I was trying to think how an AoS RPG would work, without society so to speak I think the only AoS RPG that would work would need to be a twist on High Fantasy, with the grim dark flavour. Think Deathwatch AoS. Mighty Heroes traveling the Planes slaying enormous beasts. Very crunchy, tactical game, but there is no money in miniatures so who is actually going to make that game? No one probably. And I doubt GW would separate the 40K RPG license from the AoS/Fantasy one.

Think Deathwatch AOS, Dark Heresy AOS, Only War AOS! Why bother comes to mind. All it will do is confirm that AOS is a 40K rip off. AOS is not RPG friendly in any shape or form.

I'll see if I can't have a look at the AoS setting and come up with a way to RP it. Probably won't be for a couple of day though, just so that you know.

It's interesting that this game mechanics discussion started now.

At the moment the biggest problem the entire Warhammer Fantasy setting faces is THE END. The Old World has been destroyed, and GW has moved on. So, who ever gets the license, and is interested to build new system, may not anymore do new version of Old World, what ever system that company might use...

I'm am not so sure about this statement. If you look at the licenses GW is trying to farm out there is Warhammer Fantasy and Age of Sigmar. So a company could pick up the Fantasy license and develop in the familiar Old Word Setting. The one question I have is the dice mechanic. How close can you mimic the FFG mechanic before they say it belong to them.

I'm am not so sure about this statement. If you look at the licenses GW is trying to farm out there is Warhammer Fantasy and Age of Sigmar. So a company could pick up the Fantasy license and develop in the familiar Old Word Setting. The one question I have is the dice mechanic. How close can you mimic the FFG mechanic before they say it belong to them.

I also agree that the classic WFRP setting could return under GW's current licensing strategy. However, I can't imagine another company wanting to re-print all the cards, chits and dice from FFG's game. I understand why FFG did it as part of developing their own signature RPG style, but a new licensee could achieve more sales at a lower production cost by returning to the classic system, especially if they don't own all the expensive printers and equipment in-house that FFG does.

I'm am not so sure about this statement. If you look at the licenses GW is trying to farm out there is Warhammer Fantasy and Age of Sigmar. So a company could pick up the Fantasy license and develop in the familiar Old Word Setting. The one question I have is the dice mechanic. How close can you mimic the FFG mechanic before they say it belong to them.

I also agree that the classic WFRP setting could return under GW's current licensing strategy. However, I can't imagine another company wanting to re-print all the cards, chits and dice from FFG's game. I understand why FFG did it as part of developing their own signature RPG style, but a new licensee could achieve more sales at a lower production cost by returning to the classic system, especially if they don't own all the expensive printers and equipment in-house that FFG does.

True that, but while I may speak in ignorance, I thought that going over to cards and special die and stuff was done partly to avoid people just downloading the stuff illegally and then play it. With the cards, and specially with the die, one would need to actually buy at least some products to play the game. But I could be mistaken.

True that, but while I may speak in ignorance, I thought that going over to cards and special die and stuff was done partly to avoid people just downloading the stuff illegally and then play it. With the cards, and specially with the die, one would need to actually buy at least some products to play the game. But I could be mistaken.

The best anti-piracy measure for RPGs is to release really awesome books that people want to own, preferably without any duds in the product line because there are too many RPG books on the market to justify buying shoddy ones. If a customer doesn't care enough about owning the game to buy a few books, adding components to "force the purchase" isn't going to help. Those people will just play something else instead.

It's all about personal preferences of course but one of the biggest turn offs for me in RPG game design is the steadfast reliance on the pass fail d10s and percentile dice as sacred. The amount of number crunching that goes on in game is often so jarring that you'd think people were doing maths homework rather than sitting playing a game about heroic adventures.

So keep your number crunching, let the maths stay in the background and i'll keep my narrative dice thank you very much.

I do hope you don't mean WFRP 2nd Edition cause if so I'd like to know what edition that is so I could avoid it... Having played and Gm'ed 2nd edition WFRP for what must be nearly 3 years soon, I can say, hands on heart that there is zero number crunching going on in it. It's a pretty simple system; you roll 1d100, if it equals your skill or below your skill you pass. If its over it, fail! It's really that simple.

Damage? Roll 1d10. Result = your damage along with your Str Bonus. Hardly any crunching involved. Having played 3rd Edition I'd argue the same, there is no number crunching involved however 3rd edition has a lot of 'look-up' rules. Got 3 hammers? Look up what you get. Am I on conservative or reckless? Ok I'm on Reckless, gotta look up the result for being on reckless. Ok I get +2dmg with that, plus my agility/str bonus PLUS weapon damage. ARGH.

