Games Workshop announce Necromunda RPG

Necromunda Roleplay

A box set with miniatures for four intro characters and five enemies, blank character sheets and a screen as well as a rulebook.

I remember when Games Workshop got out of the RPG business, so strange to see them getting back in.

The Masque Of The Red Death

The Masque Of The Red Death on the big screen for Roger Corman’s centenary!

And now I want to run Warhammer.

The Emperor Protects

The Emperor Protects: A Warhammer 40,000 Musical

Doing it RENT style really pushes it over the line.

Adventure Calendar 2025 8: The Pied Piper

Adventure Calendar 2025

8: The Pied Piper Of Hamelin

Dick Whittington made his fortune catching rats and that reminded me of another story about a highly successful rat catcher who had more trouble getting paid: The Pied Piper Of Hamelin.

A town has a serious rat problem, and a guy in a strange costume comes and says he can make all the rats leave, the town elders agree to pay him if he can, and he plays a magic pipe and the rats line up and follow him out of town. And now the town elders go back on the deal. So the piper switches to a different tune that night and leads all the town’s children away, and they are never seen again.

The lesson here is pay your freelancers.

We’re entering the Scarred For Life part of the fairytale collection here, aren’t we?

Sure, there are versions where the town elders pay up and the kids return, or the piper takes them to a nicer place where people pay their bills, but those are adjustments. There are also versions where he leads the rats to the river to drown and you are left to draw your own conclusions about what happens to the kids.

We had a picture book of this when I was little, and the piper was colorful, elfin and a little bit sinister.

Disney actually made this as a short in 1933, with one of the nice endings, but see also this classic creepy stop motion animated film by Jiří Barta (trailer) and the not much less creepy version from Cosgrove Hall. Compare the version with Donovan for a less devilish take.

There’s also a DC villain turned hero in The Flash rogues’ gallery and the time a Dire Wraith does it in ROM: Spaceknight.

Rat Catchers are of course the archetypal not-really-heroes of Warhammer Fantasy Role-play, but come with a Small But Vicious Dog rather than magical pipe. Skaven seem to prefer drums and bells, which feels like a missed opportunity.

For magical rodent problems that definitely aren’t panto fare, see the story of Bishop Hatto.

And pipes in general are a bit sketchy in fairytales...

Catch A Rat Today

Ah, the most basic MMO mission, get ten rats out of a basement. But where are they all coming from? Is there a Rat king or other guiding intelligence behind this? Is it targeting specific victims? Maybe a nightclub attacked using Animalism in Vampire...

Adventure Calendar 2025 7: Snow White

Adventure Calendar 2025

7: Snow White

Seven. See what I did there?

Founding Disney Princess, Snow White has the rightful heir to a throne cast down by her stepmother, threatened due to vanity and forced to escape, taking refuge with Dwarfs (not Dwarves) and saved from apparent death by true love’s kiss.

This story has had plenty of deconstructions and reconstructions, including Snow White And The Huntsman taking direct influence from Warhammer Fantasy as well as Snow White: A Tale Of Terror, several central roles in Once Upon A Time, and the recent live-action-ish Disney remake.

(There’s always been some horror in the mix, the Disney version models the Queen’s transformation on Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde.)

How much agency Snow has varies from version to version - the Disney version is actually pretty active, though she doesn’t get into any sword fights.

But you can still get miniatures for them.
(This set is from the 40s or 50s.)

Also there’s a kinda evil or just unhelpful magic mirror. I’m all about that.

Who Is The Fairest

A vain monarch takes against one of the PCs or someone close because they just happen to be better at something the monarch takes pride in. Reason to drive them out, and possibly a self-perpetuating problem...

Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play 5

WFRP 5 announced.

Oh. I haven’t done anything with 4 yet beyond generating a character for the January challenge.

RPGaDAY 2025 26 - Nemesis

#RPGaDAY2025

26 - Nemesis

I’ve written before about how to make a good recurring villain, including the time I made a pretty good nemesis for the central hero of The Watch House.

Face time. Power and weaknesses. Betrayal and otherwise making it personal. Metaphor. Neat gimmicks. Bigness.

I find it helps to have them annoy one or more PCs beyond the plot specific. And it’s pretty much essential to have them appear somewhere the PCs can’t just kill them.

