During my hot-foot rush through Gen Con 2025 (meeting as many cool publishers as possible to keep Wargamer stocked with news and reviews over the next year) I had a real treat: an hour and a half long interview with Dominic McDowall, CEO of Cubicle 7, to pick his brains on the studio’s newest RPG hotness. There’s a lot to share (including exclusive details on the new Horus Heresy TTRPG) but first, here’s his download on the state of the Warhammer: The Old World tabletop RPG.
Cubicle 7 announced it was doing a Warhammer: The Old World tabletop roleplaying game back in January 2024, starting with two books: a core rulebook, and a Game Master’s guide. As of August 3, 2025, the PDF versions of those books are both available, and McDowall is ecstatic at the reception so far.
“It’s had a fantastic response,” he tells me, “it’s gone down really, really well.”
“We’ve had both the players guide, and now the GM guide, knock Daggerheart off the top of the DriveThruRPG chart,” McDowall adds with a grin – “so that’s been lovely”.
“I think that shows some of the response that we’ve had from it.”
With the core game, and its initial setting, the Empire city of Talagaad, now out in the world (look for our review very soon) McDowall tells me the immediate next steps are clear.
“The next wave of The Old World books will be the starter set, an adventure book, and the GM screen,” he says. “We’re working on those at the moment, and they won’t be too far away.” The adventure book, he says, is “being written at the moment”, and the starter set “finishing up” currently. While McDowall couldn’t confirm concrete dates, it seems fair to expect those to be pre-orderable within the next few months.
Beyond that, he says, “in the next year or two The Old World Role Playing Game will be in that sort of establishing phase.”
“So we’ll be mixing in campaigns with bestiaries and the setting guides, the things that really start to establish the game and give people a load of playable information, but also a lot of adventure content and things like that.”
McDowall tells me Cubicle 7’s published campaign books will each focus on one of the game’s ‘Dark Threads’ (interlinked narrative strands of baddie activity, custom NPCs, factions, and lore hooks) – and “[expand] it out into a bit more of a structured campaign”.
“We’re going to be building some location expansions into that as well,” he adds, “so [for the first campaign] we’ll be looking at Talabheim, obviously, which is just over the way from Talagaad, so a quite logical place to explore next – and then go a little bit further afield.”
How far afield? “At the moment Nuln is in pole position for the next geographic expansion,” says McDowall. “This could change as we go through things, but that’s the plan. And the plan will be that the campaign will follow those locations, and head off even further afield after that. But exactly where is still sort of TBC.”
Cubicle 7 promised early on that TOWR – “we’re still working out how you pronounce that acronym,” McDowall admits – would start out focusing only on the core of the Empire of Man, but quickly start exploring other connected areas. Where might those be? McDowall is still tight lipped.
“At the moment there’s a couple of things that we’re working on. It depends which one logically comes first, but there’s so much cool stuff coming out for the Old World that it would be really, really good to be able to explore that as soon as possible,” he says.
In our discussion on the (honestly very cool) Dark Threads system, McDowall does tell me the ‘mind maps’ of lore and story hooks can, and will, extend “all across the Old World and beyond”. What does that ‘beyond’ mean, I ask him – the new world, perhaps?
“I think the new world might be slightly trickier,” he laughs. “This is me talking out of my hair. I haven’t thought about this at all yet. I think I’ve thought as far as places like Ulthuan and down to the Border Princes and places like that.”
Interestingly, McDowall tells me the TOWR “will be tying in as closely as we can” with all new developments in Games Workshop’s main Warhammer: The Old World tabletop wargame.
“Whenever there’s development going on in different areas of the setting, it can be a bit challenging,” he explains. “Obviously the Old World wargame is going to be leading the way with that.”
“But we’ve got a really good relationship with the studio, and they’re all huge WFRP fans as well. We spent some time geeking out and, yeah, thinking about what we can do with it.”
“The plan is that we will be keeping up with the events in the world, and we’ll be tying into those, and be able to explore everything,” McDowall says. “There’s definitely some things I can’t say quite yet, but watch this space – we’re all very excited.”
For more details on all things, er, ‘TOWR’, watch out for the full and uncut Q&A from our interview, coming later this week – alongside the other delicious treats from our talk: BIG reveals for the Horus Heresy TTRPG, and an inside look at the new Champions of Chaos spin-off for Age of Sigmar: Soulbound.
Excited to try the Warhammer The Old World Tabletop RPG? If you scoop up the book and want to share your best moments (or try and find some party members to join you) come on over to the free Wargamer Discord community! We’re a very helpful contact on your adventure, promise.