First off some background: I have a group of 5, including myself (the primary GM). We are all mature gamers with families and long-term professions. Between the 5 of us, we have a combined 116 years of RPG experience (wow... I never really totalled that up before). Most of us have been playing WFRP since first edition was released. We've ran multiple campaigns using the WFRP system lasting upwards of 4 years.

First Look: Our first impression was that they had turned our beloved RPG into a board game. All the little extras looked... unnecessary. There were concerns, especially in light of the discontinuation of the current 2nd edition line, that this could be the end of viable material for our sessions. The change in dice signaled an obvious change in the core rule system.

Second Glance: After reading most of the available material, the forums, and watching the video lecture we decided to adopt a 'wait and see' approach. The design theories looked like they might be fun (the way a good board game can be fun). Worst case, it would be a great system for quick games to introduce new people to the Warhammer cannon.

Concerns: Our biggest concern, since this is what we were getting from this point forward (in regards to WFRP) was that the system might be too simplified. The character sheets seemed abridged and the card system might be a bit sparce. With 300+ cards, that really limits the initial options (depending on what the cards contain). For example: Are there spell cards? Do the cards contain skills? This could use up the allotment of 300+ cards pretty quick. Till we get a count on what's in the decks, it's hard to say if they will contain enough detail to keep things interesting (expansions aside).

Questions: There are still a lot of questions about the system. Until they are answered (or seen) it's hard to make a solid decision. Here are some of the questions we have so far:

• How do you move the marker up and down the stance bar? Is it triggered by circumstance or does the player decide?
• What exactly is in the card decks? I know there are wounds (with crits), conditions (like blind), Insanity, and Attacks (like Accurate Shot). What about cards for social interaction skills (and others like climb, swim, or stealth) or spells?
• How much detail is there on character sheets and how customizable are they when they level? Are they still going to be interesting with forward goals after a year of campaigning?
• How are the 4 books bound? Perfect bound? Hardcover? More importantly, what is the page count of each book?

Final Thoughts: The opinion in our group is a 'wait and see'. RPG games are 80% roleplay and 20% mechanics. If the system is fun, doesn't get in the way of or restrict roleplay, and if the characters are robust, unique, and customizable over long campaigns, then this system is as good as any. If it's not, well, we have enough 2nd (and 1st) edition books to last us for the rest of our roleplaying lives (which won't be long now 'cause we're all old).

If anyone can answer the questions we have so far, please do. Otherwise - enjoy your game however you see fit. That's what it's all about. Thanks for reading. From our table to yours - GG.

Nez

Edit: In all honesty, if the past efforts of FF are any indication of future products, then I'd really like to see what they have up their sleeves. Every game I own from FF is top-shelf. They are fun, replayable, and have unique mechanics - well worth the money spent. The WFRP2 and DH publications are amazing and rank amongst my most treasured RPG books. I really hope WFRP v3.0 blows my doors off and judging from past experience I have no reason to believe it won't.

More or less my concerns are the same as yours, as my WFRP roleplaying situation is.

I'm GMing WFRP since Autumn/Winter 1996 and gladly wellcomed V2 as it was a great improvement above the first while mantaining the mechanics more or less compatible (Read: you could pass from GMing V1 to GMing V2 without much effort, same thing for converting stats, careers and houserules from V1 to V2).

Now we are going to have a newish V3 that is a completely different game, from roots to leaves. Stats are completely different as game mechanic is.

I'm not a resticted minded person, I usually like innovations and usually wellcome them. But I can distinguish innovation with change for the sake of change (or is it for money's sake?). You see... with this new version, people HAS to buy the new products if wants to play V3.

I mean: with V2 corebook and a bit of effort you could convert whole campaigns (Like Doomstones or TeW) thus allowing you to re use (or continue to use) your old and well payed material. Now, not only this version does not pay respect to one of the best gaming systems ever, but makes everything (bar pure fluff and bacground) mostly useless (and I do have most of V1 and V2 material). Not only! One of the wonderful things of WFRP was that the stat line was very similar to those of Mordheim and WFB, thus allowing for not complex conversions and enabling the possibility to play mixed sessions: I GMd a mercenary campaign this way, alternating WFRP sessions with WFB battles where the PC combat was handled via WFRP rules and units combat was handled with WFB rules and all seamlessly and with not much effort in converting stats. Now that will not be possible, or at least not without much more effort.

