Peacekeeper_b said:

LOL love the chaos gods bit! and i play descent like an RPG....the overlord is more like GM in our games but yeah respect is key

Peacekeeper_b said:

This happens in every RPG, including 2e. The Trollslayer is expected to fight, the Wizard is expected to cast spells, etc. Warhammer is a bit better with this, because many careers have useful skills. I don't see 3e being any different, and seems very similar to 2e. Yes, I can see what you are saying in regards to combat ... that the group being given a relative carte blanche to coordinate makes them more of a "well-oiled machine", and agree to an extent. Of course, the groups I run with generally do some of this anyway. We have people say "don't move there, because I'm going to fireball that area", or "you should charge him that guy, and I'll charge him later and we'll get double-team bonuses", etc. We're hardly a "well-oiled machine", but some tactics do get discussed. So, I'm not sure it will be a huge stretch for us, and it isn't boring or game-breaking (and this included playing 2e this way). As a GM, if you want limited discussion, just make sure it's clear to your players. Tell them they can discuss the order iteslf, but detailed discussion about WHY or who's doing what must be curtailed. The GM can vary the restrictions as much as they want.

Also, don't forget the enemy get to do the same thing, so that is another consideration. Rather than the Trollslayer going first, if might be a better choice for the Wizard, who happens to be in charge range of the Ogre, to react first and step out of charge range, or get a defensive/slowing spell off, or for the rogue to grab the loot/tome/contested object before the opposing side can get it, etc. I think it will be hard to say what will really happen with this system. A lot depends on the GM and the players (and group overall), and their individual temperments and methods for playing. Some groups might not be able to agree to an init order often, some groups won't have trouble quickly deciding an init order, some groups will try to plan every player's actions before the round begins, others won't discuss their PCs actions at all. And so on. I don't think 3e's initiative rules particularly force a single 'best' order, nor force players to take a role or 'always' take a specific action (any more than 2e did).

Honestly, I used to think like Peacekeeper. I am a huge fan of the roll below mechanics of the old Warhammer system (though I prefer a d20 roll below since it's basically a percentile dice, but faster to roll and easier to modify.). I've been gaming for twenty-two years as well and am used to traditional systems. I've played dozens of games with funky dice, cards, dice pools, roll at a target number, roll below a target number, static initiatives, dynamic initiatives and so forth. When I first heard of 3e my reaction was...why? Second Edition had a good mechanic and it was such a radical change to 3e I thought Fantasy Flight Games had lost their minds, especially with all the 4e DnD looking gear that went with it. I found it laughable, but didn't pray for it's ultimate failure and could see how, for new gamers, the visual appeal and the rulebook-lite mechanic would be attractive. I had no intention of ever, ever, ever getting it and made fun of it with my friends for a while.

Only difference is, after reading the designer diary about the die mechanic, I totally changed my tune. I love the new system and think there is a lot of good in this direction for RPG'S, Why? Let me give you the finer points:

1) The dice. Sure it may be easier to say take a -30 percent. Oh you succeed, good, moving on. Oh you fail, that's bad. But these systems will never, ever give the nuances of action resolution this system does. Let me plug down a few examples. So you spend fortune to make a last desperate swing and you hit but roll a bane. Well you plow through the greenskin doing some solid damage but your sword breaks. If you were to do that to a player with a -30 to their roll and just arbitrarily shout out your sword breaks, well, I don't know any player who'd think you deserve the best GM ever award for that! After-all, the action was a success, so why did my +20 vorpal sword of mega-doom break? Also, look at it from the standpoint of political intrigues between NPC'S and Players in social situations. For the past ten years, I've never asked a player to roll a single social role, believing roleplaying alone could carry the weight because, success or fail systems result in: you either convince the king of x or you don't. It also applies to simple checks like jumping a gap. In success/fail systems you either jump a gap or you don't. It loses those great cinematic moments when a person almost makes it, but slips and is clinging to a ledge. This system offers those possibilities to be actualized continually rather than at the GM discretion and often at the behest of the player who is being penalized for rolling a perfectly good success. This die mechanic offers more give and take allowing the system to navigate itself and for the GM to steer how the story wishes to go based on the rolls of the player's dice, which in turn offers new possibilities and story elements to come up. Going back to Social rolls again, which are generally uninspired in most games (more of an afterthought system-wise to all those glorious combat talents) - the social rolls under 3e will create very dynamic results in how my NPC will react to those social situations. It gives the players hand on controls. Also I can reward great roleplay with something better than a simple pass and fail mechanical bonus, I can give fortune dice to the roll. So now a player can 3 comets, two boons, and a boat load of successes to the roll. The king doesn't only agree with x, he's going to give x and x and x as well. You see, that is not possible in a normal success/fail system, but in those systems there are basically four results, success, fail, critical success, or critical fail. There are no failures with successes and no successes with failures. Not even conventional dice pool mechanics have that option since they focus solely on failure, botch, or how many successes. That is a massive difference. Sure you can make it up and the GM can do whatever he wants, but this mechanic gives a direct player to GM interface and makes interpreting whatever he wants a little easier and prevents him from being arbitrarily cruel.

