In the heart of the great forests, within long-buried lairs, and at the very edges of the world, they wait. Ravening hordes of inhuman creatures biding their time, plotting the downfall of every ordered kingdom, salivating in anticipation of the bountiful slaughter soon to come. In this dark and bloody age, bold deeds and great courage are called for.
You have chosen to take up a hopeless fight, to stand when the coward would flee and the wise would kneel. You must oppose the swelling tide of strife and war, of flame and fury, or be smothered by it. Let others wallow in their false peace, let them hate you trying to drag them from it. For if you are skilled and lucky, if you choose worthy allies, take up stalwart arms or master perilous magics, you may even live to see your grim work done. Welcome to The Old World RPG, and your journey starts with the Warhammer The Old World RPG Player’s Guide.
This is the first release planned for the Warhammer The Old World RPG, but we have covered several of Cubicle 7’s other Warhammer RPGs in the past, including the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Starter Set, and the Warhammer Age of Sigmar Soulbound Starter Set.
The Older World
For those new to the setting, it’s worth noting the differences between the various Cubicle 7 fantasy Warhammer RPGs, for which there are now 3. Warhammer Age of Sigmar Soulbound is set in the latest edition of Warhammer, Age of Sigmar, or AoS for short, the current setting of Games Workshop’s fantasy wargame. Here things are slightly different from the original Warhammer, and the narrative has moved on, and some race names have changed (along with some new races added, and some races removed).
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, WFRP for short, is set in the original Warhammer fantasy setting, which no longer has an active wargame supported by Games Workshop. The Old World is set 300 years before the original Warhammer Fantasy setting, prior to the rise to power of some races. This makes it a prequel setting for Warhammer, like the Horus Heresy is to Warhammer 40,000. Both the Horus Heresy and The Old World have wargames currently produced by Games Workshop, and Cubicle 7 has announced an upcoming RPG set in the Horus Heresy.
Adventurous Beginnings
The Warhammer The Old World RPG Player’s Guide provides players with the background for life in the Old World, with a focus on the Empire, and in particular, Talabecland, and within it, the town of Talagaad, which is the core setting for the initial Old World products. It details the other provinces of the empire, and the lands beyond, as well as a large section on religion and magic, but the core focus is character creation and the rules, and if it’s going to be anything like Soulbound or WFRP, there will be plenty of supplements detailing the various areas of the Old World.
Warhammer The Old World RPG uses a D10 system, which is entirely different from the D6 system that Soulbound and Wrath and Glory use, or the D100 percentile system that Imperium Maledictum and WFRP use. In The Old World RPG, players roll a number of 10-sided dice (D10) equal to their characteristic, like weapon skill, reason, strength, etc. Each score that rolls under their skill number is a success. So if you had a melee skill of 5 and a weapon skill characteristic of 3, you would roll 3 dice, and each score of 5 or less would be a success.
What I like most about the system is that there’s a load of Lore skills that your character can take, and each can provide bonuses to tests if the lore can be leveraged. This can be as simple as knowledge of a city when making an athletics or a stealth test. You can use your knowledge of the city to your advantage when trying to outrun or sneak up on an opponent. Some skills are also dependent on lore. The use of blackpowder weapons is one example, where you need the lore skill to use the physical skill.
Tests are modified by adding or removing dice. If a fellow player uses their action to help you, for each success on their roll, you get an additional dice, or if you’re firing a bow at someone who’s in cover, you’ll lose dice from your roll. Tests can also be grim or glorious, depending on whether the dark gods are working against you or if the odds are substantially in your favor. For glorious rolls, you can reroll all your failed rolls in your test, and if the test is grim, you have to reroll all of your successes.
Old World Optionality
The Old World RPG character creation has a lot of options for variety in the player’s guide. You can play 1 of 6 races, a human, from either the Empire or Bretonnia, a dwarf, a halfling, or a Wood or High Elf. There are then 30 careers to choose from, some of which are locked to races. Only Wood Elves can be Waywatchers, only Empire Humans can be Priests, and only Dwarves can be Brewguards, for example.
You can then add further detail to your character with 59 available talents. Some of these have prerequisites, like race, characteristics, or other talents. These are initially gained during character creation by rolling on a table associated with your chosen race, but they can also be bought with experience points at the final stages of character creation or during play.
Status also plays a huge part in the game, and each class has a tier associated with it, Brass, Silver, or Gold. This tier details your starting equipment options and assets, how much money you have to spend during game sessions, and also how other characters will interact with you. Brass NPCs may respect or fear a Gold character, but they will struggle to blend in, just as Brass characters will find Gold settings awkward.
Your life beyond the adventure is also featured in games, and every few sessions, players take part in endeavors, such as learning skills and spells, resting, or wandering the wilds. If you test a skill during an endeavor, each failed roll is marked on your character sheet, and when those marks are higher than your skill, your skill goes up and the marks are removed. Experience points are also gained during play, and these can be used to gain talents or increase skills, but I like the endeavor system for grounding characters and showing what their lives are like between their glorious adventures.
The Future Of The Old World
The Old World RPG Player’s Guide is entirely aimed at the players of the game. To play the game, you will also need a Gamemaster, who will run the game, and they need the Gamemaster’s Guide, which details how sessions work and provides a whole host of details on the setting and rules, and stats for NPC adversaries and monsters.
A big part of creating a group of characters is how they are all connected, and a Grim Portent session shows how they are and what they are facing. It’s mentioned in the Player’s Guide, but the Gamemaster’s Guide shows how to run this session and how to tie it in to your campaign.
Cubicle 7 has a whole host of releases planned for the initial wave of Warhammer The Old World RPG physical products. Anyone purchasing the Player’s Guide now will get access to the PDF, and those purchasing the Gamemaster’s Guide will get a digital copy later this month. Other physical products planned for a Q1 2026 release include character sheets, maps of the Grand Duchy of Talabec, where the initial releases are planned, and several reference card packs to save you looking through the rulebooks mid-action in-game. There are also several bundles available, including a Collector’s Edition for those who want to go all in.
A digital copy of the Warhammer The Old World RPG Player’s Guide was used to produce this preview, which was provided by Cubicle 7.
