Best Books >> Which 2E WFRP Rulebooks Are Top Notch?

I'm starting this thread based on a comment CapnZapp made in Jadrax's 3rd Edition thread:

CapnZapp wrote:My #1 wish:

That the publisher embraces the idea of giving modules enough ambition and adequate space.

Don't try to cram an ambitious project into a thin book. Don't do things half-baked. Don't try to do two things in a (small) book.

The Warhammer fans expect only the highest quality and buy no compromises. Any deviation from this gets punished harshly in reviews and commentary, as you all know. But when Warhammer is done right, I would like to say that the same critical fans can be very generous with their praise as well.

If there was one thing that restricted or reduced the value of most BI books it was the perceived lack of ambition, most pressingly manifested by a ungenerous page count.

This got me to thinking -- just what are the "high quality" books fans are looking for? Which ones have the best value... and conversely, which ones were disappointments? What was it about those "best" books that really impressed you?

... For me, two shining examples would be the Tome of Corruption and Renegade Crowns.

Tome of Corruption has lots of good flavor and background information on the incorporation of chaos and corruption in the Old World, as well as tons and tons of immediately useful information to use at the table -- from new foes, adding odd mutations to cultists, and myriad plot hooks to weave into a campaign. I also like the careers for followers of the Ruinous Powers, as either an interesting idea for a chaos campaign, or the ability to develop some very twisted key enemies to throw against the players.

Renegade Crowns really surprised me. I think the region generation system they presented is a pretty unique, robust and very usable system for creating fantasy geography, with tons of charts and tables to either flesh out regions or at the least provide some inspiration. And while the book deals with the Border Princes region specifically, there's a lot of good information about politics and rulership that you could easily use this information in other parts of the Old World. It also provides quite a few new basic career options, such as the Muleskinner and Badlander.

It'd be Realm of the Ice Queen, Children of the Horned Rat and Night's Dark Masters in my case. RotIQ is on the winning side because of the gorgeous maps and decent content (though the lack of gazetteer hurts). CotHR manages to bring a lot of the tabletop stuff made for the Ratmen into WFRP quite smoothly (though the writers' own inventions, such as the Farsqueaker, are tougher to accept). Finally, the detailed history of the Undead and of the early Human civilisations, as well as trappings for the Vampire careers, make NDM outstanding.

I thank you for your time

Lord Gorthuar de Veris
Cult of Nagash

I would have to give my vote for Tome of Salvation. Many other books are more fascinating but this is currently the only book which I just have to take with me to each gaming session. Religion has so heavy influence to whole old world that every session with a little nod to way people take the world makes it more interesting.

As a someone who's very much a fan of the first edition my answers to this come from a very specific angle. That is: What is useful to me?

The rulebook is very useful. It's got some great ideas in it that I can use. There's probably way too much in it I object to to class it as 'top-notch'. Still, there's a great deal that's useful.

RoS was a really interesting read and for me it's top notch.

ToC has is a good book, but repeats so much from the RoC books that it doesn't see that much use.

ToS is a major contribtion to the WFRP myhos and is undoubtedly up there for me.

WC is a treasure trove.

NDM and CotHR are both also ace books. There are things in both of them I don't particularly like but overall they provide excellent, if specialised, material.

I quite liked the new adventure in Plundered Vaults. Again there was a lot of repetition so it probably can't get a 'top-hole' rating.

TTT, whilst having significant flaws, contained a lot that I think I'll find useful. I'll probably run the campaign in some form eventually too. Can't give it a top rating though.

TiT is a decent adventure with an excellent premise, but really needed a lot more room to get the best out of it.

So on that basis: ToS, RoS, WC, NDM, and maybe CotHR. If I was comparing them with the best of the 1st edition books I'd probably be a bit tougher and only pick ToS, WC and NDM.

Oops, I totally forgot about RotIQ. That'd be up there too, decent book. I also forgot about SH. A good book for sure, but I've been developing my own vision of the Empire for so long that it was always likely to clash in some respects. On a purely personal level it can't make a top rating as a result.

BTW, the Farsqueaker comes from Bill King's Skavenslayer (but yes it is very silly, but so are Dwarf steamships, gyrocopters and Daemon Slayers in D:S&S).

