What are the best sources of fluff/background for WHFB?

[Chaos Wolf]

I'm not looking to start an edition war, or bash GW for nuking the olde world.
I'm simply curious, as someone who missed most of it, as to what the best sources for the fluff/background are.
Old army books/rulebooks? Which edition? Or are there any other sources?

[Elk101]

I'm not looking to start an edition war, or bash GW for nuking the olde world.
I'm simply curious, as someone who missed most of it, as to what the best sources for the fluff/background are.
Old army books/rulebooks? Which edition? Or are there any other sources?

Many of the old Warhammer Role-playing Game books are rich in fluff. They're veritable fluff mines. A lot of stuff was released (I think)  by Hogshead Publishing. There was also a series of excellent White Dwarf articles on stuff like Marienberg from the early/ mid 100s.

[Hobgoblin]

Yes, the RPG stuff was great - The Enemy Within campaign in particular.

I think it's fair to say that it was the RPG that really developed the setting in its most interesting directions. I always felt that the wargame didn't quite match the RPG in this, as the former focused much more on the goofy "goblinoids" and the like, and seemed to portray (from 3rd edition onwards) a much more crowded and magical world - and one that was much less satisfying.

I can't speak for any edition after 3rd, but at that point, the worlds of WHFRP and WHFB seemed to have diverged significantly. The former was basically Renaissance Europe with an added dose of awful cults and unspeakable things lurking in the sewers and the forests, whereas the latter was kitchen-sinkish, with comically pompous elves battling comically boorish orcs.

That said, the scenarios for the 1st and 2nd editions of WHFB were generally interesting, atmospheric and unusual: the Ziggurat of Doom, Kremlo the Slann, Rigg's Shrine, Vengeance of the Lichemaster, the Dolgan Raiders, McDeath, Orc's Drift, etc.

[The Gray Ghost]

Most of the earlier army books are really good also
the early, and expensive on ebay,  White Dwarf magazines deal with a lot of interesting fluff that was cut over the years.
here's part of an index from Oldhammer
http://wiki.oldhammer.org.uk/v/Warhammer/White_Dwarf_Index

[grant]

The GW thread is here: http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=57122.4575

But you might get lost in all the GW bashing - it's quite the place. 

Best books that are affordable are the 4th or 5th editions, they are dynamite at capturing the height of the GW world before it became more sinister and the books became thinner.

If you can ante up, the 2-3rd edition books are very good. The 1st edition was awkward. Best part was the box art.

[Elk101]

I thought it was fair enough that this was its own thread and didn't get absorbed into the GW thread as it's about resources for the Warhammer Old World rather than comment on GW. The Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay world was, in my opinion, an excellent setting. It seemed to strike the right balance between fantasy and grit without taking itself too seriously. I always preferred the Roleplay setting to the tabletop version as the latter often seemed to develop according to the latest army book or miniatures line rather than in an organic, fluid way, which was more noticeable in the Roleplay world.

There's a source book for Middenheim that I recall being good, which I think I still have. There used to be a very good online WFRP resource too, though it has been years since I ever looked at it so it may not even exist now.

[Vanvlak]

Some of the old books - I mean the fiction books set in the WH world - are good as well, as is the Mordheim rulebook.
The older rulebooks pre-6th edition or so are good, as has already been said.

[Cubs]

Most of it's available in PDF form on Scribd. I'd say it's worth paying for a couple of days' worth of subscription, then just spending a couple of hours downloading anything GW/Warhammer related.

[Psychoflexible]

http://verrahrubicon.free.fr/

It's in french but it's very complete. In the link page (lien) of this site you have some english pages.

[Charlie_]

The 4th/5th edition army books are all really good, packed full of background/fluff. I was a High Elf player back in the day, and the High Elf army book had a really lenghty, detailed history of the race as told through the reigns of the Phoenix Kings. Really good stuff.

As much as I enjoyed the release of 6th edition, with the renewed focus on troops rather than magical heroes, I was dismayed by the new army books as they were released. They were really slim in comparison to the earlier ones, and featured nowhere near as much background information.

[Rhoderic]

The divergence between WHFB and WHFRP really must be stressed. I don't play RPGs, but from what I've read of the WHFRP books, they have much more ambience and atmosphere, partly thanks to focusing on one part of the Warhammer world (the Empire and its immediate surroundings), making the reader view the whole setting through Empire-tinted glasses. Really, if there are two concepts that are more integral to the Warhammer world than all the rest, it's the Empire and Chaos. A very interesting setting comes about from those two elements alone - which is not to say the other races, cultures, nations, factions and gods don't add spice, but sometimes I feel that the "roving eye" approach of WHFB (where one moment you're focusing fully on High Elves, the next on Lizardmen, then Bretonnians and so on) makes for a more confused jumble of atmospheres.

At any rate, where WHFB proper is concerned, I agree that the 4th/5th edition army books are the best place to look for fluff.

The Black Library "franchise fiction" novels can be very hit-and-miss. I read the first 5-6 of the Gotrek & Felix novels and I wouldn't call them well-written, although the first book (Trollslayer) was somewhat better than the rest (it's actually not a novel but an anthology of short stories, which was a format that suited Gotrek & Felix much better - it kept their adventures from turning too grandiose). Hammers of Ulric was a much better read. The newer Black Library novels I wouldn't know about. At any rate, they're all just franchise fiction, so adjust your expectations accordingly. They're "guilty pleasure" reading, nothing more.

[Elbows]

While I never played WHFB if the older army books (late 90's etc.) are anything like the old Codices they'l be a good source for fluff.  The old school codices in the mid-late 90's were almost 70% fluff to 30% army building.  Later they seem to have all but abandoned that, army books because 1/3 the size...consisting of almost solely army-building bits.  As it's a game, I'd imagine plenty of army books are selling for dirt cheap on ebay.  Old codices are comically cheap on there.

[Humorous_Conclusion]

One possibly good source is here:

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/6/Fantasy-Flight-Games

They have all of the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd and 3rd edition which should provide a pretty good range of material.

[Chaos Wolf]

Does the rpg stuff go into the different skaven clans and vampire clans/families?

Thanks for the good feedback, everyone.

[beefcake]

If you want the chaos fluff the Realm of Chaos books ("slaves to darkness" and "the lost and the damned") are great. they fetch huge prices on Ebay though but you could probably find PDF's around I reckon.