Tabletop Game / Zweihänder

In the grim perilousness of medieval Europe you will still roll peasants and die of cholera.

ZWEIHÄNDER Grim & Perilous RPG is a bloodier, grimmer and grittier version of classic tabletop role-playing games you may already familiar with. The community calls this style of gaming the pathetic aesthetic, but we simply call it grim & perilous gaming.
—The official webpage

For the sword of this name, see BFS and Swords.

Crowdfunded on Kickstarter in summer 2016 and published in summer 2017, Zweihänder is a Spiritual Successor to Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. And "successor" may be generous; it is frequently considered a near-perfect clone of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. Many concepts clearly mimic the better-known setting while writing around trademarks - see Captain Ersatz, below, for a very small sample of how much of the game is lifted straight from Warhammer. It goes beyond the creatures; you could easily introduce the game to a Warhammer fan by saying the Aetheric Winds are the Winds of Magic, the Princes of Chaos are the Chaos Gods, character generation is pretty much WFRP 2nd Edition, and gameplay is pretty much also WFRP 2nd Edition. The similarities are obvious and intentional, as when Zweihander was coming out, the fate of WFRP was not certain. Fantasy Flight Games had lost rights to Games Workshop's intellectual property and dropped the lines. Cubicle 7's revival had not been announced, so anyone wanting that experience could just pick up Zweihander and get it.

That is not criticism. The game competently executes its premise. If you want a one-book RPG that gives you the feel of old-school, insanely-lethal classic WFRP, Zweihander has you covered. Simply put, it is to Warhammer classic what games like Dungeon Crawl Classics are to early Dungeons & Dragons.

Zweihander is meant for low & dark fantasy campaigns. The creators state the book can be used to craft homebrew stories set in the works of Andrzej Sapkowski, George R.R. Martin, Glen Cook, Scott Lynch and other ‘grimdark’-inspired worlds - assuming you don't mind reworking things that clearly come from Games Workshop, such rolling up a rat catcher who knows about the secret ratmen of the sewers. Or you could play it exactly as written, which will give you a well-executed WFRP-clone.

The game is complete to run with one book, though it is a Door Stopper at over 600 dense pages. A supplement called Main Gauche allows for playing the Chaos side of things, and a Dark Astral supplement lets you use the ruleset in a Grimdark science fantasy space setting. One that legally isn't Warhammer 40,000, of course.

Of note, this page has previously displayed not an introduction to the game, but a copy-and-paste of the ad copy of the back of the book.

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Tropes associated with Zweihänder include:

