Overused/Underused >> Topics & Things In Extremes

I'm curious what y'all feel are some of the topics, items, trends, concepts etc. that are used in v2 in one extreme or another -- either extremly overused, or criminially underused. I'm most interested in these collective "things" treatment in the v2 canon and official released -- I know a lot of underused stuff was given more treatment in fan material, but that's not the focus here.

I'll kick things off...

Overused: Skaven. Yes, Children of the Horned Rat gave us a lot of great info on this insidious threat to the Empire. But for a threat that the majority of people in the Empire disbelieve or have not heard of, they are featured in a lot of content and material.

Underused: Halflings. They are one of the four core races, but have virtually no content supporting their position in Warhammer society, and very little mention in content. How about some more adventure hooks for halflings? Or a module in the Moot? Or some key halfling NPCs to integrate?

Underused: Cults. The evil that is mankind. Monsters are all well and good, but often the most frightening opponent is the opponent you never suspected -- the butcher down the street, the fishwife, the street merchant. We've got the occassional brigand or black-hat bad guy, but the subtle infiltration of cults, and the undermining of the Empire from within could use a lot more oomph. Tome of Corruption did a great job with this, but I'd like to see more references and ways to integrate cults and more cult-based scenarios and machinations in other sources.

Underused: Blackpowder/Technology. Blackpowder weapons are a big part of the feel of Warhammer, but very little detail and support goes into it. And based on the engineering savvy of Dwarfs, I'd expect to see more about contraptions, steam power and "technology" used in the Empire. The Skaven tech is well detailed and outlined in Children of the Horned Rat, but is very suspect, unreliable and dangerous -- so it's even more surprising that more commonplace, accepted and reliable technology is more or less missing.

I'd love to see more stuff on halflings, IMO they need to be developed as something more than comedy pie munchers.

Overused: Chaos hordes, come on... insane that the Chaos Horde hasn't eaten itself from within allready, and retreated back to the Wastes.

Underused: Orcs/Goblins, history has shown lots more invasions from the lovely greenskins, and yet it's the c33wl Skaven/Deamons that invade!

Overused: Vampires... no idea why, allways disliked their presence that close to the Empire.

Underused: High Elf politics, the masters of magic has to little voice when it comes to the Empire

Overused:

- Skaven; nuff said.

- Vampires; in TTT, that is.

- Chaos; both the cults and the warriors (though I would like to see some really good cults, the ones who actually have a shot at toppling the Empire).

Underused

- Greenskin; gotta love the gobbo's!

- Halflings; where is the 'complete book on the Mootfia'.

- Elves; I still don't know how to portray them as both genuinely alien and actually playable.

- Dwarves; there must be more to them than Trollslayers and Runecasters.

To state the blithingly obvious: the overused creatures are the ones on which sourcebooks have been published, the underused ones have no such luck. "Coincidence? I think not."

So, what we want is books on the Greenskins and non-human playable races!

Skaven I agree are certainly very overused.

Orcs and greenskins in general are criminally underused.

NPCs with unique mind altering abilities are starting to get on my nerves, there's two in TTT and the one in DotL was already one to many.

River Boats.. underused, I used to describe WFRP as Cuthulu meets Traveller in Renascence Germany, the Cuthulu elements are there but the Traveller aspect has gone far away.

Nurgle cultist butchers... Very overused.

Altdorf... criminally underused, indeed it is less developed than the Border Princes.

Criminally Overused
Beastmen, beastmen, beastmen, beastmen... theres no escaping these fellas - While I like the idea of some or all fringe villages being vulnerable it seems everywhere bar Altdorf and Nuln is swamped with the things. How does farming get done? How does logging get done? Tssk. Your never more than 6ft from a beastmen in the Old World (3ft from a skaven

Overused
Skaven - I like em for a change but as soon as anything occurs in a city, its the skaven... sigh

Criminally Underused
Religion - So Volkmar is a zombie brought to life by a demon prince while Esmer is rallying his followers in Marienburg... and this isnt used as a basis for a minor schism how? Or for the grand campaign of WFRP that could have torn the Sigmarite religion in half or for either side or a third party to try and tip the sides into open conflict or resolve the issue? HOW?

