This is a serious question, and I promise that I'm not setting you up for anything. I honestly want to know how you imagine the experience of playing this new game will be like. Walk us through it. Don't just say it's going to be like a board game, or like D&D4E, because that's not what I'm asking.

Start as though you were describing a night of gaming with your friends. You're gathered around, ready to play the new version of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. The GM opens up the box, unpacks all of the cards and books and dice, and then what? What do you think the next step will be?

What does the GM do? Is he just a card-dealer? As a player, do you wait your turn silently, then flip your cards, roll some dice and knock on the table to let other players know your turn is over? Is it a waste of time to speak in a funny accent while playing this game, since roleplaying isn't part of it?

Okay, basics.

You get into combat, you first see who has the higher initiative. Don't know if it will be the dice or not, but I figure it could be, in which case the GM asks you to roll your dice stat. Let's say it's 2, so you roll 2 dice. The enemy has 3 dice they roll. YOU manage to roll 2 success, the enemy one, so you get to go first.

Next comes combat. You get to roll 3 dice. You roll, and roll 2 axes, for a total of 2. The enemy is wearing armor, and get's to roll 4 dice to see if they actually take damage. They roll their toughness dice (score of 4) and get a roll of 2 successes. They take no damage.

The enemy gets to attack, they roll their WS of 4, so 4 dice. They roll 3 axes. You roll 3 dice, you only get 1 success, you take damage. They look a ttheir Strength bonus which is 4, and roll the dice. They roll a 3, you have leather armor on, and reduce it by 1, you take 2 damage.

Next round.

You decide to go into a less conservative stance, it gives you a bonus of +1 die. You roll to attack....

Skills

You need to determine whether your have the diplomacy ability to get your way out of being surrounded by bandits, and are attempting to communicate with their band leader before they skewer you for not giving them more gold. Your diplomacy skill has you rolling 4 dice.

The GM either decides how high a success you need, or can roll the dice. He opts to roll the dice, figures it's a really hard challenge, and rolls 10 dice. They come up that you will need at least four successes. You roll, you roll 2 successes...let the battle begin, in which you probably will all die.

Skills 2

You are a rogue trying to open a lock. You need to roll a skill roll equal to or over 4. You have 6 dice. You roll, holding your breath and roll...and get 4 successes (success are determined by symbols on the die, failures are depicted by blank sides or other). You get a 4, the door opens to reveal....

Excited...I'm not.

What's changed, instead of the percentile system of 000-100, divide that all by 10, sort of what you did with your SB and TB. These are then your "dice" or stats for each ability that you get to roll. So for a former WS of 60, you would have a new score of 6, and get to roll 6 dice.

Stats, skills, etc. go up similarly, but in 1 point (or if it were the old system, 10 point) increments.

At least that's how I'm seeing it, still NOT THRILLED. I'd actually be more excited if it were a boardgame...ala Heroquest or something like that.

I guess I will just put this in a GM's point of view since I am going to run the game for my group when it comes out....

Everything starts off at character creation. My two players both give me thier elaborate and detailed backgrounds (at least I hope) then I let them pick out thier careers to get a good feel of what careers they like in the new edition. One of my players will probubly play a influencial high elf noble, while the other might play a mighty dwarf ironbreaker (I don't know what they will really play so I guessed). Once the characters are created the party is formed and ready for a night of adventure.

The session begins as the party travels along a road to Middenheim. They move along th road carefully so they do not attract the attention of bandits. Clouds cover Moorslieb giving the chaos moon an evil glow. I have my players roll a quick perception test. Referencing the cards on the table I quickly see that thier characters failed the roll and suspect nothing of the danger ahead. They see an broken wagon in the middle of the road. Perhaps a sign of an attack? The party quickly looks around to see any danger. Nothing but the darkness of the night and sinister glow of Moorslieb. The party inspects the wagon and spots the body of a dead merchant next to it, his throut cut by a blade of some kind. The party seems to get nervous. The tention builds with every passing moment.

After a few heart pounding seconds the party sees no danger and heads on to Middenhiem. Suddenly an arrow is fired from out no where. I resolve a surprise round and hand one of my players a wound card. A few moments later more bandits arrive and the party is overrun, but the question is: will they survive?

