First off, I'm not quite sure I like the additions of the 30 different dice and 300 different cards. Much of the appeal of WFRP is its simple gaming concept (at least to me) and I feel this is ruining it for me. It seems as if this new system is making Warhammer Fantasy into a generic D&D style game. It also makes the whole game far more expensive than it should be.

That being said, my group and I have spent quite a sum of money on supplement books. We have everything from Knights of the Grail to Tome of Corruption (a book I paid almost 60 dollars for). It will be difficult to transfer all of the new information to the new system. And I know we can still play the old version, but now we'll never know what's over in Araby or Nippon, what's passed the World's End Mountains. We'll get no new books unless we switch to the new edition.

On another note, I like playing as a Halfling. I like interacting with them. Halfling pie is amazing. Where have the Halflings gone? I may be in mourning.

Does anyone else want to voice issues with this new version of the beloved WFRP?

marz.twin said:

I'm not sure why you feel that all the material that you have is now obsolete. The warhammer world has not changed markedly. I'm still happily playing 2nd ed. while using a lot of my 1st ed. books. Given that so much of it is background material, which really does not need stats or rules supplement, it's essentially one edition over another. The same is true, if not more so, for the 2nd edition material.

I think your other arguments cut more wood, but this one doesn't seem especially biting against 3rd ed.

Mikael Hasselstein said:

Well, firstly, it will be hard to play a Chaos Marauder (or any other career not in the new edition) if I have no rules to do so. And second, I'm assuming prices and equipment will change (considering there are no hit locations, armour will change substantially). Third, statistics on weapons will most likely change, as well as NPC stats from the many adventures. These will be difficult to transcend from edition to edition.

I agree with Marz. i mean there is no reason for the cards or the extra dice. the game that black industries developed was just fine. FFG is trying to combind that WFRP with the Warhammer card game. if i wish to play the card game then i would buy the card game. i am happy that they are continuing DH but i wish they would not remake WFRP from scratch like they are doing. WFRP fist edition and second are compadible, it sounds like the 3rd edittion wont be. and it seems like the cards dont leave much for a good GM to create new characters or have much creative licence. what exactly does FFG have against races? why is it you can only be a human from the empire or a dwarf not from the empire? and why they gota be hatein on my haftling homies?

Personally I don't mind not having Hobbits, I've never liked them, but I sympathise with everyone who feels that they have lost an integral part of the game, that is never nice. What worried me was that Humans, Elves amd Dwarfs are all quite good at combat, Halflings are not. Is the game more hack slash and FFG felt that Halflings were no use in a combat heavy game? Is there a money orientated reason for the absence of Halflings? It has been hinted at that Halflings will feature in a future supplement, have Halflings been omitted to force fans to buy an additional supplement later? Is there a positive reason? Have Halflings made way for Elves so that we can have a decent background on Elven PC's instead?

Foolishboy said:

Actually, Jay said that the hobbits will be integrated later in the game. BTW, bring on the ogres with the little fellas !

Foolishboy said:

Halflings were never very popular. I think it was less about halflings being poor warriors and more about the fact that most gaming groups never contained a halfling. If they could only fit 4 races into the corebox then it made sense to include four groups that people would actually play with. Dropping the halflings leaves them with more space for the other races.

Hauer Glaeken said:

I think you'll find I mentioned that in my first post.

macd21 said:

This is not my experience. I've had a liberal dose of halflings in almost alll of my campaigns since the V1 days, and that includes a lot of games with a lot of different people. They're as WFRP as TEW (which includes a Halfling Player Character, natch).

And what's all this nonsense about halflings being 'non-combat' oriented? The may be short but their BS makes them excellent ranged support specialists. And certain halfling careers, like Fieldwarden, make them specialists in certain other situations, like fighting undead.

No, the reason they weren't included had nothing to do with 'folks not playing them' and everything to do with cramming High Elves into the setting because it is obviously changing from the grim and gritty one of V1 and 2 and moving more towards the 'heroic fantasy' one of WFB and WAR (as indicated by Graham McNeil and every other thing we've seen so far) and halflings don't fit the 'heroic fantasy' mold (although this doesn't explain why empire dwarves have up and vanished and all dwarves have to come from a single mountain)...

I discovered today the existence of the new 3rd edition ad all that it seems to imply... and it is such a sad day...

I have collectioned most of V1 and V2 material and I have no problem combining and merging them. With V3 I'd have to buy everything from scratch without being able to use V1 or V2 material that is not pure background (Adventures must be completely rebalanced, Npcs can't be quickly converted, careers can't be converted, magical objects must be rewritten...). And that's just the top of the iceberg...

WFRP3 is going to be a "Collectionable RPG": players must buy players set in order to be able to play (in the boxed set there is material enough to play comfortably with 1GM and 3 players) thanks to the new custom dices and cards for everything (heck even for wounds!), careers included.

The ruleset at a first sight seems to be both watered down and more rollplaying (less base stats but more dices to roll and counters to keep updated).

