First time poster, long time lurker.

Been running WFRP campaigns since the early 90's. I love the rules, but over time, the career system has irked me, especially since I like to use the rules for other settings. After accumulating a pile of Modern and Sci-Fi careers I've written, I simply had enough. Also digging Chaosium's advancement rules, I came up with this: http://anglypur.blogspot.com/2016/05/wfrp-grim-hack-rules.html

Short and sweet. A couple of things I thought self-explanatory but didn't cover were things like Specialty Weapon: Energy Weapons/Aegis Missile Defense Systems/Rabid Cat Launcher, etc.

Also, some may deem me criminally insane, as I don't use the Old World as my setting.

Quote from: MKoth;897536I don't use the Old World as my setting.

Burn the heretic!

Huh. I know I've played fast and loose with the career progression, but abandoning it completly has never crossed my mind. I guess it can become wonky with 'I'll have to take career X next to get talent Y', but that kind of thing has (fortunately?) never cropped up in play, or at least no-one has been that blatant about it . But good to know that this kind of thing can work, and it's essentially how I build NPC:s. 'This guy would need these skills, and those talents sound about right as well. His WS should be about 47, and...'.

As for Attacks, I also dislike how they break the gradual progression, but rather than abandoning them altogether, in my games they represent potential number of attacks the character is capable of. You can normally perform only one per round, but if your attack roll comes up with same numbers (11, 22 etc.), you notice an opening and if you have extra attacks can try to exploit that with another attack. This 'opportunity attack' cannot be performed in the same way than the initial attack, however, so the secondary attack could be a fist punch, shield bash, etc.

Holy crap, Dr.! Excellent idea! I use doubles as crit/fumbles for all rolls depending if it's a passed or failed test, but ignored the 'crit' for WS and BS due to Ulrich's Fury. Offering an additional attack for a crit attack is something I will try out!

The Career Advancement system was a sore point for my group back when I ran it in the '80s. It's a great character GENERATION system, with characters most likrly ending up in careers that are only approximately what they want to be doing, allowing them to move into them during play. It just become frustrating as every character but the wizard was forced out of a career they liked simply because most career paths are far too short for long-term play, forcing them into careers that had nothing to do with the ongoing story or their conception of their character.

I last ran WFRP in the early '90s, so admittedly my grasp of the rules if rusty, but these house rules like solid to me. If I were to make a suggestion, I might make the max characteristic variable. Maybe something like your starting characteristic + 50. It still gives an average of 80, but even if the characters all manage to completely max their characteristics, they all still can have an edge in certain things.

Brilliant!

I don't have any advice but can only chime in that I have had a similar issue with the game.

My players love WFRP 2e.  It is, by and large, their favorite system.  I like it too, but I am perhaps not as fanatical about it as my players are.  They love the career system, the options it gives them, and the game outside the game.  I think it is very flavorful advancement system but somewhat cumbersome as a GM.  

In any case, my biggest complaint is that the career system is deeply wedded to the setting.  In fact, it describes the society of the Empire in tremendous detail.  The Old World is cool and all, better than many settings, but it is not the only setting I want to play in.  My players would be happy with a steady diet of WFRP, but I can only stomach the setting for so many campaigns before I start feeling woozy and stifled.

The career system simply does not port well to other settings, even other fantasy settings with say a dark ages or sword and sorcery feel.  Transporting it to a modern or sci-fi setting? I've done a lot of rules hacks, but the WFRP career system is pretty involved.  It's not particularly complex, but there is a lot of it.  For me, re-writing the careers is not really worth the effort. If I was going to remove the career system from the rules, what you have here should make a good basis, but I'd probably just just use BRP. That's me though.  

I'd love to see WFRP system redone to fit more genres. Not likely to happen though.

As a side, I am thinking about doing WFRP in Greyhawk, as at least a slight deviation.  IMO, that's about as far as WFRP can deviate without a serious re-write.

Quote from: Madprofessor;898391I don't have any advice but can only chime in that I have had a similar issue with the game.

