Warhammer World Campaign Setting and Lore

[Sjeng]

Is the basic rule book (8th edition) in it? I mean,the full version??

All is 7th edition. But yes, it's a nice 250 page book with rules, world info and tabletop gaming/painting info.

[Big Bene]

Just buy the book already. It's very nice and you'll cherish it forever

It is indeed, and certainly worth the 60 Euro it costs, but this doesn't help me if I don't have this money. It's not that I'm not willing to buy the originals, I own more than one of the older editions (original book, of course).
Moreover, for the current version, I like to print all the material out and have it all together in a ring binder - rules, army book, and the errata and faqs (which I can put right between the corresponding pages).

[Sjeng]

I did some googling, and found this on WHF lore:

WARHAMMER MERCH: IN UR WALLETS TAKING UR CASH

Warhammer Fantasy Battles was originally released in 1983. The 7th edition was released in the fall of '06, sporting over fifteen separate armies, each with a miniature line of hundreds of different figures. Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, was first available in 1987, the Second Edition, was released in 2004, recently changing from GW’s in-house development to a license now under Fantasy Flight Games. Games Workshop publishes a huge number of Warhammer novels and artbooks through their Black Library imprint. Black Library has been around since the late 90’s, but GW first started publishing novels in the mid/late 80’s. Many of the first novels released under BL were reprints of older (and very out of date) novels.

Games Workshop also produces a few spin-off miniature games. Mordheim, a campaign-based skirmish game that fuses RPG and wargame; Warmaster, an epic-scale wargame using vast armies of 10mm-tall figures; and Blood Bowl, a spoof on the Warhammer world that plays like American football.

Mythic currently holds the license for online/MMO Warhammer video games, while Namco holds the general non-MMORPG license, represented by the dubious Warhammer: Mark of Chaos, a real-time strategy game.

MORE, GIVE ME MORE!

Over the past two and a half decades Games Workshop has produced a library of stories, army books, art books, and novels based on Warhammer. These are where the details are found, and anyone looking for in-depth information should go.

Where to start, then? There's no official entry point to Warhammer background, as most of the really detailed stuff is scattered across hundreds of books. With a few exceptions, novels, background books, and game books, tend to focus on a single nation, race, or event. So, to make things easier, I've grouped some of the better sources below in general categories.

GAME MATERIALS

Essentials: Game Books

Warhammer: the Game of Fantasy Battles, 7th edition is, in my opinion, the best consolidated "top-down" view of Warhammer available in book form. While half the book is rules, there's still plenty of artwork, great atmosphere, plenty of miniatures pictures, and a solid world guide. Plus, if you decide to start playing with toy soldiers, you'll be all set.

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, 2nd edition is rather like the WFB rulebook: lots of art, half game rules, and half background. This is a "bottom-up" view of Warhammer, so instead of mighty heroes, nations, epic histories, WFRP focuses on cultures, politics, economy, and life in the Warhammer world. It is very Empire-centric, focusing on that nation almost completely.

Notable: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay

Grouped by best general background to useful for specific subjects.

Realms of Sorcery: Plenty of background on magic and the Imperial colleges.
Old World Bestiary: Divided into half background and half rules; great flavor and “in character” accounts of creatures of the Warhammer world.

Tome of Corruption: Chaos and the Norse.
Tome of Salvation: Priests, cults, and gods in the Empire.
Sigmar's Heirs: Very detailed Empire sourcebook.
Knights of the Grail: All you ever need to know about Bretonnia.
Children of the Horned Rat: This book doesn’t exist.
Night’s Dark Masters: All about vampires.

Plus a number of adventures and additional books on various subjects or localities. See Fantasy Flight Games for a full list.

Notable: Warhammer Fantasy Battles

The various army books are the single best resource for detailed information about a single race. At 22 bucks a piece they’re pricy, especially as you get about a third background and the rest rules. If you can find 4th/5th edition army books, they may be priced cheaper, and often have as much or more background. Some may end up being dated.

Notable: Out of Print and Hard to Find

Warhammer Armies: Undead 4th edition: mostly reprinted in Liber Necris (see below) this contains a detailed account of the sorcerer Nagash, his creation of Necromancy and the Tomb Kings, and the later wars against the Vampire Counts. Nagash’ story is relatively original and a classic Warhammer blend of historical bits, epic dark magic, and over-the-top events.

