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

I ran 4e D&D in the Old World. It was "ok." Before that I ran 3E D&D in the CONAN world (no, not the rpg..just the world using the D&D rules). That worked GREAT, although lack of magic items really favored rogue/ninja characters over fighters.

Honestly, I like that there are a LOT of NON-MAGIC-CRUTCH character careers in WFRP. The magic crutch-to-do-everything got old with other game systems.

jh

Hm, your post reads more like a statement then a question, but if there is a question about what we think could be good system for WH i think my answer would be GURPS. It can be very gritty and with very small modifications to the spell fumble system you are good to go by the book i guess.

Err, saying using playing cards for resolution is a "no dice" resolution mechanic is very misleading, it's still a fortune/random based mechanic. Heck, if you're pulling the face cards, you're just rolling a d10.

If you're assigning numeric values to face cards, you might as well roll a die.

If you have interesting effects occur based on face cards, then it's closer to 3E's dice, ha. If that's the case, I'd really like to see a tarot card resolution mechanic... hrm.

Funnily enought though, dice are generally seen as 'geeky' or maybe I should say 'gamey' and remind people of childrens games (i.e. Snakes & Ladders) whereas cards remind people of more mature games (Bridge or Poker). You and I, as gamers, may just see them as different ways of determining random resolutions, but to a non-gamer if can be a very different perception.

Terwox said:

"No Dice" is the name of our own rpg system - sorry for the confusion. In a nut shell, draw a card. If its a number, add that to your stat, trying to beat a difficulty number. If its a Jack, its a major fail. If you draw a Queen, its a major success. If you draw a King, keep in your hand and redraw. You can use the king as a free redraw at any point (basically like the old fortune points in 2nd ed)

Once you add suits into the equation, you should be able to mimic the warhammer dice to a certain extent. So if the cards a spade say, you would gain 1 point of stress or fatigue. If its a heart, you recover a point of stress or fatigue

The reason we prefer to use cards is :

1. You dont need a table! My gaming group now sit around, relaxing on the sofa. Every so often the gm asks us to draw a card, which we show to everyone (so no cheating!) and then get on with the roleplaying. Its incredible how much more relaxed we are now when roleplaying. Its just far more condusive to roleplaying - the cards are practically invisible and dont break the flow at all. I took part in a few games over the summer, played in a local park, and it worked just as well than playing at home.

2. Its fast! Because the card result is instant, you save time- dice rolling takes a few seconds to compute, and believe it or not, those seconds add up. We get through about 50% more story and adventure in an evening than we used to. I once ran our game at a convention, a pirate/ninja game with plenty of fighting styles and actions. The final climatic battle, involving 4 pcs,15 mooks and a bad guy, took 3 minutes, and had players trying all sorts of actions.

3. Its accessable! Having extensively playtested our games with non-gamers, they all enjoyed the experience and got what to do straight away. Since we wont to expand the hobby, strange polyhedral dice are intimidating to non-gamers. Gamers love them of course, but we dont wont to preach to the converted....

Although the new warhammer game looks fantastic in production values, it just isnt how I do things now - thats why i shall convert it. Since the whole game has been simplied its now much easier to do so.

OsirisDawn said:

I suppose it does! Actually though, I would think with the new lighter system, it may well be easier to convert now. At first glance its seems fairly close to True 20 (6 stats, similiar skills), or possibly storyteller (with dice pools).

Phantomdoodler said:

It's actually quite easy to use GURPS as a very light system - it's one of the strengths of GURPS that I think gets too easily overlooked. +1 from me for using GURPS to play in the warhammer world, although I'll certainly be buying the new WFRP3 and giving it a go