Hellebore said:

If the point of this thread was simply to vent and express how much you hate this system, then, well done.

You hate the game's use of Action Cards for special attacks, the semantics of the titles used for these actions, and the cool-down mechanic. Amongst other things, I'm sure.

That being said, what exactly do you wish to get out of this debate? You've pretty much met just about every opposing argument with: "Nope. You're missing the point". So, frankly, I'm a little confused about this discussion.

Perhaps you should contact Jay Little or other FFG employees directly and send in an official complaint and request some official reasoning from an actual game designer as to why they decided to create this system the way that they.did.

Good luck, I guess.

OsirisDawn said:

OsirisDawn said:

OsirisDawn said:

The point is that events detailed in a novel or short story will have those unique descriptions added to them the same as any attack, manuever or action in a RPG could or should despite it being based on a card or cool down mechanic. I shouldnt need a special card to hack open a goblin's chest and chain shirt. I shouldnt need a special card to stab a ogre in the gut. These are descriptions best left to the result of the die roll not special cards. If you roll extremely well the GM/Player can explain it as a awesome strike and so forth.

Special manuevers should always be available and not a focus of time, unless that time is ambiguos and based on such things as fatigue, speed, experience and randomness, not just a flat out "4 rounds later". Otherwise the so called strategy of the game isnt really there, as it becomes "beat the system" instead. Such as we use the elf's really high initiative to let the troll slayer go first to use his uber-kill card in every battle, hoping to kill off a foe immediately at the start of the battle. Nothing wrong with that overall, but abuse is there for it.

John the sickly boatman should not have the same recharge on a card for combat as Smitty the experienced soldier.

And the main point I was trying to make is that the above descriptive terms from that story are easily enough described with the use of standard, non-special actions that anyone can tried, not just card carrying members of the Beat Back club.

I have nothing against people liking the cards or the way they work, or the dice mechanic. But I think Hellebore had a valid argument that quickly went sour with the rush of "troll" and "warseer" comments implied to his opinion. I respect a lot of the fan material and work and words Hellebore has contributed to the various games he is involved in. His words have merit and value and should not be buried beneath a mountain of "house rule it", "the cards are not necessary so dont use them", "troll" or "dont post here".

Hellebore said:

I still don't get it. You seem to be defining kewl powerz as something with a cooldown, but some of the actions on that list do indeed have cooldowns, and yet you are saying they're all mundane.

From an objective perspective they are mundane. Anyone with sword training can do them and do them all the time. From WFRP3 rules however they are special powers that cannot be used at will.

I asked if any of those used in the example had cool downs because the descriptions of characters in the G and F novels were not of special moves nor of abilities that would require a cooldown. They were being in a guard position, a basic ability anyone with a sword can do, hitting someone in the chest really hard again nothing special and so on.

There were the attacks made by the characters in the story, all of which were not special and then the abilities used to represent them from WFRP3 which you've said some have cool downs which makes them special.

The difference is in how they are represented. I don't like special moves being used to represent normal attacks in a combat. Having a cooldown on hitting someone in the chest with your axe is silly.

hellebore

Hellebore said:

Yes, that is silly, but a standard attack (ie, hitting a goblin in the chest) does not have any "cool-down".

Performing a physically straining combat maneuver might be taxing on a character's physique. You said you yourself. Cool. The workaround is to force the character to take some time to recover from maneuver, hence "cool-down". The player can still, RAW, say "screw that!" and take a point of fatigue or two (or even use up some precious Fortune Points) to accelerate this recovery period so that he can use that same attack immediately again. That's all in the rules, and it pretty much matches with what you proposed earlier.

The issue is that you vehemently dislike the actual game mechanics involved. Hey, that's cool: I hate the World of Darkness rule system for morality, which is pretty integral and important.

So, once again, I think that the only way that you'll get closure from this issue is to contact one of the game designers and ask THEM what the deal is.

Hellebore said:

Well, I don't know. It's just an artificial abstraction to help simulate some aspect of combat. Like my boxing example above, you generally don't see a combat (in movies or books, I've no real idea of irl fighting with swords) with all big moves and no smaller ones. The cooldown on the bigger moves helps bring a feel for the cut and thrust and toing and froing of a fight. It works for me.

