I'm pleased to be able to share video from the WFRP seminars I ran at GenCon. Big thanks to our hard-working video production crew for bringing this together to share with folks online.

Here's the direct link: http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_content/wfrp/3_media/wfrp3seminar.html

Over the course of the video (which has been broken up into five smaller segments for easier viewing) I present information on a variety of WFRP topics, including: player characters, playable races, an overview of the core set, descriptions of the four books, the career system, character sheets, talents, party sheets, cards and other playing aids, the wound deck, the stance system, action cards... well, quite a bit!

I hope you enjoy the information found in the seminar video, and that it answers some of the questions you have about the new edition. I also want folks to know that I'm working closely with the marketing department and web team, and will be providing numerous designer diaries to examine many of the game's elements more closely.

I'm also hopeful I'll be able to share some special "guest diaries" from some of the people involved in the development and design of the game... the eclectic, creative, incredibly hard-working group of talented writers and developers who helped bring Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay to life in a whole new way.

- Jay

Well, that certainly moved me to being more optimistic.

The movies confirmed a lot of the items that were vague or based on speculation before.

And it made the fact clearer that this is not a product I will get.

Sadly so...

Thanks for putting this online.

I'm just going to hit the topics that concern me the most, if anybody wants to talk about them.

Character Origins: There are fewer options for starting places in V3 than in earlier editions. (Earlier editions were limited as well, but not to this extent.) I suppose you'll have to house-rule some things if you want to start off with a character from anywhere else. (You had to do this with earlier editions, just not to this extent. And in V3 it may be as simple as saying, "Okay, you're from Karak Kadrin, then.") I also don't see any Imperial Dwarfs, but maybe I haven't kept current with canon.

We may be getting a "narrow but deep slice" of the Warhammer setting here. I actually prefer this, and it's something that I knew we'd be looking at with a new edition. I would rather get one kind of really well-developed Dwarf character than have them be just short Humans with a few exclusive careers. In the previous editions we had more freedom to define our characters, but we may not have had this level of detail for them to start with.

I'm crossing my fingers on this one.

Funky Dice: I like the dice. I just can't read them! Right now it looks like a code that doesn't want to be broken. If I knew what the symbols meant, even if I didn't quite understand the rules that they refer to, they'd be a lot less intimidating. It also looks like a lot of dice to be rolling at one time -- and a slow process of resolving what's indicated by the symbols -- but the results might be worth it. Or it might be a lot quicker and simpler than I'm guessing.

Thanks dude!

jh

I have a friend who wants to check out roleplaying (if he as ever played it has been years and years ago). I'm currently playing 4E and there is no way I'd try to teach that to a brand new to rpgs player.

Warhammer 3rd Edition, however, might be just the ticket. He's a computer guy, so the layout will work. And we can use the bits and pieces to show him how roleplaying works differently with people than with computers.

I also like the more focused Empire Warhammer rather that a large overview slice of the whole world. Focusing on one spot at one time in history really helps in the roleplaying options in my opinion.

So the previews helped make more interested than I already was.

And I like the idea of having a party card in the middle of the table instead of a battle map.

The video's are great, thanks for getting those up.

Cards: Big thumbs up from me. After seeing the videos it obvious that the cards aren't boardgamish at all. They're fantastic reference sources so that all of the player information is right there in front of us. If the cards can get us through a session without book referencing then I say they're brilliant. Love the way information is streamlined in front versus back format.

Dice: RPGs have a ton of room for innovation in their resolution medium. There's lots of ways to get more information out of each resolution instance in a game and that's why you see a lot of indie games using playing cards for resolution. Each card can provide more than just a number. So I like what FFG is attempting to do here with dice. Gamers like dice and we want to see them in our RPGs I think. I'm extremely interested in seeing what all can be derived from each dice throw with their design. Possibly very good stuff here, assuming that they're relatively quick to read. If it turns out that a lot of time gets spent on pushing dice results around, it could be a drag.

Party Sheet: Definitely looking forward to learning more about this as I think its a sweet mechanic. It appears that FFG has made some design efforts around focusing the game at least partially on The Party. Having an actual mechanic tied to measuring a fluctuating cohesiveness sounds pretty neat to me. Any time you have intentionally focused design on specific mechanics it results in changes to the flavor of what the game would have been without them. So I'm looking forward to seeing how this mechanic translates into intraparty roleplaying. So far I'm liking it.