2) There are dozens of reasons why 3e is overall, so far, a better package than 2e. Don't get me wrong, I love 2e, but I don't play it without changing it. I won't bore anyone with those details, but lets face it, 2e suffers from a horrible experience curve just like 1e did. You start out biffing all the time to advancing to a point you never miss. Plain and simple. You're also stuck on a limited character advancement tree that pigeonholes a character beyond basic into not only a specific role, but specific skills, talents, etc. Sure, there is some reality to that, but it's very hard to maneuver around without back-treading and wasting a ton of xp. The new "phrase" system gives the game that flexibility, period. 2e at low levels has a horrible "whiff" factor, a problem that plagues Dark Heresy as well. This system, so far, doesn't seem like it will have that same effect. Sure you have to advance and team up to fight to win in 2e, but how does that help the human bowmen? Where is his buddy to help him make those shots? 2e's combat maneuvers are semi-arbitrary and don't really enhance combat as much as hold them back. In my opinion they were too reflective of 3e dnd combat maneuvers which works great in that system but interface strangely with 2e. 2e also has no room for high-elves and the like. Sure, it could have been a stand-alone game, but I once ran a Vampire in a party of normal humans and man was that power curve off. My group is fine with that sort of thing, but I know most want "game balance" (whatever that means) between characters. 2e is limited in this capacity by their GW statline and how the majority of the character is derived from those stats. 3e gets around this problem by not giving races huge statline advantages, but by specialized Talents. This also prevents one factor that plagues 2e, at high levels, everybody starts looking the same...statistically. That really is a pain to some who want nitch protection. A Troll Slayer just doesn't seem so Slayery when the lowly rat-catcher becomes a Grail Knight and has as much power if not more powerful than mister demon-slayer over there.

3) The initiative mechanic. So far, this is my second favorite part, it really is. Players actually deliberately working together and the capacity for truly spectacular, cinematic moments, what? Fantastic! But, to the point now, so what if the healer always goes last? Isn't that what a healer would do anyway? I mean, he's not a great fighter, but he's a great healer and all his buddies are about to get a good beat-down. Wouldn't he want to wait to see who needs healing the most, then start healing? Wouldn't he actually wait for the guy who goes down from a blow then rush up and heal him before it's too late? Wouldn't the Troll Slayer be charging in to die? Wouldn't the wise elf be patient as the Troll Slayer goes into the fray to help keep him alive by picking off foes with his bow? The argument the initiative mechanic will force specific tactics all the time and override role-play I see in the exact opposite. It stops the healer (who rolled the highest) from having to go first and the Demon Slayer (who rolled like crap) to have to wait until after the Demon has already been killed. It also creates tactical flexibility in a sense of: We're going to run away and the Troll Slayer is going to cover the rear. Everybody gets run and the Troll Slayer now has the freedom to attack the greenskins as they try to break passed him, instead of him having to go at the bottom of the round (because that's what he rolled) and the Greenskins getting to go before him (when he couldn't attack since they rolled higher than him). Again, this enhances the roleplay. So in the same scenario, the players being chased by Greenskins run into a room with a troll just after the Troll Slayer had put down several greenskins. Well, the players did let the Troll Slayer go first to fight the greenskins, but now the feeble rat catcher and gambler have to have a go at the Troll for one round by themselves. New role-playing opportunities were created and a better story is told. If players can't solve who should go first because the elf and dwarf are competing for kills, I'd love to see them settle it with a die off so the best man gets to go first while the human just stands back and shakes his head. It could absolutely be used to allow players to have fun with combat in these sorts of ways, competing to go first or second, or to work as this finely oiled machine...whatever they want to do, not what the system tells them they HAVE to do.