GREYLORD: Okay, basics.

You get into combat, you first see who has the higher initiative. Don't know if it will be the dice or not, but I figure it could be, in which case the GM asks you to roll your dice stat. Let's say it's 2, so you roll 2 dice. The enemy has 3 dice they roll. YOU manage to roll 2 success, the enemy one, so you get to go first.

What do you think the other dice are going to be used for? And what about the other symbols other than the hammers? There are eagles and hourglasses and stuff. Have you thought about how those might be used? I'd find it strange if the other symbols mean nothing. In fact I'm pretty sure that each one puts a twist on the roll you've made. I'm not sure what those twists might be, or how they'll affect play, though.

I wonder if hammers are hits and eagles are blocks, or something like that, rather than hammers always being a success all time.

lordsneek said:

That's very much what I'm expecting. I might run my campaign with a little different tone, or take more time to get to the fighting, or maybe only fight once in a great while, but I can't imagine that WFRP doing anything but what you described. It's a vehicle for telling stories, first and foremost. The cards are like character sheets, only more versatile.

We have no reason to assume that V3 will be a game that jumps from one combat scene to the next. I think that's an unfounded fear. But to some extent, the rules can dictate to us just how important it is to be a good fighter or a good talker in this game, thereby influencing our gameplay. If we only had one social skill, we'd be finding all sorts of nuanced ways to kill. If you only have one form of attack, you really need a wide selection of social skills so that you can avoid fights or make sure you fight for the right reasons.

The balance in V2 is a good -- lots of social skills and talents, but plenty of combat-related ones, too. If we're lucky, V3 will strike a similar balance.

DagobahDave said:

If you notice, I only put some of the symbols out there and didn't mention what the eagles and hourglasses are for. Some are for the aforementioned skill checks, others however are for modifiers to skill checks and situational modifiers which the GM rolls in a similar fashion to determine effects. It's much like the D10 system, but instead of percentile, it's done by number of dice. Does that make sense.

So each type of die represents certain aspects of the character, situation, and modifiers. Instead of a flat D10 percentage roll, you would use things such as initiative dice, with the higher number of successes (rolling the symbol you need) being your total. In a way, it's a cross between Heroquest, and the System currently found in Warhammer Fantasy Battles, but with opposed checks as described above.

You're all pretty good at guessing, but I would really like to se a real demo session of the game. I don't hope that all the different dices will make it to complicated to make a test. The good thing about 2nd Ed was the simplicity of using D10's only...

DagobahDave said:

Well, first of all, i have played a lot of WFRP 2nd edition lately. A LOT of it. Sadly, this has made me forget all other RPs I've played. Sadly because therefor i will base my entire answer on this. Okay, i have been playing DnD, but not as a RPG, but more like a miniature game.

The first thing that would happen differently is the arlocation and enviroment. We usualy play aroud a large table, with a lot of other stuff on it, or sometimes we don't use a table at all. This is where the problems with 3rd edition would start. Tokens and cards have to be unpacked and put into the right places, instead of just putting a paper in front of us. A lot of tokens might be lost, and we all need to remove all the other stuff to get a view of the party sheet and access to the card piles. My experience with card tells m that the cards need to be sorted in different piles before we start.

Then we get to playing. Here i imagine the game will be pretty much as it used to be. There is usuallthe thy no rules for the RP part, almost no game has that, so i guess this one doesn't have it either. Except maybey charm and the like, but we don't use that.

Then we come to the combat. Here, mostly is a blur, because for the lack of information. But as i see it, it will be more like a board game. I think that it will have the basic rules of combat, of course, and more. That "more" part is where i get suspicious. We don't need any more rules than that! Everything else can be roleplayed. And if it isn't, no RPXP. If it have this, wich i strongly suspect, then the entire RP in combat will dissapear and be more like a board game.