I don't see how you can call it silly, coz it works afaict. Istm that perhaps you're bringing in your own ideas of what you expect of cooldowns and powerz and it's just your personal preference involved, rather than reflecting an inherent flaw of the game. But you raise objective metrics like verisimilitude and logic, whereas you haven't offered any evidence except preference and your own ideas of how things should work.

monkeylite said:

I've provided plenty, you've just ignored them. It is fact that you can swing an axe really hard to hit someone as many times as you can swing it. Ergo, some kind of 'mighty strike' would only work if it was limited by how much fatigue you had.

You may or may not be able to perform a specific attack on an opponent due to circumstance, but that has nothing to do with how often you can do it. Obviously you can't go for a kidney punch from the front, but that should be governed by manoeuvring around the opponent rather than an abstract cooldown for when you can do it again.

The point is that rather than tie the abilities into the story, they are given a flat abstract balancing factor. One could just as easily argue that a 'standard strike' may not be useable all the time either due to circumstance, which makes any argument of special abilties having natural cooldowns because of opportunity to use them completely meaningless. Everything is opportune.

@Necrozius, if they wanted to have the cooldown reflect the effort, they could have done many things other than simply 'it takes X many rounds to use power again'. For example, I previously mentioned a fatigue cost of these abilities. If your character can only sustain 6 fatigue and the ability costs 3 fatigue, then it can only be used twice before resting (or even less if you suffer fatigue from other areas). Another idea would be the number of rounds required to make the attack again is =current fatigue level (afaik you gain Fatigue as you go), thus the more tired a character is the longer it takes for them to psyche themselves up for the next big hit .

These create a similar game balancing effect (that is, a 'cooldown/x times a day' mechanic) that also blend into the story in a logical manner. This is what I think is the problem with a lot of rules these days in RPGs, they favour abstraction over simulation, despite the fact that you can achieve similar results in both and simulation has the added bonus of working within the story as well. So to me, it is simply the most logical to have rules that reflect the story and work as game mechanics, you shouldn't have to sacrifice one for the other. Especially in an RPG.

Hellebore

Hellebore said:

Interesting. Now I have a better idea of what you mean.

I guess that my difficulty with this debate is that, from my perspective, both systems (recharge time vs. automatic fatigue poitns) achieve the same end results.

Whereas with the recharge system you allow the player to pace himself and take a bit of time to recover from such strenuous actions, while still giving them a RAW way to speed up that process by taking fatigue points or spending fortune. In the end, I don't see much a difference except that there's less book keeping with your optional rule (which is awesome, by the way).

Necrozius said:

Nice and interesting reading indeed... I loved Hellbore explanation too, that puts things into perspective. And also gived me some ideas: Hellbore, do you mind if I try houseruling your musing for my V2.5? I'll post them as soon as I've written them down.

I'd guess that the decision to use a "recharge" time (rather than a system like Hellebore described) is probably based on modern tabletop and computer RPG design. I found in the demos that I ran, most players (even some vets) took to the concept of the recharge rates immediately, without explanation, while the fatigue rules took some going back to the rulebook (in how the modify further rolls, or lead to insanity).

That in mind, using a recharge is purely a semantic difference (literally, you could just grant fatigue on a 2-1 or 4-1 ratio), and probably one intended to give the majority of gamers a clear picture of the intent of the rules, in common, modern parlance.

Hellebore:

What do you want them to call the actions? Action A, action B, action C? They give the actions interesting names so that they are evocative of the objective of the action. People will have a hard time remembering that Action A is a strike with two weapons while Action B is a powerful overhand blow. If they are called Double Strike and Troll-Feller Strike, people can more easily recognize what the action represents and how it basically works. They need to name the actions something, and evocative names, even if some are a bit cheesy, are much better than boring non-descriptive names.

