I have the chance to pick up some of the stuff for this game for a steal, but I am hesitating. I've always been interested but never played it.

1) How well does it run? Do the fiddly bits make it harder or easier to DM?

2) How well does it handle long term pc growth? If you've played the same characters for 2 years, does the system break down?

3) Can you play without the bits if need be? If not, what is the minimum amount of 'bits' that you need to use to play?

4) Can you reskin the game for other settings? Can you house rule/make up your own stuff easily? Or is everything interlocked so changing stuff makes a muddle?

Cheers

Hi,

1) Very well, much of the fiddly bits make running games easier as a GM/DM. And the system is quite modular, so it's easy to ignore parts you do not like or add different elements during the campaign when you've played for a bit. In the beginning I introduced a new rule/fiddly bit each session so that the players could learn the system bit by bit.

2) Works well, our last campaign lasted for about 2 years (we played through the whole 1ed Enemy within) and we played for about 100 sessions. Certainly the player characters become quite powerful after so many sessions, but combat still felt risky and the characters were far from invincible.

3) Yes, se question 1. It's easy to remove/add bits from the game. Do not like disease? Remove it. You feel the party sheet is not helpful? It won't break the game to get rid of it.

We play with most of the bits and we like it, but most bits are easy to ignore or add as you grow more acustomed to the system.

At a minimum you'll probably have to use the following cards: actions, talents, careers, creatures.

All others are more or less optional, but very helpful (in my opinion).

4) Should be easy, me and my wife worked on a Wheel of Time adaptation of the game, which seems to work quite well. I have also seen a Warhammer 40 000 adaptation of the rules which looked solid.

I also converted the whole 1st edition Enemy within campaign more or less on the fly and that worked like a charm.

The rules are quite easy to adapt to your liking, the core mechanic is quite modular and the dice mechanic allows for on the fly changes. I'd suggest running with the rules as written in the beginning, but it's not hard to modify.

Good luck!

I find that if players make their characters bent from the get-go, then you'll have a problem with hurting them. I had a dwarf watchman who REFUSED TO DIE. But that was my fault for helping the guy build his character.

Most players make the same glorious mistakes that keep them nice and squishy over the course of a campaign:

They never buy wounds with advances.

Who needs defences anyway?

The healer will put me back together, healing skills are great in this game!

ANy player you hear saying that, start checking does his character have his affairs in order.

1: It can be a bit hard at first, but really all the fiddly bits are basically the same as you have in any other rpg. Just that you have the bits instead of making a bunch of notes on your character sheet that you forget.

I have actually gone they way of making MORE cards than what the game has. Every item is on an item card and all rules that apply to the characters are on cards they have. It works very well once you have a grip on the system. But then characters have a lot less stuff to keep track of early on since they haven't had the time to buy additional Actions, Talent etc.

2: Not sure. We have been playing the same campaign for 3 years and it hasn't broken. The thing is, the characters who specialised and tried to make min/maxed characters have all died. WFRP has multiple ways to kill characters and the longer a character is played the more problems in the form of permanent injuries, insanities, diseases and mutations the character collects, making him harder to play and eventually breaking him. The only character who survived for 3 years is the fighter who went for a rounded out fighter character with no dump-stats. In the end, yes, the system will break a bit, particularly if one of those min/maxed characters manage to survive in the long run, but I have yet to experience it.

3: I would honestly not reccommend it. At that point you might as well just play WFRP 2e which is properly designed for it.

4: I guess... but I think it would be a lot of hassle to do it properly and with the specialized dice and stuff its just made to be Warhammer all the way through, so it would allways feel a bit shabby to me.

1) How well does it run? Do the fiddly bits make it harder or easier to DM?

It runs exactly like any other game, except you have that other stuff if you want it. I don't tend to use the fiddly bits much. I tend to just write things on a post-it note like anything else.

One thing that the fiddly bits do is make this game very attractive and tactile. Use them or don't.