• Absurdly Sharp Blade: Downplayed. Jabberwocky have a Vorpal Claw that's talked up in its description, but in the unlikely chance you find one of these rare creatures and are fortunate enough to kill one, the Vorpal Claw is just a more damaging Zweihander with greatly increased durability. Though given how stingy this game is, a Vorpal Claw may be the closest thing to a magic item, an adventurer will get.
• Absurdly Low Level Cap: Tiers are the closest thing to levels in Zweihänder, and the maximum is three.
• Always Chaotic Evil: Almost all the mutant races, the Chosen of Chaos and every single thing that is Abyssal. For them, slaughter and rapine are virtues.
• Armour Is Useless: It most definitively is not, but fat chance you'll ever see any besides (if you're lucky) your starting padded skullcap and that rusty piece of moth-ridden chainmail you nabbed off that bandit.
  • According to the rules, chainmail or plate armour give 1 armour point that stacks with Brawn Bonus (natural resilience) that is a 4 for an average adventurer. This means that average guy in munitions plate armor is as just resilient as ripped warrior naked (unless they suffer an Injury, wherein the ripped, naked warrior begins to Bleed to death). Leather armour was useless against anything but lightest attacks (think fisticuffs).
• Attack Failure Chance: Critical Failure: In general, rolling a natural 100 or a high multiple of 11 on any skill test will result in a critical failure as well. A natural 01 or a low multiple of 11 will instead result in a critical success. One during spell casting may summon Daemons of Chaos, render you impotent, render you and your party and your distant relatives impotent, or merely give you an insanity point. Guns tend to simply blow up.
• Black Comedy: A lot of it all around.
• Body Horror: Chaos corrupts; what drives the point home better than waking up one day with a face growing out of your armpit? When fighting in Wytchstone tainted environment, don't breathe in.
• Captain Ersatz: The gods of Zweihänder are basically the gods of the Warhammer world, without the names. (See Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep" below.)
  • The creatures are basically creatures straight out of Warhammer with the serial numbers filed off. The skrrzak are the Skaven. The Aztlan are the Lizardmen. The Chosen of Chaos are Chaos Warriors. The Grendel are the Beastmen. The Dvergar are the Chaos Dwarfs. The Siabra are the Dark Elves with a Witch Queen instead of a Witch King. The Arch Cenobite is a Keeper of Secrets, the Brass Primarch is a Bloodthirster, the Abyssal Prince of Decay is Nurgle, the Abyssal Prince of Change is Tzeentch, the Orx are pretty obvious, Carnal Demons are daemonettes, the Dragon-Born Ogres are dragon ogres...the point has surely been made by now.
• Clock Punk: The Clock Punk and Steampunk technology of Warhammer are downplayed here, but there's still elements of it with some of the Gnome and Skrazzak knicknack that appears. More may be appearing with the Main Gauche supplement.
• Critical Hit: "Fury!"
  • There's also a page of critical hit effects once you move down each step on the 'Damage Condition Track, including an epic 16+ page version written by a medical professional adapted to ZWEIHÄNDER with quite a few eye-watering effects that makes Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay/Dark Heresy's tables look like a walk in the park by comparison.
• Critical Failure: A critical failure during spell casting may summon Daemons of Chaos, render you impotent, render you and your party and your distant relatives impotent, or merely give you an insanity point. Guns tend to simply blow up. In general, rolling a natural 100 or a high multiple of 11 on any skill test will result in a critical failure as well. (A natural 01 or a low multiple of 11 will instead result in a critical success.)
• Crapsack World: The game doesn't advertise itself as "grim and perilous" for nothing.
• Crystal Dragon Jesus: The God-Emperor. Sigmund is a mix of Jesus Christ and Sigmar Heldenhammer. He was born from a virgin on a night with a twin-tailed comet. He also worked as a carpenter before finding a Dwarven relic warhammer that urged him to go slaughter evil and make a benevolent empire.
• Door Stopper: As shown in the page image, the core rulebook is enormous.
• Darker and Edgier: By design, as shown in the page quote. Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay largely skirts around the sexual violence implied by Slannesh and the Dark Elves. Zweihander on the other hand, dives into it. An example is that the Daemonette expies have a hidden barbed phallus and inevitably they'll violate their summoner to death with it.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Skrazzak civilization is based around dedication to their mothers, with each female becoming the new Hive Queen of an entire tribe.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The gods are known only by such names as "The Custodian," "The God-Emperor," "The Winter King," etc.
• Extreme Omnisexual: The Grendel want your women. They also want some of your men... and the children. Plus the occasional farm animal (though the Grendel really don't like the offspring of that particular breeding).
• Deadpan Snarker: Nevermind characters and NPCs, the core rulebook can get in on the snark.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Averted. If your characters encounter things like Greater Demons or Pit Dragons, then your characters will die. Period.
  The Greater Demons of the Abyss are living symbols of the futility of fighting chaos. Their might is unmatched. Their threat is limitless. Each and every one of these foul beings have the power to bring low the greatest of mortal heroes.
• Evil Virtues: All the Chaotic races, minus Formor, have some pretty positive cultural traits (Orx are brave and somewhat community-minded, Beastfolk loathe rape and accept outcastes - though appears to be retconning, and Skrazzak are utterly dedicated to their queens).