Also, as NezziR said, the cooldowns are not per day, or even per hour. They are a number of rounds, usually no more than 5, some as little as no cooldown or every other round. (which is like once every 12 seconds or so) ... umm, is that really so unrealistic? Between time to recover from an attack, ready yourself, set up for it again, then find an opening/opportunity to use it? It *is* logical, despite what you *think* is logical. Yes, a person can swing an axe in a powerful strike as often as they want...but they can only swing the axe so fast. A thrust with a sword is faster than an overhand blow that has a wind-up. A boxer's jab is faster and easier to execute than a hook. Thus, *in real life*, given a set amount of time, the jab can be used more often than the hook. There is a real physical limitation to time between repetitions of use. The time difference between the jab and the hook, then, is represented by a cooldown for the hook. If a jab can be used once a round, then a hook can only be "used" every other round. Not so far fetched, and perfectly "realistic" as far as trying to represent real-time actions in an abstract round-based system.

In WFRP 3e, a PC can push themselves to use an action faster, by spending fortune points or using talents, etc. If you dislike "kewl powerz", I guess you dislike Swift/Lightning attack in v2 too, right? Those must be "cool powerz" like 3e action cards, since they are practically the same sort of thing. I mean, realistically, anyone can swing a weapon as fast as they want (not just once every round/6 seconds, so everyone should be able to lightning attack from character creation. That would be realistic. I assume you've houseruled that in your v2 games, and your PCs can lightning attack all the time? Oh, and in real life people can swing fast while moving, so it wouldn't be realistic if PCs couldn't lightning attack and move too. So, you've house ruled they can do that too? The list can go on, but I hope you see my point. This is a game, and will never really match reality. It is no less "realistic" than v2. If you want a "realistic" combat RPG you'd better go find an obscure RPG that has realism as it's primary focus, and stop playing WFRP (any version) and pretty much any mainstream RPG.

I've GM'd 3e twice, and in my experience the cooldowns and action cards in fact had a positive effect of aiding the player in roleplaying the combat, rather than focusing on the mechanics. It didn't break the gaming experience, it enhanced it. I'm sorry, but unless you've GM'd or played the game, all you have is wild speculation. You certainly have a valid concern, but keep in mind that there are a lot of posts from people saying your concern is not a reality. Read through the Decree reports/reviews. Especially read posts from people who hadn't played before and weren't already pro-3e. The majority by far had positive experiences, including using the action cards and their recharge.

Hellebore said:

If you use fatigue instead of the recharge cost, you'll really be able to use an action only once per encounter. You use Action A for 2 fatigue, then Action B for 3 fatigue, and that's it, you can't use any actions with fatigue again or you'd pass out.

If you want an explanation for the recharge system, use your fatigue system. The actions are tiring enough not to use them every time, but not so you're exerted too much (i.e. gain fatigue). So you don't gain fatigue for using them, but they're a bit too tricky to do them too much in a row.

As for the names, it's better than Attack With Weapon, Attack With Two Weapons and Attack With Weapon But From A Different Angle.

Wow, this thread would make Ron Edwards giggle with glee.

Hellebore:

Ok first: If you want to play a simulationist game, go play something else . They might as well print that on the box. The rules are not created to simulate faux-reality, if you want that, go play Riddle of Steel .

Oh, and here's the simulationist argument for cooldowns that everyone always ignores (because it's flat.) The idea is that for say, backstabbing someone, you need a combination of luck, timing, and opponent awareness in order to line up a good backstab. You can only do this so often in a combat, generally needing surprise, etc. This is abstractly represented by recharge. So for troll-feller strike, perhaps the troll slayer needs to leap and crash into the big guy. Next round he's stuck in close melee, until he can get some room to jump again. Whatever, and so on. If you think fantasy doesn't involve special moves, go read Robert Jordan, yeesh. Another example: Legolas can, at times, jump on a shield, ride down a stairway, and shoot a bunch of orcs while he does so. But he doesn't, all the time, because he's not always at the top of a stairwell with a shield next to him. So, recharge abstracts how often he's near stairs with a discarded shield near him. Hellebore already knows this and doesn't like it, I'm just saving people the annoyance of typing it and feeling that it will be persuasive.

Anyway, that's the usual simulationist argument. The gamist argument is "well, it balances out, what are you babbling about" and the narrativist argument is "does it make the story more or less engaging and creative for the players and the gm?" (Not that I know if the recharge balance out or make the game more engaging or not, but those would be those arguments about it.) And you can't be simulationist and narrativist and gamist you necessarily must sacrifice aspects of two at some point for your highest priority. Sure, the other two enhance the one, but there's always a priority. Mine is obviously not simulationist.

