Building a New Era of Warhammer Memories

Cubicle 7 WFRP Producer Andy Law contributed an excellent article to Meeple Monthly's June edition, describing how C7 created the WFRP Starter Set. We have included the text from the article further below to make it easier to read!

Building a New Era of Warhammer Memories

By Andy Law

We all have memories that never leave us. Perhaps of a first kiss? Or a period of great illness? Or a time you won against the odds? These memories linger, replayed in the mind, fondly recalled and reimagined as you share them with friends. As a roleplayer, my library of such memories is a little different to the standard. After all, in my mind, I have defied unjust emperors, battled mutants and trolls, and even died. And not many people can claim to remember that!

Walking in a new pair of shoes and experiencing the life of a different person is one of the great strengths of roleplaying games (RPGs). Unlike books, plays, or movies, where you watch another’s path through a fixed plotline, in RPGs you personally take part in the narrative, and you directly affect how it unfolds. And that can be powerful. The memories it creates can stay with you for life. 

Because of this, when Cubicle 7 turned to building the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Starter Set—a boxed set to introduce roleplaying in Games Workshop’s famous Warhammer world —one thought kept swimming to the fore of my mind: I didn’t just want an introduction to Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay(WFRP), I wanted a box full of fantastic memories that would never leave anyone who played through it. 

To ensure this outcome, we turned to one of the best roleplaying writers in the business: TS Luikart. He has an enormous repertoire of work to his name, but more importantly, TS understands what makes a roleplaying adventure memorable: it’s not just clever scenes, deep characters, and interesting environments, or even unexpected twists, hilarious events, and gasp-worthy shocks, it’s all of those and more, combined and attached to meaningful player decisions with actual consequences. TS and I chatted for hours. We planned and plotted with Dominic McDowall (Cubicle 7 CEO). And, eventually, we were happy, and TS went to work building an introductory adventure that was full of memorable moments to blow us all away.

But we didn’t just plan the Starter Set to offer a simple adventure for beginners to WFRP, we also wanted it to be a complete starting point for veteran players. With that in mind, I drafted in two other writers: Andrew Leask and Ben Scerri. They were chosen because they were not only brilliant wordsmiths who understood how to make their contributions memorable, but they also both played WFRP regularly, and were used to thinking of the Empire, the primary setting of the game, as a living, breathing place, which really helps when creating believable, consistent content.

I set Ben to creating ten extra scenarios for more advanced players. Each was to present a unique situation or circumstance involving truly memorable moments. Before Ben began, we discussed what these moments could be, and how to best build them into compelling stories. Soon, ideas were flying between us, and Ben started writing.

Andrew I set to describing a whole town and its surrounding lands. To ensure the Starter Set was useful to all WFRP gamers, we felt it was important to not only present adventures, and the rules to use them, but to also offer a complete sand-box experience where players could wander and interact as they wished. However, a simple town full of places to visit wasn’t enough — these locations had to excite the players with everything they had to offer. So, Andrew and I built a plan to ensure that every location described was not only interesting, but also had unique stories attached for the players to investigate. This meant every location, no matter how minor, could be easily used in play.

As the three writers tapped away at their keyboards, I built 6 pre-generated characters, all of which could be customised by their players. These characters were then given to Ben and TS so their individual stories could be interwoven into the adventures they were creating. 

And, in no time, we had a book with 11 adventures (The Adventure Book), another book dripping with colourful locations with scores of adventure ideas (A Guide to Ubersreik), and all the support material we needed to bring all of that to life. And, once we put it all together and polished it up, myself and the Cubicle 7 team could not have been more delighted with the end result.

So, if you like the sound of a box full of extraordinary moments, do take a look at the WFRP Starter Set. Not only does it teach the game to beginners, it provides a massive sandbox for experienced gamers, and ten extra adventures to ensure you have many months, and maybe years, of play ahead of you. And every detail it presents is designed so that you, too, can collect unforgettable memories like defying unjust emperors, battling mutants and trolls, and, given WFRPis grim and perilous, perhaps even dying…

The Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Starter Set contains everything you need to create your own memories in the Warhammer world:

  • Read This First! Introduction sheet
  • 6 Ready-made Characters
  • The Adventure Book
  • A Guide to Ubersreik
  • 3 Rules Reference sheets
  • 3 Handout sheets
  • 49 Advantage tokens
  • 4 highly detailed maps
  • 2 custom dice from Q WORKSHOP
  • A simple Gamemaster Screen

Andy Law 

is the producer of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplayat Cubicle 7 Entertainment Ltd. Whether as an artist, writer, developer, cartographer, editor, or enthusiastic fan, he has been creating unforgettable Warhammer memories for over thirty years. He lives a delightful life of haggis and Irn Bru in Edinburgh, Scotland with his ever-gaming family.

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4th Edition © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2019. Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4th Edition, the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4th Edition logo, GW, Games Workshop, Warhammer, The Game of Fantasy Battles, the twin-tailed comet logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likeness thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world, and used under licence. Cubicle 7 Entertainment and the Cubicle 7 Entertainment logo are trademarks of Cubicle 7 Entertainment Limited. All rights reserved.