4) Everything I've said above about the initiative system, the dice, and the player generation freedom give great opportunities to do exactly what Jay said in his GENCON footage. This game is designed to eliminate the feel that gaming is the players versus the GM, instead it is meant to make them feel like they are working together to tell a story. Whenever systems are limited and controlling and the GM must enforce those elements of control, he becomes the "bad guy." The dice give players direct narrative control by what they roll (for good or ill). The initiative system gives them direct control over their fates and allows them to accomplish what they want to accomplish in a combat without having to be held down by the limits of static initiative.

5) Time to face facts, role-playing is a dying market. Don't believe me, look it up. Why? Well, some people say it might have been a fad, or the internet and video games are killing the market, but is that true...to some extent, sure. But fact is, since the creation of DND role-playing has been basically the same gig. Same sort of systems, same sort of splats, same dice, same tools. Do I need to buy another fantasy game that works similar to DnD, but it isn't quite DnD, no, I don't. I'll just use my house ruled DnD. Do I need a different game about Vampires...White Wolf has done a pretty good job covering that as well. Everything that can be done with standard dice, character sheets, and math has already been done. My point is with that, there is little besides massive genre games (DND, Shadowrun, Dark Heresy) there is little for side markets to draw in gamers. The second factor is the learning curve. Dice aren't just dice, they are part of an entire math equation, a long, three hundred page equation on how to use those dice with a specific game. The GM actually has to learn all of that (or at least be familiar with it) in order to run a game. Each spell, each Talent, each ability, is a new equation that needs computing. That is a turn-off in an era where video games do that for you. The last, and most critical point of role-playing's untimely demise is set up time. I'm not talking about those established games, I'm talking about that first sit down. Generation, especially to new gamers, takes at least an hour, maybe two. The GM of course, has to read 300 pages before that and be familiar (exam level familiar) with the entire system. So how does that play out on cards? Simple, The GM doesn't need to know what Talent of Death does, it says it on the card. Players don't have to sort through pages onto pages of advanced and basic talents put in alphabetical order: Here they are, this is what you get starting out, choose one-three of them and move on. You don't have to spend sixty-seven creation points or roll two d10 and add twenty for each of these eight stats then copy down these skills and spend these points then choose one of these talents as you flip back and forth from the list to the talent section trying to remember the difference between orator and master orator. It's direct, a player has the system in their hands taking some of the work off the GM's shoulders. All he needs to know now is the basic mechanics of how everything operates and the game can actually run itself. Furthermore, the dice have easy translated pictographs, with the most limited amount of math in the world. Reds take away greens, skulls are bad, eagles are good. I think a four year old could roll a skill check in this system. Fantastic! That means as an adult or a teenager can breeze through them.

6) The great nail in the coffin of RPG is the fact that we actually don't need much to play them. In my twenty two years, I've bought 16 games. I've easily played over 50. Hmmm, what does that mean from the business side. Simple. Lets say each group has four players. Lets say there are 2000 people who play this Game called "Descent the RPG." Okay, now to play you need one book four the group. That means out of 2000 actual players only 500 books are being sold. This is a book, mind you, that needs nothing else to play (except some dice). Now dice aren't made by the same company usually and are left to a secondary company to produce them. So that is a sale the RPG company is losing as well, roughly 12 dollars. Now most groups, everybody gets a set, but once you have it, you're set for life. I know guys who still use the first dice they ever bought. There is a further factor that now must be included which is the downloaded RPG. Sure, I'm not that guy but I know plenty who haven't bought a gaming manual since the creation of Torrents. I've seen every White Wolf manual ever printed in a single torrent. That's hundreds and hundreds of dollars of revenue that that company is not getting. It makes clean sense that this system is designed to get everyone in a group to buy in. Is that a bad thing? Is that a business trying to rip you off? Honestly, no, it's not. That's a company that loves its product that knows how this market operates and is basically saying, look, buy our products so we can keep making more and you can keep enjoying them. Because, fact is, I am willing to wager a lot of companies have died over the single manual for a group to play forever issue. The ones that managed to succeed somehow got players to buy in. This is why DnD is probably so successful because fighters actually buy fighters handbooks and the like. Also the roleplayer complaint that "my players will have to actually buy their own copy" has absolutely no merit to it what-so-ever. Listen, playing an RPG and not buying the game is like test driving a car to go work and back each day, but never actually buying it. Would a car company let you do that? No. To play WOW with your buddies online is what, 40 bucks for the game plus 10 bucks a month? Lets just say it is because I don't play myself. Well, that buy in, just to have a good time with your buddies is 160 dollars the first year, and 120 dollars each consecutive year. And you could not play WOW if you didn't buy the game and pay your monthly fees. As a final point, the cards, special dice, etc. are a way to keep the game being stolen via illegal downloads. Some may be for it, others against it, but in the world of small, independent companies that are staffed by people who love their work but receive little pay for the hard work they do, it is something they should absolutely prevent just so they can get up and go to work the next day.