Stances: Again, another focused design element that will specifically drive decision making and roleplaying. At least it sounds like a pretty focused design element. If it turns out that its sort of glossed over then, meh, what a waste. But it looks like a lot of the player decision making when it comes to the action will be driven by this one mechanic, which sounds interesting to me.

Careers: Sort of disappointed in what appears to be a pretty heroic offering. Hopefully the options will be there for lower keyed campaigns. Jay's specific mentioning of the ratcatcher coming up later sounds promising though.

I've stayed out of most of the discussions about how boardgamish v3 may or may not be. After seeing these videos, I don't see a boardgame at all. I see a lot of potentially very handy reference materials, some very interesting design for specific mechanical influences on the game narrative, and what may be a very slick information delivery system in the dice design.

Thanks! The video cleared up a few things. Although the "stance-o-meter" was a bit too much after all these bits and the dice pool, so far I'm impressed with the refreshing new ideas. And ****, that was some huge amount of description on the back of the Troll Slaye career card! And since most of the rules are on cards, I hope this means that the books are full with fluff.

Great presentation (even though it looks like you had exactly one spectator )

Hopefully this clears out much of the misconceptions that otherwise could have soured the community.

I'm with jadrax here. Even though it looks a bit more like Warhammer Online the rpg I'm still cautiously positive. If for nothing else than to roll an enormous number of dices!

No mention of the Laurelorn Forest, so I'm guessing that Wood Elves are from Athel Loren only still?

Also no mention of Elf Magic within the Tome of Mysteries, as it seems to look at just Human magic use. Is this a good thing when High Elves are now properly introduced as a Player Race.

When I looked at the videos I was so suprised, the game looks great. What I'm I sainig it looks alsome, ablosutly faboluos, amazing. I love that what Jay and all other team members did to the system. Nice new machanics, great dice and amazing arts. Can't wait for the relsease of this. I will buy all the core set, Adventures Toolkit and the extra dice.

I hope we will see more in the near future. More book, cards and all other stuff.

And I would only now ask three questiions: when it's going to be on sale? And what new expansions will be realesed after the Adventures Toolkit? And will there be an expansion for my favored Skaven and Chaos?

donbaloo said:

I agree with the first statement, but I'm still not entirely convinced on it's lack of boardgamish-ness. (and the english language has the knife twisted further...)

I'm a little worried they're going to make the game to heroic in general. WHFRP has often been a situation of guys who couldn't fight their way out of a wet paper bag getting stuck in horrible situations and just barely getting out by the skin of their teeth. I hope I can keep doing this, mostly because I'm a jerk.

Just beause they haven't included a battlegrid in the box doesn't make it any less of board game-y,(Aaargh, right in the spleen!) to be honest I hoped they would, because I always have trouble keeping track of people in combat!

The video seminar was very informative and I appreciate them taking the time to record and post it here for those of us not able to attend in person. Some things I liked and other things I'm still not too sure about. I like the reference cards and can easily see how that will keep the pace of the game moving. I'm also liking the (albeit brief) description of taking wounds and critical hits as it seems to address 1e and 2e problems with being heavily loaded at one end which is something that always kind of bugged me.

However, I'm also in the camp that really hopes that PCs are not geared to be too heroic as that really isn't in the spirit of WFRP IMO. I've always GMed (and played) WFRP such that characters don't often go looking for adventure, but instead adventure comes looking for them and drags them kicking and screaming into the night.

The special dice are something else I would like to know more about. On the one hand they could be excellent for creating narrative for task resolution and combat, but on the other hand if trying to fit the narrative to all the different dice/symbols isn't intuitive it could end up being a bottleneck for pacing and gameplay. I consider myself a more narrative style GM and as such prefer the dice fade as much as possible into the background, but these custom dice for 3e seem to create more focus on the dice themselves.

What I would really like to see is a video recording of an actual play session. Even just a 1-hour snippet of a session that puts all the pieces of this 3e puzzle together and shows how skill use and combat work.

Thanks for that. It was quite informative. The new critical hit system in particular sounds good. As some one who has two players in his group that really need to make use of cheat sheets or notes or something to help them keep track of their game mechanics, the card approach should be helpful to my group. The conservative vs. aggressive stances are a good fit as well. They're already present to a certain extent as an rp element in my group but having game mechanical effects derived from them should enhance my game.

