CriticalHits.com is a website that primarily covers rpg (mostly D&D 4e). One of their staff writers recieved a copy of WFRP 3 as gift and did a first impressions review of the system. Here's the link:

www.critical-hits.com/2009/12/23/first-impressions-review-warhammer-fantasy-roleplay-3rd-edition/

Thanks for sharing this. I'm not sure why everyone is in a hurry to review something without playing it. It's a reoccuring theme that's just irking me.

However,

His comments seemed to be good one. It is more organic in inspiring creative play and the rulebooks do have a large number of typos and many things were left out of the box to be included later. So while this review didn't tell me anything I didn't already know, it seems to be my opinion of the game as well.

Sinister said:

First impressions count and unlike most games this has alot you can write about first impressions and since in this case money is a major concern first impressions become even more important. These are truths that the WFRP3 community is going to have to get used to. The fact is that the game hits you with alot at once and decifering everything can be confusing.

People can be totally blind to flaws in something that they like. The fact is that at the moment WFRP3 has some big flaws and although they may be ironed out with new releases or may not effect things in the long run they are there and they will get pointed out time and time again.

WFRP3's flaws lie in the fact that it takes so much stuff to play and offers no cheap and easy way to start. It has layout problems and printing errors combined with a new system that regardless of how good it may or may not be will still make people think twice about getting into it.

Then WFRP3 has the problem of marketing, the inital marketing for this game was horrendously bad and poorly thought out. With no word of warning the old system was let go and a finished and radically altered version was revealed to be taking its place. WFRP3 would be having a much smoother ride imo if they had announced when the career compendium came out that it was the last book for WFRP2 and started at that time to release titbits and previews of a project in developement. This combined with a lack of solid information about how future suppliments are going to be stuctured is going to leave people wary about buying into the game.

The inital release was hampered by the fact that some things that should have been a same day release were not, the adventurers toolkit and the extra dice should have been available from the beginning even if it had delayed the inital release.

What we need at the moment is an idea of how careers are going to be able to progress in the long run. Releasing them on cards seems to massively reduce the rate at which they can be introduced and we have little idea to how you will be able to progress along your career. Going from a swordmaster to a bandit because you have run out of advances to take feels totally wrong to most people who know the setting but it is a problem that they will face in a long term game because as it stands at the moment there is no option to go higher as a swordmaster. Now people can point out that you can still RP the swordmaster but it misses the point of what the career system has always represented and that is the characters job and station in life.

Basically FFG needs to start telling people soon exactly what to expect in the future and let us know how it will round out the game which is currently IMO severely lacking in content and too narrow in focus ,the focus on Reikland is too specific and implies differences between people of that area and others that is not hinted at how they will differ from each other, they seem to have taken the narrow focus of Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader in context of the Imperium and tried to replicate it in the new WFRP forgetting that the 40k systems while narrow in focus still cover a vast array of planets and people. The game should have made its focus the entire Empire (preferably Old World) and not one small province of it.

I would like to clarify this is nothing to do with how the game plays but how the game is percieved.

Also keep in mind that not everyone goes to the website before purchasing a game, the number of arrogant people I have seen on this forum who think having warnings of somethings shortcomings in advance is the same as fixing those shortcoming is stupendous.

Kaihlik

You have some very valid points in there, but I personally feel you are wrong on the marketing. Or rather, you are right for a VERY small subset of users (i.e. people who played WFRP previously, had played and possibly loved v2 and were taken aback by the announcement of a new release). The marketing was aimed at creating awareness in a new pool of blood more so than targeting the old WFRP player base. They were targeting other FFG fans who had only likely played their board games, and people new to the setting and material.

They did throw the old school folks a tidbit here and there, but such fair was often misinterpreted, poorly understood and therefore poorly received by the throngs of old-system fans who immediately decried anything having to do with a new WFRP game system.

I think the marketing was VERY good for who they were trying to address, and it appears to have interested a LOT of people in the game and setting.

I do think that FFG would be better off showing a clear "forward plan" from the initial boxed set, so that it's clear "where that investment will take you" and that "we will support you".

That could be best combined with some room for feedback. Good design obviously doesn't come from thin air so feedback should reflect what is published nearly a year down the road, but clear evidence of "we will support these races, we will lay out career paths, we will offer these sets of physical aids" etc.

Good feedback would be something like, "what classical adventures should be recreated" (assuming they have legal authority to do that) and also "what don't you want to see" (for example, I personally find unlikely coincidences play a role too often in past adventures).

Rob

HedgeWizard said:

Second edition players were their core customer base for this new eddition. You're saying alienating them is a good thing. Wow.

HedgeWizard said:

Those are some huge assumptions there. Without actually working at FFG or them releasing the numbers (which they won't), you are just guessing.

You have blinders on.

If you want to make the request for more information about upcoming products, feel free to do so.

However, criticizing the marketing of this game is ridiculous. Every metric we have for measuring its initial sales (looking at Amazon sales ratings, examining store sales from places like Black Diamond Games [http://blackdiamondgames.blogspot.com/2009/11/rpg-market-share.html] , reading FFG reactions to the games response, etc.) suggests that it has enjoyed a strong = start. If you have any data that disputes that, feel free to include it, but until we see something the points in another direction, we should include that the launch of 3E was a success.

The quesiton is how can FFG continue to expand interest in the product and build on the initial success. And more information about upcoming products will do that.

