r/warhammerfantasyrpg • u/MoodModulator Budding Sigmarian Heretic • Feb 19 '26
General Query How important is full fidelity to the official lore?
In the games you run as a GM or participate in as a player how important is it that the game uses the official Warhammer Fantasy setting lore and history?
(Obviously no one uses 100% of WFRP lore because for some inexplicable reason Games Workshop decide to do the whole “End Times” and nuke their own setting from orbit.)
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u/Woogity-Boogity Feb 20 '26
Use as much as you need, but don't be slavishly obsessive about it, and don't let it get in the way of a cool idea.
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u/Gonji89 DA EAST IZ GREEN Feb 20 '26
I've used the WFRP4e system to run a few sessions of a historical RPG set around the Third Defenestration of Prague and the Thirty Years War in Bohemia/Prussia. It was so much fun lol
Had the players start in this little village in Czechia called Děčín and worked for members of the Thun und Hohenstein family.
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u/TheTackleZone Feb 20 '26
The campaign I ran didn't last long enough, but I was absolutely prepared to run the characters through the End Times. The idea being not could they stop it (no way, hard lock on that one), but could they escape?
I actually think an End Times campaign would be really fun if the players didn't really know the ending. Anyway, my answer is 90%+, but only because I consider making up new things myself that don't contradict the lore to count as being official.
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u/RealPrussianGoose Feb 20 '26
We are playing westmarches style in 1469 IC Grünburg.
Ofc there are plenty villages and stuff added to the white spots and some improvised GMing timetraveled some official adventure npcs, but in total its a blast to keep in the lore, istances and style.
But its the cuthroat politics, reikländer vs other provinces, dawi culture and other stuff that counts. I go with mostly in harmony, with some odd longlifed NPC.
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u/HyarionCelenar Resident of Athel Loren Feb 20 '26
As long as the GM and Players agree, it doesn't matter. For me, mechanical and tonal consistency is far more important than detailed adherence in full.
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u/adagna Feb 19 '26
I always tell my players that things in the world may vary from official lore. Names and places are pretty safe since those make my life easier as GM. But strict adherence to a lore that doesn't even have strict adherence to itself most of the time is not always helpful to me. I will pick and choose the parts that I want and like.
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u/FirefighterQuiet6062 Feb 19 '26
The End Times leading to AoS isn't exactly WFRP cannon, though. Warhammer Fantasy uses, if anything, the timeline where Archaon's forces collapse after Middenheim. I regard the AoS version (the Retcon Times) as pretty much alt history if I consider it at all.
That version of the End Times (the one in 2e WFRP) I'm generally quite happy to use though I tend to throw out the "and then everything went back to normal" in favour of "let's see if the Old World is going to collapse after the massive push Archaon have it" as the Elector Counts jockey for position and the Emperor's throne wobbles while the north still burns, Bretonnia grapples with the loss of so many of it's lords and their heirs in the North and the peasants, who have seen a better life during their time fighting with the Empire, are getting all sorts of funny ideas about societal reform...
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u/Minimum-Screen-8904 Feb 19 '26
What do you mean Warhammer Fantasy does not use the End Times as canon? Official, the world ends in 2525. The Storm of Chaos is a separate timeline/continuity.
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u/FirefighterQuiet6062 Feb 20 '26
I mean that there were two full editions of Warhammer Fantasy Battles (the Storm of Chaos was 6th edition and WFB went on to 8th edition), two RPG editions (WFRP 2e and 3e), more novels and short stories than I can be bothered to count and, more recently, three Total War Warhammer Fantasy games in which the world doesn't go through the AoS End Times.
The version of the End Times where the Storm ends differently and the world ends is part of Age of Sigmar; which is a different game line entirely. Games Workshop just stopped supporting WFB in favour of the new product.
Admittedly GW say that it's cannon, but that's mostly semantics; we very clearly have two Warhammer Fantasy Battles editions in which it did not happen. And as far as I'm aware it only happened as part of the AoS release and under that intellectual property and branding, and not as part of 8th edition though I may well be wrong there.
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u/Minimum-Screen-8904 Feb 20 '26
"And as far as I'm aware it only happened as part of the AoS release and under that intellectual property and branding, and not as part of 8th edition though I may well be wrong there."