My players love WFRP 2e.  It is, by and large, their favorite system.  I like it too, but I am perhaps not as fanatical about it as my players are.  They love the career system, the options it gives them, and the game outside the game.  I think it is very flavorful advancement system but somewhat cumbersome as a GM.  

In any case, my biggest complaint is that the career system is deeply wedded to the setting.  In fact, it describes the society of the Empire in tremendous detail.  The Old World is cool and all, better than many settings, but it is not the only setting I want to play in.  My players would be happy with a steady diet of WFRP, but I can only stomach the setting for so many campaigns before I start feeling woozy and stifled.

The career system simply does not port well to other settings, even other fantasy settings with say a dark ages or sword and sorcery feel.  Transporting it to a modern or sci-fi setting? I've done a lot of rules hacks, but the WFRP career system is pretty involved.  It's not particularly complex, but there is a lot of it.  For me, re-writing the careers is not really worth the effort. If I was going to remove the career system from the rules, what you have here should make a good basis, but I'd probably just just use BRP. That's me though.  

I'd love to see WFRP system redone to fit more genres. Not likely to happen though.

As a side, I am thinking about doing WFRP in Greyhawk, as at least a slight deviation.  IMO, that's about as far as WFRP can deviate without a serious re-write.

Have you checked out our Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay retroclone called ZWEIHÄNDER Grim & Perilous RPG yet? It's built agnostic of a world setting, instead focusing on key elements and the themes that drives grim and perilous adventuring. It is completely portable between other campaign worlds, with rules you can remove wholesale if it doesn't fit into your vision. It also addresses the legacy issues with how players progress through WFRP careers, while improving upon the formula.

And, in fact, we are including a neat little supplement buried in the back of the Game Mastery guide called "Dark Astral", intended to be a test bed for a sci-fantasy take on ZWEIHÄNDER down the line.

Come take a look at the free to play GRIMDARK Beta: http://grimandperilous.com/?page_id=95


Cheers,
Daniel

Quote from: MKoth;897536First time poster, long time lurker.

Been running WFRP campaigns since the early 90's. I love the rules, but over time, the career system has irked me, especially since I like to use the rules for other settings. After accumulating a pile of Modern and Sci-Fi careers I've written, I simply had enough. Also digging Chaosium's advancement rules, I came up with this: http://anglypur.blogspot.com/2016/05/wfrp-grim-hack-rules.html

Short and sweet. A couple of things I thought self-explanatory but didn't cover were things like Specialty Weapon: Energy Weapons/Aegis Missile Defense Systems/Rabid Cat Launcher, etc.

Also, some may deem me criminally insane, as I don't use the Old World as my setting.

Welcome to theRPGsite!

For me WFRP without the career system is like a broken pencil - pointless.

Quote from: One Horse Town;899329For me WFRP without the career system is like a broken pencil - pointless.

I wouldn't go so far as to say it's pointless but for me, it's definitely lost something.

The constant and often unlikely career-switching of WFRP characters, to me, further compounds their rakish, picaresque existence.

Not something I would ever do, but its awesome you like the system that much. I think the combat system in particular was quite elegant, especially at the time the game premiered. Not certain how much was changed in 2nd edition, and 3rd was obviously a beast of a very different box. But while I've altered the career system many times (especially in a homebrew 40K rpg I was working on in the 90s), I'd echo many other in that for me the system is intrinsically linked, aesthetically, to that most brilliant and crazy taking of classes to the umpth extraction.

Quote from: The Butcher;899577I wouldn't go so far as to say it's pointless but for me, it's definitely lost something.

The constant and often unlikely career-switching of WFRP characters, to me, further compounds their rakish, picaresque existence.

I think it'd definitely lose something.

To be completely honest, I didn't figure this hack out until about nine months into my current campaign, so we haven't implemented them yet. My answer to my issues at the beginning was to make 'Faction-based Careers,' as the players are based in a small frontier town in the midst of a hex-crawl. Maybe WFRP may not have been the best choice of rules, but my players love them and so do I, so there you go. I plan on posting these careers on my blog in case anyone may find a use for them, even though some of them may be kind of campaign specific. Here's an example: http://anglypur.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-monk-faction-and-careers.html