Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay vs Wicked Ones
Compare Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and Wicked Ones side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay | Wicked Ones | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Fantasy | Fantasy |
| Play Style | Career-Based, Grimdark, Deadly, Investigation, Corruption, Licensed Setting | Base-Building, Domain Management, Faction Play, Sandbox, Playbook-Driven, Fiction-First, Open Source |
| Core Mechanic | Roll d100 under skill or characteristic. Success Levels measure degree of success by comparing the tens digits of the target and the roll. Advantage accumulates during combat, adding +10 per point to attack tests. | Build a pool of d6s equal to your action rating and keep the single highest die: a 6 succeeds, a 4 or 5 succeeds with a consequence, and a 1 to 3 fails. Before the roll the GM sets position and effect, which fix how bad the consequence can be and how much the action accomplishes. Stress can be spent to push a roll or resist a consequence. |
| Dice | d100 | d6 dice pool |
| Complexity | Medium | High |
| Accessibility | Low | Very Low |
| Runnability | High | Very High |
| License | No open license | CC0 1.0 |
| Cost | $$$ | Free |
| Publisher | Cubicle 7 | Bandit Camp |
| Year | 2018 | 2020 |
| Best For | Groups who want dark, gritty fantasy where ordinary people face extraordinary dangers in a richly detailed setting. The career system creates unique character arcs from rat catcher to witch hunter. | Groups who like the fiction-first Forged in the Dark engine and want to flip the dungeon crawl: instead of raiding a dungeon they build, grow, and defend one as its monstrous residents across a long campaign. It rewards tables that enjoy a strategic hoard-and-tier economy layered on villain-POV roleplay, and that are willing to set tone and safety expectations up front given the evil-protagonist premise. |
| Highlights | The career system structures advancement around trades, moving a character through jobs that shape both skills and story. Success Levels measure how far a d100 test beats or misses its target, turning every roll into a degree of result. Advantage accumulates during a fight, rewarding momentum with stacking bonuses to attack tests. | Players design their own dungeon during downtime and later roll its traps and defenses against invaders, which turns base-building into the game's central strategic layer. Giving in to a monster's Dark Impulse earns a Dark Heart to spend for a bonus die, so playing to your character's worst instincts is rewarded rather than left as flavor. The four-phase cycle feeds each raid's fallout back as calamity and blowback that summon heroes to your door, so the campaign escalates its own stakes without the GM inventing threats by hand. |
| Considerations | The rules assume the Old World setting, so moving WFRP elsewhere means reworking its careers and tone. Comparing tens digits for Success Levels on every test adds a math step that can slow combat. Advancement is career-gated, so a character often must finish or leave a career before branching into new skills. | The three magic disciplines have no fixed spell lists, so a spell's power is decided by the GM in the moment. During a dungeon invasion the player characters cannot leave the sanctum, so most of the defense is run through minions and traps until the heroes reach the final room. There is no published setting, so each group must build its own region and factions before raiding can begin. |