The GM is both the storyteller and the judge. He has the plot, and we all play our parts in it as he wishes. Not that we are controlled, we can do freely what we want, but he usualy knows what we would do in different situations and build up a game based on that. The judge is when we do something stupid, he logicaly makes us pay for it. For an example when my noble decided that he wouldn't have to prepare anything before a murder trial because he was a bretonnian noble and the victim was an bretonian outlaw who had insulted him, he was close to get 90 lashes. But after a long discussion and by proving that he was a good man in general, he was almost spared from punishment. Almost...

This card system seems to remove the GMs powers greatly. I dissaprove of that.

I didn't read anything in this thread except the OP before posting, just so you know.

Captin', that helps me see where you're coming from. I really appreciate that you wrote out an answer. You might be right -- that could be the experience that we're going to get. Let's hope FFG posts up some previews this week, since it really does seem to be a lack of information that's leading a lot of people to form a negative opinion.

Captin' said:

Captin', since you wrote in swedish in another thread im going to assume that you are a swede and that you're living in sweden, for the sake of argument.

Are you familiar with a swedish RPG called Noir? (made by some of the guys responsible for Eon and Neotech)

Noir is a prime example of how you can make a really astonishingly good RPG even if you remove some of the GM's powers. It uses an advanced fate point system, that let's players actually change entire situations in the scenario (like simply retcon away locked doors from the scenario in order to pass through them). The objective in that game is to make a story together as a group, instead of the GM just railroading the players through his or her scenario in according to his or her rules.

If you have the opportunity and the cash, do check the game out. It is REALLY good, provided that the gaming group get the philosophy behind it.

Usually the GM's rule is divine law, but it doesn't have to be that way. A game can be good, nay, BETTER than ordinary RPG's by the mechanics giving the players some leeway...

I'd just like to pick up on this point if I may, because I agree with this 100%. I can't help thinking that someone at FFG who's more familiar with the boardgame market (no, it's not a boardgame, I accept that now) came up with the idea for all the components.

The reason I say this is that with a boardgame you have to all sit around a table or other playing surface that's big enough for the board. Since the table's a given, there's no problem including lots of cards, counters etc. to be placed on the table during play to keep track of these things.

Now this may work out just fine for a lot of gaming groups who roleplay around a big table as well. If so, great. Unfortunately that just isn't possible with my group. There's one table that the GM uses that isn't big enough for the whole group, and besides there's only 2 chairs. The rest of the group games from a couple of sofas, all writing and dice rolling is done balanced on the back of a book. There's no room for al these components.

This is the one aspect of this that I haven't seen an answer for yet, from anybody (let alone FFG). It didn't come up in the write-up of the Gencon seminar and nobody's had any practical suggestions when the question's been raised. How do you track stances, wounds, selected actions etc. with nowhere to put the cards? Given that it's not just the cards in play, but also their state (stance tracker and double-sided wound counters for instance) that's important.

And one other thing that's not been raised so far, cats. Don't laugh, I'm serious about this. Any cat-owning RPGer will know that at some point during the evening sombody will drop a dice, the cat will pounce and before you know it the **** thing's under the sofa where you can't reach it. With a D10 (or any other standard dice) that's not a problem, you just grab another and re-roll (unless someone's particularly attached to their "lucky" dice but that's another issue). What happens if your fortune dice is now lost? Halting the session to move furniture to retrieve the **** thing just ruins the flow of the game, especially if it's in the middle of a particularly vital combat or an in-depth piece of roleplay.

All these separate components and unique dice pools may make for a revolutionary gaming experience. This may be the best RPG ever invented just because of them (though I somewhat doubt it). However they just don't work in a real-life gaming situation.

ChaosChild said:

As a fellow cat owner all I can say is: get the cat out of the room and close the door. Cat pouncing problem solved.

ChaosChild said:

Guys, we gotta make this fit into a space designed for this , using only these.

Merroth said:

Not an option due to the layout of the house. It's been tried before.

ChaosChild said:

Roll your dice into the WFRP3E box?

MILLANDSON said:

Would it be tasteless to ask: "Cat got your tounge?" if no one presents a reply fast enough?

Varnias Tybalt said:

Maybey in a year or two, but for the moment I am theoreticaly stoned on WFRP 2nd edition.