also includes brief details of the setting, which is something of a triumph. It's not the best setting ever invented. It's not particularly original (it's basically dark ages Europe, with the Empire being the Holy Roman Empire, Tilea being Italy, Brettonia being France, and so forth), but it is very flavourful. There's a kind of Conan/Cthulhu thing going on behind the scenes, which is nice. Basically, though, it's just a fun place to adventure, which is precisely what's needed.

This is a great game, and would provide a better introductory RPG than D&D in it's current incarnation. It's probably much better at the job than even the new Basic D&D set, although that's an unfair comparison since I haven't yet seen the latter. The fact that so many of the options can be pulled out, and particularly the fact that the insanity rules are optional (which makes a big difference - with a mature group you would want them in, but with a younger group - the Warhammer crowd - you want them left out), means that the game can be tailored to just what you want.

Best of all, the game already has adventure support - there's an adventure in the book, and a compilation of some old adventures already available, with more on the way. As I've noted before, this is not only a good thing, but almost indispensible for me these days.

The game's not perfect. There are some areas where I would have done things differently. However, this is not a system to house-rule. If you're playing this, it's probably best to play it as written, with only a note about which options you are and are not using. Anything else is overkill. But it is probably worth noting that this game is now my demo game of choice, and I'll probably have to pick up a second copy, so I can leave one at the club where I run those demo games. In short, this is a good one, and highly recommended.