2) How well does it handle long term pc growth? If you've played the same characters for 2 years, does the system break down?

We ran Dying of the Light (1e translated to 3e) and got to rank 4. It was a blast.

3) Can you play without the bits if need be? If not, what is the minimum amount of 'bits' that you need to use to play?

Yes. We originally started with none and added them as we went, just for color. use them or don't. It doesn't matter. In fact, the CORE BOOKS don't require them at all.

4) Can you reskin the game for other settings? Can you house rule/make up your own stuff easily? Or is everything interlocked so changing stuff makes a muddle?

It is the same ruleset as used for Star Wars (albeit they thinned it out a lot, but it still has some of the feel).

You can check out my HOUSE RULEBOOK below

Enjoy!

jh

2) How well does it handle long term pc growth? If you've played the same characters for 2 years, does the system break down?

We ran Dying of the Light (1e translated to 3e) and got to rank 4. It was a blast.

And not to mention that I lost three--yes, three--characters in that campaign. First my navigator, then my dockhand, then my beloved dwarven ratcatcher. But it certainly was a blast!

To address the question, I feel like the system does break down at higher levels. But once we get to rank 3 we usually start over with new characters at first rank when starting a new campaign. Same thing happened with Enemy Within. By the time we got to chapter 4 our characters reached rank 3 and we retired them.

I had a lot of fun with the few third rank characters we played and I was definitely looking forward to seeing where we went with them. That said, we were definitely dicking around without any clear idea what we wanted, aside from saying to ourselves "oh yeah, that's definitely what my character would do." I went from swordmaster to dilletante. Our wizard went became a preist. Our wannabe witch hunter turned into a thug. It actually left us with a whole lot of developing rather than making our characters suck. "Multiclassing" can leave you with a lot of fairly handy skills that you don't suck terribly at.

[...]"Multiclassing" can leave you with a lot of fairly handy skills that you don't suck terribly at.

Agreed!

I played a character who had 6 careers (so about 70-80 gaming sessions), all of them basic: boatman, thug, thief, navigator, barber surgeon, soldier (in other words, a pirate). My goal was to get a skill check in as many skills as possible and I also tried to raise most characteristics to 4. So when the campaign was ended, I had checks in almost all (basic) skills and most characteristics at 4. So while my character was a rather good jack of all trades, I had a decent chance to succeed at anything, but I still failed a lot of checks. I could probably have gone on for at least 3-4 more careers (so another 35-45 sessions), without feeling the need to start over. I would have started to aquire as many advanced skills as possible, and getting a skill check in them, and maybe spread some fortune advances among all my characteristics.

So Tywyll, to elaborate some more on your question number 2:

Skills, which are an important part of character improvement, cannot be trained more than three times. So if a player focuses on a few skills, they could be fully trained in them after 35-40 sessions or so. Then it might feel as that character won't become any better.

I'd say that if you know that you're going to play a long campaign, encourage the players to branch out early on, rather than focusing on a few skills. Maybe your players do not have to be as extreme about it as I was, but if the players branch out into careers that gives them access to new skills they will not only have a more well rounded character, the game will last much longer as well.

Of course, if you wanted to spend nothing at all on it you could follow the directions for downloading fantasy grounds that are around here... Somewhere... That would allow you to see all the fiddly cards in all their glory. Are you going to be running it face to face with your own people?

I'd say that if you know that you're going to play a long campaign, encourage the players to branch out early on, rather than focusing on a few skills. Maybe your players do not have to be as extreme about it as I was, but if the players branch out into careers that gives them access to new skills they will not only have a more well rounded character, the game will last much longer as well.

+1

If you focus on one angle for your character, I find it starts to get a bit dull quite quickly. Diversify, I say. This is especially handy when you decide to diversify into social stuff. I think using social skills in wfrp rather than just grunting at NPC's is highly rewarding.