Anyway, this is a game you're not going to buy, and have no interest in using. The game is not in a design state, the game is already being printed. You can do nothing to change it. Why are you here? All of your simulationist buddies took one look at the game, scoffed, and went back to creating detailed food charts and plotting out how their gritty farmer characters would be rotating their crops this season, and started modeling how that diptheria outbreak would affect their grim village.

" I just call it like I see it. "

OsirisDawn said:

Thanks for your comparison, now that's really interesting - mid 30s here too with similar time constraints, so shifting work load sounds excellent. I've had some good answers to my questions here and I'm moving from a WFRP3 sceptic to genuinely interested in this game. Thanks all.

Terwox said:

Fantastically said Terwox, I couldn't put it better myself. What makes this thread extra special is Peace_Keeper has decided to once again descended from the burning bush with the Tablets of 1e and 2e to brandish above the heathens below and cry there is only one true way and one way alone, turn away from your d8's and d6's fornicating and being used for the same roll. Back from your blasphemy of naming action cards. Come to the light of over-generalizations and pundit banter and misinformation and complete lack of education on which to form all opinions. For if thy worship at the alter of any God but 2e or 1e, thou shall be smoted with furious vengeance.

Well sorry to disappoint you Peacekeeper, but all you wishes to see the game fail and Jay LIttle Starve to death have been dashed...Amazon listed 3e it's number 1 seller. Guess it's here to stay....tisssue?

Anyway, yeah, its a gamist concept. Got it? Good. Moving on. Are you going to get it then? Do You have any intention at all? Or did you just come here to yell at us some more about it? What is your point in doing this, ummm (cough, trolling). Some people agree. You want to dissuade them from buying it then? If you did, you might have failed because Hephlat (sp?) is getting on board and the first time I ever saw him post was in your thread. So what are you doing this for? And don't go all Jesus Christ pose either with another one of your angellic, I simply posted a thread and it's your choice to respond or not. Of course, you could have posted it like this: Rant: Same old complaint about the game, but now I'm going to ***** specifically about special action cards and recharge. Which, if you'd actually read the threads you'd find where this has been discussed endlessly.

So what I'm wondering is, do you need to be convinced to buy it? Well, it's a great game. Why? See the thousands of other threads talking about what's good about it to find out? End of story. Wait that must not be good enough for you. Well, let me just say this it seems like this cleverly titled post was to draw people in, so they'll get pissed off and flame and flame and flame and so on, bogging down healthy conversation with another ***** thread. Fantastic.

Well I can do bitching. First off, actually Peace_Keeper you can still split open an orc without a special card, I know, fascinating right. Unheard of. You can do all those things you listed off and the novel listed off without cards, yes, yes you can you silly man.

See folks, Warhammer 3e is a roleplaying game and in these types of games you can actually still do whatever you like. Because it's a roleplaying game and Jay Little realized you wouldn't necesarily want to deal with it so he created a way they won't overshadow the game and are easily removable, by simply returning the cards back the box. Why should you have to pay for something you didn't use? If you even bother to ask, I simply say, get over it, ya' two year old. A hundred dollars is too high for 157 cards I'm not going to use? Oh Christ shoot me.

Oh wait, yeah, I was about to *****. Well lets take a look at your favorite system in the world 2e. It has 16 confusing, arbitrary and useless maneuvers in its system. They were so bad I house-ruled them straight out the door. Heck, even the manual house rules them with little side boxes that give way better suggestions on how to deal with things like multiple attacks which is far, far better then that great maneuver system (which is an absolute clone of DND 3e action system, heresy I know). 2e also suffers from a horrible power curve. A human at low level might as well lay in a crib and cry to his mommy because he's only really got a thirty seven percent chance to stand up let alone take a piss. Spells are unwieldy, unbalanced, retardedly difficult to cast for the effect they achieve, some Gods/schools are so much better than others, so with al that you might as well just take two battle axes and go to work. Oh yeah, the skill list is overly cumbersome, most of the talents are useless, the eighty-million careers are pretty redundant and could have been summarized as a career called COMMONER. The whiff factor greatly overpowers the enjoyment of the game at low levels (see Dark Heresy complaints for more of the same bitching). Critical hits are awkward to assess and greatly slow down combat. Hit Locations are about as outdated and as useful as a Pong Machine. The weapons are totally flat and characterless. Most of the additional books are utterly pointless. The magic books completely reprint the original spell list and don't fix the problem of the completely flat, cookie-cutter style of magic (no, in fact, with Arcane, it makes it worse. Here is your tree. Here are your ten spells Choose one of three trees. You go up that tree). The monsters are all over the place. Dwarves can become stronger than giants. The eight characteristics cap out quickly and then, there really is no where else to go. The races are unfocused. The power curve between suppliment books and core books are way off, (the gifts of the lady anyone)? And Halflings are actually called Hobbits, and oh my God, it's such a violation of Tolkiens visions I can't believe GW would even create them let alone Green Ronin put them in without including all the other Tolkien creations in one book that I can easily access because oh my God, it's not true to the spirit of Oh My god, tolkien and stuff.