Hopefully RC will make a good draught excluder.

Tomb Of Salvation is fantastic, its hard to fault it tbh.
Nights Dark Masters is very good as well, and I would happily buy a book by the same team no matter the content.
The Warhammer Companion has a lot of really nice stuff in it, mixed with stuff I would never use myself. I quite like the format though, 1st edition used have several books that where just full of crazy stuff like this.

In general I think the ones that suffer the most are the ones with far two low a page count for the topic, (Knights of the Grail, Spires of Altdorf,) ones that haven't been proofread at all (Tomb of corruption), and the ones that do not mesh with the rules or indeed background (Karak Azgul)

Overall my scrores for the line are

Name                       Usefulness Likeability

Corebook                   *****      ****

Old World Armoury          *****      ***

Warhammer Companion        ****       *****

Tome of Salvation          ****       *****

Realms of Sorcery          ****       ****

Sigmar's Heirs             ****       ****

Nights Dark Masters        ***        *****

The Thousand Thrones       ***        ****

Children of the Horned Rat ***        ****

Renegade Crowns            ***        ****

Tome of Corruption         ***        ***

Old World Bestiary         ***        ***

Lure of the Liche Lord     ***        **

Forges of Nuln             **         ****

Ashes of Middenhiem        **         ***

Realm of the Ice Queen     **         ***

Barony of the Damned       **         ***

Gamesmaster's Toolkit      **         ***

Plundered Vaults           **         **

Terror in Talabhiem        **         **

Gamesmaster's Pack         **         **

Knights of the Grail       **         *

Spires of Altdorf          *          **

Character Pack             *          **

Karak Azgul                *          *

The more obvious ones:

Realms of Sorcery - The best supplement on magic in the Empire there is. It's brilliant.

Tome of Salvation - Does for priests what RoS does for wizards. Likewise brilliant.

Tome of Corruption - Awesome piece of work, all the potential chaos hell you could ever want to unleash on a party. And more magic items then you can shake a stick at. Some of which are easily adapted to a shinier, more good-guy type if thats what you want.

Old World Beastiary - A bunch of monster fluff, stats, and rules for running them as well as neat mounts, rules for special abilities, etc. A great overview. Quality writing, and divided to a fluff section for the players and a GM section with all the crunchy bits.

And more controversial ones:

Knights of the Grail - I loved this book. Some people didn't. It breaks down the Realm of Bretonnia and makes the people approachable and playable while providing many new options and an interesting, amusing culture. Worthy, but it rubbed some people the wrong way; choose for yourself.

Nights Dark Masters - Does for vampires what ToC did for chaos; on a smaller, softcover scale with less magic bling. Makes vampires approachable and usable as understandable and still-scary antagonists. But, some people didn't like this either. Your mileage may vary.

Sigmars Heirs - The definitive book of the empire. Lots of gazeteers and information on Imperial provinces plus a few fun careers. It's nice, even for me, whose less of a crunch guy.

Renegade Crowns - Rules for making your own Border Prince region. Some people hated it for this. I loved it, and have used it for WFRP as well as other RPG's. It's a good supplement in general.

I've heard great things about Children of the Horned Rat and Realm of the Ice Queen, but I don't have either, so I can't give a fair review.

Old World Armoury is great, but the prices in it are unbelievably absurd and badly put together.

I really enjoy "Children of the Horned Rat" and "Sigmar's Heirs".

Id say the top 2 are essential, the next 3 are very useful, then after that they are specific subjects that are only useful if you are planning to use their subject area.

Tome of salvation, brilliant, really helps you get to grips with religion, one of the most, if not the most, important part of the old world.

Tome of corruption, very good, cover everything from lowliest cultists to ravening hordes of Kurgan to daemons, although it focus' on the human rather than the daemonic. Really a must for understanding the big bad. If you can find the GW fluff publication Liber Chaotica its good too, or even the old realm of Chaos books although they are V1 oriented or simply fluff (LC)

Realms of sorcery...good info on how magic is viewed and illegal stuff like things like hedge wizards witches etc. Magic is of no interest to me from a character POV or even as a significant part of the plots I some up with but I still found this an interesting read.

Sigmars Heirs. Pretty much essential for Empire info, but could have had a bit more to it I feel.