I agree on the fact that V3 could be considered "another take on Warhammer", something between Mordheim and WFRP, to be played between a V2 campaing and another, just to distress nerves... But almost 100€ for 4 players set (GM included) as a starter is a bit costy (What if in my campaign I'll have no mages and no priests because I want to do a full Dwarven campaing? I'm wasting money on 2 out of 4 handbooks I find in the boxed set!). Moreover my V2 campaing is, after 4 years of playing, almost at halfway from it's end and I have no mind for converting EVERYTHING to V3, neither I want to stop it for a new one just because V3 came out. So, unless one of my players wants to invest 100€ in the new game just to give it a try, V3 will not be buyed or played from any person of our gaming group.

The drawbacks continue: new expansions will be useless to gaming groups that like ours will not play V3 thus limiting not only our possibility to explore new things but also V3 sales! While I do know people that use V2 Tome of Corruption, Tome of Salvation and Path of the damned with V1 rules (yes, that is actually possible), I think nobody will buy V3 Greenskin Compendium for a V2 use.

Summing it up we will stay and see what will happen with V3, we will of course be pleased to play some demo games in a Con and yes, maybe it will be pure fun... but I do not think V3 will enter our houses, not before 3-4 years at least.

That's a fairly rational approach. There's so much we don't know about how the game works. Most of V2's problems it inherited from V1, but its clearly a significant break away from that even if many of the stats and skills are the same. We do know, for example, that a couple stack of cards are easier to use than flipping between charts because hunting down charts, even if bookmarked, takes more time. We also know that die pool systems don't have some of the problems that %100 die systems have. We don't know if V3's system will produce better results though because we haven't seen it in play.

I am sort of the same wait and see person here. I am still waiting for a demonstraion video of a WFRP 3rd Edition session with character creation, play and advancements.

SO COME ON FFG GIVE IT!

I think some of us are waiting - we don't pay $99 for an unknown game. :-)

If FFG won't do it, someone will and post the videos on YouTube.

That was how I decided to buy Red November: by watching a fan made video on YouTube in which he showed—in great detail—setup and play.

That works for me.

I prefer Ye Olde Version 1, to the 2nd edition.

It was mostly due to the combat system. I saw Ulric's Fury much more often on a d6, than when we started rolling d10. It became much harder to lose a character (or a Fate point) to a single, lucky shot from a Gobbo, for instance; and that changed it for me from a Grim World of Perilous Adventure, to just more of a Grim World of Adventure. There were also the rules for +10 for winning combat, and pushing the foes back 5' (and you could choose to follow-up). I know you have a manoeuvre tactic in v2 but it's its own action. I enjoyed the combat mechanics in v1 more than 2nd.

I also prefered the magic system. Having to roll when at 12 or less magic points. Needing the left ******** from a Greater Daemon to cast Summon Total Power, for instance. Knowing that getting your components was an entire adventure, or campaign, all in itself; and that the component would be used up in the casting. If you strayed into Necromancy or Daemonology BAD THINGS would happen to your character. Magic was very rare, powerful, dangerous and difficult in the RAW (rules as written). In 2nd, it is painfully easy to walk about slinging spells.

And I missed Risk tests, but that's only because I'm a bit masochistic.

Regardless, I am looking forward to 3 and will be one of those that is going to dole out $130 for the core and adventurer's kit "just to try it out." I'll definitely report on my findings. I won't expect magic to have gone back to dark and dangerous v1 style, but I exepect some kind of incarnation of the Ulric's Fury mechanic.

P.S. Every time someone writes "dwarves", Khorne spares a kitten. It's "dwarfs". Won't someone, please, take Khorne's feelings into account?

Mordenthral said:

I did it on purpose, you know... I'm a Solkanite by heart and I'm doing this not only in disfavour of Khorne *Spits* but because I want to burn those kittens myself... no kitten = no aduld black cats. No adult black cats = less witches (Now I've to find a way to get rid of Frogs and Crows... but that's another campaign)

Even if I got over the idea of them torpedoing 2E to make everybody rebuy the core material, etc., and decided I was a FFG customer again... one thing stands in the way more than anything else. The dice.

Icon dice are a total dealbreaker for me. If a role playing game doesn't use traditional polyhedrals, chances are I'm not interested. I want numbers on the faces, not little axes and green clovers.

Requete said:

Yep, no way around the icons. It would be completely unfeasible to relate the number of possible axes and clovers you could roll in a dice pool and roll some number-covered dice in their place to get the same results.

I mean, if each blue dice has a 33% chance of generating an axe and 33% chance of a green clover and a 33% chance of a blank face, it would require IBM computing power to devise some kind of mathematical corollary that would allow me to substitute different colours of numerical dice.

I'm not going to do the math; and all sarcasm aside, I can see your point of view. If you don't like it, then that's that. There are ways around what you don't like, but why bother when you already have a working system?