Warhammer Armies: Skaven 4th edition: reprinted or rewritten in places, this book is packed with awesome stories and flavor bits, such as skaven stealing all the children of a town, and the thirteen stanzas of the Doom of Kavzar. This book is distinct from the later 6th edition book as the back is a bright red (instead of dark brown/red) and it has a screaming bell on the cover, rather than a warlock engineer standing on a cannon.

Realm of Chaos: the Lost and the Damned and Realm of Chaos: Slaves to Darkness. If you see these and have spare cash, buy them. Perhaps the finest gaming books ever published, these two are packed with background, stories, and incredible artwork. Some of this found its way into Liber Chaotica (see below), but a fair amount has not seen print since. Each of these books can go for a $100 or so on eBay.

BACKGROUND BOOKS AND NOVELS

Essentials: Background

World of Warhammer (minus the "Online. Craft.") has the widest scope of any no-rules background-only book. It's roughly the same stuff you can find on the GW website, but a bit more detailed, in handy book form, and somewhat dated. A few things have changed, and stylistically, it's based off of the Warhammer 5th edition era. As such, it's quite a bit brighter and cartoonier than older or newer artwork and stories. This is the era that slightly predated and coincides with Blizzard's first Warcraft releases, so is visually the closest to their work. With those caveats in mind, it's still a solid book, especially if you don't want to purchase game rules you won't use.

Liber Chaotica. The best of the best. Even though it's nominally focused on Chaos, this book actually covers, via artwork, layout, poems, and text, key ideas in the Warhammer world. Magic, psychology, geography, history... it's a detailed look at all the things that make the Warhammer world different from the real world, or other fantasy realms. Although it's a bit dense, especially if you're just introduced to Warhammer, it's really one of the finest quality products GW/BL has ever released. Just be careful... by the end you'll be reading backwards-written and backwards text in a mirror to decipher hidden messages in the previous text. Literally.

I recently found out that the hardcover collection goes for around $900 USD and softcover for quite a bit as well. If you have a shot at this and can afford it; buy it. You'll be rewarded with a good read or profitable eBay sale.

Notable: Background

These are of variable difficulty to find; some may be purchased second-hand at this point, though may be somewhat expensive.

Liber Necris is full of reprints from the 4th edition Undead book, which is a good thing. It actually helps bring Vampires from a fantasy cliché to something very unique to the Warhammer world in all but name.

Vile Ratmen is an entertaining book, even if fanciful and written about magic boogeymen that don’t exist.

The Life of Sigmar, and The Witch Hunter's Handbook are written and published in an “in-character” style, as the kind of materials Imperials and/or Witch Hunters in training might use.

Empire at War, is dry, but interesting enough if you're into military textbooks.

Grudgelore is a good call for Dwarf fans, and packed with some decent artwork of tiny, bearded men.

Blood on the Reik is largely an artbook, but offers some great atmosphere and Warhammer goodness. Like fish hats.

There's more on novels in that topic, but I only quoted the lore books. Novels can also be a source of inspiration, but are too specific in my opinion. I also have a torrent for those fantasy RPG books if anyone's interested. will post soon.

So I've been searching for Barak Tor and Kalos on the maps, but can't find it... Kalos seems to be somewhere in the desert, so that means south, but does anyone know where these two locations are?

Can't find Durrag-Dol either, it's supposed to be in the World's Edge Mountains, but that's a big area

Question has been snowed under reposting.

[torilen]

WOW - great info. I'm going to have to copy and paste that...and go through it
piece by piece. That's a lot of stuff...but thanks for posting it. That gives us
all a great place to start.

[Blackthorn]

So where does this map come from?



It shows the locations of Mentor domain and several locations from HeroQuest.

[knightkrawler]

Was that one in one of the White Dwarf issues on HeroQuest?
Only explanation for the existence of this I'd have...

[Patroclus]

..............

Sjeng, this is a very good research… Of course the torent is totally enough for me to explore the world, but all this info you have gather could also be useful...

Is it real?

[Sjeng]

found a torrent with all warhammer fantasy rulebooks:

[kat.ph]warhammer.fantasy.battles.eng.armybooks.and.rulebooks.latest.9.1.08.plus.bonus.torrent

And here's the torrent for warhammer fantasy RPG:

[kat.ph]wfrp.warhammer.rpg.torrent

[knightkrawler]

Is it legal to download pdf-torrents of material that's not being published anymore?

[drathe]

In most countries, no.