Bestiary. Only really needed if you plan on using non human opponents. I actually found the main rule book to be adequate (although Im probably in a very small minority on that one). Its fluff section is good at showing you the monsters mindset and peoples view of monsters and I think its worth it for that.

Real of the Ice Queen. Lovely fluff and rules, not an area Im interested in but a good read.

Nights Dark Masters. Never really used this. A good book, I just dont like vampires.

Knights of the grail. Didnt really like this for some reason. Again, i think its the subject matter rather than the quality of the book.

Renegade crowns. A nice idea as a sort of country generator but probably not too useful.

Warhammer companion. Didnt like this one.

PS..Captainflakk....Is your avatar a rabbit smoking a bong?!?...It is isn't it?...heh.

PPS. Warriorpoet...Im not even going to start on yours...

...seriously, that thing is freaky...

I hope he doesn't read this, least his Ego go nuke, but any work Steve Darlington worked on is prime quality.
I remmember some time ago, when I asked who the fuck was this guy and why the fuck everyone treated him with honours. Then they mentioned he wrote some WFRP books... my favorites, and I don't think it was a coincidence.

So... The Big books are Top Notch: Rulebook, RoS, ToC & ToS - The Elite Four.

Also, top notch supplements: RotIQ, CotHR, NDM.

The crappiest are, IMHO, Karak Azghal, which is utterly useless and KotG, which is utterly badly written.

Tome of Corruption just annoys me, if it did not have huge sections of text that where cut and pasted into the wrong place, often duplicating what had gone on before, it would rate up there as an excellent book, but in its current state its just shoddy.

scumofsociety wrote:

PS..Captainflakk....Is your avatar a rabbit smoking a bong?!?...It is isn't it?...heh.

LOL. Not my rabbit if it is any consolation, nor any rabbit I know=

#1 ToS
#2 SH
#3 NDM

Worst books were Renegade Crowns and the PoTD books. The PoTD books should have been twice the page count. They were like heavily edited movies with no continuity. I hated RC so much, I took it back to the store.

Realm of Chaos was meh... to much rehash of old material for the cost$.

Special mention goes to LotLL. It was free, and I dig traps.

planetcore wrote:

Realm of Chaos was meh... to much rehash of old material for the cost$.

surely you mean Tome of Corruption...or were you being ironic?

This is one of those question that I find very hard to answer, a lot is based on the game world I am running.

OWA, Sigmar's Heirs and Companion are great but used off and on, wonderful reads for ideas and fleshing out the world.

Tome of Salvation, Realms of Sorcery, Tone of Corruption, are used all the time and provide alternatives for characters. Wonderful reads for ideas and fleshing out the world.

Children of the Horned Rat and Nights Dark Masters are good but if your game does not use Skaven & vampires, not much use.

Same can be said for Realm of the Ice Queen, Regegade Crowns, and Border Princes, if you don't game there they are just good and fair reads.

scumofsociety wrote:

planetcore wrote:

Realm of Chaos was meh... to much rehash of old material for the cost$.

surely you mean Tome of Corruption...or were you being ironic?

Yes, sorry. I meant ToC.

Drakar wrote:I hope he doesn't read this, least his Ego go nuke, but any work Steve Darlington worked on is prime quality.

I remmember some time ago, when I asked who the fuck was this guy and why the fuck everyone treated him with honours. Then they mentioned he wrote some WFRP books...

Not sure if it was me that pointed it out to you

I do agree, his stuff is very good, and its an honour to be working for him on the Estalia Project.

Apart from the rulebook, the best books for me are:

ToC, ToS, CotHR, NDM, RotIQ

Not that I've not used elements from other books, but these seem to be the ones I've used the most.

Tor wrote:

I do agree, his stuff is very good, and its an honour to be working for him on the Estalia Project.

Same here.

Gorthuar wrote:It'd be Realm of the Ice Queen, Children of the Horned Rat and Night's Dark Masters in my case. RotIQ is on the winning side because of the gorgeous maps and decent content (though the lack of gazetteer hurts). CotHR manages to bring a lot of the tabletop stuff made for the Ratmen into WFRP quite smoothly (though the writers' own inventions, such as the Farsqueaker, are tougher to accept). Finally, the detailed history of the Undead and of the early Human civilisations, as well as trappings for the Vampire careers, make NDM outstanding.

