Warhammer 3rd Edition REBUILT

benjaminography

benjaminography

Serf
old-book.gif


Hello Oldhammerers!

I've been lurking on a number of your various blogs for a while, and have finally made the move to your forum!

I'm a mordheim player, who has returned to WFB after a 10 year absence. I love all things 80s GW, and really feel it lost alot of its spirit during the 90s and has really lost much of its appeal after that. There are always good bits, but the transparent pursuit of wealth has really corrupted it.

To cut a long story short I'm in the very longwinded process of reconstructing the 3rd Edition Rulebook. The ultimate aim is to have either one, or a series of chunky A5 hard bound tomes which will house EVERYTHING.

*DISCLAIMER*

However before I go into specifics, I really don't want anyone, and specifically this community to get into any trouble. Therefor I would like to absolutely clarify (especially to the GW banhammer) that this is a personal project, with absolutely NO intention from my part for redistribution.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7449255.stm

MATERIALS

The chief documents I am working with, are:

The Rulebook
The Army Lists
Siege
Mighty Empires
Both Realms of Chaos books

Additional materials consist of articles from White Dwarf and Citadel Journal (for Mighty Empires)

THE FORMAT

I'm going to maintain as much of an 80s zest as possible. Therefor all illustration work, photography etc will be sourced from existing periodical sources, or created in the style of.
The main change to layout will include flanking columns to the main text, which will be filled with images, fluff, and more importantly help and tips (such as the current 8th rulebook)

THE BINDING

The final printable document will create a series of 32 page booklets, which will be bound into a single volume.

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-bind-your-own-Hardback-Book/?ALLSTEPS

WHAT WILL CHANGE

I am not tremendously experienced with 3rd (I was born only a few months before it was published!) so I would really appreciate any input more experienced players might recommend.

I am after tried an tested house rules, new ideas for army lists, new ideas for adapting existing lists and rules (got a few myself), and new and exciting ideas for expanding what we have in 3rd in new and exciting ways.

I'd like to retrofit elements of later editions for 3rd, such as units, races, fluff and characters, as well as re-examine how certain armylists and rules are presented, possibly taking things into a new direction. Imagine what 4th might have been if GW had taken another route?

An idea that I would like to float, although I have no idea how to implement it, is rules to support bigger and smaller games.
i) Larger Games - WFB mutated and developed as the need to sell larger armies developed. Hence stuff like horde units and more giant units present now. I like the idea as the scale changes, rules are dropped and new ones take over, as the game fundamentally changes to suit scale. It would be great to explore this.
ii) Smaller Games - A retrofitted Mordheim style of play could be an example of this.

COMPATABILITY WITH BLOOD

Much of the content and prose in the book might yet develop into new original literature. As much of BLOOD is fundamentally similar to 3rd, much of the book's content could be shared, and I will be more than happy to refit the final item to suit the copyright free BLOOD if possible.

This is going to be a long process. I am usually hovering between a bunch of projects simultaneously, as well as job (you probably all know what I'm talking about!). So this will be something that will take time and careful consideration, but will ultimately be a great resource!

I'd really like to keep any discussion regarding the private nature of this book to PM only.

Ideas, suggestions and thoughts to this mighty thing should be discussed in the thread!
 
Hey Ben!

The Scale issue is an interesting one, some things do begin to break-down at ultra-small skirmish level or at the Warmaster size mass combat. Have a look at Warhammer Skirmish.

Also I was kind of hoping you'd illustrate the whole thing yourself :)
 
Is that the 6th/7th ed skirmish rules? It could be good to start listing good post 3rd ed stuff that can be reintegrated.

Yeah it is tempting to re-illustrate some parts, but to do the whole thing would take quite a while! I'm going to get a list together of the illustrators who will be in it, to keep it stylistically consistent. So all the John Blanche and Ian Miller stuff for starters. Then with some help from the community we can start to source material from other projects they might have worked on to fill it up. I'm really keen to keep the armylist layouts of the illustrated characters, so they might possibly need ading to, unless anyone knows a good source of similar illustration work?

How do people feel about a Fimir rewrite? In the new Storm of Magic supplement they have stats that better reflect an ogre sized model, and I kind of like the idea of a smaller force of chunkier models as an armylist (much like ogre kingdoms). The halfbreeds could fill alot of mid level ranks with the potential to have a variety of mutations, or other semi racial attributes (orc-fimir, elf-fimir, dwarf-fimir etc)

I've never played 1st ed 40k before. Do people know how interchangeable it is with fantasy? I'm wondering if things like mega giant, steam tanks, sphinxes and stuff could use vehicle adapted rules perhaps?
 
