Cubicle 7 have just released (digitally) the new Greenskins book! We heard about this last year and it looks thoroughly exciting. Here’s what their website has to say about it:
“A Guide to Brutal Warlords, Warbands, and Monsters in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay
“Orcs and Goblins infest the wild corners of the Old World and beyond. They are creatures bound by a common ancestry, a love of bloodshed and violence, and the unifying spirit of the Waaagh! Orcs and Goblins are the perfect antagonists for any game of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. Tribes and Tribulations provides details on a number of these belligerent and spiteful creatures: Goblins, Orcs, Black Orcs, Hobgoblins, and Snotlings, as well as sections on Ogres and Trolls. Each specific tribe receives its own chapter, demonstrating the variety of Orc and Goblin warbands that plague the Old World and beyond.
- The Cluster-Eye Tribe: The Terrors of the Drakwald, a band of Forest Goblins hungry for captives
- The Broken Nose Tribe: Notorious breakers of several Dwarf Holds and incorrigible looters of artillery
- The Black Mountain Boyz: A vicious band of Orcs accomplished in the arts of banditry and extortion
- The Stone Snakes: Savage Orcs engaged in an ongoing campaign against the depredations of Chaos Dwarfs
- The Wolfboyz of Oglah Khan: A band of Hobgoblin scouts for hire, with a pronounced reputation for treachery
- Matthogg’s Payswords: A brutal group of mercenary Ogres currently located in the wilds of Ostermark
- Trolls in Various Forms: The various forms taken by these ferocious monsters and insights into their behaviour
- Waaagh! Magic: The shamanic practices of Orc and Goblin magic users and the spells they employ
- Orc and Goblin Nemeses: A guide to mighty Orc and Goblin foes, notorious Warlords, and monsters
“Orcs and Goblins provide a GM with classic antagonists for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, and Tribes and Tribulations offers all the tools needed to provide such creatures with the strategies and personalities required to make them memorable and challenging enemies.”
This all looks extremely fun! I have fond memories of playing Orcs & Goblins in Warhammer Fantasy Battle (decades ago) and hopefully this book will capture the nature of these mean-but-ridiculous classic baddies.
It appears that the book is focusing on various different exemplar tribes (for each of the Greenskin variants, plus Ogres and Trolls), and presumably will go a long way to rectifying the issue that the statlines given in the core rulebook are all (intentionally) baselines which need templates applying to be a challenge to most PCs. I’m guessing the Cluster-Eye Tribe chapter is a reprint of the pdf-only release of the same name, but as far as I can see the rest of it is all-new material.
There are some more pages (including the free preview) on the DriveThruRPG page where you can buy it in pdf format. The print version (with free pdf) is available on Cubicle 7’s own webstore.
Ill Met by Morrslieb 
Does it explain green skin culture and social structures or how they reproduce?
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You can read the Culture section on the preview on DriveThruRPG (linked above). Doesn’t appear to say anything about reproduction that I can see.
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That’s a shame as when it comes to the greenskins the only real issues that have never been addressed by Warhammer Lore are 1. Where did they come from in the first place and 2. How do they reproduce and what are the stages of their growth and development.
There was never any shortage of stuff written about goblin tribes and their social structure.
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I think the idea of this book is to provide ready-to-go adversaries with interesting backgrounds. I gather that plenty of people were annoyed that the bestiary in the 4e rulebook only provided baseline profiles for monsters, which required modification to be a challenge for moderately-experienced PCs. Evidentally the little pdfs (Cluster Eye Tribe, Dead Parade, Warband of Baal Many-Eyes) were attempts to provide out-of-the-box enemies; I get the impression that this book is a longer-form version of the same thing.
We’ve never had a Greenskin book in WFRP have we? (Unless there’s one in 3e.) So it’s not like this is reproducing something we’ve already got.
I can see the value of having info on Greenskin reproduction, since you could definitely get some adventure ideas out of that. I’m not sure what the value is (in play) of knowing their origins? It’s be interesting to read, but I can’t really see how it would lead to any interesting adventures.
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This like the issue with the Altdorf sourcebook rather hinges on the question as to why Game Masters bother to buy sourcebooks.
I suspect that most GMs are quite creative people and so have little problem coming up with adversaries for their games and so do not need someone else to be creative for them.
The main reason GMs buy sourcebooks is to be provided with the facts and information they need to accurately recreate the Warhammer world. Therefore information on Greenskin orgins, reproduction. and culture is vital to accurately presenting them in your game. Particularly if you happen to be running a game based on greenskins.
At the moment it seems that greenskins erupt out of the soil fully grown and armed ready for battle, much like the Urak-Hai in Lord of Rings but without the magic. The question then is whether this is truly the case which would have serious consequences for towns like Grunbergs whose local farmland must be awash with orc spores.
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Maybe you’re right on reproduction – as far as I was aware greenskins reproduced like any other mammal (which means it hardly seems worthy of comment). But apparently it was changed at some point to say they reproduce via spores – which does seem worthy of comment in a sourcebook on them!
