Saturday 2 July 2011

Small But Vicious Dog Steals Hearts, Humps Leg

Remember that ill-advised B/X-WFRP hack I wurbled about a couple of months back? Done (apart from the last few magic item and monster descriptions).

All the other WFRP-ish goodness - drugs, diseases, insanity, mutation, gunpowder, chaotic magic, dorfs with mohawks, hot pies, giant angry puffins and so forth - is in there. Heck, I've even included rules to model that special WFRP "gods hate you; failure is law!" atmosphere.

Have a download, see what you think (critique and comment welcomed and appreciated):

Small But Vicious Dog ver0.3: Cover and Contents page
Small But Vicious Dog ver 0.3: The Gubbins

Also useful:
Chaos Mutations compilation by Andrew Fawcett

Small But Vicious Dog is dedicated to:

Erin "Taichara" Bisson for giving me the idea with the FF Red Box Hack,
Owen "Coopdevil" Cooper - the psychopomp of the Brit OSR,
and
Kelvin "brainsplurge" Green for mooting the idea of a B/X-WFRP modcop in the first place.

Oh, while I was pecking away at SBVD I discovered Warheart, a WFRP-style mod for the d20 system. It's pretty cool, but you can't call it a *proper* WFRP clone: there's no ratcatcher career FFS! *Tsk* Schoolboy error.

Tangentially related: Seeing as my long-time favourites the Fimir are finally getting some love (both from the grassroots, and from the Evil Empire itself*) after 20 years spend in the Squat Zone, you might be interested in this: Mr Saturday's Fimir army for WFB.

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* GW shamelessly mining their old IP instead of having a single new idea? Nah, never happen. ;)

25 comments:

  1. Oh, I have some comments and corrections. Is there an email to which I can send them, or shall I post them here?

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  2. I am totally digging on this. The writing is far more entertaining than most rules.

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  3. Interesting idea. I shall download it and had a look.

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  4. @Kel: chriskhogan (at) googlemail (dot) com. Treat my half-formed ideas rough!

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  5. This is officially MINT !

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  6. Utterly f'ing brilliant. Much better than Toffeehammer, my unpublished WFRP take upon Searchers of the Unknown.

    I'd completely forgotten about Razorbills.

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  7. Downloading now.

    BRILLIANT name, and the premise sounds like awesome. Thanks to JRients for pointing this out on Twitter or I might have missed it.

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  8. I may have to steal and use this immediately. Absolutely brilliant.

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  9. Well, that is just super!

    WFRP 1e used to (does) have characters making small, but real, advancements each session/adventure, what with 100EP being the standard reward. Having to actually kill things and gather some real wealth - not just enough to pay passage on the next ship out of town - means that characters will struggle to advance. Bravo! The hopeless battle to survive in a world that would be grimdark even without the Chaos Gods and the Underempire of the Ratmen is replicated in the advancement mechanics.

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  10. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  11. Check me into the chorus, friggin' superb.

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  12. Between this doc (which I find totally awesome but don't fully get, never having played Warhammer) and Kelvin's recent play report, my desire to play WFRP has increased manifold over the past few days!

    If I were to pick up a copy of the rulebook, any thoughts on whether 1e or 2e is better? From what I've read they sound pretty similar...

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  13. First edition WFRP is a wonderful thing to own, a big doorstop of a book filled with wonderful art and all the rules you'll ever need -- and some you will never need -- partly because they forgot to write any more and then sold the game to Hogshead.

    Second edition is much thinner, and the art isn't nearly as good. It's very much a post-D&D3 book, with full colour pages done in that faux-parchment look. It's a bit tidier, but lacks some of the character of the first.

    In terms of the rules, it's more or less the same system and the games are largely compatible. The second edition is a bit more streamlined and tidy, and there are proper magic rules, but that's about it. They're not quite as similar as two editions of Call of Cthulhu, for example, but they're more so than the average shift between D&D editions; think of it as the difference between D&D3 and D&D3.5, or the Savage Worlds editions: clear differences, but largely the same mechanics.

    The big barrier to entry is finding the books at a decent price. Forget about getting any of the sourcebooks, as you'll be priced right out, and be prepared to lurk on eBay for a while to grab a core rulebook for something less than an arm and a leg.

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  14. I'll have a look and will put up either a 'thoughts on' or a playtest review when I've had time to consider it properly. Might be a while as I'm teaching for a few weeks...

    Suffice to say for now that this is Highly Relevant To My Interests.

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  15. Chris, this is really, really good stuff.

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  16. Well written and funny, well done.

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  17. Looks good. Still going over it, but I like what I see.

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  18. This looks like a great deal of fun to try out--thanks for sharing this. The mental-infection will no doubt spread quickly...

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  19. @Kelvin: Crikey, I'd not realised WFRP 2e was so recent! I'll keep my eyes out for a copy of the 1st edition then for sure. Thanks for the rundown! (Faux parchment... so 2000! Why can't publishers just stick with the classic black text on white paper? ;)

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  20. Delightful. I particularly like the sections on madness and magic. I've also never played WFRP, now I think I might have to.

    And I wish I'd thought of that name.

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  21. Links are dead! What will I do?!?!?!?!

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  22. I just read this and must say I love it! Wonderful feel for what makes WHFRP so good.

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  23. Links to Mediafire fon't work anymore :(

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  24. @Aplus + mkotschi: Use the ver0.3 links in the sidebar up at the top, cheers.

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