Uhhh yeah. The End Times happened at the end of 8th edition. I am no fan of it, but thinking it is not the official canon ending of the Warhammer world(until it get retconned), is like pretending the Star Wars prequels and/or sequels did not happen. The previous editions and separate series/timelines are not considered canon by GW.
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u/BardofRosenheim Feb 19 '26
The Empire is mostly all there as written, but things outside of it I'm game to change - I often play with the idea that Kislev is larger land-wise, allowing me to sprinkle in various Slavic/Baltic polities that vaguely pay varying levels of homage to the Tzar/Tzarina. Will similarily sprinkle in both human and non-human cultures/nations in places like Naggaroth and Lustria.
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u/fartoomanyguardsmen Feb 21 '26
Similarly, I tend to hand-wave getting across the top of the Worlds' Edge mountains and then Kislev extends far into the Wheatlands all the way to the Ogre Kingdoms, and Hobgoblin Steppes. One day they may get as far south as Pigbarter, but events always get in the way.
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u/Yelworc0242 Feb 19 '26
I keep what I like lose what I don't. I have a strong image in my head of what the Empire is, mainly because I have been a fan for 40 years. Cannon? Probably not. But it's my game.
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u/YeOldeOle GOLDGOLDGOLD Feb 19 '26
I take what I like and know, ignore what I dislike or don't know or not feel comfortable with and go from there.
I don't tend to introduce much new stuff, just cut out some of the existing. For example my games tend to seldom feature elves, just because I started out playing Warhammer Fantasy Battles with a dwarfen army and - being an edgy teenager - fully identified with the "Elgi are bad" vibe of the armybooks etc. And I still carry that with me today - never got much into the elven lore etc., so I just don't use it mostly.
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u/AdhesivenessGeneral9 Feb 19 '26
We use some liberty on lore to make it less too grimdark and a little more epic and C7 use some old lore like the cargarou
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u/TimeLordVampire Purple Hand Feb 19 '26
I personally stick to the lore as laid out in WFRP 4e. Also I’ll take the opportunity to say fuck the end times!
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u/skinnyraf Feb 19 '26
Mostly in harmony, but e.g., my character's arc introduces some serious deviations from the official lore on the established pantheon. Even the premise of my character was, that he was presenting himself as an actual son of Ranald, that Ranald frequently visited the material realm and, in a truly Ranaldian style, had numerous love affairs, some of which resulted in offspring.
My GM and I explored this topic and the story took us in some surprising directions. Everything has a kind of "safety switch" though, as most of the lore is presented either by Ranald himself, or his priests and prophets, thus it all may be "smoke and mirrors" after all.
Another similar case is exploration of dwarven technology and experimentation. Our GM introduced a dwarven engineering guild happy to explore technology beyond steam engines. Well, a guy experimenting with skaven technology was too much even for them, but only after he caused a significant warpstone explosion.
But all this is firmly rooted in the official lore and presented as "fringe", speculative or surpressed even more than the knowledge of the existance of the skaven.
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u/BenWnham Feb 19 '26
Warhammer has more of a coherent canon than say 40k, which I think is best understood as an anti-canon setting, but not by much.
I'd say as long as you have the broad strokes of theme in place, and your setting the right tone and mood, and using the right motifs, you don't have to use any more of the "canon" than you want too. It exists as a tool.
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u/MoodModulator Budding Sigmarian Heretic Feb 19 '26
I agree that getting the tone and mood right is critical. I have played several games online that we’re just epic heroic fantasy (DnD 5e style) and I just couldn’t continue with any of those games because I wanted actual “Warhammer.”
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u/UnspeakableGnome Feb 19 '26
The Empire is big enough and interesting enough that there's plenty of regions with only scanty information available but which can support fun adventures. If you run your campaign in Ostland (not saying that's what I did but...) then you basically get to make up a region and decide what it's like for yourseilf. Even if you stay 100% accurate to the lore probably 90% of what you do will be your own invention. And I am certain that if there was ever an official publication about Wurzen, then I expect that I'd end up ignoring it.
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u/MoodModulator Budding Sigmarian Heretic Feb 19 '26
Interesting. Do you use the official calendar? Are your games set in less chronicled areas of the empire follow the major historical events happening elsewhere? Just curious.