Having experienced both I can say that I find the 2nd ed system to be much faster and efficient. Now if we are going to discuss number crunching I'd have to say DnD takes the crown for the amount of crunching going on in that ruleset. 5e certainly clears up a lot of the hassle but there is still some crunching going on.

If there's one thing I would like to implement into 2nd edition and really the only part of 3rd edition that I liked was the narrative dice. I just didn't like the mechanics built around it. I find the star wars system to be the refined version of what 3rd Edition should have been. And I really love the SW system, its just plays so smooth and the narrative dice is coupled with a fast working mechanic system to it without the need for cards and such. Its brilliant. I will say narrative dice is the way to go and definitely trumps the percentile dice by a huge margin.

True that, but while I may speak in ignorance, I thought that going over to cards and special die and stuff was done partly to avoid people just downloading the stuff illegally and then play it. With the cards, and specially with the die, one would need to actually buy at least some products to play the game. But I could be mistaken.

The best anti-piracy measure for RPGs is to release really awesome books that people want to own, preferably without any duds in the product line because there are too many RPG books on the market to justify buying shoddy ones. If a customer doesn't care enough about owning the game to buy a few books, adding components to "force the purchase" isn't going to help. Those people will just play something else instead.

Making great products and designing them to be harder to pirate are not exclusive to each other. I can promise you there are people who loves all manner of RPGs and have not paid a single cent for them despite having all the products on their computer and playing them on regular basis.

I do hope you don't mean WFRP 2nd Edition cause if so I'd like to know what edition that is so I could avoid it... Having played and Gm'ed 2nd edition WFRP for what must be nearly 3 years soon, I can say, hands on heart that there is zero number crunching going on in it. It's a pretty simple system; you roll 1d100, if it equals your skill or below your skill you pass. If its over it, fail! It's really that simple.

One of the biggest faults with WFRP 2e IMO was the "untrained Basic skill = stat/2" rule. Not only did it lower skill ratings to 16% for average (i.e. too low), it also added number-crunching every time a stat increases with XP. The 1e system of straight-up stats with +10 bonuses for skills was far more elegant. Degrees of Success/Failure increments of 10% could also require some number-crunching, but otherwise I agree, 2e isn't particularly math-heavy.

Making great products and designing them to be harder to pirate are not exclusive to each other. I can promise you there are people who loves all manner of RPGs and have not paid a single cent for them despite having all the products on their computer and playing them on regular basis.

Do you suppose any of those chronic penny-pinchers went out and spent hundreds of dollars to buy WFRP 3e just because of the components?

Making great products and designing them to be harder to pirate are not exclusive to each other. I can promise you there are people who loves all manner of RPGs and have not paid a single cent for them despite having all the products on their computer and playing them on regular basis.

Do you suppose any of those chronic penny-pinchers went out and spent hundreds of dollars to buy WFRP 3e just because of the components?

No, but I find it a happy occurance that they probably couldn't enjoy 3rd edition at all.

No, but I find it a happy occurance that they probably couldn't enjoy 3rd edition at all.

Lol, touché .

I do hope you don't mean WFRP 2nd Edition cause if so I'd like to know what edition that is so I could avoid it... Having played and Gm'ed 2nd edition WFRP for what must be nearly 3 years soon, I can say, hands on heart that there is zero number crunching going on in it. It's a pretty simple system; you roll 1d100, if it equals your skill or below your skill you pass. If its over it, fail! It's really that simple.

One of the biggest faults with WFRP 2e IMO was the "untrained Basic skill = stat/2" rule. Not only did it lower skill ratings to 16% for average (i.e. too low), it also added number-crunching every time a stat increases with XP. The 1e system of straight-up stats with +10 bonuses for skills was far more elegant. Degrees of Success/Failure increments of 10% could also require some number-crunching, but otherwise I agree, 2e isn't particularly math-heavy.

The untrained skill was basically half your stat. So lets say you've got an intelligence stat of 32. You wanted to use a skill that uses intelligence but your not trained in it, so its half your intel stat which is 16 in this case. If there's a stat increase with xp which is always increased by increments of 5, so 32 becomes 37. Half of 37 is 18. I will agree though that the degree of success/failure can be a pain to work out but I usually don't use degrees/successes unless specifically called for in certain situations.

