Day 11 of the 2026 #Character Creation Challenge and I’m going to be using a game that was popular in the United Kingdom back in the day. Warhammer Fantasy Role Play 1st Edition which recently came up on sale at DriveThruRPG. Readers of my blog know that I had been scanning in and talking about older character sheets that I had recently re-discovered from a lost binder. One of those that I posted about was a WHFRPG character that I don’t recall ever playing. So at one point in my early gaming career, I did at least touch the system. It may have been a session zero to get the characters ready for a campaign that never happened. I remember seeing advertisements for WFRPG in different gaming magazines, but I never really looked at it since we all had Dungeons and Dragons to use. I had always associated Warhammer with the tabletop miniature games that were really popular. I did like the artwork that I saw in the advertisements.
From what I understand, this is a percentile based system. The summary for character creation starts on page 20. There are eleven steps in total. Each character has several characteristics (with the in-game abbreviation) which are Movement (M), Weapon Skill (WS), Ballistic Skill (BS), Strength (S), Toughness (T), Wounds (W), Initiative (I), Attacks (A), Dexterity (Dex), Leadership (Ld), Intelligence (Int), Cool (Cl), Will Power (WP and Fellowship (Fel). Will Power deals with mental and magical resistance, Cool is the ability to remain calm and Fellowship is the social skills and appearance of the character. The other Characteristics are the standard that we find in different RPGs.
The first step is to select the character’s race, gender and name. The four racial choices are Human, Elf, Dwarf and Halfling. I’m going to stick with Human for this male character and his name is going to be Teowulf. The second step is to generate the characteristics stats based off of a chart listed. Each race had a different column, some with simple responses, others with different used dice. I rolled the different dice listed under the “Man” column and wrote them down on the character sheet in the Starter Profile. I then wrote down the racial abilities for Teowulf. For age you had to determine if he was young or old. If ye was young, roll 6d6 and if he was old roll 6d10. He is young and is 20 years old.
The Alignment is next and I’m sticking with Neutral. Next comes Fate which for a Human is d3+1 so 2 is what I rolled. And fate must have been looking at this character since he didn’t have a high enough WS to be a Warrior, but he did have a high enough BS to be a Ranger. So Teowulf is a Ranger.
Next comes the Skills that Teowulf has. Being aged 20 he doesn’t get to add to the d4 to determine how many skills he has. Luckily I rolled a 3. There are no automatic skills for being a Human. But I do get to roll randomly on the Human/Ranger skill chart to see what skills he has. This came up with Sing (what?), Very Resilient and Ambidextrous. OK, the last two I can see how they would help, but I wasn’t expecting Teowulf to be skilled in singing. But I’ll run with it.
Now the Trappings are the equipment and money that Teowulf had acquired before he started the adventure. I looked at what was listed for Rangers and I wrote it down on the sheet. I rolled 13 gold crowns in his purse.
I don’t know why this was separate from the skills step, but next is to roll against the Human/Ranger Basic Career Chart. Another percentile roll resulted in Teowulf also being a Hunter. That makes sense. I checked the Hunter description and wrote down the additional characteristics, skills and trappings he now has.
Step eleven is The Free Advance. The book explains that since adventurers are a cut above the normal population, this extra stuff helps them as heroes in the story. I can add +1 to S, T or W or any other by +10%. Since I can see Teowulf being one of the possible front line fighters, I elected to up his Weapons Skill.
Technically this is where the summary ends. There were still quite a few blank spots left on the character sheet. I elected to look at the skills, weapons and fill in some spots that needed them (description stuff mostly) and called it good.
Afterthoughts:
I had to snigger when I saw there was a BS skill, but it didn’t mean what BS usually stands for. I don’t know if they were trying to go for a different look, but I think that using three letter abbreviations would have helped me keep track of the different characteristics.
While I had a little bit more of an understanding for the character sheet that I scanned from my book, I really don’t see myself playing this game. I don’t know anyone who plays WHFRPG and I have other fantasy systems to scratch that itch.
Additional Notes:
On the Modiphius Discord Server, Michael Dismuke (who runs the STA fan website Continuing Missions) liked my entry for Star Trek Adventures- Captain’s Log. He thanked me for showing of the system.
On Mastodon, @SaltyMonk@mastodon.online also responded to my my Captain’s Log character. He remembers making a similar mistake to the ones that I had made when he first make a CL character.
Coming Up Next:
Star Wars Roleplaying Game 2nd Edition
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