I don’t understand your argument about not needing pre-written adversaries because GMs are creative – surely by that logic, no one would ever buy pre-written adventures? Of course it is fine if that’s your own approach, but I think some people appreciate having this sort of thing available in order to save time (and show how it’s done).
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We are told that greenskins reproduce via spores as they do in WH40k, but there is no further detail on the the phases of reproductive growth, What stimulates the growth process or how the infestation came about.
Fans have theorised that the spores were originally deposited on the planet on the landing gear of visiting spacecraft. I’ve also read that the growth process goes through various stages starting with the growth of statis pollups, which then evolve into tiny squigs that become mobile a bit like tadpoles, and then evolve through stages into cave squigs, snotlings, gnoblars, goblins, hobgoblins, orcs, black orcs, and eventually trolls, Each stage of evolution getting stronger and bigger.
But that has never been confirmed or denied and so at the moment we are left with the concept of ORcs just springing out of the ground fully formed and armed with no concept of culture or development.
So, a GM would have a real problem running a Greenskin campaign due to lack of information on what they are and how they work. Something a a Greenskin sourcebook really ought to be ALL about.
You point about the Adventure Books is perfectly valid and many GMs prefer to buy the adventure plot for their games. But that’s precisely where information on the adversaries ought to be found, Because if you are buying a packaged adventure you expect it contain everything needed to run the adventure.
Sourcebooks are usually aimed at GMs who are sandboxing their own games and need background information on who the world works. e.g. I want to run a campaign in Lustria therefore I’ll buy the Lustrian Sourcebook so I know everything I need to know about the continent where it will take place.
Previous publishers seemed to understand this and published sourcebooks that provided a through explanation of the subject. 1e, 2e, and 3e produced excellent sourcebooks. C7 seem to be struggling with the concept.
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I like how you encounter people with various approaches to the game in these comments. Myself, I care mostly about ready-to-play materials. I will buy adventures and various directly gameable tools (like Buildings of the Rikelands) but you will see me grumbling about lore-heavy books that offer “inspiration” at best but leave the hard work of preparing gameable materials to me. (But I simply don’t buy these books, so no harm done I guess.)
And the idea of running anything “accurately” sound totally alien to me. I don’t care about lore or canon. My WFRP campaign is mine, and I will alter or ignore canon as it suits me, probably even converting non-WFRP adventures to my campaign (for example, stuff taken from Lamentations of the Flame Princess, which has a very similar theme/era but generally focuses more on premade adventures rather than lore).
This is not meant as an disagreement with anything, merely to chime in with a very different gaming philosophy.
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@mrdidz: Thanks for the info on Greenskins reproduction, that is fascinating!
If the exact details have never been confirmed in GW publications then I would strongly suspect that they wouldn’t let C7 do so. It seems very rare for the RPG to be able to create new lore. (Obviously that wasn’t the case back in the 1980s!)
Personally I’ve been really impressed with the 4e sourcebooks I’ve read so far but I know we disagree on that, fair enough!
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As already stated in the past I have been bitterly disappointed with the 4e sourcebooks which by my standards are mediocre at best and for my purposes pretty much useless as providers of accurate source material. I’m still trying to salvage what value I can from the Altdorf Book and probably won’t waste anymore money on another one until I’ve dealt with all the inconsistencies and inaccuracies of my first purchase.
i do agree with your point about WFRP rarely being the source of new lore. But unfortunately when your only motivation for publishing an army book is to encourage the purchase of more lead it seems unlikely that anyone on the wargame design team is going to bother wondering where goblins come from.
So, I guess we will remain in the dark for some considerable time making it almost impossible for a GM to run a proper Greenskin campaign.
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I wonder how many of this will actually get used in play. I mean – how many detaily described greenskin tribes do you need for your typical WFRP game?
(As opposed to, say, with hunters, which haven’t been described yet.)
#obligatory-grumbling
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I take your point! Maybe the intention is to give you a choice?
I could envisage a nice freeform campaign trying to thwart various allied tribes.
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Very little I suspect. The most I ever do is look up the Greenskin Army Book to determine which tribes are indigenous to a specific area and thus most likely to have a raiding party in the area.
And to do a proper greenskin campaign you7 would need far more information on the Greenskin culture that is provided in the current lore.
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I think it depends on your game. I mean, there are some people who will never see or want a wizard or magic in their campaign, because they prefer a mundane focus, but there are others who consider magic an essential element and demand more more rules and more spells. There are others who want humans only campaigns, while others are forever complaining about the lack an elf book. Any book or any individual section of a book is irrelevant to someone (I’m not remotely interested in more rules, for example), but of vital importance to someone else (another interesting location or NPC or scenario seed, in my case).
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As one who is new to all things warhammer (after decades in other RPGs) and am the GM with experienced WFRP players, I really appreciate the approachabilty provided in 4th edition (and, yes, I am making my way through all of the 2nd edition materials due to the great bundles). Adding subject matter books and short .pdf products to provide jumping off points is great. I can’t wait to get Lustria and this is now on the list.
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Welcome to Warhammer! It’s an amazing world. Hope you have lots of fun playing and learning about it!
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