YMMV / Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay

• Audience-Alienating Era: For being wildly different than any other edition (eschewing a traditional pen-and-paper RPG style for something closer to a board/party game, with decks of cards, cardboard tokens and colorful custom dice that use symbols in place of numbers), Third Edition was considered something of a black sheep in the WFRP family, and even at its heyday was less popular than the more traditional Second Edition (and especially the Warhammer 40,000 games based on Second Edition's rules). With the release of Fourth Edition and Fantasy Flight Games losing the license it has been mostly forgotten, especially as it is a physical-dependent product in an era where buying rulebooks and materiel digitally (or through a subscription service) has become much more popular.
• Broken Base: The changes brought by the second edition did this, as did the third, and the fourth. Business as usual with Tabletop Game edition changes, in other words.
  • Within second edition fandom Renegade Crowns is either a brilliant toolkit for a GM to create his or her own unique yet very Warhammer corner of the Old World or a wasted opportunity to shed light on a previously mostly ignored area.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: WFRP is very popular in Poland, partially because it was widely available while D&D was almost unknown until a few years ago, partially because the typical Polish tabletop player is a grump who really enjoys the setting's cynicism, and partially because most of the game takes place in fantasy equivalent of central Europe, so the setting feels more familiar than say Forgotten Realms.
• Heartwarming Moments: In one short story, an Imperial scholar braves the burning sands and undead hordes to travel to the city of Bel Aliad. They get caught when his guide decides to pilfer the tombs, and the two are escorted by skeleton warriors to a chamber where a mummified prince sits on a throne, flanked by a priest who speaks in fluent Reikspiel. The prince, through the priest, asks why the scholar has come here to steal his possessions, and the scholar explains he hasn't come here looking for treasure - he seeks a cure for his wife dying from poison inflicted by a jealous rival. The prince listens to the translation from the priest, pauses for a moment and then gestures for his guards to chop off the thieving guide's head and release the scholar. With that, the prince smiles, gets up out of his chair and speaks to the priest one last time before exiting the chamber with his skeletal retinue. The priest steps down and says to the scholar: "My lord commands me to tell you that he, too, loved once. He too would've travelled to the ends of the world to save his love. I am to show you the wisdom you seek." He then guides the scholar to a secret chamber and shows him the knowledge he needs to save his wife.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • 2nd edition's Tome of Salvation illustrates a salute used by members of the Cult of Sigmar, in which one holds their fore and index fingers horizontally across their face to simulate the holy Twin-tailed Comet. Fans quickly noticed a striking resemblance to◊ the V-Sign as commonly used in Japanese works.
  • When it was revealed in the 4th edition that the Skaven had stolen the design for Doomrockets from Ind, there was quite a few people in the community making references to Gandhi and nukes.
• Paranoia Fuel: Reading about competent Grey Wizards is basically this - you'll never even know you're around one thanks to their illusion magic, and their practical experience further makes them excel at all manner of subterfuge from Frame-Ups to infiltrations. They are so covert that they don't even truly reveal their dealings to the Emperor himself - fortunately, they are so committed to rooting out corruption that they have killed more of their Order for breaking its zero-tolerance rules than any other College and are decentralized such that it would be virtually impossible for any cult to infiltrate them in return, but their secrecy will always make one wonder...
• Tear Jerker: The Bretonnia sourcebook "Knights of the Grail" is this if you're familiar with the way Bretonnian peasant life was portrayed in the 5th edition of the wargame. Whereas peasants under the old lore had rights to protect themselves, and could even rise to become knights and nobles through merit and valor, that is no longer possible in the Bretonnia of this edition. Instead, the book emphasizes just how miserable and oppressed the peasantry is, with ruinous taxes and strict control over some of the most mundane details of their lives, all at the hands of detached, apathetic, or even outright stupid or cruel nobles. Making things worse, the peasants actively strive to keep up the illusion the nobles have of the peasants living lives of contentment, peace and ease, because the alternative of getting their masters involved in their lives is seen as far worse. For example, peasants strive to avoid involving the nobles when they have crime or legal disputes amongst themselves, because they fear the result will be swift, brutal and hamfistedly indifferent to any nuances (and oftentimes, it is). But this explicitly just perpetuates the cycle of suffering; when peasants inevitably suffer to the point they have no choice but to revolt, the nobles feel affronted and crush the revolt with extra brutality, fully believing their own narrative that this behavior is fueled by the peasantry being "ungrateful" and "inherently wicked". And given how stratified and stagnant Bretonnia is, this cycle will probably never change.

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