I thank you for your time

Lord Gorthuar de Veris
Cult of Nagash

Oh, the Farsqueaker is not an invention from the author of CotHR. The Farsqueaker first appeared in one of the "Felix and Gotrek" novels. I think it was in "Skavenslayer". The grey seer Thanquol used it.

OK, my list (on a scale of 1-10):

WFRP Core Rulebook (Hardcover, Full Colour, 256 pages): 9
It's clear, well written, good (streamlining of v.1) rules (for the most part, Encumbrance comes to mind), oozes atmosphere and most important of all, it brought this great game back from life support and returned it to us all! Plus: Tzeentch's Curse rocks the world!

Realms of Sorcery (Hardcover, Full Colour, 256 pages): 8
It is good at what it covers, and makes WFRP magic truly unique from magic in other games, but it covers too little; petty magic, lesser magic, more rituals (particularly for creating magic items), specific Magister careers (like Magister Vigiliant from NDM) etc. are all absent. Also, the adventure has a wonderful setting but not so good a plot, and adventures in sourcebooks are a waste of space to me; they should be in books like 'Plundered Vaults'.

Tome of Corruption (Hardcover, Full Colour, 256 pages): 9
This book is so crammed full of ideas that it's almost impossible not to find some use for it, and I like most of those ideas. Particular highlights are the chapters on 'Chaos theory', Cults, Norsca, Chaos Warriors and Sorcerers, and Deamons, but practically everything is good. Yes, the editing errors and typos are dreadful, but they don't reduce the value of the book for me.

Tome of Salvation (Hardcover, Full Colour, 256 pages): 9
Again a wonderful book, limited in scope (rightfully so, in my opinion), but very thorough in what it covers. In particular, I just love all the different and contradicting (and conflicting!) ways of worship, and most of all the 'small gods to be elaborated on by you the players' (which I've been doing to my hearts content). The only thing missing is more rituals (as the authors conceded), but that's forgivable.

Old World Armory (Hardcover, Full Colour, 128 pages): 6
Not bad, but not very good either; a lot of redundant material, but then again, also a few new weapons and armour, as well as a slew of nice 'background' things like clothes, household items, and businesses and rarely used but still useful things like hirelings. Hardly essential, but it still adds more depth to the world.

Old World Bestiary (Hardcover, Full Colour, 128 pages): 8
The first part is very, very good; an series of in-world perspectives on the various creatures that threathen humanity; many are funny and all contain both truth and falsehood, making these entries perfect for 'enlightening' your players. The second part is pure rules and stats for these creatures; solid, but not particularly exciting, a useful resource, nothing more, nothing less.

WFRP Companion (Softcover, Black and White, 128 pages): 8
This is a grab bag by design, so you'd expect hits and misses, but luckily its goodies are for the most part of high quality. In general the in-depth articles on life in the Empire (trading, river-life, medicine etc.) are very nice, and so is the 'appendix' to the OWB. The two Tilean cities (Tobaro and Sartosa) are also good, though the absence of maps, or even sketches, reduces their value somewhat. Other things either did not excite me (like the Gunpowder shop and the 'Cult of Illumination') or should have been put elsewhere (like the Gunnery School of Nuln). In general, though, it'll be a rare person who doesn't get anything out of this.

Sigmar's Heirs (Hardcover, Full Colour, 128 pages): 8
An essential book for WFRP, as the Empire is the heart of the Old World! The sections on history, government and the Provinces are what makes this book so useful; I wouldn't go to Averland or Ostermark without it! Again, the adventure takes up space that could be used better (though it is not bad at all).

Knights of the Grail (Hardcover, Full Colour, 128 pages): 8
No, it is not v.1 Bretonnia. Yes it is still a very nice addition to the 'playing field', and suitably 'grim and perilous' in it's own way. No, the new monsters are not all good, and the adventure is just plain bad (though I like the beginning). Yes, it brings this land into it's own, different from the Empire but nearly as interesting. All in all, as good as could reasonably be expected.