Those are my very, very long, two cents on the whole issue. Hope you enjoyed them and maybe, gave you a little different perspective on everything. Now if Jay would only send me an advanced copy to playtest so I be a little better informed when I preach the merits of 3e, that would be hugely helpful. Here's to hoping.

commoner said:

Cut to avoid repeating the entire length of the post

Have to disagree with your example. You could just as easily say 'the GM doesn't need to know what the Talent of Death does, he can can just bookmark the talents page'. And it's either RIGHT or WRONG in both cases, because either the GM doesn't need to know what it does until it comes up or they need to work it into their plan beforehand.

A four year old could probably roll a skill check with this system, yes. But we're not designing it to play with four year old, are we? For those of a sufficiently mature age to actually play a role (let's extremely generously say a 12 year old), I think they can handle 'roll under a percentage using these percentage dice'.

Peacekeeper_b said:

I see a bit your point here, though the same happens in other RPGs as dvang and commoner have mentioned, with people delaying to wait for someone else to send their fireballs, etc.

But there are ways to houserule this so that your team cannot react as a well oiled team, and it works better with the system proposed for WFRP3... My suggestion would be the following:

1. Roll for initiative as usual.
2. Give each of your players cards or tokens or a different coloured die (if there are 4 players, you would need to be able to select a number between 1 and 4).
3. At the start of a turn, the players, without talking to each other, have to choose the position in which they want to act.
4. If several players choose the same position, then the one that got most successes in the initiative order gets to act first... here you could even add 1 stress to the group to show that they are not coordinated enough.

Now, this system would indeed simulate quite well the chaotic feeling of battle... You could even have the players choose the free action they'll make at the same time they choose the position in which they want to act.

The above would work only with experienced players, and the GM should then be fair and make their monsters act in an uncoordinated fashion, unless they are a very well trained force... actually, I think I'll start a new topic to present this as a houserule for adding more complexity to the combat.

dvang said:

dvang said:

I dont know, I think reacting at the time your personal speed, agility and initiative allow you to react makes the most sense. Sometimes that wizard just isnt fast enough to move out of that ogres way just because you have an elf in the background shouting "YOU CAN DOOOOOO IT!"

If anything, switch action, motivate or intervene should be special skills or talents or manuever options that have requirements. For example, a faster PC sees the ogre charging Joe the Wizard. By spending his reaction or a half action the Elf can shout "Joe, Ogre, Move" and the Joe can spend his reaction and a half action to bump his action up a phase.

Course, the reaction rules as they stand in 2E would allow Joe to duck or dodge as it is.

If you want a PC to be able to enhance party intiative, well there should be a FEL skill/talent for that or such not. And then that character should be using his FEL or LD as the initiative attribute.

TO ME (note the capital letters) the initiative system presented thus far is hinky.

Right, then the entire games stops so the GM can flip to page xx and find the Talent. Of course he could bookmark it, but he might as well bookmark the entire book so that he can quickly find the other fifty Talents or whatever he needs to look up at any given moment...or he could just look at the card that's already, open on the table and ready to go in front of the player and he can keep going while the player checks the stats. Hmmm, which one is faster, easier, and a better interface...let me see...

Also, my response about the dice was that the original quote here was about how these symbols are so confusing and different and strange and hard to read and interpret bit. My point is, that you have so agreed with is that a four year old could read them. So is that really that hard and different and strange? Thanks for agreeing with me that in fact, no, they're not. Also, while a four year old could read them well, they could not interpret them as well as grown-ups could. And just because a four year old could use them, does not mean they are a kid's tool. I mean a four year old can operate a gun, but can they do it properly? Yet I'm sure you don't go around saying that a gun were designed for a four year old to play with, are you?

My point is, they are easy to use and, since you ignored the first part of my dice post I'll restate that: they offer a way broader range of role-play, story, and success opportunities in their simplicity and elegance than percentile dice ever could. Like I said, I used to be a huge fan of the roll below mechanic, and I still love its simplicity, so I'm not meaning to attack it. All I'm saying is, this system is better in regards to what the dice can achieve in a roll rather than a simple success or fail mechanic. That's all. And that point, I noticed, you completely avoided.