Just have fun gaming.

On a d6:

1 = Blank

2 or 3 = Eagle

4 or 5 = Hammer

6 = Two Hammers

DONE

I can attest to having roughly the same outlook as the OP. I can't say that I have many concerns though, since I was never that interested in WFRP in the first place.

However, this new approach to in-game mechanics for an RPG has piqued my interest and I might actually try it out just because of that. There's no reason at all to suspect that the game would be a "boardgame" or that it would be ruined just because of some new gimmicky mechanics. It's merely another way of keeping track of the same kind of stats and dice rolls like before. And really, the "traditional way" is hardly the optimum one. Sure, it has worked, but I have yet to encounter an RPG that DOESN'T present a high number of difficulties regarding buggy rules, strange and time consuming game mechanics, character sheets that get worn out due to all the writing and erasing of stats you have to do over the course of a campaign etc. etc.

If FFG is willing to try out a different way of keeping track of this, then I don't mind in the slightest. There has to be change if you want to make progress after all, instead of being frozen in time with the same concept over and over again.

Now I can't gurarantee that the game will be any good, because I haven't played it yet. Im also of a "wait and see" standpoint. It's just that so far no onr on these boards have been able to convince me that a game must inherently suck because of a few gimmicky and non-traditional additions to the game mechanics. When I play RPG's, most of the focus concerns roleplaying anyway, and there is no rulesystem or gaming trinkets that could ever steal that focus from me or my gaming frineds.

I'm an old school player from D&D and haven't ever played WFRP. always wanted to. and now there is a chance to get into the game at the ground floor. I understand the sentiment on the forums about the changes. i know guys who still play 2nd edition D&D. I understand that this update of the game is an attempt to bring in the younger player. We have to remember what our roots are on these games. the older crowd read a whole lot more and we compared our games to the books we read. we didnt need a whole lot to game with, just pencils and paper. then over the years the reference points of the games shifted to a large degree to movies and unfortunately to video games. this industry is driven by what the new guy at the table expects from the game. and unfortunately the new guy is more than likely to have played world of warcraft or something similar before he has played a table top rpg.

Truthfully, what I see here so far is an about as honest attempt as you are going to see from a big game company to bring roleplaying back. there is a lot of chatter about this game trying to be 4e D&D, but i think its just the opposite. I don't see a lot of MMOish stuff here. all the cards and stuff are just a new way to interface the game something visual and immediatly accessible to a new player. I could be wrong, but i followed the whole development of 4e from speculation to actual play and this doesnt come accross the same way. there is no " hey look at all the great things you can do now" propaganda. what i see is a lot of things that can potentially make the game quicker and smoother to play.

I'm not a game designer, but I have rolled a lot of dice. there is only so much that a numerical dice can do for you. the more you want the slower the game becomes, and then its more about the crunch than the story. When I first played Descent: journeys in the dark, I reallized that there is a whole lot of things that can be done with symbol dice pools and cards working in conjuction that a D20 or D100 can never do. I always wondered what the card and symbol dice system could do for an RPG. I guess we are going to find out in a couple of months

My advice to people is to go out and play 4e D&D and then go play Descent. They are both trying to do the same thing, they are both trying to bring MMO elements to the table top, but look at how the Descent game does things a lot quicker and easier. then go take a nap, and try to see how a card and symbol dice scheme could help or hurt an RPG.. I think this is where our speculation should be geared at right now. all we have so far is a lot of mindless unfounded nerd rage.

cheers and good gaming

chojun said:

Agreed.

I see people making generalized assumptions, much like they did for 4e D&D and NWoD for White Wolf, and getting angry about these assumptions. Nerd raging over vapors.

If it's not your game, it's not your game.

You see... here is not having something against progress. I am an open minded person and usually wellcome innovations and improvements.

I'm not telling WFRP V3 will be an owful game, easily it will be fast paced and a joy to play, FFG has some experience in that after all.

My, and most of other naysayers' rant is about not having respect of a 23 years old gaming system! The only thing I do see here is a big fat company that put his hands on a juicy license and wishes to milk as much money as possible without even caring about the philosophy and the spirit of the game itself! I do not see here the love, the respect and the caring that BI people showed when developing V2. I'm stating to ask myself if you yaysayers and you FFG ever tought at least once about why V2 was so wellcomed from the fanbase while V3 isn't. Are you seriously thinking we WFRP fans are ALL static minded naysayers? Now I make you a comparison: what would you think if GW next month comes out with WFB V8 that is based on 12mm scale miniatures, D10 instead of D6 and a completely different ruleset, promising to create a new, never existed, super interesting army book (like Fimirs, Chaos Dwarves, Ind, Kathai, Nippon and so on) along with old armies only for the new system? Wouldn't WFB players that spent lots of money on armybooks and miniatures would be right to feel betrayed? Well here it is the very same!

