I love the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay setting and I've had fun with both the 1st and 2nd editions (all online - not had a chance to play IRL). I've never played 3rd edition but I've heard mixed things about it.

So I was wondering WFRP fans, what is your favoured edition and why? I suppose I have to go for the more polished 2nd edition with it's sheer volume of material, but I have a lot of fondness for the jokes and weirdness of the 1st edition - balance aside how can you not love a system where you might roll up a character with a jar of leeches or a trained bear?
This message was last updated by the user at 18:44, Sat 23 May 2015.

Have to agree with you and say 2nd ed. I have all the books produced and love playing the game. I have a thing for random character gen and like having to play the hand fate deals you when the dice land. You could end up anything from a combat monster or a cartographer but playing either is great fun

My favourite edition is the 40K one :)

*ducks*

Seriously speaking, though: what are the differences between the 1st and 2nd edition of WFRP? Different rules? Different fluff?

*scratches his head thinking which edition was the one that was published back here*

1st and 2nd for Fantasy are quite different.  Magic was completely re-written and handled quite differently.  Even the critical damage and death concepts were handled differently.  It's hard to explain it without just outright copy-pasting some things.  1st edition felt like an enhanced version of Warhammer Quest (the board game)

2nd edition felt as though they put a genuine effort into creating an RPG, not just going "ooh look, we have Warhammer Quest, let's create interaction rules for when the party is in town."

I didn't even know that something like Warhammer Quest even existed...

Could you tell me more about the two editions? Back in the 90s, some version of WFRP has been published in my country. I haven't played it, but a lot of people did. Now I wonder which edition this was...

90s?  Probably 1st edition.

1986 (1st edition)
2005 (2nd edition)
2009 (3rd edition [Fantasy Flight Games Version])

Warhammer Quest was an expandable board game, the "DM" built the board based on a series of quests pre-written in a book.  It was like a simplified dungeon crawler, and the characters leveled-up using a custom set of cards.

1st was neat.  don't get me wrong.  When I first got my hands on it, I loved it.

2nd, rewrote magic.  Made some cleaner divisions amongst the jobs (added a few).  And really fleshed-out some of the bad guys (namely the Skaven.)

It's like comparing AD&D 2nd, to AD&D + SKills and Powers.  Without the latter.. you're saying, "hey this is neat."  With the second, you're saying, "hey, this feels complete."

I've ran and played both 1st and 2nd edition and I have to say 2nd is more streamlined and easier to run.

Though i still think the Enemy Within campaign is by far better than any of the campaigns I've seen for 2nd edition.

  Definitely second, because my road warden in Shadows over Bogehnaven got more skills in second edition than 'ride horse' in a campaign where the first instruction to the GM is to not let the party have horses. ^_^

 Which is to say that many of the classes were more rounded out and complete, as well as all that aforementioned magic and mechanical jazz.

1st edition predated Warhammer Quest by quite a bit.

I used to role play using the games workshop skirmish rules, the white box with the warrior smacking a skeleton with a mace and contained two or was it three black covered booklets. The campaign lasted many years until 1st ed came out :)

2nd edition and I'm still playing it.  We tried 3rd and it wasn't for us.

Yeah I jumped on the band wagon twice for 3rd Ed once when the box came out and once when the books came out I thought the books would give me rules to play without the fiddly bits which I wasn't that keen on sadly a page saying if it doesn't fit ignore it wasn't my idea of making a game with bits work without them....

SO

For me its still 2nd Ed all the way

I like the episode when they threw the turkeys out of the helicopter.