Stress (Patreon)

Not that I'm feeling stressed about starting this Friday. Not at all. Honest.

However, taking the stress off, this blog is super easy to write. Why? Because I wrote an intro to the Stress rules in the pdf. So, let me just paste that in here!

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These WFRP4 house rules introduce a quick system to handle what WFRP1, 2, and 3 referred to as ‘Insanity’.

I originally pitched a Stress ruleset to replace the old Insanity rules when I was hired to write for WFRP4 back in 2018. However, it was decided that the rules were not needed, so I laid Stress aside to concentrate on other stuff. But the idea continued to worm its way through the folds of my brain. And the more I mulled, the more I felt that Stress rules would be useful.

Warhammer is the original ‘grim and perilous’ RPG, and it frequently goes to rather nasty places. Because of this, Warhammer encounters can as easily shatter the mind as they can the body, but the most current rules only deal with physical trauma. So, no matter how I tried to move on, the idea of adding Stress rules to WFRP4 kept dragging me back, demanding a resolution of some kind.

Years later, I decided to run The Enemy Within as an actual play online. So, it was perhaps inevitable that my mind returned to Stress rules once more [because, boy am I stressed about it!]. To support that stream, I finally pinned some in place, play-tested them, then started a rewrite. What you’re now [accessing in this blog post] is the latest version of those rules.

I’ve taken time to ensure they are impactful but also in the control of the player to guarantee player agency is front and centre. The rules also allow players to avoid situations that they may be sensitive to without ever focussing on that. Hopefully, this will ensure the rules suit as many players as possible.

So, if you’re looking for ‘Insanity’ rules for YOURhammer, this pdf should provide a good starting point. As always, if you have any comments or concerns, do please send them my way in the LAWhammer Discord and we can talk them all out.

Andy Law

22nd April, 2023

And that's that. If you have more ideas for Afflictions, or have comments or concerns, drop them into the LAWhammer Discord server and I sort it all out.

Also...

EDIT1: V1.1 now uploaded. Mostly minor formatting changes.

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