Take a look at Indiana Jones’s assorted enemies and how Belloq in Raiders is the one that feels like a nemesis. An old rival with the same quest and a history of stealing Indy’s victories, happy to have a chat (when surrounded by armed thugs) and showing some human feeling at least involving Marion. He’s the one who talks Indy down from destroying the Ark. And his fatal flaw is that he did what he warned Indy about at the start - he chose the wrong friends.

But with the word Nemesis in particular I want to talk about Nemesis The Warlock.

If you met me aged about 15 to 18 there's around a 20% chance I was wearing this T-shirt.

Nemesis is a long-running 2000 A.D. comic strip about an anarchistic alien wizard fighting a human supremacist theocracy called Termight with its army of Terminators. The setting has never had its own tabletop game unlike some of its fellow series, although we did get some Dice Man comic gamebook strips and a HeroClix figure, but it may have ever so slightly influenced Warhammer 40,000.

But it’s a more hopeful take where revolt can work, and good beings (and sometimes chaotic evil beings willing to work with them) can oppose and defeat oppressors.

26a - 5, 3, 3

Why, Proud, Genre

Your nemesis showing up to spoil your party (in a social situation where you can’t attack them) is one thing. How about a chance to do it to them in turn?

Runeslinger

RPGaDAY 2025 7 - Journey

#RPGaDAY2025

7 - Journey

I don’t really run travelling quest kinds of games. Not really intentionally, but my main games are squarely in the urban fantasy category, and a formative experience was The Enemy Within for Warhammer Fantasy focusing on investigations in various cities and towns.

I’ve certainly run games with settings of the week, but the travel between them is rarely a feature. Doctor Who can go anywhere and anywhen, but the travel in time travel only features very occasionally.

Should I try one?

Hmm, I could. But my main place to GM also has a lot of D&D so I would expect at least some to involve travel and quests.

But I suppose I could take the midnight train goin’ anywhere.

Though that might make me want to run a Glee game instead.

7a - 5, 7, 6

Why, Lucky, Art

A visit to a casino! Gambling! Shows! Suspicious happenings!

Runeslinger also featuring a Journey lyrics joke

Bonus: Polyhedral Nonsense taking the Journey joke further

RPGaDAY 2025 3 - Tavern

#RPGaDAY2025

3 - Tavern

Taverns are the kinds of places freelance adventurers meet patrons or hear rumours, and the details vary by setting.

But they’re also places where downtime can happen, which sometimes segues into other adventures. One of the first setting details established in Vampire: The Masquerade was the Succubus Club, because vampires hanging out in nightclubs and hunting there had already become a feature. And inverse of that, the Bronze was the most fun place among the standing sets for Buffy apart from the occasional monster attacks.

Adventures set in and around bars include the infamous barroom brawls like A Rough Night At The Three Feathers for Warhammer.

Freeform LARPS are often set around (and played at) bars and the like for similar reasons, if not in a more focused event like a diplomatic event.

And the next step is games set wholly or partly around bars and clubs and restaurants, with the PCs as regulars, owners or staff in the service and hospitality industry. Often fighting monsters who try to eat the patrons and the like. I’ve considered it with vampires running a cool club and done it with monster hunters staffing a pizza place.

3a - 3, 1, 8

Where, Envious, Lesson

Can the PCs get into that exclusive club opening? And will it really be worth it?

Autocratik

Runeslinger

Warhammer: The Old World: The New RPG

Warhammer: The Old World, with a new system with d10 dice pools, set a couple hundred years before Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.

Character Creation Challenge 2025 24: WAR

Character Creation Challenge 2025

24: WAR

What is it good for?

Since I mentioned Warhammer in medieval-ish fantasy, and now ancients, ways that musicians can find themselves in war. Regimental bands have mostly stopped playing music as they march into battle due to more modern ways of communicating, which is the kind of historical-fantasy-ish war I’m considering.

(They’re still around ceremonially, though. Here in Edinburgh, military and other bands from around the world play at the Military Tattoo at the Castle every year, showcasing a mix of traditional and modern instruments. With the right application and audition process you could be lead electric guitar for the Royal Marines.)