Underused
Anything Dwarvish or Halfling though I love the scenario at the end of RoS and its firebrand halfling and Pie generator

Some other things came to mind...

Underused: Non Sigmar/Shallya Religions: Aside from possibly some Taalists near Talabheim, there's virtually no integration of the pantheon of gods in content, especially the adventures and modules, other than Sigmarite priests and priestesses of Shallya... Where are the followers of Morr? What about a trickster trying to earn Ranald's favor? Or some Ulrican priests that are causing problems with the local Sigmarite faithful? And when was the last time Myrmidian priestesses formed up to throw back a threat? And remember Verena? She's actually a god, which is easy to forget since she's never mentioned.

ynnen wrote:I'm curious what y'all feel are some of the topics, items, trends, concepts etc. that are used in v2 in one extreme or another -- either extremly overused, or criminially underused.

Well, I'll start off by looking at the things you list:

Skaven - overused.

Halfings - not so much underused as not given a proper WFRP treatment. I have stricken them from my campaign, because they mainly just fill the role of a jolly old human anyways, as normally portrayed. They lack a second dimension.

Cult - overused. There are cults spilling out of the woodwork all over the place in WFRP. I would like to see less reliance on cults as a plot vehicle, instead focusing on personal motives. The butcher can be a bad guy without being in a cult, there can be criminal bands that are not followers of chaos, and so on.

Blackpowder/technology - underused. A I like it like that!

In my campaign the technology is the domain of crackpot inventors, and maybe gunsmiths. But that's about it.

My own list for now:

Overused - chaos. There are many other things that motivates people to commit dark deeds apart from chaos. Base greed, cruelty, desperation, stuff like that.

Tragedy - underused. In most situations where people are embroiled in things that adventurers have to take on, there is so much potential for portraying tragedy. The tragedy of Evil, or someting like that might be an appropriate term.

Magic - overused. At least in some of the published books, like Spires of Altdorf. There's just too much magic floating around.

/M

Here's a list on...

Doesn't contribute too much to the uniqueness of WFRP, a legacy that could perhaps be excised entirely

* Halflings
* Vampire blood lines (let's remove all vampires except the Carsteinian archetype)
* ...

MagnusSeter wrote:
Tragedy - underused. In most situations where people are embroiled in things that adventurers have to take on, there is so much potential for portraying tragedy. The tragedy of Evil, or someting like that might be an appropriate term.

Well, I'd be careful here. Some high profile official supplements suffers tremendously because their writers forgot to maintain the balance between lightness and seriousness.

Tragedy that means wallowing in misery and despair should be used with caution.

Tragedy as a reflection on human folly, and how the desperate search for power always comes back to bite you in the behind, on the other hand, is what WFRP is about imo.

That is, if done right, players of WFRP are observers to a crazy menagerie of strange and ludicrous personages which may be stereotypes but ultimately humanely understandable.

It is in this that WFRP is a "fantasy" - as PCs often get (or carve out) opportunities that your station, your means or just plain bad luck would have prevented you from taking advantage of in the "real" world.

So, tragedy should indeed be used as a sobering tool. But then right before the players start to squirm in discomfort, it should be broken off by action, or by comedy, or by something that just baffles them.

jadrax wrote:
Altdorf... criminally underused, indeed it is less developed than the Border Princes.

And we are thankful it should stay that way, at least if FFG doesn't plan to revisit the capital soon...

(I actually contemplated moving away from Altdorf in TT just because of SoA. Can't imagine a worse grade for a city supplement than that...)

Edit: Smilies reenabled.

CapnZapp wrote:

So, tragedy should indeed be used as a sobering tool. But then right before the players start to squirm in discomfort, it should be broken off by action, or by comedy, or by something that just baffles them.

Beautiful summary! I agree with every word of your post. It's also important to note that tragedy is just not someone doing something bad, or something bad happening to them. It's either people doing something bad because they are forced to it and then bad things happen to them (spiral of badness, sorta), or tons of bad stuff happening to people, who try, and try, and try to make life go on in spite of this.

Showing tragedy is showing that life aint fair, especially in the Old World.

/Magnus

Overused:

Middenheim - between the two editions, we've had two complete adventures set there. Granted the contrast between PBtT and AoM showed the effects of the SoC, but now it's time to move on.