Renegade Crowns (Hardcover, Full Colour, 128 pages): 7
Either you like it for what it is, or you dislike it for what you think it should have been. For me, it is the former, but I understand the latter very well. The 'region generator' is good, the 'how to play the rise and fall of a prince' is good, and though it could have benefitted from things like mass combat rules and managing systems, I can understand the author's decision not to include them.

Realm of the Ice Queen (Softcover, Full Colour, 144 pages): 8
A good look at the land of Kislev. Highlights include the extensive city descriptions for Erengrad, Kislev and Praag, the beautiful maps of the cities and the country as a whole (mr. Law does it again), the clear explanations of the society, culture and politics of Kislev, two new kinds of Arcane Magic (Ice Witches and Hags), three new Divine Lores (Dahz, Tor and Ursun), a small bestiary, and the rules for freezing to death on the cold plains. About the only thing that could have been better is the description of the countryside, as it is very short for the amount of terrain it is meant to cover. Once again, there is an adventure to waste space, but thankfully, it is short (and of reasonable quality).

Children of the Horned Rat (Hardcover, Full Colour, 128 pages): 9
A very good book. If you want to feature Skaven prominently, this is nearly essential. Very complete, the only thing missing is a few careers for 'Skaven hunters'. Chapter I (an 'intra-world' manifest on the truth about Skaven) is one of the best things I have read in WFRP books so far. Other highlights are the notes on Skaven culture, personality and roleplaying, and the (admittedly rarely used) rules for Clan Skyre Warplock Engineering.

Nights Dark Masters (Softcover, Full Colour, 144 pages): 8
A solid covering of the subject; Vampires. Again, only needed if you use the bloodsuckers, but hey, what did you expect? The 'intra-world' manifest is not as good as that of CotHR, but on the other hand we do get more careers for the brave souls who fight the 'Lords of the Night'. Special recommendations for the colourful history, the many possible powers and weaknesses of the Vampires, Greater Necromancy, the non-'White-Wolf-goth-melodrama' attitude to Vampire morality, Andy Laws map of Sylvania, and the 'God of the swamp behind the Chicken Pen'.

Plundered Vaults (Hardcover, Black and White, 96 pages): 7
Two great adventures ('Rough Night' and 'Sing for your Supper') three adequate ones ('Grapes of Wrath', 'For love or Money' and 'Carrion Call') that have nice ideas, but need work, and one bad one ('the Haunting Horror') that is not worth saving. All in all, not bad.

Ashes of Middenheim (Hardcover, Black and White, 96 pages): 6
The city part is worth a 7; too short, but adequate. The adventure is only a 5 however; to many inconsistencies and lost opportunities. Only for newbies, or those who don't mind doing a complete overhaul.

Spire of Altdorf (Hardcover, Black and White, 96 pages): 4
The city is utterly inadequate; a 3, and the adventure, while having some nice ideas, is plagued by logical flaws and a 'intrigue' system that needs a critical hit; a 5. Skip this one.

Forges of Nuln (Hardcover, Black and White, 96 pages): 6
Again, the city is a 7; it gives a good feel and all the essentials, but could have benefitted from more pages. The adventure is a 5; the main plot is just not good, though some of the side plots are worth using on their own.

Terror in Talabheim (Hardcover, Black and White, 96 pages): 8
The city is once more shorthanded, but nevertheless quite good (8 ) The adventure has a great plot and execution, but in parts it needs extensive elaboration (though no essential changes) to make it work (8 ). If this were properly sized, it would easily score 9.

Barony of the Damned (Hardcover, Black and White, 96 pages): 8
A good and lengthy description of Mousillon and surroundings, full of adventure ideas, and even the premisses for a great campaign (8 ). The adventure is quite nice in itself, though it barely touches on the plots examined in the first part (8 ). For me, this self-containedness is OK, as it is not necessary to have a world-changing event in every adventure.

Karak Azgal (Hardcover, Black and White, 96 pages): 6
The 'above ground' part is wonderful, a WFRP-style 'Keep on the Borderlands', full of intrigue, corruption and adventure waiting to happen (7) the 'dungeon', however, is just a cheap version of Undermountain; good for old fashioned 'Dungeon-crawling' but not much else (5). Still, the 'Town' part makes it a nice product, as long as you realize that once below, you are on your own.