Hey folks,

I'm still working on this. Sorry I still don't really have anything to show. I've been slowly crawling through my OCR of the rulebooks, correcting and retyping the misread text. I've also been cleaning up and sourcing artwork I'd like to possibly reuse.

Ultimately, I can see two divergent editions of this being created.

First a purist 3rd edition - so the updated original rulebook and armies supplements, with additional reintegrated white dwarf materials.
Secondly would be something I'm alot more excited about. It could well be an alternative 4th Edition, if the soul of 3rd was continued. Call it Althammer perhaps?

What I'd like to know is what would people like to see in this alternative 4th? What is kept, what is lost, what changes? What later fluff/rules from later editions is brought back to this edition?

I'd love to brainstorm, and see what everyone thinks and recommends!
 
I don't own a 4th edition rulebook so I cannot recall what was different with that edition. I'd probably vote for the purist 3rd Edition book, though.
 
I think it is a great idea to take the soul of 3rd edition and to remove the clunkier rules, streamline the game a little and have the best of both worlds.
 
So what are you putting under one cover?

* 3E Rulebook
* 3E Warhammer Armies
* 3E Siege
* 3E ROC: StD
* 3E ROC: LatD
* 3E Fimir (WD)
* 3E Norse Army (WD)

I'd say you need to go backwards. 3E dropped a lot of very good stuff from 1E/2E. Off the top of my head:

* Drug crazed ray-gun wielding anacho-primitivist feminist Amazons.
* Caber Tossing from ]McDeath
* Alcoholism
* Robots from Revenge of the Lichemaster (citadel journal)
* Magic Weapons - the rules for these in 2E are much tastier, runes and dawnstones and whatnot.
* Points system - 2E has an explanatory points system so you can stat any model at all.
* Nippon Army with rocket launchers and ninja.

Then, personally, I'd retro-fit WFRP1E (the double-digit stats were a very late change in its develoment, all stats are basically 2E) and WH40K:RT (which is essentially 2E with more laser guns and skirmishing - many of the monsters are actually just renamed AD&D creatiures - Enslavers are Mind Flayers, Ambulls are Unber Hulks etc. so they are already "fantasy"), skimming the 40KRT supplements for additional sci-fantasy arms and armour, everyone loves Lighting Claws.

There is nothing interesting in 4E/5E, it's just dumbed down. There might be interesting artifacts in the army-books.

6E has:
* Skirmish rules that are quite mordheim like, and are nice
* Campaign rules
* Terrain Rules for snow and ice etc.in the Generals Compendium
* Even More Campaign Rules for map-based and stuff (Generals Compendium)
* Boat-to-Boat ahoy there! (Generals Compendium)

7E can't think of anything interesting from there.

8E
* Magica/Chaoticl Terrain a lot of the monsters from Storm of Chaos / Monsterous Arcana are cool too.

Regards the Fimm, aren't the small ones the Shearl and the large ones the Dirach - which have ogrish stats already?
 
1st Edition also had dungeoneering rules, professional careers for heroes and campaign rules, which might be worth taking a peek at.
 
Wow, alot to think about there guys.

I was reading somewhere that 1st Ed was a modular game-system, where supplements could be picked up and dropped to very much construct the version the player wanted. I really like the idea of picking your favourite flavour of core rules, choose which armies supplement you want etc etc.

The purist single edition will contain the Rulebook, Armies (with WD additions) and Siege. It will also be updated with various erratas and FAQ points from WD. This should be a fairly concise 3rd Ed rulebook. Some areas will be retyped, and I was considering removing content from the core rulebook that was made redundant by Armies possibly. I was originally going to be including mighty empires too, although I might keep that seperate. If the volume becomes too big it will most likely be subdivided into volumes. This is basically what I wanted to achieve originally.

I'm now thinking Realms of Chaos, will be combined into a single volume with the 40k content removed.

The alternative 4th edition I was talking about, was really like a 3rd Edition B (incase there was any confusion there). I'd love to expand the army lists, introduce new races and content. Essentially carry 3rd Edition forward, but in a different way to how GW did.

I like the thinking of working back as well as forward in terms of content. I am totally unfamiliar with 1st and 2nd, so will need to read up and rely on the community for advice in regards to this. Some of the stuff Zhu listed sounds great, I'll check it all out!