Bands in wartime will get into some of the same dangers as other soldiers, though they might be able to get out of some things, playing for parties for the brass instead of the big push.

Equally, civilian musicians and other entertainers could end up performing to troops on goodwill tours.

It’s a good gig for inserting secret agents too...

Players of the Delberz Irregulars

“War! A war! A war on the far side, on the other side of the planet”

Concept

The adventures of one of those musician command groups in Warhammer Fantasy Battles.

#RPGaDay2024 12 - RPG with well supported campaigns

#RPGaDay2024

12 - RPG with well supported campaigns

D&D by dint of time and money. Call Of Cthulhu likewise. Warhammer has The Enemy Within, now with a new ending as well as a hardback expansion and companion for each of its previous main releases. The World Of Darkness has Orpheus.

More recently, look for Gar Hanrahan.

12 - Well supported

What does a roleplaying game need to be or feel well supported? A core rulebook, some kind of intro quickstart, maybe a ‘regular’ adventure or two to show what kind of thing the game is actually built to do, perhaps an expanded setting book. If it needs special dice or cards or the like it’s good to have those available. Does it need tie-ins and spinoffs? Do they help anything more than overall visibility?

12b - Parallel Worlds

Something to drop on games with a suitable Weird Level, but with so many fun options there’s the temptation to overdo them and you end up like Xena: Warrior Princess.

For The Watch House I tried to restrict myself to one such A Whole New World episode per season. I may not have succeeded.

Of course there are series like Sliders and Loki that are all about them, which is also an option. GURPS Infinite Worlds and previous editions’ Time Travel are good starting points.

And you could let everybody play versions of one idea.

David Chapman

Runeslinger

#RPGaDay2024 10 - RPG you'd like to watch on TV

#RPGaDay2024

10 - RPG you’d like to watch on TV

Well duh.

Not wanting to say mine, and not wanting to say the obvious ones of mine based on TV shows already...

Warhammer Fantasy Role-play, in full grimdark ratcatching weird puns glory.

10a - TV

With its weekly schedule and long seasons pre-streaming-era TV was a good fit for episodic RPGs. And I’m not just saying that because the longest and most successful game I’ve ever run was a licenced TV show RPG.

10b - Steampunk

I prefer the actual Victorian aesthetic for VSF.

David Chapman

Runeslinger

Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom

Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom was fine I guess?

The first let Jason Momoa do more amiable hangout stuff, which was by far the best part of a largely functional lighthearted superhero movie.

Amber Heard got about eleven lines if you include three times she shouted while using her powers, but presumably they made the end credits before they cut half of her part as she’s still third billed.

The cephalopod secret agent was fun, could have had more of him.

It would be very nice to blame climate change on one guy.

Among the reused parts of other movies I expected to see - the Loki joke was a particularly bold move - I was surprised by an appearance by the suits from Planet Of The Vampires. Looking it up, director James Wan states it’s a reference, which I appreciate.

But for another reference which is more of a spoiler, I shall employ a meme. See below.

Adventure Calendar 2023 12: Warhammer

Adventure Calendar 2023

12: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay

I’ve done Warhammer midwinter and all already. But is mangling of history, myth and other fantasy stories means it wouldn’t be hard to do again.

A Mondstille Carol

A horrible old rich person claims that his house is haunted by spirits reminding him of his wrongdoing. What’s really going on? May involve regular spirits, a curse cast by surviving victims, Shallya trying to save a soul, Daemons of Law, business rivals Scooby-Dooing the whole thing, heroic con artists...

Warhammer stamps

Warrhammer 40th anniversary stamp sets. We live in strange times.

(Also, the stamp packs called Miniature Sets are always called that.)

Warhammer 40,000 new core rules

Ahead of the new edition big intro box, and the anniversary stamp set(!), the new core rules for Warhammer 40,000. Keywords!

Golden Demon Warhammer painting awards

The Golden Demon Award winners include some amazing miniatures painting work.

Warhammer TV

Warhammer coming to TV via Amazon, and possibly films as well. 40K, at least to begin with. Henry Cavill starring and executive producing. I wonder who as...

Thor: Love And Thunder teaser

“I need to figure out exactly who I am."

io9 analysis by Germain Lussier

Coming July 8th!