If you are looking for an old school game, this an an excellent one to start with. I found V&V a good read, and I always enjoyed the artwork, but I honestly never really found it to be much of a playable game.

Back in the (very) early 80's, several of us had gotten tired of playing nothing but “that Fantasy RPG.” My roommate was big into comic books, and found a copy of V&V, so we thought we would try it out with our gaming group. First, we did a little play-testing, to make sure we understood the rules and such. We quickly realized that it needed a bit of a rewrite to be a good playable system. My memory is a bit fuzzy now, but I know our greatest dislike, by far, was character generation.

First, the character is based on the player. Your stat's are the characters stats. In general, most people think they are better than they really are, compared to others impressions. This can lead to conflict and opinions better kept to oneself. This is an unnecessary complication when you simply want to escape the real world and have some fun. Next, you use random rolls for your characters powers. Anyone who is a fan of comic superheroes knows that most characters have a set of cohesive powers based on a theme or shtick. Random rolls result in characters that have random powers, which are hard to pull together in any kind of theme, and sometimes end conflict with each other, or are downright silly. Same goes for Skills and Weaknesses, though kudos for including Weaknesses ... something especially good in a superhero game.

Bottom line, if you like playing a character based on you, after throwing a bunch of dice, hoping to get lucky with them, then playing the random conglomerate you come up with, this game is for you. That’s not sarcasm … I know people who like the throwing the dice and playing what they get. If you prefer to escape the real world and play a character that makes sense (tongue in cheek, as this IS a superhero game), then V&V is a pretty weak game system.

As for the rest of the rules, they left little impression on me, other than being no better or worse than other games at the time. Before we could rewrite it to our satisfaction and bring in the whole gaming group, one of the guys found a copy of Champions, and that's the game we fell in love with, and played superheroes with for many years.

Still, I always enjoyed FGU’s V&V material, and collected almost all of the adventures (missing one) ... most of which can be found in PDF form here. They are very much worth checking out even if you prefer a different rules system.

In conclusion, if you are into old school games, this is still one you will want. Note: this is a scan, but you can search for or copy text.

If you are looking for an old school game, this an an excellent one to start with. It's nice to have it back in updated form. I found V&V a good read, and I always enjoyed the artwork, but I never really found it to be much of a playable game. Still, I had to have this PDF.

Back in the (very) early 80's, several of us had gotten tired of playing nothing but “that Fantasy RPG.” My roommate was big into comic books, and found a copy of V&V, so we thought we would try it out with our gaming group. First, we did a little play-testing, to make sure we understood the rules and such. We quickly realized that it needed a bit of a rewrite to be a good playable system. My memory is a bit fuzzy now, but I know our greatest dislike, by far, was character generation.

First, the character is based on the player. Your stat's are the characters stats. In general, most people think they are better than they really are, compared to others impressions. This can lead to conflict and opinions better kept to oneself. This is an unnecessary complication when you simply want to escape the real world and have some fun. Next, you use random rolls for your characters powers. Anyone who is a fan of comic superheroes knows that most characters have a set of cohesive powers based on a theme or shtick. Random rolls result in characters that have random powers, which are hard to pull together in any kind of theme, and sometimes end conflict with each other, or are downright silly. Same goes for Skills and Weaknesses, though kudos for including Weaknesses ... something especially good in a superhero game.

Bottom line, if you like playing a character based on you, after throwing a bunch of dice, hoping to get lucky with them, then playing the random conglomerate you come up with, this game is for you. That’s not sarcasm … I know people who like the throwing the dice and playing what they get. If you prefer to escape the real world and play a character that makes sense (tongue in cheek, as this IS a superhero game), then V&V is a pretty weak game system.

As for the rest of the rules, they left little impression on me, other than being no better or worse than other games at the time. Before we could rewrite it to our satisfaction and bring in the whole gaming group, one of the guys found a copy of Champions, and that's the game we fell in love with, and played superheroes with for many years.

Still, I always enjoyed FGU’s V&V material, and collected almost all of the adventures (missing one) ... most of which can be found in PDF form here, under Fantasy Games Unlimited. They are very much worth checking out even if you prefer a different rules system.

In conclusion, this PDF is something I had to have, but because of my memories of the various books themselves, not the game system. :-) If you are into old school games, this is one you will want. So, thanks Monkey House!!

BTW: You CAN copy text from the PDF. You just can’t alter the PDF or extract pages.

Overall, an excellent set of fantasy role-playing rules. It combines detail with simplicity. You have choices in combat (which is indeed perilous), yet it flows quickly from player to player, and is fairly quick overall. You also get interesting choices in developing your character as you gain experience. And you have a limited number of Fate/Fortune points for times when the dice are against you. Always nice to have the ability to avoid one bad die roll from ruining your whole gaming session. The Warhammer Fantasy world is, in my opinion, one of the better fantasy worlds available for gaming, though you need more than the core rules to see it all. While WFRP is not my favorite rules system, it is still one of the better systems I have played, and I wish Fantasy Flight still supported this 2nd edition to some extent.

On the negative side, I am not a big fan of the career system ... though it does work well enough so long as you do not have to "roll" for your first career. Note that I have a stong bias for game systems where you design a character you want to play, over coming up with a character using random rolls. To be fair, I do like the WFRP's career system better than the class/level system used in other games, however. While the insanity rules are interesting, I don't care for the fact that you gain an insanity point every time you take a critical hit ... and should you gain a malady from this, some of them could be fun, but some simply make your character unplayable.

The PDF itself is very nicely done. It would be nice if clicking on the TOC or Index entries took your to the relevant page ... especially considering how much the PDF cost. Considering that a new edition of WFRP is now out ... I have not played it as it is way to expensive to try ... the price of the 2nd edition books has now gone through the roof in response. I feel the cost of this PDF is a bit on the expensive side for an out of print, unsupported set of core rules. I was only able to justify the cost because this is one of the games our group activity plays.

Regardless,Warhammer Fantasy Role-playing 2nd ed. is system/world well worth a look.

Excellent Book. I'm not a Power Gamer, but I have not played D&D in a long time. This book helped me make sense of all the new stuff, and how to plan a character for long term. Also had a no-nonsense guid to feats and skills.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

This is mediocre at best. There are a number of interesting subjects, but the scale is all over the place, and none are suitable for use with miniatures. In addition, objects do not seem to meet the scale. For example, in ?1 Bedroom,? it appears as if the bed is 11 feet long by almost 6 feet wide. Some of the objects are well done, but stand in stark contrast with the simple lines used for walls ? as if they had minimal thickness.

A must have book for a really interesting game. I find the system to be very playable, even though it is not the system I normally play.

And, you just can't beat the price.

I am rating the quality of the pdf more than the contents. This appears to be a scan of the original book. There is only minor skew for the contents, and even though the text goes almost edge-to-edge, at appears nothing was lost. This appears to be one of the better scan jobs done on these old TSR books.

If you are hoping to duplex print this on three-hole paper, forget it. The text on both edges is almost to the edge, and some of it may be lost if your printer does not support edge-to-edge printing.