You see I can do it to. I could also be doing it in the 2e thread, where I can find, ironically, a whole thread dedicated to how to make 2e play exactly like 3e, except we can't give up our egos on the 2e thread to actually play 3e so we might as well spend hours trying to figure out how to make standard dice roll like those new, devil's-dice that comes with 3e. Even though, anyway you shake it, to yield what the new dice do in a single roll with the old system will always take a heck of a lot longer and never have as much possibility or curve as the new dice do.

Do I sound ridiculous? I hope so, because that's how you guys read to me all the time.

I think FFG should create some more sections, you know at the top. Each one labeled after one of the general complaints about the game. Just so we don't have to have entire threads dedicated to this in the main area. Seriously, we've been going over these points for months now. The games the same, the complaints are still the same, no new ground. I don't care if you guys want to rehash, but do it in the original threads instead of creating new ones.

I'm so terribly sorry, but I seemed to have thread-jacked you. Oh well.

commoner - he created his own thread to discuss fears he had with an aspect of the game. It's a reasonable concern - will new roleplayers just yell "I Troll-feller strike him!" without any additional description every so often? What is rationale behind the recharge counters?

I think we've explored that. Here's the truth - if you really want to like an expensive game, you try and pick it apart first. Because you want to feel that the game is worthwhile, is a useful innovation, is worth the cost of the box, and feel good about buying it. If anyone's trolling in this thread, it's you.

FWIW, discussion on this forum has helped me decide aspects of the game I do and don't like in more detail than just gut reaction. Yes, there was a fair amount of flaming, both from "fanbois" and "haters", if you want to assign labels.

But Hellebore has stated repeatedly he has no intention to buy. So he has no intention on buying the product, no matter what we say. Secondly, if he did want to hear our points he'd honestly have agreed with something by now, but he hasn't. Recharge is bad and cards are bad and stupid names are bad. Whatever. This is not a dialogue, this is a ***** fest, nothing more.

I'm glad these posts have helped convince you one way or another. But I don't know why it needs to be this slug fest. I was calm for a long time, but more threads keep going down this way than I care to count. In addition, I am not trolling because I have been following this thread, technically, I thread jacked "using his own thread for my own purpose." as far as I understand it. LOL. Seriously, I'm sorry I resorted to it, but what else needs to cover here?

phobiandarkmoon said:

Just as a side note: not all counter-arguments in this thread are conjecture: some members actually HAVE played the game or even DM'ed it one or more times at the Emperor's Decree event.

The major flaw of this thread is that Hellebore hasn't tried or even handled the game, to know what actions exist, what their effects are, and if any of that aleviate his fundemental dislike of the mechanic of cards. We really need to put this off until Hellebore tries the game and comes back with his review. If he doesn't do that (I sincerely hope he does), we can just bury it.

commoner said:

Wow, personal attacks. Nice.

Hey, kudos to FFG and Jay Little, the succeeded. I can admit that. But I can also say this.

Your characterization of me to kind of wrong. Not as in it is immoral or rude, but as in it is inaccurate. Yes I despise what the game as become and it is true that I have no intention of buying it or playing it and I would rather it fail, which it obviously isnt. And I understand, even before this thread started that you could get a goblin to split in half with a really good roll and no special cards, but my earlier post, in the defense of Hellebore was stating that it isnt the cards that allow characters in the books or movies or comics to perform those truly cool actions. And that it could be described and simulated in any RPG system easily enough and not just WFRP 3E with its cards.

