Hi everyone,
I have been a Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay fan since the first edition, and seen the various changes that have come about - I think the audience has definitely got younger, or maybe Its because I have just got older! Although I wont be rushing out and investing in the new game, I do appreciate the attempts to make a more intuitive game. Roleplaying games used to be about someone learning a whole bunch of rules, and then teaching them to players. I do like the fact that this game has been designed for everyone to jump straight in. Actually, I was attempting to use Warhammer with my own No Dice roleplaying system, which uses playing cards, and shares that ethic, so adapting it to my own system will actually be quite simple now, from what I have gleamed from the forums here. Why not just by the game then? Well two reasons. One, its a lot of money, and for a Gm, you want lots of choice for your money, not a modular rpg system. I want all of the human races, halflings, careers etc from the beginning, so my players have great freedom to play anything they want. Secondly, my friends sit around on sofas, drawing cards and roleplaying, so anything that requires a table top, however pretty it may be, is out. We find we concentrate on the roleplaying totally in this manner.
I am not sure how the Talents work now, but so far the Characteristics and skills have been easy to adapt to my system (draw a card and add Char (1-5), plus Skill (+1-3), plus Specialism (+1). Magic, prayers etc will take some adaption, once I grasp the nature of things - the spells etc seem to be unrelated to 2nd edition
Anyway, I know there is likely to be a backlash to the new system from us old 1st edition cumudgeons, but I think it was time to shake up the hobby a bit and remove the intimidation factor of roleplaying to newbies - I know from experience that its very difficult to introduce non gamers into the fold - (although now our group use our No Dice system that no longer happens), so maybe tghis new game will at least tap into the boardgame market, which is at least a start of invigorating the game