Undead and Skaven - we now have three full adventures (Lichemaster, LotLL and BotD) with undead as the main antagonists and one campaign (TTT) featuring them prominently. There's a full Skaven adventure (TiT) and the ratmen make cameo appearances in most other adventures (which is fine, IMO). This is OK because there was a Chaos-heavy bias previously, but the balance should swing back to more equitable screentime for other baddies, IMO (see below). Especially since Undead and Skaven offer less roleplay potential than others.

Tired memes - maybe it's just forum banter, but there seems to be an over-reliance on the same old memes to capture the WFRP gestalt: Ratcatchers, sausages, beggars dying in the mud, pies, small but vicious dogs, witch hunters and Sigmar. I'm not saying these should be excised from the game, but we need to establish a brand new vocabulary of shorthand WFRP memes.

Underused:

Slaanesh - We haven't seen any adventures with proper Slaaneshi intrigue since DotR, and Slaanesh seems like it would be the most appealing choice to cultists. Would be nice to see more Slaaneshi taint in urban settings. All the other Chaos gods have gotten major screentime recently (although a Purple Hand update would be nice).

Other Villains - Would be nice to see more regular human villains (criminals, heretics, scheming nobles), lesser-used cults (Khaine, Stromfels and local gods like Bylorak) and lesser-used nonhumans (Chaos Dwarfs, Dark Elves, Ogres and yes, even Greenskins have gotten short shrift lately).

River Travel - as jadrax said, it's a staple of WFRP yet recent adventures tend to have the PCs plodding along roads.

Other parts of the Empire - Averland, Western Stirland, Ostland, Ostermark, Nordland

Rural settings - urban settings are great for WFRP and wilderness survival horror is hard to do well, but I think it's time.

Herr Arnulfe wrote:although a Purple Hand update would be nice

I thought there already had been one somewhere?

jadrax wrote:

Herr Arnulfe wrote:although a Purple Hand update would be nice

I thought there already had been one somewhere?

They're described in ToC, but I was thinking more in terms of having them incorporated into an adventure, since they're probably the most influential Chaos Cult in the Empire and their objectives/methods have likely changed considerably since TEW.

Herr Arnulfe wrote:

jadrax wrote:

Herr Arnulfe wrote:although a Purple Hand update would be nice

I thought there already had been one somewhere?

They're described in ToC, but I was thinking more in terms of having them incorporated into an adventure, since they're probably the most influential Chaos Cult in the Empire and their objectives/methods have likely changed considerably since TEW.

Just looked it up, you fight the remenents of them in Ashes of Middenheim.

jadrax wrote:

Herr Arnulfe wrote:

jadrax wrote:

Herr Arnulfe wrote:although a Purple Hand update would be nice

I thought there already had been one somewhere?

They're described in ToC, but I was thinking more in terms of having them incorporated into an adventure, since they're probably the most influential Chaos Cult in the Empire and their objectives/methods have likely changed considerably since TEW.

Just looked it up, you fight the remenents of them in Ashes of Middenheim.

Is that the Middenheim chapter or the cult in general? Logically they would've refocused their major operations to the southern Empire where things are a bit more stable.

Herr Arnulfe wrote:Is that the Middenheim chapter or the cult in general? Logically they would've refocused their major operations to the southern Empire where things are a bit more stable.

There really isn't a cult in general, it's a cell based organisation with next to no communication between chapters.

jadrax wrote:

Herr Arnulfe wrote:Is that the Middenheim chapter or the cult in general? Logically they would've refocused their major operations to the southern Empire where things are a bit more stable.

There really isn't a cult in general, it's a cell based organisation with next to no communication between chapters.

That doesn't jive with the TEW portrayal, but oh well. What I'd like to know is whether they have plans elsewhere or if the AoM material only covers the remnants of Wasmeier's crew.

Dr. Rudolf von Richten wrote:[To state the blithingly obvious: the overused creatures are the ones on which sourcebooks have been published,

You mean, like Vampires? Or Fimir (if we count the unofficial Warpstone 25)?

Underused: Ways for PCs to actually integrate their career in the game, and adventures that give PCs entries into new careers. The career system is one of the defining parts of WFRP, it should deserve more attention.

Overused: As everyone said, Skaven.

