In an exclusive reveal, RPG publisher Cubicle 7 has informed Wargamer that a new edition of the classic Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay system is almost ready to launch, due in 2026 alongside the 40th anniversary of the classic grimdark fantasy RPG. CEO Dominic McDowall-Thomas promises that fifth edition will be an “evolution, not a revolution” of the familiar fourth edition rules, and that backwards compatibility with current supplements is “one of the key things” the design team has prioritised.
Anyone who saw the recently released Warhammer: the Old World Roleplay shift to a D10 dice pool system instead of the classic D100 system, fret not. WFRP fifth edition will retain the D100 system, and the “really satisfying amount of depth and complexity” that the tabletop RPG is famous for. And it will take place in “a similar time period” to the previous editions; close to the End Times, but not there yet.
“I think there’s been a growing clamor for a new edition of the rule book for a while”, McDowall-Thomas tells us. While the core system of fourth edition is very solid, it has been expanded with dozens of supplements and a proliferation of subsystems. “When you’ve got that level of detail across the breadth of everything, it’s a bit much for some people”.
So “for the last few years” the designers have been working to “look through everything and standardize it a bit more”, and strip out peripheral subsystems “where the additional complexity doesn’t really give the returns in terms of satisfaction of the experience”. Conversely, “the changes that we brought in with Winds of Magic, for example, they’re really, really good… things like that [have been] built into the core of the system”.
The fifth edition rules will be backwards compatible with fourth edition, great news for anyone who has a heaving shelf full of fourth edition books. “The numeric ranges [for difficulties] are all the same, the names for [skills and talents] are the same”, McDowall-Thomas says, though the specifics of how an ability functions may change. He expects there will be “a couple of things that will have changed enough that we’ll put out a document to accompany the launch” to explain how to square them, but for the most part, you should be able to use older supplements without much fuss.
In general, you shouldn’t expect fourth edition books to be rereleased with updated rules any time soon. “One of the reasons for the backwards compatibility is that we’ve got so many plans, the last thing we want to do is to have to go back and remake anything that we’ve already done”, McDowall-Thomas says.
And it wouldn’t be a new edition of WFRP without a mega campaign spanning multiple adventure supplements. McDowall-Thomas admits “we are currently working on one”, and though he “can’t say too much about that at the moment, we have just finished play test on part one”.
Our interview with McDowall-Thomas went into greater depth on the reasoning for these decisions, and even turned some nitty-gritty specifics – tune back in with Wargamer for the full interview soon.
Excited? Frustrated? Think this might be the moment to hop onto WFRP for the first time? Come and share your thoughts and tales of grim and perilous adventure in the official Wargamer Discord community!
For another upcoming Warhammer RPG from Cubicle 7, check out Wargamer’s interview about the ground-breaking Horus Heresy RPG.