• Explosive Breeder: One reason why humans and other "benign" humanoid races are in dire peril. Most of the mutant races breed at an extremely fast pace. The Grendel and Orx reach sexual maturity at age 2!! But both of these races are also very long-lived and can still be impregnating people when they're centuries old. Worse yet, the Grendel's sex powers can puppet large harems of women to stay pregnant and keep pumping out halfbreeds, while the Orx can also reproduce asexually by infesting corpses with their spores. Meanwhile the Skrazzak have their queens that can squirt out large numbers of the rat-men.
• Fusion Dance: The Fell Knights and Havoc Conjurers are already awful to fight. To make things worse, they can undergo a Black Magic ritual that fuses them into a new being, the Dread Count. The Dread Count is a Magic Knight that's more powerful than either original villain in their respective fields.
• Gangbangers: The campaign seed Gangs of Kahabro adds the option of roleplaying medieval 'Work Gangs'.
• Genre Shift: The expansion book "Dark Astral" provides rules for science-fiction campaigns in the vein of Dark Heresy and other Warhammer 40K role-playing games.
• Gold–Silver–Copper Standard: Zweihänder has a similar monetary system, albeit based on Old British Money: 12 copper pennies to the silver shilling, 20 silver shillings to the gold crown. Confusing as hell for anyone who grew up with decimalized money (basically everyone who isn't a Brit or an Irishman born before the mid-60's)
• The Greatest Story Never Told: The city's rat catchers are the first line of defense against evil ratmen, the Skave...err Skrzzak, who are plotting to conquer the world. They brave the medieval sewers, full of diseases and instant death, armed with little more than clubs and a small (but vicious) dog, all for below minimum wage. They've learnt long ago to not mention it to the people on the surface, on fear of ridicule. Most thankless job ever.
• Greater-Scope Villain: The Abyssal Princes are the source of all the awful Chaos crap that's filtering into the Material World, but none of them are able to manifest directly into reality. Its their Mutant races and Chosen of Chaos servants that are rampaging in the world.
• Green Rocks: Wytchstone. Used in the creation of more powerful magickal items and ritual circles, including the disease-curing panacea.
• Guns Are Worthless: Zigzagged. Guns are extremely deadly if they hit — which reflects in their extremely high purchase price; your average PC will be lucky if he ever sees one. However, the operative words are if they hit. Firearms technology being reminiscent of 16th-century Europe, guns are not noted for their accuracy.
• Hotter and Sexier: Averted. While its influencer Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay likes to skirt around the topic of sex and sexual violence even in the sourcebooks about Chaos, Zweihander outright talks about people being taken for sex slaves, forced pregnancies, rape and etc. Between the emphasis on that and the rough-drawn pictures (especially in comparison to the slick production of the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd edition and up), it becomes a case of Fan Disservice.
• Immune to Bullets: Any monster with the Unnatural Viscera ability are immune to ranged weapons.
• Karma Houdini: As soon as either your Order or your Chaos Ranks reach 10, both are usually reset to 0. In effect, any Chaos ranks you may have accrued before getting Order rank 10 (or vice versa) are erased.
• Karma Meter: Corruption is basically a reverse Karma Meter, indicating how chaotic your character's behavior has been over the course of one play session. At the end of the session, each player gets either one Order Rank, which are a more direct form of Karma, if their Corruption was low enough; or one or more Chaos Ranks if their Corruption was high enough. As players accrue more and more Order and Chaos Ranks, they gain either additional Fate Points or horrific addictions, insanities, or mutations.
• Kavorka Man: The Grendel are a Mutant race of violent ugly beastmen who worship Abyssal powers. Many of them also have an unknown power (scholars speculate it's pheromone-based) that makes it easy for women, men, children and the occasional animal to fall in lust with them. While the Grendel aren't above rape especially if they worship the Abyssal Prince of Pleasure, most of them have an easy time getting sex slaves by letting their powers do the trick or plying victims with the Wine of Bacchus.
• Kill It with Fire: There's actually a monster trait with the exact same name. The trait is linked with Reanimator and it means the monster will eventually come back to life unless you set it on fire.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Launched as soon as a player gains either 10 Order Ranks or 10 Chaos Ranks.
• Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: Generally averted. Magic powers don't grow in potency and the spells you get are about in line with the average damage output of most other classes at the same experience amount. And while warriors may be limited to 'hit stuff with sword' as opposed to 'call down lightning from the heavens', 'hit stuff with sword' won't end up with the warrior causing accidental self-sterilization, permanent insanity, strange weather phenomena, witch-signs, repeat offender of curdling the party ale, summoning demons, and being treated to a rousing game of Burn the Witch! by the party priest of Sig... um, the God-Emperor... and/or anyone else within earshot.
• Luck Manipulation Mechanic: Fate points grant you a 'get out of jail free' card. A session-based allotment of 'fortune points' can be used to re-roll your dice, although every fortune point spent gives the GM a "misfortune point" to spend as they please...
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Or rather, With A Little Luck My Shield Will Allow Me To Parry This And Survive Another Round