Nice videos. It looks like the game will be fun. I hope that FFG will be publishing adventures or campaigns to go along with the books. I don't mind GMing a game, I just don't have the time and/or talent to write one up.

It got me going from pessimistic to optimistic!

I (and some other readers)have a two concerns I hope the developers will take up in future posts.

1. Is the game too heroic? Can I still play things like peasant, coachman, fisherman or woodsman?

2. How do the Wood Elves fit into the lore? I thought that they very, very rarely leaved Athel Loren, and if they do they certainly wouldn't interact with people from the Empire?

3. Are there as many carriers as previous editions? I heard something about 30? And I guess many are exclusive for a certain race?

Other then that, I'm happy. It's a lot of change to take in for an long time gamemaster as myself, but hopefully it'll be for the better.

Reclusiarch said:

Such is the power of the Three.

Okay, that's it. I now have to hate Fantasy Flight. How could you do this to me? It's horrible, unfair and devious. There is almost nothing that will make me not buy this game now and that is just plain wrong!

This game has so many esciting design elements that I'm going to be shelling out a c-note for a game I will probably never get to play (most of my players are still too in love with d20). Though it might be worth the money just to look at it. I've been toying with various ways to make the player's interface with a table top game more visual and intuitive and this looks to have made some major strides in that direction. I'm very impressed.

Seriously though, I can't wait to see what the finished product looks like. Very exciting.

DagobahDave said:

Hehe, whoops! And I don't even know how to edit my post. D'oh!

The party sheet sounds interesting and the idea of critical hits occurring throughout the entire combat instead of when a character runs out of Wounds is awesome, but that looks like way too many dice to roll at once. Honestly, when Jay was explaining the various types of dice and what the represented within an action, and then showed how many could be used in a single roll, my thoughts immediately turned to the fact that some players take forever just to resolve the basic "d20+modifier" mechanic. I can't help but wonder how long it will take to resolve everything on those dice.

Other than that, my main concern is that all of the extra options will just make combat take that much longer to resolve. I hope Jay and company make things more interesting, but every game I've played that's added stances and whatnot haven't really worked out as advertised, but at least in my opinion. I still hope FFG plans to release a cheaper set with nothing but the books for those of us who don't won't the extra accessories, especially now that it's been confirmed that some of them are optional.

Sythorn said:

I have to agree with you this system has you rolling a lot of dice at once. I liked how 2nd edtion used only two dice but I am okay with a dice pool system becasue I play world of darkness and exalted sometimes. In fact in my brother's exalted campaign I roll 16 dice for my basic dice pool. So for me 36 dice dosen't seem like too much of a stretch (since you obviously aren't going to roll them all at once).

As for combat well I guess we will have to wait and see. I admit one flaw in the 2nd edition combat system was that it took way too long to finish. I once ran a combat that lasted about a half an hour (and the PCs were only fighting one or two beastmen). From what I have seen from the new edtion I think it will be easier to resolve combat because the system is set up so it becomes possible to finish off an oppenent in one or two hits (using the combat deck). In 2nd edition it was hard to do this if the guy you were fighting had armor and at least 4 or 5 toughness bonus. WS/BS also factored into it as well since it used percentile it was almost impossible to hit enemies due to low WS/BS. One the PCs in my group has 55 WS and still has a hard time hitting enemies. I believe that a dice pool system will fix most if not all of these problums. Having low stats most likely won't effect your dice pool too much because you get conseravative/reckless dice to help you out.

Armor and toughness might subtract from dice to help balence out the system and prevent too many dice be rolled at once.

Please don't be too overly concerned about the dice pool. I highly doubt anyone will be required to roll all 36 dice at one time, and, please trust me on this, you are all smarter than you think you are. You will learn the dice symbols fast and very quickly not have to worry about missing anything. You can do it!

Anyone remember the old D6 games? They were so versatile! All I had to do was roll 30 D6 to complete my masterpiece in acrobatic close combat against the stormtroopers! (Yes I played SWD6 by WEG and loved it!)

E

I played Shadowrun, WEG Star Wars, and all sorts of White Wolf goodness. The dice pool presented is easily manageable.

Interesting videos. Moves me closer to the 'No' camp, but I will keep an open mind until it is released and I can get a better look. As for the dice pool, I'm not worried about being able to use them effectively, it's just the sort of thing that strikes me as sort of lame (personal opinion of course) and makes me less likely to want to play a game.