Warpstone Magazine, the fanzine for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, is still going strong in the vacuum left by Hogshead, even if their publishing schedule has become (even) more erratic. What will happen to this fine magazine now that Games Workshop is picking up the license again (WFRP v2 is to be released sometime next spring) seems somewhat unclear at the moment, but hopefully GW wont mind a fanzine existing alongside their own official material.

Content

The magazine itself is becoming increasingly more professional with each and every issue, and like most of the preceding Warpstone magazines, this one is possibly the best one to date. The reviews (of Dwarves: of Stone and Steel, Fear the Worst and more) are good, if late – I presume that anyone who’s interested has made up their mind a long time ago about these product, as they were all released six months ago or more. Tim Eccles’ column The Correspondent is this time used for musings on the possible second edition of WFRP, quite some coincidence, as the news to that effect was announced a short time after the release of this issue.

Next Garrett Leper has written an article on death and dying in the Warhammer World. Five pages of customs and beliefs about death, burial rites, testaments … and a bit about roleplaying ghosts! Solid material, and highly useful for all GMs, I would imagine. The three-page article on the Outrider career that follows might not be that immediately useful, but it contains some good background, and is another valuable addition to the Warpstone semi-series on different careers. The “fact” that all Outriders are supposed to have really long, neat moustaches does seem a bit silly to me, however. There’s also an article on Entertainers in this issue, and my comments on the outriders go for this one as well.

“The Professor’s Dilemma” is a short scenario concerning a rather odd murder-mystery. A neat little piece which is more of an encounter than a full scenario, this is not entirely to my tastes (I don’t care particularly for the “monster” that is used), but it is well written, and I have no doubt that a lot of groups could have fun with this one.

The front-page article of Warpstone issue 21 is about Ogre PCs. This is an idea that was mentioned in the passing in the Power Behind the Throne-part of The Enemy Within-campaign, and no doubt a lot of players have wanted to see rules for playing these big brutes. And here they are. Well written and well thought out, and with a great deal of background on ogre culture and lifestyle, this is an article that even those who abhor the central idea will find useful and interesting.

The piece de resistance in this issue is the long adventure called “The Tears of Myrmidia” – which takes place (mostly) in Araby. This is a very good, very long (19 pages) adventure that could easily be expanded into a small campaign on its own. While reading this I immediately started thinking about ways to incorporate it into my ongoing campaign, and that has never happened to me before while reading Warpstone. (Sadly, I couldn’t find out how to do it). This is the best scenario Warpstone has ever published, in my opinion.

Rounding out the issue is more Talabheim material – very good as always, even if I think it’s spread out over too many issues by now – and a couple of short articles on Forms of Address and the Bakers’ Guild – good background here. Lastly, there are a couple of pages of letters. Happily, the editors have decided to not include any fiction in this issue either.

Conclusion

The art is excellent, as always, and the layout and editing is of near-professional quality. All in all, this issue of Warpstone is, pound for pound, page for page, more than worth the asking price.