So the most complaint going on is "omg tools, we have always done it without them killz" or something like that.

But how many have actually tried storytelling tools at all?
How will it help the story -and I'm thinking mostly for experienced groups that have played tons of rpg. Do you even see the ways to use the different tools, or even try?

The Dice
These tools are not just success counters anymore, but storytelling tools, that gives power to players wanting to and in my opinion needing to be part of the fiction. The show if you make or not make it, and how things go right and how things go very wrong. They will stimulate and help in creating fast fiction that does not make the Story-Guide sit and do everything (if you are not using GM's, and scenes walk around the table to each player this will be a great tool).

Tension Meter
Helps creating mechanical effects to in tension drama and be a pressure meter that show how the group is doing psychological. When its getting bigger, well, the characters should be more irretated and so forth. Until it boils over and the characters find a way to accept the way things are and makes up for the tension.

and so forth.

Thoughts people - how can the new tools create fun story elements that help create fiction - and even be great tool for experienced multi game groups.

[in a calm voice] Yeah, I'm not getting it either. I mean, these are some great tools for new (and old) GMs and players, but if you don't like them, if they don't fit into your game or play style, don't use them. I don't understand people complaining just because they are 'available'. Don't like the party sheets? Don't use them. Don't like the tension meter? Don't use it. Don't like the Progress Track? No one's saying you HAVE to use it to play. It's just available for you to use as a tool. If you don't need it and it doesn't add to your game, don't use it - but - it's not fair to say that some other GM or Player wouldn't benefit from it. Think of these extras as 'for them'.

I don't think it could even be said that the price of the game would go down much (or at all) if you removed things like the party sheets and progress tracker from the box. Consider it an extra and give it to you cat if you don't like it.

I would guess even the cards are printed in the book and not 100% necessary to play (if they aren't, there will be a player made PDF within days of release). The only thing you can't really set down are the dice. If you've discarded all the tools and you hate the dice, if the cards bother you and you don't like the career choices - guess what - you're playing the wrong game. I would hope everyone will give it a shot, but stick with v2 if it's not for you.

If WFRPv3 isn't finacially viable there likely won't be another for a very long time (if at all). The publishing days of v1 and v2 are over (moment of silence), no one is going to pick up dev on v2, this is what we have. I for one intend on making the best of it and I hope it gets enough player support to continue or we go back to the dark days of WFRP drought. No new official stuff. That would suck.

Now, I don't like to end on a negative note, so I'd just like to say that a lot of the discussion (positive and negative) has been very thought provoking. Customers who are upset got that way because they are huge fans of the game. We all have that in common. Before you yell at someone for being negative, try and remember that

Sidebar: When I was a kid we played Warhammer with paper, a pencil, 2 rocks and a stick - and the stick was optional. Some people didn't like the stick and didn't use it. Me, I loved it. I beat my players silly with it every week. Twice. Uphill. Both ways.

The biggest problem is these "extras" actually do add quite a bit to the price, look at boardgame prices (Im not saying 3rd ed is or isnt, im not convinced either way, but they are the only thing with the similar amout of components), the board isnt the largest percentage of the cost.

The fact that they come with the entry set into the game realy eliminates them from actually being an extra to a forced to pay for. Kinda like as a kid saying the brussle sprouts with your meal are extra but your mum still forces you to eat em, you cant take it or leave it.

Some of the components I can see as being useful but I would have prefered to see them as an extra thing I could buy if I wanted it, rather than having to buy them and have the choice to ignore them.

That may be true, but wouldn't you say that the 4 books, the character sheets and the 34 dice would be worth the price of the core set - or no?

Edit: Say the player needs 2 of the books, the dice, and the character pad. That would be right at around $100.00 for most games.

For $100 the set is cheap if you only look at the books. RPG books normally go for $35 a piece, here you get them for $25 and actually get the dice + extras that you normally in other rpg's have to buy besides the book(s).

Very - very few rpg's is just one book. And most do buy many books and use a lot of money on it. Go past the initial pricetag and actually look at the savings...

And can the discussion go for what I asked for - How will you make use of it to be a great tool for creating a common fiction in your group.

Ah, looks like I missed the point of you post, sorry.

Here's one example.

www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp

I feel the tools are the biggest sticking point for many people. Personally, I feel that WFRP 1 revolutionised RPGs, hence it was popular. WFRP 2 just tidied it up - it did a good job, but it was still just a janitor. I'm glad WFRP 3 is experimental, new and original.

Anyhoo ...

I'm a firm believer in randomness, particularly where WFRP is concerned. Without randomness, you tell the tale you want to tell, which is pleasing but dull. When a dice roll forces you to imagine something you hadn't planned for, that's the reason we have game mechanics. To stimulate us, provide uncertainty and jolt us away from going with what we expect.

WFRP 1 and 2 did this well, but I feel that the d100 mechanic was a constraint. It never forced you to think outside the proverbial box. Degrees of success don't take into account complication and escalation, the two most import story-telling devices. I suspect that WFRP 3 forces you to use your imagination in further dimensions, by providing definite indicators - boons, banes, etc. - that complicate simple actions more richly than Degrees of Success.

EDIT: Bugger. Didn't answer the question ...

Well, I guess I'll use all these cards and funny symbols to produce a richer environment that forces everyone to think beyond success and failure and imagine success with negative consequences and failure with positive consequences. That's what makes the new system attractive to me.