Lure of the Liche Lord (Softcover, Black and White, 128 pages): 7
It's a Dungeon. A good dungeon, with very extensive description and an elaborate background. A deadly (though not 'killer') dungeon,which can easily kill even an experienced party. A dungeon integrated into it's surroundings, with many plots to to make a great story. Probably the best kind of Dungeon WFRP can support. Still, it's a dungeon, and I'm just not that fond of those.

The Thousand Thrones (Softcover, Black and White, 256 pages): 7
The overall plot had great potential, but was brought down under the weight of the requirements put on it. Many of the individual chapters, however, are good to excellent and require only a bit of work to use as independent adventures. The other chapters (ecept, sadly, the final one) at least provide you with inspiration and source material to be used for adventures of your own.

WFRP Character Pack (50 Character Sheets + 16 page softcover booklet): 5
The sheets are useful if you don't want to copy from the book or print from what's on the web; the booklet has nothing (except long lists of (N)PC names) that is not in the rulebook. Pretty useless, unless you want the sheets or the names. OOP, and probably not in reprint.

WFRP GM's pack (softcover screen (3 'A4.5' pages) and softcover booklet (32 pages)): 5
The Screen is awful, a third of the booklet is material from the rulebook. It's redeeming features are the adventure in the first half of the book, which is quite nice, and some maps for 'stock' Inns, Tollhouses and Villages, which are reprinted from the v.1 Rulebook, and are moderately useful if you do not own said book. OOP, and definitely not in reprint.

GM's toolkit (Hardcover (screen, 4 'pages') and Softcover ( booklet, 32 pages)): 8
A sturdy screen with nice art, a good map of the empire, and mostly useful tables, plus a booklet with a lot of encounter ideas; what's not to like?

Character folio (Softcover, 24 A5 pages): 7
A very elaborate character sheet; nice, but some strange choices (like a Tzeentch's curse checklist) that are wastes of space for most characters keeps the score down a bit.

One purely statistical observation, my good Doctor: You might want to reduce your scale from 5-10 to 1-5.

Or why do you have grades below a 5 if even this (supposedly average) grade means "skip this one"?

When I see your scores I come to think of the IMDB scores, where any grade below 6.0 really is a very very low grade...

(Yes, this has bothered me for quite some time

)

I would be genuinely interested in knowing what your scores would be if you had to regrade based upon the rpg.net scales, for instance!

Regards,
Zapp

CapnZapp wrote:One purely statistical observation, my good Doctor: You might want to reduce your scale from 5-10 to 1-5.

Or why do you have grades below a 5 if even this (supposedly average) grade means "skip this one"?

Because it needs to be clear just how inadequate this product is.

Oh, and btw; some of the parts of PotD gat a 4, with subsections even a 3, so it's not a 5-10, but 3-10 spread.

CapnZapp wrote:
When I see your scores I come to think of the IMDB scores, where any grade below 6.0 really is a very very low grade...

Well the education system I'm used to runs on an 1-10 scale, with 5 (technically, 5.4) or below meaning you've failed the test or exam or whatever, so that's the meaning behind my numbers.

CapnZapp wrote:
I would be genuinely interested in knowing what your scores would be if you had to regrade based upon the rpg.net scales, for instance!

I, OTOH, have a bit of difficulty with the rpg.net schales, because I find them too crude; I read their 1-5 scale as a simplified version of an 1-10 scale: 1 = 1-2, 2 = 3-4 3 = 5-6, 4 = 7-8, 5= 9-10. Thus, I personally prefer the finer degrees of 1-10.

Neveretheless, I will do a quick rpg.net rating (1-5) for all the books without explanation, as the latter is already found above (not so much for style, but that is quite subjective anyway).

N.B.: In the 'style' department, my main criterium is the writing; with art taking a secondary place and typos/editing mistakes etc. coming in third in importance.

