Gonna need an extra set or two of dice if you want a fast moving game

By Emirikol, in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay

Just a thought about when I ran the playtest last weekend.. The game ran smoothly and relatively quickly (once we knew the rules), but the one thing that consistently slowed us down was waiting to hand dice around the table. Hence, I ordered two extra sets for my group :)

Jay h

I'm really considering doing the same. Well, one pack, at least.

Any news on when they're set to come out in stores?

Can I ask how many dice of each variety are provided in the Core Set?

I've heard that a typical beginning dice pool is around 6-9 from groups who ran the demo so that would tell us roughly how many dice per player the Core Set provides.

  • 4 x ®
  • 4 x (G)
  • 8 x <B>
  • 4 x <P>
  • 6 x
6 x [W] 4 x [Y]

(See sig below for symbol key)

For the demo, we didn't run out of dice - even with some of the large mod pools we had. In fact, we had a small pile of dice that didn't get used. If you had a few more you might not have to shuffle them around the table as much - a pile on one side - a pile on the other - etc. Might make it easier if you had a large group. I think a couple of expansion packs of dice would probably cover a fairly large group without tossing dice back and forth too much (or at all).

Our table will have more than one core set (one for each person in fact), so we'll be covered up in dice.

What NezziR said. gran_risa.gif

We never ran out for any individual roll... but if people wanted to roll at the same time there might have been a couple times of waiting. For the most part, everyone wanted to see what everyone else had rolled, so we didn't have much simultaneous rolling (even for init).

I did wish I had a few more to use as a GM, so I wouldn't accidentally shortchange the "players' " dice by keeping some behind my screen (which happened on a couple occasions).

NezziR said:

Our table will have more than one core set (one for each person in fact), so we'll be covered up in dice.

I'll say you will, maybe I can buy some of your extras off your group.

I think my fear regarding the number of dice in the Core Set stems from the situation where a bunch of greenskins are sneaking up on the party and I tell all the players to make Awareness (or is it Perception?) skill checks with two Challenge dice. With only 4 dice provided in the Core Set, and trying to run a table of 4 players (I've preorder both the Core Set and Adventurer's Toolkit) that skill check will take a while to resolve, longer than in D&D or some other game where the penalties or difficulties are simply numbers.

I suppose I could roll the Challenge dice myself and then present that roll to the players as a static penalty they will have to overcome. The rationale being that the Challenge dice represent how quiet the greenskins are so everyone has the same difficulty in hearing them.

When there are a lot of creatures, you can group them up (as henchmen or not henchmen). They can attack individually or as a group (supporting one another). There are ways to handle large groups. It's pretty slick actually. I don't see you needing huge piles of dice, larger than normal, for big groups.

Keep in mind that, even with a large group, you're rolling dice pools. If you tried to roll two at once you wouldn't be able to tell them apart (short of rolling them in two different boxes or something). It's not an issue, you'll understand after a couple of rolls.

I preordered today (finally my FLGS put 3-rd en in offer gran_risa.gif), and added 2 dice packs to the order without any hesitation.

Hope that will solve the problem of running out of dice.

At least for the time when FFG will start to make some real nice looking dice for Warhammer (Q-Workshop ones maybe?), when I plan to buy some more for my personal use as a GM, and let the players have the old ones.

Emirikol said:

Just a thought about when I ran the playtest last weekend.. The game ran smoothly and relatively quickly (once we knew the rules), but the one thing that consistently slowed us down was waiting to hand dice around the table. Hence, I ordered two extra sets for my group :)

Note: The OP never said they ran out of dice for individual rolls. However, even only having two players and a DM, we had to pass dice around for every single roll. If you don't want to do that, it's going to cost a significant amount, and everyone should be aware of that. The extra dice packs are also fairly small... anyone have the numbers handy for those? If I recall, it's about four packs to get what you get in the base set.

No, we didn't run out for individual rolls, but I always like my games to run fast so I'd like to have a set in the hands of as many players as possible. I figure that from round to round, most rolls will be the same, however there may be a give/take misfortune die.

jh

Yes, if the players want to roll at the same time, I could easily see running "out of dice". I do like your idea, Emirikol, of the GM just rolling the challenge dice once and applying it to every player's roll. I do think that will help a lot. Then again, some circumstances require only a single person in the party to succeed or fail. Do you really need to know if everyone spots the package, or jsut if one person does? (since the players will obviously talk to each other). If the group is moving together, does it really matter if only 1 person fails their sneak, or all 4 fail? Maybe, maybe not. Regardless the enemy were alerted and init gets rolled, for example.

Terwox said:

Emirikol said:

Just a thought about when I ran the playtest last weekend.. The game ran smoothly and relatively quickly (once we knew the rules), but the one thing that consistently slowed us down was waiting to hand dice around the table. Hence, I ordered two extra sets for my group :)

Note: The OP never said they ran out of dice for individual rolls. However, even only having two players and a DM, we had to pass dice around for every single roll. If you don't want to do that, it's going to cost a significant amount, and everyone should be aware of that. The extra dice packs are also fairly small... anyone have the numbers handy for those? If I recall, it's about four packs to get what you get in the base set.

If i recall right the pack is

3<B>, 2®, 2(G), and one of everthing else (maybe 2[W])