PointyEaredBastard said:

WTF kind of sissy crap is that? More D&D4E style "your character is a beautiful snowflake rockstar azzkickr and nothing bad ever happens to him" nonsense? Or full bore narrative-indie "storytelling cooperative hippie drum circle where our ludopoetic commune collectively decides what happens... and of course we all live and win and are groovy, man" ultranonsense?

Another nail in the coffin.

REQUETE: WTF kind of sissy crap is that?

Maybe it's just like a Fate Point from either of the earlier editions? Maybe you only get a limited number of those. I wouldn't assume too much about that rule just based on that short description. It doesn't tell us anything about how wounds or criticals work, or what they do to your character exactly.

REQUETE: More D&D4E style "your character is a beautiful snowflake rockstar azzkickr and nothing bad ever happens to him" nonsense? Or full bore narrative-indie "storytelling cooperative hippie drum circle where our ludopoetic commune collectively decides what happens... and of course we all live and win and are groovy, man" ultranonsense?

Un-flipping-believable.

So it's like D&D4E. No, it's like an indie game.

Nail in the coffin? No! It must be piton! Or, it must be a needle! Could not possibly be a nail.

Right on brother! It might as well just read "if you cry the GM won't kill your character." this really is starting to look alot like D&D 4e Warhammer Expansion. OH let me guess, the wizard spells are limited to whats in the spell deck which is reshuffled every 'day'! Ooooh! Oooooh! I hope the action cards have really cool names like "strike of the winter wolf" and "Thunderous Smash of the Thunderous mountain thunder" so that all the non-wizards can sound like theyre doing something cool too!!!

vyrago said:

So far we've seen one called Ranged Shot, which is just what it sounds like -- shoot a ranged weapon. There's also Dodge and Melee S[trike] (I think). Looks pretty standard to me.

Very likely, there will be some cool-sounding action cards -- but probably nothing more snazzy than the Talents in V2. "Grudge-Born Fury" is pretty flavorful, but why change a name that fits, if you don't have to?

My only concern are the cards. On the plus side it's great to have a handy reference guide as a player. However, what if I have two players with the same career or abilities? Sharing can be done, but it would be nice if every player had their own set of cards, especially if card position has meaning (as it seems to with cautious vs bold).

I suppose if they permit owners to make copies of cards for personal use then it is not so bad.

I also have no problem with a game being geared towards 4 players + 1 GM. In my experience most RPGs are instrinctly balanced towards 4 player characters and the GM is forced to compensate for more or less players.

Requete said:

These rules are obviously geared towards younger players, but that isn't bad in itself, if they can be easily ignored.

Fate points already were there to make the game easier to live by for younger players. As a mechanic, though, they work perfectly. BEing able to avoid a critical by running seems like rewriting past events on regular basis... And then Fate points are still there... So you're never sure if what happens really happens, then. I don't like that because it becomes metagaming again. Boy, I really hate when talk becomes rulespeak in my games. I can't stand it actually.

This said, I respect a will to cater for younger audiences. Roleplayers almost all started playing in their teens. And then we keep on playing and maturing. To gain a wider fanbase, you need to market to the teens, that's just a business necessity. I just hope these rules are non-obstrusive and easy to ignore.

I'll bet that there'll be consequences for "running away" from a conflict.

Like less or no experience points, or some other misfortune. Perhaps the party loses fame?

Jericho said:

I'm afraid I don't follow your logic. When I started playing role playing games in my tweens/teens, the game was harsh as written and it was easy to lose a character if you were incautious. Why could we handle that back then but now young people cannot?

I think corporations often make some of their worst entertainment decisions when they decide to thoroughly underestimate their audience.

On the surface I like the idea, and hate the idea of V3... will I buy it? Yeah, cause I have enough disposable income to experiment with things like games... will my group play it? Probably not, since it seems rather limiting for a group of 6-8 players... but I'll have to actually wait and see what it is like when it hits the shelves in my neck of the world...

Grognard here:

You know what, I've decided really don't care if the game rules system is good bad or indifferent. I'm interested in the background material.

So much of what was printed by BI for v2 is simply not dependent on the game rules, because it's all background information. Hopefully, FFG will bring these back into print with a new cover (or not). More importantly, I hope that they produce new stuff for which you also do not need the core rules, because that allows v1 and v2 GMs to also make use of their material.

Please don't bring us a Plundered Vaults. I already had most of the treasure in those vaults, and I don't want to have to buy what I already have in order to get half a book's worth of new material for the price of a new book.

All of that said, I'm hoping for something good.

(*Reverting back to grognardism*) And you can have my v1 and v2 material WHEN YOU PRY IT FROM MY COLD DEAD FINGERS!!

So there!