The untrained skill was basically half your stat. So lets say you've got an intelligence stat of 32. You wanted to use a skill that uses intelligence but your not trained in it, so its half your intel stat which is 16 in this case. If there's a stat increase with xp which is always increased by increments of 5, so 32 becomes 37. Half of 37 is 18. I will agree though that the degree of success/failure can be a pain to work out but I usually don't use degrees/successes unless specifically called for in certain situations.

I realize that dividing stats by 2 and rounding up isn't rocket science, but IMO it was an unnecessary change from the 1e system of straight stats. It's kind of an ugly mechanic. Of course, 1e had its own clunky skill sub-systems and suffered from poor rules organization, but the basic principle of roll vs. stat (+10/+20 for skilled characters) was more elegant IMO.

EDIT: DoS/DoF increments of 10% became more of a "thing" in the WFRP 2e supplements and 40KRP games.

It's all about personal preferences of course but one of the biggest turn offs for me in RPG game design is the steadfast reliance on the pass fail d10s and percentile dice as sacred. The amount of number crunching that goes on in game is often so jarring that you'd think people were doing maths homework rather than sitting playing a game about heroic adventures.

So keep your number crunching, let the maths stay in the background and i'll keep my narrative dice thank you very much.

I do hope you don't mean WFRP 2nd Edition cause if so I'd like to know what edition that is so I could avoid it... Having played and Gm'ed 2nd edition WFRP for what must be nearly 3 years soon, I can say, hands on heart that there is zero number crunching going on in it. It's a pretty simple system; you roll 1d100, if it equals your skill or below your skill you pass. If its over it, fail! It's really that simple.

Damage? Roll 1d10. Result = your damage along with your Str Bonus. Hardly any crunching involved. Having played 3rd Edition I'd argue the same, there is no number crunching involved however 3rd edition has a lot of 'look-up' rules. Got 3 hammers? Look up what you get. Am I on conservative or reckless? Ok I'm on Reckless, gotta look up the result for being on reckless. Ok I get +2dmg with that, plus my agility/str bonus PLUS weapon damage. ARGH.

Having experienced both I can say that I find the 2nd ed system to be much faster and efficient. Now if we are going to discuss number crunching I'd have to say DnD takes the crown for the amount of crunching going on in that ruleset. 5e certainly clears up a lot of the hassle but there is still some crunching going on.

If there's one thing I would like to implement into 2nd edition and really the only part of 3rd edition that I liked was the narrative dice. I just didn't like the mechanics built around it. I find the star wars system to be the refined version of what 3rd Edition should have been. And I really love the SW system, its just plays so smooth and the narrative dice is coupled with a fast working mechanic system to it without the need for cards and such. Its brilliant. I will say narrative dice is the way to go and definitely trumps the percentile dice by a huge margin.

No I was definitely not singling out 2nd edition as being overly number crunchy and you're quite right that most of those criticisms are aimed at games such as DnD with the mindboggling array of bonuses and modifiers. Since I know you are a fan of Star Wars and it's similar if streamlined system we're on the same page with regards the narrative dice.

I think where we differ is that you dislike some of the things that aren't perfect e.g. the overly bloated card system etc of 3rd to the extent that it prevents you enjoying the game and preferring 2nd edition. Whereas I am prepared to forgive some of the card sifting and table clutter because it's got those dice.

As you know from playing in my games I run a WFRP3 podcast. Having listened to other podcasts of WFRP from both 1st and 2nd edition and then listened to my own or Reckless Dice Podcasts audio, there is inherently more discussion of numbers at table than there is with 3rd edition. Sure it's not as bad as with DnD but there's still too much of it for my particular tastes. And it is this one factor alone that stops me returning nostalgically to earlier editions.

But I think ANY game that uses percentile dice is to some degree gonna end up with you doing more maths. Some more so than others yes but at their core you are doing number calculations to see whether you hit or miss and so on. Now that's okay for the RPGers who love maths and there are many who like to be able to see the numbers to see that it's all fair and above board. What I like about WFRP3rd edition (and would probably like about Star Wars if I got the chance to play it) is that there has been a very definite decision made by the game designers to hide the numbers behind the specialised dice and it's this one factor more than any other that sees me love 3rd edition. I think 2nd edition with it's degrees of success and failure was almost a precursor to the 3rd edition system that Fantasy Flight designed.