And please stop telling "If you do not like V3 just stick to V2 and stop complaining" because V3 is completely changing our gaming perspective in the foreseeble future: no new official expansions will be compatible with V2 so we have to stick with what BI produced until his departure, everything else has to be unofficial and fan made.

Now let's talk about what you can and what you can't do with a numeric dice. I mean: what is exactly that a good and experienced GM can't do with a D100?!? If you people are so stick to dices and tables please go playing Mordheim or Warhammer Quest! RPG is not only about rolling dices and follwing what they are telling. RPG is about improvvisation, is about a GM making players live an exciting story where some parts are, yes, decided by a die roll, but with a bit of salt! I mean: in our gaming group we do not use full combat rules for EVERY combat. Generically, when the fight is not so much important I do tend to go more descriptive and make few die rolls. But when the combat IS important I use the full rules, thus giving players the sensation something important is happening; even then I can use my brain's salt to adapt die rolls to the flow of the combat's description without needing fancy hammers and stars on the dies themselves! Scared? But it's as simple as that: a good GM does not need dies to tell the story for him, a good GM needs the possibilty to be as flexible as he can in order to be able to tell HIS story in HIS way!

Now I tell you something you can do with a D100 that you can't do with blue happy dies with fancy hammers on their side! It is called IMPROVISATION, my friend. The fact is simple: When you and your players roll a D100 against a statistic you have a degree of success or a degree of failure that widely varies from one roll to another, that thing is one of the most powerful tools a GM has in it's hands, not an obstacle for his storytelling! In fact, being the GM the one that has to interpret that degree he can accomodate it to it's own purposes and make the story/combat be as exciting and flowant as he can manage. ROLLplayers call this "Cheating behind the screen", ROLEplayers call it skill.

Now if you take the same tests rolling happy dies on a colorful table you have on the cards layed on the table, you most probably have a set of fixed results to stick to. That forces the story flow, liftening the burden of decision from the GM (WOW!) but taking away the powerful tool of improvisation from the hands of the GM.

I stop here, but I could go on and on.

Erik Bauer said:

I fully agree with your opinion - but there is one thing: You talk about EXPERIENCED GMs - and that's the point! FFG designed V3 for new customers - not for us!

I know, Knight, I know...

That's why every time I envision a party playing WFRP V3 I always see youngsters playing it as it was some sort of Magic or Pokemon game.

Jokes apart... It is sad to see the RPG that made our group learn how to play in a mature way and we GM learn how to GM in a mature and improvisative way being transformed into something to be used mostly by inexperienced players because experienced ones will find so many limitations in it. That's what I call lack of respect.

Erik Bauer said:

I still don't get the pessimistic attitude. Why should the mechanics of a game force you to play an RPG only as some sort of Magic or Pokemon game?

Two short stories to lift your spirits :

1. When I was a youngster and started playing D&D Basic with my cousins and friends (I was 13 back then), it was pure munchkinism... nobody remembers those 10'x10' rooms with a dragon inside? I do... but my friends and I played on, the plots thickened, and soon the real roleplaying took more weight. Why deprive kids from discovering RPGs as we did? D&D Basic was a cartoonist, ridiculously simple RPG, easy to start a game in no more than 15-30 minutes; let's admit it, its rules were quite crappy, but it gave many of us hundreds of hours of fun and sleep deprivation... Let more youngsters come into the hobby...maybe when you become 20 years older you'll meet great 20 or 30 year players that will take their first "munchkin" steps with D&D 4th or any other simple game (if WFRP 3rd turns to be this way).

2. After designing and playing a Descent campaign (with house rules I designed before Road to Legend came out) one friend of mine decided to GM a D&D 4th campaign. His initial intention was to have an MMO style campaign, "à la Descent" , because he loves tactical games. But then, little by little, we started roleplaying more and more until we went from 3 combats per session to 1 combat and 2-3 hours of roleplaying per session; the plot thickened, our interest in the story grew and, after a TPK (trapped by nasty Goblins after a cave-in), we decided to change a lot of D&D 4th edition rules that, in our opinion, disrupted the RPG aspect of the game and give much more weight to diplomacy and character story progression... there you have, roleplaying with D&D 4th edition!!! Exactly, that's what makes us roleplayers, we adapt and invent and imagine and have good time with the old good friends and with the acne-ridden newcomers...