I'd actually argue going to a section of a book, with an alphabetised list of talents, is faster than trying to find one card in a stack of cards

Wow, that was one very impressive post, Commoner. I would, however, like to explore a couple of your points some more.

Commoner said:

Granted, it takes a great deal of time investment to make an RPG fun. Yet, I have always found that character generation is time well spent. I enjoy it immensely. However, I think it is best done with 1 GM and 1 Player together, rather than in a group. I disagree that the GM has to be as familiar as you say about the system and the rules. I've been winging it for decades! If you asked me right now how the game mechanic for striking to stun worked, I'd have to apologize and go look it up. Spending all the time to learn the rules is pretty tedious business, time better spent in getting to know the game world.

But I take your point that there's an investment in time, but a hobby exists so as to waste time enjoyably. What is at stake is making that time fun and not tedious. Does 3e really cut down on the learning the system by using its props? I'm not sure, yet, that it does. It strikes me that a better game aid than cards (which can be lost) would be a really good index system, perhaps web-based (or .html based that you can download) so that rules-based questions (such as how to strike to stun) can be instantly looked up and played out. Perhaps the plugging in of the PCs' stats would make this even quicker.

But, if 3e does indeed cut down on the tedious rules-learning I'm all for it. I just think that the board-game-esque elements feel pretty kitsch.

I get what you're saying about the money-making element. I do think that the D&D model of players handbooks were a smart deal for TSR/WoTC, in order to get the players to buy in. But it seems to me that the real moneymakers were not getting the players to buy in, but giving the GMs more to collect. I don't think that I've ever seen all the players' books possessed by all the players in a game equal the amount of books that the GM had alone.

For me, the real money-making angle that I hope FFG gets in on is not new and different rulebooks (for GMs and/or players), but more and more background books (which can also be used for 2e - though I can understand if they want to plug in just enough 3e-specific stuff to make it attractive for grognards like me to want to get 3e). Being the Warhammer GM of my friends, I WANT to be FFG's cash cow: make interesting books and I will buy. Put out kitschy nonsense and I will not. My players are a lost cause for FFG; they only play because I induce them to. I induce them to do so, because I really enjoy the Warhammer World, which I experience largely through the WFRP books that I have purchased. Most of the books that I have have never been used in conjunction with a game that I have played. Yet, I have spent much enjoyable time just reading the books and imagining how I would use that material some day in a game.

edit: the editing and quoting functions of this forum engine are extremely tedious and difficult to use.

Mikael Hasselstein said:

For me, what made D&D the business leader, even if its mechanics are mediocre, is the incredible number of good campaigns/adventures that have been published for all its editions... I hope FFG will put some effort into publishing good adventures and campaigns for WFRP3... My gut feeling is that Plundered Vaults had a lot to do with WFRP2 success.

phobiandarkmoon said:

the talent you start with is on your character ALL THE TIME.......you keep the card out by you....thus making it faster

Farin said:

OK, so it's more convenient than writing it on the character sheet, but in the end the information is there either way. I'm not denying it's a useful game aid - I'm arguing against it necessarily making it easier for the GM to learn the system well enough to play it.

But I take your point.

I agree with you, Peacekeeper. The initiative system seems a bit odd to me, at least in a 'fluff' reasoning way (not necessarily the mechanics themselves). I'm willing to give it a try at least. I mentioned it to my group at our DH game, and they seemed to react favorably to it overall. I think the loudest appreciative comment about it was the fact that in tight situations, for example where PCs are in a line, and where the PCs are basically forced by the situation to only move in a certain order (because of placement), it would make things much easier if they could move in order, rather than needing to wait for those with lower initiative that are ahead of them to move first.

Ex.

ABCD

A, B, C, and D are players in a narrow tunnel, where passing is either difficult or impossible. Player D is in front. Initiative is rolled, with B scoring highest, then A, then C, then D. B's turn and he ... waits because C and D have to go before he can. A's turn and he ... waits because D, C, and B all have to go before him. C's turn and he ... waits because D has to move first. D then moves. Now, how to interpret the order of those waiting, and considering the fact that A, B, and C at minimum lost a half action due to being required to Delay their action while D got a full turn to act. 3e's initiative method means that the group can just decide the party's initiative order is D, C, B, A and not have the hassle and annoyance of being required to wait for those ahead of them to move. This is the big thing my group seemed to think was great about the 3e system.

BTW, Nice post Commoner!