TOWR - 8 months later

 I've been playing Warhammer: The Old World RPG almost weekly since it was released, which is a little more than 8 months ago. How is it going?

Glad you asked! It is, mostly, going excellently. I'm using the various plots and hooks in the GMs guide to run the campaign, and far from running out of material, I've actually had to limit myself, and we're now in the "second half of the campaign" phase where the difficult work of a GM is starting to show up - slowly bringing everything towards a satisfying conclusion.

The game. It plays quickly, and I like it. The downtime system is really good, and my players are using the rules for investing money into assets to build a Myrmidian undead-hunting militia in Talagaad. Great stuff. 

The economy system works as long as you don't look TOO hard at it - if you have players who want to break it, or like shopping for stuff with everything they have, its not going to do much for you. But once everyone understood what the game is trying to do, and played with it rather than against it, we found that it supports a certain style of "building yourself up in a home location"-play very well.

The favors and contacts system is a bit weird. I think I'll have to rule that someone can become a contact through play, and not just through the appropriate downtime action. The favors themselves work pretty well, but my players aren't using them as much as I think they probably should - they seem to be afraid of them being collected. Granted, I have once or twice collected favours at inconvenient times (and once it led to a debacle of a troll-hunting expeditions)...

Combat works okay. Its not ideal for my personal style of GMing, but its not bad at all. I do find all the weird little rules on various enemies a bit tedious, and they can create some gotcha moments. For instance, a lot of minions have rules that automatically give someone +1d when they take the help action. Good enough, makes for quick play. But then you run into Orc boys. They give +1 success. That adds up very quickly, and in big combats with many boys requires some careful GMing to avoid bad feelings among players. I think I would have preferred it if they didn't make all these special rules, but just gave us statlines for the monsters and had the rules work normally for them. Might have played quicker too - more rolling, but less looking things up.

The setting... It's strange, once upon a time I was a 1st edition grognard who didn't like color magic. Now... I miss it. The color magic system, how the winds work etc has become part of how I describe the warhammer world, and its actually hard not to fall back on it. Of course, I can do that, but it feels like I shouldn't. Its also a bit weird to "know what is going to happen" in the history of the world. Sometimes good: the "oooooh"-moment when my players found out Thorgrim Ullekson is a mover and shaker behind the scenes was nice. But also it creates a very "metagamey" feel. I guess this might not be the same if your players aren't accomplished warhammer scholars.

Overall - Warhammer: The Old World RPG is a great game. I personally find it infinitely better than WFRP 4th edition, though YMMV. Indeed, I think its the best warhammer fantasy pen&paper game to date - though first and second editions of WFRP give it a run for its money in certain ways, TOWR is just a little bit more concise and creates fewer "bad" moments - just the fact that combat is less swingy, and that the help system works very well to include the entire group for important rolls, is enough to put it ahead of the pack.

I still think Cubicle 7 has done an amazing job on this game!