Necromunda gets a Full RPG, and This Is Much Bigger Than We Expected

When Games Workshop launched the new edition of Necromunda earlier this year, there was one strangely specific word printed across the front of the new core set:

“Skirmish.”

At the time, it felt like an odd distinction for a game that had always been about gang warfare.

Now we know why.

Games Workshop has officially revealed Warhammer Necromunda Roleplay, a complete miniatures-driven tabletop RPG that takes players beyond gang battles and into a much broader exploration of the underhive and ash wastes. This is not simply a campaign supplement for Necromunda: Skirmish. It is a separate game with character creation, advancement, an Arbitrator running the story, dedicated adventures, and its own 224-page rulebook.

And from what GW has shown so far, this may be one of the more interesting ways they have expanded Necromunda in years.

You Are Not Running a Gang Anymore

Necromunda Roleplay puts the players in control of a small group of bounty-hunting Venators taking jobs across the hive.

One player acts as the Arbitrator, essentially the game's Game Master, presenting the story, controlling encounters, adjudicating rules, and responding to whatever questionable decisions the rest of the group makes.

The Core Set includes four ready-to-play Iconic Characters:

• an Escher Assassin
• an Orlock Gunslinger
• a Squat Fixer
• a Goliath Champion

Each has its own starting rules, but the miniatures also include alternate build options if you would rather use them as your own Venators.

That last part is important.

Necromunda has always been at its best when your fighters stop being generic models and start becoming actual characters with grudges, injuries, stories, and increasingly ridiculous equipment. Building an entire RPG around that aspect of the setting feels like a very natural extension.

There Are 18 New Plastic Miniatures in the Box

The Core Set includes 18 completely new plastic miniatures.

Beyond the four player characters, there are five Adversary characters representing some of the people you might run into during the included adventures: a Scabber, Saboteur, Hive Preacher, Cadaver Merchant, and Heretek accompanied by a servo-skull.

Eight Hive Scum round out the opposition, with a variety of weapon options for building the disposable individuals unfortunate enough to get between the Venators and their objective.

Even if the RPG itself is not your thing, these models have obvious value to existing Necromunda players.

GW even specifically notes that the Adversary characters will work nicely as various Hangers-on in Necromunda: Skirmish.

That kind of cross-compatibility is exactly what we hoped to see.

It Still Feels Like Necromunda in Combat

The RPG does not throw away the tabletop game underneath it.

Combat retains recognizable Necromunda concepts including Single and Double Actions, hit rolls, and injuries, but wraps them inside a broader roleplaying system.

The Core Set adds D10 and D100 dice alongside the familiar D6, Firepower, and Injury dice.

Outside combat, most actions use a roll-under system. Your character has a skill value, the Arbitrator applies a difficulty modifier, and you are trying to roll below the resulting target.

GW's example character, Escher Assassin Ophelia Skar, has separate values for Weapon Skill, Ballistic Skill, Acrobatics, Intimidate, Stealth, and other abilities.

That immediately tells us this is going considerably deeper than simply adding dialogue between normal Necromunda battles.

You may be shooting somebody one moment and trying to intimidate a contact into giving up information the next.

That is exactly what an Underhive RPG should be doing.

Character Creation Looks Surprisingly Extensive

Players are not restricted to the four included characters.

The rulebook contains complete rules for creating your own Venators from the six Clan Houses, with individual backgrounds, archetypes, and skill selections. There is also an Underhiver origin and the option to play a Squat. The box even includes 50 blank character sheets for creating and tracking your own crew.

Characters then develop between adventures, gaining experience and improving their skills as the campaign continues.

For us, this is where the game starts getting really interesting.

Necromunda already has one of the richest settings Games Workshop produces for this type of play. The Clan Houses, guilds, Enforcers, bounty hunters, mutants, cults, beasts, criminals, and assorted lunatics have spent years being developed across campaign books.

An RPG finally gives players a reason to experience that setting without every problem eventually becoming a gang battle over territory.

Two Full Adventures Come in the Core Set

The box includes two complete adventures.

An Abominable Intelligence sends the players after a Van Saar Heretek, while The Pilgrimage of Bones tasks the group with eliminating a Cawdor preacher on behalf of the Corpse Harvesters Guild.

You also get two double-sided card playmats representing areas of the underhive and ash wastes, 11 quick-reference player handouts, and an Arbitrator screen filled with useful rules references while hiding whatever unpleasant plans are waiting behind it.

In other words, this looks designed to be an actual playable RPG starter box rather than a rulebook that expects the group to invent everything else themselves before session one.

The Existing Necromunda Range Is Coming With It

This may be the smartest part of the entire system.

Necromunda Roleplay is compatible with the existing Necromunda miniature range, and GW specifically confirms that players do not need the Necromunda: Skirmish books to use those miniatures in Roleplay.

The first expansion is launching alongside the Core Set:

Journal Apocrypha: Denizens of the Hive – Adversaries Book 1.

The 48-page journal contains profiles for 51 additional allies and adversaries, drawing from Clan Houses, Palanite Enforcers, Ogryns, hive dwellers, exotic beasts, Kal Jericho and Scabs, and even the Ambot.

That means an existing Necromunda collection immediately becomes a miniature library for the Arbitrator.

And considering how wonderfully strange the Necromunda range has become over the years, that gives the RPG an enormous head start.

Our Take

This makes considerably more sense than we expected when “Skirmish” suddenly appeared on the new Necromunda box.

Games Workshop is effectively splitting Necromunda into two ways of experiencing the same setting.

Necromunda: Skirmish remains the gang-versus-gang tabletop game.

Necromunda Roleplay zooms the camera in and asks what actually happens between those battles.

Who lives in the hive? Who hires the gangs? What happens when four bounty hunters start investigating something they probably should have left alone?

That is where Necromunda's setting has always been particularly strong.

The 224-page rulebook, character advancement system, custom Venators, included adventures, 18 new miniatures, and immediate support for the existing model range also suggest GW is treating this as considerably more than a novelty side product.

There are still things we want to know, particularly how deep the advancement system goes, how campaigns are structured beyond the introductory adventures, and how much freedom Arbitrators have when creating their own scenarios.

But as a concept?

This one makes an enormous amount of sense.

Necromunda has always been one of Games Workshop's best settings for telling stories.

Now it finally has a game built specifically around doing exactly that.