Aaha, no sir ;)
While I've been trying to wrangle the rules to make sure the system can provide a good "social mechanics" interaction, I came across a resource right there hidden in the game, ripe for the picking: Careers!!
For those who are familiar with Warhammer Fantasy RolePlay (WFRP), each character's advancement is tied to learning the skills and talents of their 'Career'.A career is anything from a rat-catcher to an acolyte, a burgher, a political agitator, a watchman, a noble or a roguish con-man (but mostly rat-catchers and agitators!). The greatest thing about this system is that is puts players in the lives and professions of their characters, and their life skills (such as they are) is what they have to use to muddle through the politics and social mores of the Old World, while trying to uncover evil plots and make a bit of coin.
Thus, to my mind, WFRP ends up becoming "Sword-and-Sorcery meets Snatch" (the Guy Ritchie movie), with the poor characters (average joes) coming up with all sorts of shenanigans that regular people would have to resolve plots that go way over their heads.
The Mordheim ruleset lends itself very well to this sort of dark humour hilarity, of poorly trained underdogs having at it to the best of their abilities. Mordheim gives us already a wealth of careers we can work with: all the Hero and Henchman stats and special abilities, as well as the skill lists they have access to. Zealots, Ruffians, Petty Thieves, Hucksters, Sewer Jacks, etc.
There are many special abilities from warbands, specific models or Hired Swords, which define very well specific careers and profession, which can be put together into their own skill lists. The several market-associated skills of the Arabyan Merchant and the criminal skills of warbands like the Ostland Bandits and Mobsmen fit very well together into a progression tree or skills with pre-requisites.
Here you can find a thorough list of all model stats and special abilities from GW-released warbands and other warbands that have been created by the Mordheim gaming community. I deliberately left out many of the warband leaders (as their stats are often too high), savage models (orcs, beastmen, skaven) and those associated with lands outside the Empire, as the RPG is intended to, like WFRP, be focused in the lands of men with players following typical professions.
List of Mordheim model stats and special rules (click to download)
I will be creating a re-structured set of skill lists, so any one character with the right choice of skills can eventually become a Merchant, a Warrior-priest or a Thief.
All based on existing Mordheim skills and special abilities.
"But Nuno!" I hear you say, "What's the point of adapting Mordheim to all of this, if I could just play WFRP, where all the rules are made already? Why are you wasting your time?"
And the answer is, first of all I enjoy creating things :) But I don't do it for its own sake: I have a good reason to need this done. Creating something for the sake of it is good Dev training, but is mostly only useful for me, not much for others who may have no need for new rules.
From my ~11 years of experience as a Games Master running things like Dungeons&Dragons and Pathfinder, it's because the rules are too much work. I'm serious: the amount of bookkeeping I'd have to do for Hit Points, and the endless +1 modifiers, for all the NPCs and monsters running around the table, drove me crazy... despite me knowing the rules by heart, and being quite organized. It really tired me out.
WFRP has much of the same amount of detail, especially in combat rules. And it's exactly the combat system that grinds most RPGs to a halt (not all! but most). Don't get me wrong, I like the combat rules, but always felt that the amount of rules detail jarred a lot against the flow of the story... and combat would take hours, even when players are diligent and quick on their rolling.
And is exactly the simplicity of Mordheim stats that appeals to me.
I've come to believe that to satisfy my thirst for skirmish combat, I have games like Mordheim (where the rules are even simpler and to be honest, more simulationist). On the other hand, if I want a proper RPG story-based experience, I will turn to a less combat-heavy, more skill and social-oriented RPG. Two different experiences for two different needs.
And I believe that the simple stats system of Mordheim can (surprisingly!) help me run a simpler, streamlined version of a Warhammer RPG, without me having to fuss over a lot of calculations and modifiers and whatnot. And I can create special rules and new NPCs much more easily for it too, instead of having to layer careers on top of careers and racial templates, etc.
Everything is much easier with Mordheim :) And that's exactly what I need, so I'll make it happen.
Sorry this rules-system has been slow to come out, but real-life-work commitments have been eating most of my time (and still are!) and I have other Mordheim-related projects on the go too. It's all coming along, don't worry, these things should take their time.
Creative work can be a bit tiring from time to time, so having a bit of variety in what you develop is good to keep things fresh and flowing.
Don't lose hope: projects won't be left to gather dust forever, sometimes you get your best ideas for a project while working on another completely different one!
Roll high and prosper!