But I think ANY game that uses percentile dice is to some degree gonna end up with you doing more maths. Some more so than others yes but at their core you are doing number calculations to see whether you hit or miss and so on. Now that's okay for the RPGers who love maths and there are many who like to be able to see the numbers to see that it's all fair and above board. What I like about WFRP3rd edition (and would probably like about Star Wars if I got the chance to play it) is that there has been a very definite decision made by the game designers to hide the numbers behind the specialised dice and it's this one factor more than any other that sees me love 3rd edition.

Seems to me that traditional systems aren't so much for people who love math, but rather symbol dice are for people who hate numbers. I've gamed with lots of RPG players who didn't love math but weren't bothered by seeing numbers on dice.

Making great products and designing them to be harder to pirate are not exclusive to each other. I can promise you there are people who loves all manner of RPGs and have not paid a single cent for them despite having all the products on their computer and playing them on regular basis.

Do you suppose any of those chronic penny-pinchers went out and spent hundreds of dollars to buy WFRP 3e just because of the components?

No, but I find it a happy occurance that they probably couldn't enjoy 3rd edition at all.

Actually when it comes to 3rd edition WFRPG suffered a great deal thanks to piracy.

There was one core reason for it. Not enough components.

There wasn't enough components in the core set or any of the expansions for a full group to play the game and it was an absolutely ridiculous concept to ask GM's to buy a second core set or require each player in their group to go out and buy an adventure toolkit or buy multiple copies of expansion sets just to have enough stuff to play the game without having to make photocopies.

It was just a terrible business model and WFRPG largely failed on the business end. As a game it was fantastic but when you sell something crazy expensive and STILL not provide sufficient tools to play the game people are going to get pissed right quick. And it wasn't just components. You didn't get enough dice either.

The fallout of that was really bad for the game and it quickly got bad reputation as is typical in the gaming community. If you make something inaccessible for gamers, they will crap all over it without ever playing it and that is exactly what happen to WFRPG. 90% of the bad reviews I have read of the game where clearly done by people who partially read the rules on pirated PDF's and proclaimed it horrible.

Making great products and designing them to be harder to pirate are not exclusive to each other. I can promise you there are people who loves all manner of RPGs and have not paid a single cent for them despite having all the products on their computer and playing them on regular basis.

Do you suppose any of those chronic penny-pinchers went out and spent hundreds of dollars to buy WFRP 3e just because of the components?

No, but I find it a happy occurance that they probably couldn't enjoy 3rd edition at all.

Actually when it comes to 3rd edition WFRPG suffered a great deal thanks to piracy.

There was one core reason for it. Not enough components.

There wasn't enough components in the core set or any of the expansions for a full group to play the game and it was an absolutely ridiculous concept to ask GM's to buy a second core set or require each player in their group to go out and buy an adventure toolkit or buy multiple copies of expansion sets just to have enough stuff to play the game without having to make photocopies.

It was just a terrible business model and WFRPG largely failed on the business end. As a game it was fantastic but when you sell something crazy expensive and STILL not provide sufficient tools to play the game people are going to get pissed right quick. And it wasn't just components. You didn't get enough dice either.

The fallout of that was really bad for the game and it quickly got bad reputation as is typical in the gaming community. If you make something inaccessible for gamers, they will crap all over it without ever playing it and that is exactly what happen to WFRPG. 90% of the bad reviews I have read of the game where clearly done by people who partially read the rules on pirated PDF's and proclaimed it horrible.

I disagree that it was the concept of using die and other components that was the trouble. I agree that price was crazy and that it should have been enough components for a five group (1 GM and four players) with a handy extra player set at an affordable price. And thus it was a bad business set-up that downed it rather than people stealing the products to pay anyway. Because like you said, at the end of it the game was fantastic, but the sell strategy for it was aweful. Two different things, and I am still happy the pirates could not experience this game. A sad thing that those individuals crap all over a product because they can't steal it with ease, but such is the ways of men.

I agree that price was crazy and that it should have been enough components for a five group (1 GM and four players) with a handy extra player set at an affordable price. And thus it was a bad business set-up that downed it rather than people stealing the products to pay anyway. Because like you said, at the end of it the game was fantastic, but the sell strategy for it was aweful.

Yeah, originally it was speculated that 3e was monetizing additional components by not providing enough in the core box, but if that were the case, FFG would've printed extra dice by the bucket-load. Ditto for the Star Wars dice; on several occasions I've been tempted to buy a SW corebook, but didn't bother because the dice were out-of-stock. The fact that FFG is trickling out dice for these games in small quantities suggests that either they're having supply issues with their dice manufacturer, or else the overall demand for symbol dice isn't very high.