So, take a step back, play some WFRP 1st or 2nd edition sessions to get in good mood and hit the snooze button for a couple months. When 3rd edition finally comes out, take a decision by what you see, but don't waste too much time of your life getting blue about what could or not happen...

Cheer up, Erik!

Maybe everything will come to a good end. Maybe there will be things we can't see today. I don't know how but maybe!

Concerning the d100 vs. New dice issue:

It's all a matter of perspective. Where I used to say,

'To negotiate the obstacle, give me an agility check. You can apply your acrobatics bonus if you have it, but you take a -10 penalty due to conditions. You need to roll under your agility to succeed'.

Now I might say,

"To get past this obstacle, take the number of (blue) stat dice you are entitled to based on your agility. Grab (yellow) skill dice if you have acrobatics. Throw a (black) chaos dice in there because the conditions are less than optimal. You need at least 2 hammers to succeed."

(The second line is speculation based on what I know so far)

Essentially, it's the same. If you want to keep your d100 out for quick 'there's a XX% chance this might succeed', do so.

Now for the results:

With the d100 the roll is made. The player passes with 1 degree of success. You might say,

'You manage to negotiate the obstacle. You do so deftly and make it look easy.'

With the new dice the player may succeed (with a bit of flare as well) but now you have an unusual pool with which to construct your description around. In this case, the stat dice succeed alone, but combined with the skill dice he passes with a little extra. The chaos die indicates there may have been difficulties.

'You deftly cross the obstacle, however on your way across a loose stone betrays you. You teeter on the edge for a second then expertly leap across to land in a roll on the other side. You turned a potentially bad situation around and made it look easy.

(Again, just speculation on how things might work)

d100 or special dice. Either can be exciting. Remember, you can do things any way you want. It's your game Don't start getting all nervous till someone actually plays the game and explains how things really work. Fun is subjective. Working/Broken mechanics are not. If the system is solid a good GM can play it like a violin.

Nez

As an experienced GM, I can say that I think the new system will be much, much better than the D100 one. Respect for a 23 year old system? Why? It's old - that doesn't mean that it is good. It just means that it needs to be chucked in the bin and replaced with something that takes advantage of the improvements in game design made over the past two decades.

NezziR said:

NezziR said:

The big difference is that with percentages even Gemma the girl in my group who sometimes counts on her fingers can understand the results and workout the probabilities of a percentile system. Ask her to workout the probability of rolling two hammers from a selection of different d8's she won't have clue. That's the difference with a percentile system it is easy to see how difficult a given roll is going to be, with symbolic dice it becomes much harder to make choices based on your chance of success.

macd21 said:

I'm sorry I had laugh at this statment. The new amazing all sing all dancing never seen before mechanics of WFRPv3 are not new. We had systems much the same as this twenty years ago. When FFG say new and innovative all it means is the kids of today have never seen it before. Why do you guys think so many people have comparred WFRPv3 to HeroQuest? Simple because the new game looks like an expanded roleplaying version of HeroQuest. The new game resembles HeroQuest far more than it does WFRPv1 or v2. RPG game design is moving in cycles , it has come full circle. The games companies want to bring in the kids, the new generation of players , so they have done the obvious thing, they have looked at the games that hooked us (the veteran gamers) and copied them. If these new games do hook a new generation of players in a couple of years those players will be crying out for more advanced systems and the games companies will start to make them again.

Does all this mean that WFRPv3 will be a bad game? Honestly i don't know the game could be great and I intend to give it a chance.

Foolishboy said:

I played Heroquest when it first came out. WFRP v3 it is not. RPG game design does not move in cycles. There has been a clear line of development over the past three decades, with game designers learning more about game mechanics and player preferences over time.

@Nezzir

Maybe you're right... but what if the dies are rolled upon a card where each combination of pictures represents a different result? AFAIK combat system will work like that. Now you have a result which has not to be interpreted by the GM and FFG is selling this out as a plus "The dies will tell the story"; and maybe this is a good thing for unexperienced GMs. But you have to read it also like the GM can't anymore give an interpretation to the result and has the dies tell the story in his place: a GM that does not have the possibility to freely give an interpretation to a rolled dice looses one of it's most powerful tools.

"You do not have to strictly stick to the mecanics" I hear you say. Right, obviously right. But will we be able to not stick to those mecanics when running a combat? I do not know... my fear is we could not. I'll leave the final answer to the first time I'll have the possibility to play that game and/or to speak with a veteran GM that GMd that game for some sessions.

Erik Bauer said:

How is the new system different from the old one? You roll the dice, you get a result, the GM interprets that result. In this case "the die tell the story" is the same as it was in v1 or v2, though it gives you more information to work with if you want.