WFRP Core Rulebook (Hardcover, Full Colour, 256 pages):
Style: 4
Substance: 5

Realms of Sorcery (Hardcover, Full Colour, 256 pages):
Style: 4
Substance: 4

Tome of Corruption (Hardcover, Full Colour, 256 pages):
Style: 4
Substance: 5

Tome of Salvation (Hardcover, Full Colour, 256 pages):
Style: 5
Substance: 5

Old World Armory (Hardcover, Full Colour, 128 pages):
Style: 3
Substance: 3

Old World Bestiary (Hardcover, Full Colour, 128 pages):
Style: 5
Substance: 4

WFRP Companion (Softcover, Black and White, 128 pages):
Style: 3
Substance: 4

Sigmar's Heirs (Hardcover, Full Colour, 128 pages):
Style: 4
Substance: 4

Knights of the Grail (Hardcover, Full Colour, 128 pages):
Style: 3
Substance: 4

Renegade Crowns (Hardcover, Full Colour, 128 pages):
Style: 3
Substance: 4

Realm of the Ice Queen (Softcover, Full Colour, 144 pages):
Style: 4
Substance: 4

Children of the Horned Rat (Hardcover, Full Colour, 128 pages):
Style: 5
Substance: 5

Nights Dark Masters (Softcover, Full Colour, 144 pages):
Style: 4
Substance: 4

Plundered Vaults (Hardcover, Black and White, 96 pages):
Style: 3
Substance: 4

Ashes of Middenheim (Hardcover, Black and White, 96 pages):
Style: 3
Substance: 3

Spires of Altdorf (Hardcover, Black and White, 96 pages):
Style: 3
Substance: 2

Forges of Nuln (Hardcover, Black and White, 96 pages): 6
Style: 3
Substance: 3

Terror in Talabheim (Hardcover, Black and White, 96 pages):
Style: 4
Substance: 4

Barony of the Damned (Hardcover, Black and White, 96 pages):
Style: 4
Substance: 4

Karak Azgal (Hardcover, Black and White, 96 pages):
Style: 3
Substance: 3

Lure of the Liche Lord (Softcover, Black and White, 128 pages):
Style: 3
Substance: 3

The Thousand Thrones (Softcover, Black and White, 256 pages):
Style: 4
Substance: 3

WFRP Character Pack (50 Character Sheets + 16 page softcover booklet):
Style: 3
Substance: 2

WFRP GM's pack (softcover screen (3 'A4.5' pages) and softcover booklet (32 pages)):
Style: 2
Substance: 3

GM's toolkit (Hardcover (screen, 4 'pages') and Softcover ( booklet, 32 pages)):
Style: 4
Substance: 4

Character folio (Softcover, 24 A5 pages):
Style: 4
Substance: 3

NB: If you compare these numbers with the ones I gave above on the 1-10 scale, you'll see that the 'Style' and 'Substance' combined tend to be the same as the number on the earlier post. This is not deliberate, but neither is it entirely coincidental. 'Substance' is a direct conversion of the 1-10 to a 1-5 scale according to the interpretation given above (1 = 1-2, 2 =3-4 etc.), while 'Style' just tends to be of the same level as substance anyway*, so # Substance (= # 1-10 Substance/2) + # Style (= # Substance, more or less) = # 1-10 Substance.

I did not give 'Style' in the earlier post, because, as I said, it's quite subjective, and, to me, not so importat compared to Substance.

* this is not always the case, of course, but it's remarkable how often it is.

The best, eh?

Tome of Salvation, Night's Dark Masters, Realm of the Ice Queen. BI really got onto their stride in 2007, which makes it even greater shame that they were axed just as they really got things rolling smoothly.

It's actually not necessarily an easy question to answer. Some supplements are undoubtedly handy, some might say essential, but still have significant flaws (RoS), others be very well done and great reads but may not actually be so useful (OWB).

From my fairly erratic buying I'd pick ToS as being a top-notch supplement. It isn't perfect but it is a proper attempt to breathe life into an important part of the game and I'd certainly recommend it.

SH is somewhat workmanlike and marred is by the lack of useable maps and but remains a good book.

WC is a concept that I like. Its contents are more hit and miss than some, but overall I like it.

Tor wrote: its an honour to be working for him on the Estalia Project.

I'd like to think you're working WITH me, more than FOR me.

But thanks guys. I'm very touched. I - we! - work very hard on our books, it's really good to get feedback, even the bad stuff. But the good stuff is especially nice, cos let's face it, we're not in this hobby for the money...

Drakar wrote:I hope he doesn't read this, least his Ego go nuke, but any work Steve Darlington worked on is prime quality.

No chance of that - I'm a chronic depressive.