But to get back to the point of this thread, these initial reaction articles are not particularly useful to the consumer. Ultimately, the consumer wants to know how the game plays, to just what you feel when you open the box and leaf through the components. Asking a game review to run a short session with a game to discover how the product actually plays is not too much to ask. With luck “The Main Event” will be able to follow up on his first post, and write an informed review of the game.

Kaihlik said:

Yes the adventure toolkit and extra dice should have came out with the core set.

Yea there should be something put out on how careers progress is going to be. I was surprise there was no adv. careers in the adv. toolkit. I putting on starting any major gaming time with WFRP3 till i see more support products and where they are going with things.

Yea it kind of strange that they are so focus in one area with very little detail at that.

Hey all,

To those of you that did, thanks for reading my 'first impressions.' I'd actually been lurking the forums prior to running just to see if there were any things I should know about, so imagine my surprise when I saw my own post linked.

As many pointed out, such a review has some shortcomings, but I wanted to put something up before the holiday. I feel that by identifying it as a 'first impression' its a fair thing to publish, as it gives fair warning. I have since played and both myself and a number of the players put up their feelings in the comments rather than write a whole new post. As such, read as a whole, you can take the article as a review.

Its a great game and I'd love to hear in the comments of my article or the forum what some people with more play experience have to say to support or rebut my points.

Cheers,

TME

Kaihlik said:

There's more reviews from people who looked at the game at the time of it's release, than people that played it. This reviewer at least read the rules which I admit is far different from the boneheads that just open the box. Still, movie critics don't review movies by looking at a trailor, they watch the entire movie. At least reading the rules give you insight into the game so that's a fair review.

As for the cost, buy it off amazon it's 60 bucks, that's hardly expensive. As I've said before anyone buying this at full retail is either supporting their local game store (which I have respect for) or being a chump. Still the game is only expensive AT retail IMO.

As for the v2 players, well I'm pretty sure FFG knew what might happen with some of them but as I stated before, roleplaying can't survive on reprinting the same material and rules over and over and over. It's has to move somehow, and honestly how many v2 guys were really going to buy this ENTIRE line if it had been simply a rules reprint update. Meanwhile with it's sharp graphics and narrative game design it's going to bring many many new players to it, as evidenced by it selling out already.

@ Sinister - I in no way implied that it should have been a reprint. My view is that certain choices made by FFG about how to market WFRP3 have alienated people it need not have alienated. While FFG have been marketing the right elements in my view their choice on how they have released information and which information is released has been flawed.

By failing to announce that the Careers compendium was the last WFRP2 release they gave people waiting for more hope that they might do so. They then without warning announced a radically new system which stressed several things that the WFRP2 community did not want to hear (like the use of the word hero). In my opinion they should have announced the end of WFRP2 and the beginning of WFRP3 as soon as the Career compendium was released which would have given people a greater sense of closure about the old game. They should then have had months of designer diaries slowly introducing the new elements and allowing people to absorb it all over time. What they did was pull the rug out from under alot of peoples feet and expected to be thanked for it.

These choices created alot of unnessisary bile towards the game, if we compare it with Rogue Trader that did announce ages ago and had been drip feeding the community for months each release of information excited the community and generated anticipation, Rogue Trader was always going to have an easier time because it wasnt replacing anything but the model for marketing the game in my opinion was a much better one regardless.

In my opinion FFG are compounding thier errors by not giving us a list of future releases so that we can see how the game will pan out, cryptic clues are fun but IMO a bad idea when you have alot of people wavering about whether to buy or not. If people knew how the careers were going to flesh out then they would know if thier concerns would be addressed and be able to make up their mind about buying the game. As it is alot of people will make assumptions and get excited about them only to have it dashed when enevitably they are wrong in some way. This IMO will generate more negative feelings towards WFRP which I think is bad for the game in the long run. While the initial game may sell well too much uninformed bad press could hurt the game in the long run.

What FFG need most now is to be very clear with where they are going with the system so that people feel that they know where they stand in relation to he new game. I think this game could be really good if they approach things in the right way but I have many appreheshions about how things will actually go. The game needs alot more in depth background material than was available in the core set and if future supliments focus too much on components and not enough on fleshing out the game world I think the game is doomed to failure no matter how good the system is.

Kaihlik

I shouldn’t have to read an online FAQ to play a $100 game!

Probably the dumbest sentance in the entire review. He was referring to the accident of 'light crossbow' vs 'crossbow' which is so terribly game breaking! Goodness, is there no common sense anymore?

[email protected] said:

Probably the dumbest sentance in the entire review. He was referring to the accident of 'light crossbow' vs 'crossbow' which is so terribly game breaking! Goodness, is there no common sense anymore?

@monkeylordyoho: Is the lack of a key piece of equipment game breaking? No.

Is the crossbow the obvious substitute for light crossbow? Yup.

Should a professional product have an oversight that large on an equipment selection that a number of wealth classes have as a basic weapon? Certainly not.

If FFG wants to cater to a 'high end' gaming crowd then their gaming products should be similarly refined. The example I mentioned was just one of many errors in the initial release to illustrate that point. I stand by its a valid criticism and nowhere did I refer to such a problem as gamebreaking nor did it stop me from having a very favorable impression of WFRP.

Anyway, I'm still glad you took a chance to read the review. Do you have any comments on my concerns about actual gameplay?