As feelings about the D&D/Magic-verse wax and wane, from poorly worded patches to the involvement of literal Pinkertons, my various gaming circles have continued to move toward (and in some cases back to) different systems. While I got fairly settled in 5e over the last few years, as did many of us, I'm more than eager to learn about as many systems as possible.

Warhammer Fantasy is the preferred system of my friends at 18thWall, and they were more than eager to kick off an actual campaign proper in the setting. "Magical Europe" was their elevator pitch, followed quickly by "and you can play a Grail Knight," which is a very quick way to make me interested in anything.

We've been at it a few weeks, and I'm slowly getting the hang of this new-to-me system. Like a lot of the ones I'm encountering (and admittedly it's likely because I'm encountering them from the same people), it's played with d100s and you have to roll your stat or lower. After playing a few different d100-based games, I'm getting the hang of it, so there's no learning curve there.

Like a lot of games along these lines, the types of skills you have listed on your sheet are narrow to the point of being somewhat comical. That's not necessarily a bad thing—knowing myself and my fellow players, "Consume Alcohol" probably should be a standard stat. My love/hate relationship with this carries over from Pulp Cthulhu and others: when there is such a range of choice, it can occasionally leave you unsure what to roll. As fun as it is to have "Scale Sheer Surface" and "Hypnotism" just there on my sheet waiting to be used, there is somehow no clear path to my decision to, I don't know, use my breastplate as a blunt instrument.

As for the sheer amount of stats and subdivisions on the sheet, I can't in good conscience fault these for being complicated. I found the 5e sheet complicated when I first sat down to it, and now parsing it is second nature. I can feel myself slowly picking up on it, which is a good thing. It's a little more math-y than I tend to like my games, but that's what a good DM is for.

As for the things I like more than 5e:

Actions. I thought I would hate this when I looked down the chart of what can be done and saw half actions, full actions, and everything along the way. But this is great, actually. Rather than having Movement, Action, Bonus Action, Reaction, and certain things you can do that fall into one of these four categories, any of the things you can do is either a half action or a full action. Want to do a normal attack twice instead of moving? You can. Want to move twice? You can. Want to just attack really hard? Full action. Hell, you can choose to defend, which means a lot to me as someone who will occasionally tank to within an inch of her life and regret it.

Multiclassing. I love to build up a character, and backgrounds and multiclassing are good for that in 5e. The fact that you're actually encouraged to build a path of jobs, each of which will leave you with a series of skills and feats, makes characters nicely customizable. Considering I build characters based on story and characterization rather than at all optimally/tactically, this is my jam. (For the curious, my character's career path is Vagabond > Rapscallion > Questing Knight. It's a long story. Or maybe it isn't.)

Travel. Again, thought I'd hate this. But dividing a day up into blocks and turning those blocks into random encounters is... pretty fun? I imagine it's a lot of work for the DM, but it keeps things interesting for me as a player. Also it's nice to not be living life from Long Rest to Long Rest for a change.

I'm also digging bit by bit into the setting. Our local hardcore Warhammer fans are helping the rest of us out a lot with this. I'm frankly digging how deep the lore of this setting is, and realizing I may never get to the bottom of all of it is exciting rather than daunting.

I'm still learning a lot about this system, and trying to learn a bit more every week. But from the standpoint of a story-minded player, this is perfect. It's a bit chunky in terms of numbers and has a bit of a learning curve, but it's really giving me what I'm looking for in terms of customizing a character for the purposes of telling a story and occasionally beating up monsters.

Incidentally, if anyone knows of good Warhammer tie-in books, especially if they're fantasy-centric, please tell me on the socials. I'd like to add some to my reading pile.