This isn't going to be much of a 'review' - instead I'm going to focus on how WFRP 2e and it's conventions have been expressed in our group, and what we consider now to be the foundation of the game. That foundation is the basic rulebook, and the Old World Armory. If you can only pick up two volumes, these are absolutely the ones to get.
Some folk might say Old World Bestiary or Realms of Sorcery fall on their own 'essentials' list, and they'd be right. Really, WFRP 2e isn't complete without all of that and more. However, the Old World Armory provides something more like the basic rulebook - something for players to really dig into.
What do I mean by that? Well, lets just say the old WFRP 2e rulebook is well used at our table. I've stated before that there are rules-oriented players in our club, and we probably owe a lot of that to how our competitive games are set up. So, I always have the rulebook available to any player that wants to look at it, no matter which game I'm running. I try to drum up additional copies of the main rules when I can, and encourage every player to get at least the basic rulebooks for wargames and rpg's they truly enjoy.
For WFRP 2e, these two basic books are fairly short, as far as rpg's go. They can get really big, but there's not a lot of pages to both these volumes put together. A lot of folk complained about the lack of a good description of the world, or places and things in it. Yet, like I said - it's really for people who are wargaming anyway and want to roleplay. We already have all that Warhammer material in the form of multiple editions of the battles game, along with multiple editions of our favorite army books.
The rulebook itself, to some roleplayers, looks pretty bare. It covers all the rules you'd expect for a roleplaying game, including combat and magic. Even a few monster stats. If this is the only Warhammer World volume you have, and you're used to other rpg's, you might think you got gypped. Yet, if you put this rulebook together with both a knowledge of the Warhammer World and the wargame - it becomes a lot more than the Dungeons & Dragons clone a lot of folk who are new to the 'verse are expecting.
Various conventions from across multiple game lines converge here, making it one of the most versatile and supported systems out there. It's easily translatable to D20 - it scales on 5% increments to 100% (well, 98%) instead of +1 increments to 20, but the whole system is there. It was designed by some of the guys from the original D20 SRD (Dungeons & Dragons, 3rd Edition), so it's easy to see the same similarities. However, the mathematical design of the game is overlaid on the basic rules of the older version of the game, making it far from a D20 clone, even though it shares the math and things such as Talents (Feats) and Skills.
The Old World Armory takes care of a bunch of things players care to know without burdening the GM with tons of extra material to pore through all the time. The Availability system roots out a lot of the hassle. Just let your players know this book is on the 'standard' rack - that is, things are freely available from it - and watch their interest flare up. Of course, every single thing they want won't be available...
You'll get to see a lot of interesting things come up because of the gear available to players just using this book. It pretty much covers everything anyone could want, and if it's not in there, there's something similar. My players were able to utilize a lot of the items in here, but incendiary bombs might be the top used item for my particular campaign.
I used this while writing encounters as well, often using it a idea springboard. I'd be in a spot searching for a clever idea, then I'd open this book and try to make a piece of equipment the focus of that particular section of the adventure. It's a good way to get the more exotic items into the campaign, or to open your players' eyes to items they may have overlooked, but you consider to be something they might want to look into, such as healing draughts for chirurgeons.
These are both excellent tomes, and absolutely vital for campaigns of WFRP 2e. Having them on the table for the player group has increased their excitement and helped to create a vibrant atmosphere of cooperation. I'm going to continue this trend going forward, and will have an equipment book on hand for every game I run that has one, such as the old school Arms & Equipment Guide.
We have added more books to our 'basic' pile since we started our first WFRP 2e campaign two years ago. Those include almost all the published works, but for players themselves really only Realms of Sorcery is truly player oriented. Most of the other works are good for the GM, but I've found that these two are the best for bringing players in. The page count is low, keeping real-time consultation times to the minimum. It also means the rules aren't that complex, and are easy to teach, especially to players of the wargame.
In short, we've had a blast. We're getting more WFRP 2e campaigns ready. There is still plenty more for us with this out of print game.
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