• Made of Plasticine: Not as bad as Dark Heresy due to the lower power levels, but there is some nasty stuff on the critical hit tables with the highest level cleaving the offending body part right off/right in two.
• Magic Knight: Dread Counts are the Expy of Warhammer's Chaos Lords. The Dread Counts take it up a notch though. To create a Dread Count, there needs to be a black magic ritual that binds into one body a Fell Knight (expy of a Chaos Warrior) and Havoc Summoner (expy of a Chaos Sorcerer). The Dread Count gets the combined abilities of both, but is even better than the originals.
• Mars Needs Women: The Grendel (this game's Beastmen), the Formor and the Orx are a mostly male species. And all three of these will go and grab themselves humanoid women (not just human or elf - dwarf, gnomes and halflings work too) to make into sex slaves for reproduction. And the Orx don't even need to, they mainly reproduce by putting spores in corpses and they hate their halfbreed offspring Booguns - the sex slave part is just them asserting dominance.
• Mana: For Archmages or Elementalists, high Corruption respectively restricts spellcasting or prohibits it altogether, causing their Karma Meter to double as a Mana Meter.
• Monty Haul: Averted. Unless your party has a skilled rune-smith with a lot of Wyrdstone, the only magic items around are legendary relics like the Hammer of the God-Emperor - items that aren't going to be lying around in a dungeon. Additionally there won't be heaps of gold and jewels to haul off, treasure is going to be taking that dead bandit's rusty sword and selling it for scrap metal.
• Mutants: The presence of Moorcock-inspired Chaos mutants is a feature that set ZWEIHÄNDER and its contemporary WFRP apart from many other fantasy wargame/role-playing systems. Being a mutant means everything from being a complete cripple, to merely being an ugly human, to becoming something that can barely be called humanoid. Typically though when your character gets a mutation, they end up getting an affliction that turns them into one of the mutant races or lycanthropes, etc.
• Nigh-Invulnerable: Beware fighting monsters with the Accursed or Dense Anatomy. Accursed means you're up against a supernatural creature that can only be harmed with magical weapons. Dense Anatomy means you're fighting up against something with a weird blobby mess for a body and it requires fire to damage.
• 1-Up: The Fate Points. Burn one and you get to survive an event that otherwise would kill you by some extraordinary quirk of fate.
• Rag Tag Bunch Of Misfits: Your group of adventurers will be up of people that could include the person that throws out gunk from chamber pots.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Why everyone, even Beastfolk who often reproduce by seducing the willing, hates Formor, and why they're the only Chaotic species that can't be a Villain Protagonist. Though this has been retconned as the Beastfolk became the Grendel and now none of the Chaotic races feel any queasiness about rape.
• Resurrective Immortality: Any being that has the Reanimator trait will eventually get back to life after getting killed. However every creature with Reanimator has a way to kill them permanently.
• Running Gag: Any references to ratcatchers or the ratcatcher career will always mention their most important trapping: The small (but vicious) dog.
• Sanity Meter: Just saw a particularly grisly murder scene? Turned out that filthy hobo that stole the countess' silverware was a chaos mutant and just revealed it in front of you? Happen to be, or stand close to, a wizard (or an elf) for an extended period of time? It's Corruption time! Hope you like crippling alcoholism, mandrake addiction, kleptomania, delusions of grandeur or any other number of not-so-funny-anymore medieval mental illnesses, because you'll be stuck with it for the rest of your career.
• Shout-Out: Too many to count, especially in the Professions section. The official name for the Smuggler's professional trait, for example, is "Häns shot first."
• Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: As noted, cynical. Although not as cynical as say, 40k. The random roles system will provide players with less of a party of adventurers than a band of ugly thugs. Combat is brutal and a high-risk affair, a misroll during spell casting may consign your soul to hell. Firearms (of the general arquebus variety) are similarly risky; a misfire can easily kill a low to medium level character. More likely, however, is a misfire that destroys the weapon and all its ammunition... and that is pretty likely, but you can still earn your happy ending. The world may be doomed, but the village behind yon hill can still be saved.
• Torches and Pitchforks: A very real threat to most adventurers. When your insanities grow too grotesque, when your mutations grow too hideous, or when the peasants find out that you have a wizard (or worse, an elf) in your party; the mob awaits!
• Total Party Kill: Very easy to achieve for a GM, without even trying. A few monsters — like Dragons and Greater Demons — are basically statted only so a GM can use them to cause this.
• Unusable Enemy Equipment: Some types of Greater Demons carry weapons that only they can use and if someone who is Order-aligned tried to use it, there's a chance they'll instantly die. For the most part this is averted and you can usually pick it up and use whatever your foe had. But for what may appear to be an extra-powerful weapon, could just be an effect from a monster's trait.
• Vancian Magic: Obeys the first law, but not the second and third laws. Also comes with the caveat that every spell has at a chance of driving the caster insane, causing chaos manifestations or bringing down divine punishment, successful or not (the more dice you roll to cast a spell, the greater the chance).
• Weird Historical War: The third-party licensed rule set Flames of Freedom takes all of this game's varied options for horror and chaos and unleashes them in The American Revolution.

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