If you want the real facts , go here:

http://forum.strike-to-stun.net/viewtopic.php?t=2729&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=300

While I must admit to being intrigued, and I will reserve judgement until I can have a chance to read through the books (which, of course, being a gaming addict, I WILL buy)... I still feel a bit left out in the cold, that instead of streamlining 2nd Edition, they had to completely go the other direction. And while it is great to know that future supplements will have rules for halflings, greater numbers of players, etc., the fact that they were not included in the main rules makes it less immediately playable, at least from the standpoint of my group.

I understand that this is NOT the WFRPG of old, but I wonder why it had to change so extremely... Does anyone even know if we will be able to convert old characters to the new system? I guess I will have to search elsewhere on the forums...

Requete said:

I started playing at 10 years of age with D&D basic boxed set. I only got WFRP v1 at about 15 years of age, and yes, we managed to play great games with it right from the start. But we had 5 years of experience with roleplaying. We did all our stupid stuff with D&D. And we were actively seeking something new, more "realistic".

I remember having lots of trouble trying to roleplay properly with newbies, in any system. The rules of that era weren't geared for a wide audience. The WFRP chapter on how to GM was something welcome and new to me. But we can't say it was expansive.

Also, teens of today are not teens of 88. Their expectations towards gaming are different. They are used to lavish boards and cards, great artwork, good design, intuitive design.

If you are FFG and you want to bring in large numbers of new players, you need to take care of that. And that is what they did with v3. I agree that there is a great dumbing down of games in general, where imagination is replaced by graphics and art, note taking by counters, tokens and cards, etc. But like or not, that's what people have come to expect.

More nerdy games don't sell as well. That's the bottom line.

My hope is that FFG can make grognards like me happy while making their money and selling lots of copies to new players.

Requete said:

Requete said:

That's the wrong question. It isn't a matter of "handle" it is a matter of "how should the game best be run". In D&D, killing 1st level characters was much easier than a beginning character in Warhammer. It took them until 4th edition (which I don't like) to figure out that having spun glass 1st level characters was a bad idea. Now Warhammer isn't a super heroes game so beginning characters shouldn't be super men, but they are also playing competent adults. A troll slayer or mercenary in a chain hauberk, for example, aren't easy to kill and the game should reflect that. How durable are beginning character? Honestly, we don't know.

PointyEaredBastard said:

So instead of finding the rule in a book (with index and table of contents), I have to find the card in a deck of 300?

And when you start to lose cards (as most will most likely eventually do) you still have to look up the rule.

Mike the Villain said:

From the looks of it, you should be able to convert characters, but it won't be a perfect match.

But how important is that, really? I see that question asked a lot and I just have to wonder why it's a big deal. Are you planning to take your 2E PCs into 3E? That's going to be problematic no matter what you do, just as when you convert V1 characters to V2 and find that Attacks and skills work totally different in the two games. You can't convert magic users easily at all. Spells won't translate.

I mean, you can do it, but it's probably easier to start with new characters when you start a new game. If the GM wants to use adventures from earlier editions, they can prepare NPCs ahead of time. Direct conversion isn't necessary. If you need an NPC Watchman, there's probably a prepared one in the new game. Major NPCs should probably be built 'from scratch' in the new system so that they're consistent with the new PCs.

Peacekeeper_b said:

No.

macd21 said:

But?

Conversion of PCs between editions is probably not the best way to handle the transition to a new edition. What we did when we finished Empire in Flames (1st edition) was to start 2nd edition with new characters that related to our old characters and had appeared as minor NPCs in our campaign. In most cases it was sons and daughters of our former characters, but also a household servant of a noble PCs. We will use this approach again when we switch from 2nd to 3rd edition, but since 3rd edition is set in time before 2nd edition we will again introduce new PCs that relate to our 1st edition characters.

This approach has also made it easy to start on the printed campaign story and our former characters still appear now and again - but now as NPCs.

macd21 said:

You hold only those cards iny your hand, which ones your character needs. Probably somewhere between 20-50. The 300 cards include wounds, insanities, all tha abilities, spell, prayers, careers, et cetera.

Or you could still look it up from the book, if that's what makes you feel true roleplayer...

Knight Panther said:

300 cards can be easily stored in a ultra pro box (these things are plenty around since the rise of magic: the gathering) and you can use separators to index them (or just sort them alphabetically). Sounds much more convenient to me than having every sourcebook lying around to have every skill, talent, spell, or career handy, just in case... I think this modularity could become one of the best aspects of the new system.

Ravenheart87 said:

I'm expecting it'll be 10 or fewer.

PointyEaredBastard said:

There WILL be a ruinous powers expansion. There is no debate. Otherwise, WHFRP, this is not.

Crazy Aido said:

Sorry, couldn't resist.