KjetilKverndokken said:

There are not four books, there is one book split into four. Each "book" is only about 100 pages. Really you need all 4 to play the game. Jay Little has even admitted this.

KjetilKverndokken said:

What? I just bought Song of Fire and Ice roleplay that's a single book costing about $35 interestingly enough. Yes most people will buy extra supplements, but everytime they do, they gain an extra supplement, unlike this game which costs $100 for which you only get a Core Set, which in turn appears to have quite a narrow focus in terms of the fantasy setting.

KjetilKverndokken said:

These are the kind of statements that make me angry. The dice never were just Success and Failure. The Players always have been able to interpret the outcomes and help create the fiction. The tension between characters is handled by roleplaying. The stance meter, don't you already give modifiers based on how a character acts?

How will the tools help? From a veteran pen and paper gamers viewpoint, they won't help, they do not provide anything we don't already have. However they will clutter up the place and remind us that we are playing a game.

I think the difference is:

1. Bell curve

2. Success with negative side effects

3. Failure with positive side effects

Well, the tracking meter with events can be used for planning/writing encounters and other event based stuff as a GM and seems somewhat useful.

I don't know about the reset some of it seems to overcomplicate matters but we'll have to see...

Wait - did Jay just call me a 'Tale Telling Tool?' Have at him!

Foolishboy, if you dont want to take part in the this thread fine, make a complaint thread - but this thred is for discussing what we other want to do with it. Thanks.

Foolishboy said:

The d100 roll is just success or failure, yes you can interpret why you succeed or fail during roleplay but you only have the two basic results. The new dice pool mechanic allows for extra results such as fatigue or loss of initiative alongside the success or failure of the action.

Amketch said:

I will not go into the dice pool is better/worse, we will see how it will be.

But I have to disagree with the quoted statement.
d100 roll is:
1. yes/no - success/failure
2. degree of success/failure
3. doubles (can happen on either side success and failure)

So you can not only tell if you succeded, or not. You can tell how much you succeded, and if something special happened.

This may not bring the same amount of info as proposed dice pool mechanics, but it is more than just flat yes/no.

People please, I'll quote myself again:

And can the discussion go for what I asked for - How will you make use of it to be a great tool for creating a common fiction in your group.

Discussion about what dice do can be made in a new thread thanks.

The Dice
As I said I like that new dice pool mechanic allows for extra results such as fatigue or loss of initiative alongside the success or failure of the action. I think it will be better than the d100 but we have yet to see it actually used in anger.

Tension Meter
Like this idea of the group also having an identity of its own, the group is more than just a sum of it individual characters. I think I would not use the meter for out of character problems between players as I feel this should not influence the game world but for tension between characters, great.

The cards
I think they will help immersion in the game, no flicking through the rule book for modifiers or to look up how certain unusual actions work.

Progress Tracker
Not convinced this is anything wonderful; in most cases I think pencil and paper would be just as useful. That said you have the bits anyway so might use it in chase sequences or rather than constantly updating players on how much sand has poured into the sealed room they are trapped just ominously move the marker towards the end of the track.

Amketch said:

Let's just roll back the sands of time all the way back to 1986 and WFRPv1. Just as an example let's look at Construction Tests on p68

Failure by 01-10%. The construction is shaky and good for only 2D6 days of use. After this it will collapse.

This is just one example of how you can Fail a Test but not just fail. I'm sorry to say this but everyone that claims the percentile system is just pass or fail is actually expressing their own roleplaying limitations and then blaming the system for them.

KjetilKverndokken said:

Are you a moderator? Perhaps if you wish to dictate a free forum you should start your own fan website.

As a moderator, I am asking the forum users to politely respect the intent of the original poster -- not just here in this thread, but across all the threads in this and other forums. There are plenty of threads where people can express their likes or dislikes about different aspects of the new system.

ynnen said:

I have not expressed likes or dislikes of the new system. I have expressed a dislike of people maligning the previous system on spirious grounds.I actually said the new tools are not adding anything to the game.

KjetilKverndokken said:

I believe your thread will become more interesting when the game will be out and when we will have thorough knowledge of what these aids are for precisely. There is so much we don't know, it's little early for such precise comments on the game aids. Try starting this thread again when we all have our copies of V3 in hand...

It will be bumped by then - but there are enough previews to how a good idea of their uses for now.

The Dice

I think that the main benefit of the dice mechanic is the input the player has on the roll - how conservative or reckless to be. The actual 'storytelling' aspect of the dice might sometimes inspire some interesting descriptions of outcomes, but for the most part I don't think that'll change much.

Tension Meter
I think this will be counter-productive, at least as far as promoting PvP roleplaying. It seems more like a stick for the GM to beat players who step out of line. On the other hand, if there are lots of other ways for the party to build up stress (combat, long journeys without rest, shortage of food etc), then it could help give a sense that the characters are exhausted and in need of rest. I never liked it when a party finished a 3 hour trip through the sewers and then felt up to a jog around the city before swimming across the Reik.

Progress Tracker

The tracker itself seem unneccesary - probably easier to use a pen and paper for most of the things it suggests tracking (like number of torches). However some of the mechanics described sound interesting. Non-combat struggles, such as convincing the duke while an NPC works against you, or trying to track someone before he escapes, are interesting. Usually such encounters would be resolved with one or two skill checks and GM fiat.