Overused: Clichés. All halflings are jolly and good cooks, all dwarfs are grumpy alcoholists, all wizards of wind A behave like X, all priests of B behave like Z. For all its faults, Rolston's Something Rotten in Kislev was great in the way in which it reversed these clichés.

Underused: The structure of society. The relations between nobles, or between merchants and town councils, rivalry between different religious cults (or between different branches in the same cult), and so on. Despite the richness of the WFRP world, most adventures still start with the equivalent of the bearded guy in the inn who gives the PCs gold to fulfil a quest. See The Thousand Thrones; we get six variations of the bearded guy here, in the first chapter.

Herr Arnulfe wrote:Overused:

Middenheim - between the two editions, we've had two complete adventures set there. Granted the contrast between PBtT and AoM showed the effects of the SoC, but now it's time to move on.

Middenheim has only been used in two complete adventures, Talabheim, Altdorf and Nuln each in one. Middenheim is not running so much ahead of the rest here.
Granted, thanks to the fact that Middenheim hab been the only city sourcebook available for WFRP for a long time, so a lot of shorter adventures were set there (With a Little Help from my Friends, for instance), but they can easily be ported somewhere else.

Herr Arnulfe wrote:Undead and Skaven - we now have three full adventures (Lichemaster, LotLL and BotD) with undead as the main antagonists and one campaign (TTT) featuring them prominently.

You're forgetting SRiK here.

Herr Arnulfe wrote:(although a Purple Hand update would be nice)

I always assumed that the information found in W's house at the end of PbtT was enough to destroy most of the cult.

Herr Arnulfe wrote:

jadrax wrote:

Herr Arnulfe wrote:Is that the Middenheim chapter or the cult in general? Logically they would've refocused their major operations to the southern Empire where things are a bit more stable.

There really isn't a cult in general, it's a cell based organisation with next to no communication between chapters.

That doesn't jive with the TEW portrayal, but oh well. What I'd like to know is whether they have plans elsewhere or if the AoM material only covers the remnants of Wasmeier's crew.

TEW is self-contradictory in regards to the Purple Hand (but hey, it's a tzeentchian cult - self-contradiction is fitting in their case!). On one hand it explicitly states that the cult's cells are *very* loosely connected, on the other the High Magisters from Nuln seem to be in firm control and in good position to have their agents pursue "Kastor Lieberung" across the width of the Empire.

Anyway, Nuln seems to already be the Cults principal base of operations, since it's master chapter resides there. Thus most of the Purple Hand's important assets would already have been in the southern Empire, with little need for relocation caused by the Storm of Chaos.

I thank you for your time

Lord Gorthuar de Veris
Cult of Nagash

Whymme wrote:
Underused: The structure of society. The relations between nobles, or between merchants and town councils, rivalry between different religious cults (or between different branches in the same cult), and so on. Despite the richness of the WFRP world, most adventures still start with the equivalent of the bearded guy in the inn who gives the PCs gold to fulfil a quest. See The Thousand Thrones; we get six variations of the bearded guy here, in the first chapter.

QFT!

I really miss things like the Gravin's presence in "A rough night at the Three Feathers" from most of the material. *She* was a mover and shaker of the inn, because of her birth and wealth. I have the strange impression that democracy, or perhaps "equality", has creeped into WFRP.

I thank you for your time

Lord Gorthuar de Veris
Cult of Nagash

Whymme wrote:Granted, thanks to the fact that Middenheim hab been the only city sourcebook available for WFRP for a long time,

Also Middenheim has two city sourcebooks, while other major cities (Averheim, Wolfenburg, Bechafen) have none. Although perhaps this is actually a good reason to set more adventures there - no need for additional setting material.

Whymme wrote:You're forgetting SRiK here.

True, they're a major villain but at least there's some variety in SRIK (like TTT)

Whymme wrote:I always assumed that the information found in W's house at the end of PbtT was enough to destroy most of the cult.

The Middenheim chapter yes, I was thinking more of the southern cities.

Overused-

All Elves are alien in nature, there very being is shrouded in myths.

Underused -

Elves as one of the player races have next to nothing about them or how to play them within the rules to make the 'alien' in nature.

RoS the big book on magic, rules for Dwarfs and nothing for Elves, need I say more...