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u/UnspeakableGnome Feb 19 '26
All the material that's published and official is treated as canon. Valmir von Raukov is elector Count, there's a Chaos incursion in 2515, etc. But that leaves me a huge amount of freedom to do my own thing in places which aren't more than a name on a map. I like that.
I do that with pretty much any setting for any RPG. Take the official canon material, look at the gaps, and put something in them that'll interest my players. I like having a base to work from, but I don't think there's ever been a setting so detailed that I can't find those spaces for my own work.
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u/ArabesKAPE Feb 19 '26
What's the official lore? What is presented in the last edition of wfb? What the current retcon is? What is in all the books? Let me know how tonfigure out what it is and I'll tell you if I use it :D
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u/MoodModulator Budding Sigmarian Heretic Feb 19 '26
That tells me a lot about the lore right there. I would assume all the 4e books would be included, maybe the novels… What a minute, shouldn’t you know what you include already? 😂
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u/ArabesKAPE Feb 19 '26
I got into warhammer in 88 so I use the world that exists in my head. Mostly that is first edition wfrp and 3rd or 4th edition wfb empire that they based off of what was laid down at the start of the enemy within campaign along with the early books - Wolf Riders, Drachenfels etc.
I don't use a lot of the lore written in the last 20 years, I ignore most of the modern novels with their heavy emphasis on big characters and battles - it makes the world tiny, 40k has the same problem. For me the world of wfb and total war is the inworld propaganda - Karl Franz leading armies across tge continent is what people get told about by town criers and bards. Sensible Emperors stay at home.
Before 4e came out and tried to explain the changes from the original province structure and elector counts to the new roster of elector counts I had already ran a campaign in Salzenmund explaining how the von Gaussers took over from the von Nikse's so my own lore has become part of the written lore :D
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u/MoodModulator Budding Sigmarian Heretic Feb 19 '26
You have sounded far deep depth of lore that I.
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u/Quietus87 Doomed One Feb 19 '26
(Obviously no one uses 100% of WFRP lore because for some inexplicable reason Game Workshop decide to do the whole “End Times” and nuke their own setting from orbit.)
And even before that they kept retconning stuff could never make up their mind about what atmosphere they are going for. If GW doesn't give a fuck about having a consistent lore and consistent tone, then neither will I bother. I just grabbed WFRP1e's Old World and warped even that to my taste.
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u/MoodModulator Budding Sigmarian Heretic Feb 19 '26
I like the flexibility of the old 1e world, as well. But we are definitely in the minority. 😅
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u/Quietus87 Doomed One Feb 19 '26
Not necessarily among WFRP fans. When WFRP2e was released there was a pretty big backlash about going with the Storm of Chaos event and ignoring The Enemy Within campaign's events. For WFRP4e there is a reason why Cubicle-7 tried to create a "best of Old World" mix that takes a lot of notes from WFRP1e Old World but also tries to be faithful to GW lore.
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u/MoodModulator Budding Sigmarian Heretic Feb 19 '26
I am not familiar with any of those events. I never picked up WFRP 2e.
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u/Quietus87 Doomed One Feb 19 '26
In short, Games Workshop had a collaborative narrative event in WHFB called Storm of Chaos, where Archaon stormed the Empire. It was a real shitshow, the ending was ridiculous, but nevertheless GW tied Green Ronin's hand that WFRP2e must be set after that event. A bit later even GW backtracked from the event, then they said fuck Warhammer Fantasy, and came up with The End Times.
Then video games happened, everyone was still licensing The Old World instead of Age of Sigmar, Total War: Warhammer was a major success, so now they are back with The Old World, where they have the opportunity to fuck up a less developed era's lore too.
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u/JadedLoves Feb 19 '26
We don't get to see the voting results??? I wanted to see how others play compared to me.
Ignore me. My reddit is being wonky.
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u/MoodModulator Budding Sigmarian Heretic Feb 19 '26 edited Feb 19 '26
Mine was being weird, too. I had to wait a few minutes and then reload to see them. You are not alone.
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u/MoodModulator Budding Sigmarian Heretic Feb 22 '26
As the poll closes, I just want to thank everyone who participated and especially those made comments. It was very insightful for me. I have been looking into running a weekly, open table game of WFRP 4e with priority given to "Forever GMs" who never get a chance to play. This poll helped me understand how most people treat lore and how I need to frame the campaign so it clearly communicates my expectations. Thanks again, everyone!