In fact, as you have pointed out, many of those descriptive actions can be performed in 3E without the cards.

And let us go back to my initial dislike of this game. It is not the notion of cards or "devil dice", its the point that IMHO it was a revision and remake that was unnecessary. Of course, now that 3E is out, it is a pointless debate, its over, the game is out, it is apparently selling well and I will have to swallow my pride and accept that 3E IS WFRP now. I am man enough to admit it.

And if you havent notice, as soon as the game was announced as "on the way", or whatever, the number of my posts has declined, as now that the product is official out and available, the only things I could say about it is what I like or dislike about it. But as you are quick to point out to Hellebore, if you dont play the game, or have never seen it or tried it, then commenting on it is really not in your lane of responsibilty.

But then again, I have learned that in this forum community, unless you say the game is kewl and awesomest, then you are branded a troll.

But truthfully, everyone is a troll. Those who are willing to call others trolls are the worst kind of troll. And since I just called people out as trolls, I guess that means I am now a troll. But thanks to you, Im not alone.

So I'm a troll if I accuse someone of being deliberately confrontational and condescending?

This thread is ridiculous.

It really isn't a difficult concept: if you want civil discussion, don't resort to childish name calling and veiled insults.

Both sides of the debate are guilty of this, of course.

Necrozius said:

It so happens that I agree with you.

Fortunately we are not going to go the next level of saying "but he started it!" LOL

Back to the OP, I happen to also agree with Hellebore on the function of some of the cards. And the recharge aspects. However, I am willing to concede on two points. The first being that I am sure the designers tried and wrote various versions of that concept and rule and am certain that they feel this is the best method and that it works for what they need it to do. The second is simply that as non-player of the 3E system it is not something that affects me so I am not concerned with it enough to care anylonger.

The only reason I even initially posted to this thread was just to counter the notion that the descriptive terms in a novel or two justified the cards, when those exact same descriptive terms could be applied to any system.

And the only other reasons why I posted to this thread after that was to try to clarify my intent and then to counter Commoner's Moses and Jesus references to me.

Necrozius said:

If you accusation is deliberately confrontation and condescending. And we all know that tone is not something you can get 100% from the written word. Sarcasm does not carry well into email and forum posts.

And if the intent of the accusation is solely to accuse someone, then yeah, Id say the accuser at that moment was trolling.

Portions of the above post by Commoner, IMHO, were definately guilty of trolling.

Anyway, if the game works for those who use it, then great. But we shouldnt get angry at someone who may be asking a question or bringing a point that may be getting in their way of understanding or liking the game. But at the same time, if its not working for you, then yeah, move on.

So Im moving on back to the other forums.

You know, I actually own the game now and have read it. I have plenty of valid criticism and agree with some of Hellebore's comments. In fact I have many things to say about this game and most of them aren't the usual arguments that I've made in the past, but there is no room for criticism of this game in these forums.

It is very obvious from perusing this forum that you will suffer blistering attacks if they post anything negative. This obviously doesn't apply to everyone, but enough people to make it irritating.

You might have found Hellebore's comments condescending, but he's a gamer just like you that has an issue with where his favorite game has gone.. he has just the same right to post his issues with the game into this forum as you guys do herald it as the second coming of role-playing games.

I digress however...

Enjoy your echo chamber.

I do hope that both "sides" calm some as the game releases and matures. There is, currently, an overabundance of emotional and unsupported arguments for and against the various mechanics and form factor of the game. Many threads have been derailed, not be negative comments, but by emotionally-charged and passive-aggressive sniping. Many other threads with legitimate concerns, complaints, or even observations have been shot down by overeager defenders.

I knew from the moment I had my hands on the actual game that it would be very devisive; I'm know looking forward to when all the glowy, frothy defense and bitter commentary settle down and the game can be discussed objectively.

I think the Emperor's Decree and Rules Questions subforums are a fine model of that; the former is full of criticisms of the game (mixed with praise, no less!) that led to actual discussion, while the latter has *solutions* to the elements people don't like.