One system I'd like to introduce is a narrative orientated campaign system. I used to be a big Mordheim player, and really enjoy the process of developing characters from game to game. I always felt the game was lacking though in regards to story, and there were alot of missed opportunities to build on this. I had this idea that there could be a plotline system (like some massive flowchart, or one of those old Fighting Fantasy books). You would have a bunch of characters, with agendas and skills, who would not only grow as battlefield heroes, but also bring certain campaign related bonuses. Scenarios would be chosen based on the aforementioned flowchart, and there might be dungeon based missions, pitched battles, skirmishes based on this. Opposing players characters would develop and grow in response to yours, essentially becoming the antagonists to your protagonists. Armies would be gathered based on your characters, your location and maybe some other factors like wealth perhaps.
 
As a random aside, the best campaigns I ever played were my early days of Warhammer, when I and the two other players in our group just looked at the odd and incomplete assortment of miniatures we had and quickly brainstormed up a story that might involve them. A good campaign system should make do with what you have (buildings, miniatures, scenery), which is always different for every club.
 
Zhu Bajie":lfouxxw1 said:
6E has:
* Skirmish rules that are quite mordheim like, and are nice
* Campaign rules
* Terrain Rules for snow and ice etc.in the Generals Compendium
* Even More Campaign Rules for map-based and stuff (Generals Compendium)
* Boat-to-Boat ahoy there! (Generals Compendium)
Click to expand...

How do the Campaign Rules in the Generals' Compendium compare with Mighty Empires? Was Mighty Empires norminally for 3E? A lot of the Mighty Empire rules could be abstracted from the board game (with a huge hex map) and transformed into a pen and paper system. The rule book is free on the GW site:

http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_Cus ... mpires.pdf

Zhu Bajie":lfouxxw1 said:
7E can't think of anything interesting from there.
Click to expand...

7E have a set of pretty nifty warband rules, a step up in scale from Mordheim, with advancement rules for personalities. I played a few warband skirmishes using these rules bolted onto the 8E engine the other year - we never used the advancement rules but they were good for getting models on the table without having 8E 'Death Stars' clogging up the shop.

http://www.thekeeponline.com/documents/Warbands.pdf
 
DrBargle":3veb57ur said:
Zhu Bajie":3veb57ur said:
6E has:
* Skirmish rules that are quite mordheim like, and are nice
* Campaign rules
* Terrain Rules for snow and ice etc.in the Generals Compendium
* Even More Campaign Rules for map-based and stuff (Generals Compendium)
* Boat-to-Boat ahoy there! (Generals Compendium)
Click to expand...

How do the Campaign Rules in the Generals' Compendium compare with Mighty Empires? Was Mighty Empires norminally for 3E? A lot of the Mighty Empire rules could be abstracted from the board game (with a huge hex map) and transformed into a pen and paper system. The rule book is free on the GW site:

http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_Cus ... mpires.pdf

Zhu Bajie":3veb57ur said:
7E can't think of anything interesting from there.
Click to expand...

7E have a set of pretty nifty warband rules, a step up in scale from Mordheim, with advancement rules for personalities. I played a few warband skirmishes using these rules bolted onto the 8E engine the other year - we never used the advancement rules but they were good for getting models on the table without having 8E 'Death Stars' clogging up the shop.

http://www.thekeeponline.com/documents/Warbands.pdf
Click to expand...

The original Mighty Empires was produced in the 3E era, but I've never played it. It looks a lot more comprehensive than the Generals Companion, which is considerably shorter and doesn't have so many random tables - also renames "subsistance" as "living off the land", so that's a bit dumbed down. the GC campaign rules also doesn't rely on the ex-crawl exploration side. Not sure how the current version compares to the 1990s ME.

Never seen that 7E Warbands before and have had a quick skim. Thanks for digging it out! I don't like the competitive set-up (the victory point and warband rating seems a bit overly simplistic, and another layer of abstraction on top of the army-list PV system) but the asymmetry is nice. How did it actually play out under 8th? The injury table is less detailed and flavoursome than Mordheim. The archetypes (character Classes) and random skills is quite interesting, but it does feel quite newschool, having special rules added on at random rather than statline progression and / or Roleplay skills added.
 
benjaminography":2ylwcqvw said:
One system I'd like to introduce is a narrative orientated campaign system.
Click to expand...
Isn't that in RoC? My only exposure to printed RoC is that from White Dwarf and just yesterday I read an article on narrative campaign generation in an old WD.
 
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