Everything smells "let's make money with new unexperienced players even if this means no respect for what WFRP is meant to be since 1986"

I know, maybe my toughts are a bit premature but I do have a seriously bad feeling about this release and I feel FFG must know most of Italian gaming groups feel exactly the same thing. I mean: making WFRP more profitable and more known across the world is a good thing indeed but the price to pay this time seems to bee a bit exaggerated.

Luther said:

Your experience is not universal. I think FFG looked at the data and it indicated that High Elves and Wood Elves were both more popular than halflings. My own experience indicates FFG are right - I've also played lots of games with lots of different people since the v1 days and have not seen a single halfling PC.

macd21 said:

From my own experience Halflings are much more popular than Elves. It's one the reasons I don't like them is because every new player wants to be a halfling and then after a few games decides that halflings are inferior and wants to change character.

From my own experience, halflings and elves are about equal in popularity in the various gaming groups I've belonged to. Personally I'd rather play a halfling than an elf any day and know several players who'd agree with me, but there are players who feel the opposite and others who don't mind either way.

I've never met anybody who feels that halflings shouldn't be an available option though, at least not anyone who knows anything about the Warhammer background (specifically the Empire).

macd21 said:

My problem is that I don't understand why High Elves and Wood Elves have to be two completely separated races. In DH, you could be a Guardsman from a Hive World, and someone else could be a Guardsman that is Void Born. Why Wood Elves and High Elves couldn't fall under the same category as "elves" as the guardsman do in DH confuses me.

This is because they have different psychology traits (or at least should have), different backgrounds, different skill sets and different careers available.

That is not like comparing Karak Azgal dwarfs with Karak Eight Peaks ones. High and Wood elves are like Ancient Greeks compared to Native Americans: bot human but from two deeply different cultures and environments.

marz.twin said:

I think they have, in like a gazillion threads already.

marz.twin said:

In WFRP Wood Elves and High Elves should be a bit different. I'm hoping that the two races have been included because FFG have finally fleshed them out, as previous editions have been very light on Elf material.

marz.twin said:

That's like saying that an English highorn snob, is basically the same thing as a farmer from Scotland. Tell that straight to their faces and you'll probably get a caustic reaction.

-"Scotland, England. Not much difference really."

High Elves are born on Ulthuan, and their culture and education is greatly different than a normal Wood Elf upbringing. Then there's the fact that Wood elves live in the woods pretty much all the time while High elves have built cities and live in a wide variety of climates.

It's not the same as a Guardsman in DH, because while Guardsmen might hail from a variety of worlds they still have a large common ground in their military training. Sure, variations exist (that's what the home world mechanic represents), but the skills and knowledge is pretty much the same for any Guardsman because they all belong to the same large organisation. High Elves and Wood elves only have pointy ears in common and not much else...

macd21 said:

Well, duh. That was the point of my post. You stated that no one likes or uses halflings and that is why FFG didn't include them. I posted to the contrary to show that you're statement was neither factual nor universal, to which you reply 'your experience is not universal.'

And then you follow by again stating that you think FFG is using the 'people like elves more than halflings' meme as the reason behind removing halflings when you have no information to prove either. And all of this after you spend many a thread chiding people about making suppositions based on little to no information...

Varnias Tybalt said:

Ok, I apologize, that wasn't a good example. Here's a better one:

A rat catcher from the Empire and a knight from Bretonnia both fall under the category of humans, even though they are two obviously different people. "Their culture and education is greatly different," just like you said about the High Elves and Wood Elves. However, they're still the same race, the same species, of human.

marz.twin said:

jadrax said:

That would be cool, but only if they had supplement books for ALL of the countries. Meaning, Araby, Estalia, Tilea, Nippon, Cathay, Albion, and all of the other places that have very little fleshing out thus far in WFRP should each have their own book.

The IG example supports having different races for elves, not undermines it. Different worlds of origins in Dark Heresy give different stats, allow entry into different careers, and give different special abilities. In the IG example, the worlds of origin are different but the career is identical. It's like saying "what's the difference between a high elf hunter and a wood elf hunter".

Luther said:

My point is that I believe FFG do have that information. I think that polls over the years have indicated that halflings are the least popular of the races. Alternatively, the guys in the office could have just voted on what races to include...

marz.twin said:

Yeah, but they still live in pretty much the same era, and their peoples have a lot more contact with eachother and a lot more middle ground. It is a different matter with the elves. In the beginning, all elves where High Elves, but some decided to colonise other areas than Ulthuan. The colonists who moved to Athel Loren later became the Wood Elves (despite that they were ordered to retreat back to Ulthuan when the High Elf colonists lost the war of the beard to the dwarves). So they have had minimal contact with their ancestors on Ulthuan, and you also have to take the fact into account that this happened many thousands of years ago, and since then many generations have passed (even elven generations that tend to be quite long lived).

It would be like taking the first colonists to america and then cutting them off from the rest of europe for a few thousand years. The result would be radically different than the american people today, who have had a pretty much constant cultural exchange with europe even before and after the United States was formed. The two civilisations have influenced eachother over the years thanks to the constant communication. And in that regard Bretonnia and The Empire could be an apt comparison. The High Elves and Wood Elves on the other hand aren't really known for "keeping in touch" the same way. They might as well live on two different planets.