This may sound like a strange thread but i recently saw one player leave the community..

One thing he said was that no one talks about its short commings what are they.

I appreciate i may see things with rose tinted glasses however i believe at looking at every detail..

It it just playing styles or is there something that can be improved..

Please give me your thoughts...

Regards

They production of the books themselves, the writing is horrible, my girlfriend who is a writer throws up a little in her mouth every time she reads the rule book, its just badly written and cloaks the really, really, really (several really's later) awesome system underneath.

I do agree but i had no trouble myself navigating the book after a few reads but your girlfriend is of coarse right they had a chance to really be different with the design of the books and make them easy to navigate..

Its the old story of all that glitters good point thou

From my (brief) experience, the system bogs down a bit in large groups. It works far better with 2-4 players than with six or seven.

interesting can you explain why

What slows it

in your view

I'm inclined to agree with the view that the game bogs down a little with more players. From the way the rules and the game is presented, there is a sense that the adventures and stories that come out of it are very 'intimate' with the characters. What I mean by this is that the game brings a lot of realism and story towards fleshing out a very full character development. Mechanical aspects of the game such as wounds, the stress, and insanity even makes one feel very attached to one's character. Although the 3e rules for Chaos and Corruption are not out yet, my impression of these concepts are that they are also highly personal, and one needs to find that balance between looking power and falling into greed (and hence the will of chaos), and this is a big theme in the WFRP setting.

I may be over dramatizing this a little, but I've played several storytelling based games like WOD, Call of Cthulhu, and the like and this game is a little different in the way it feels. Because of this, I think the game excels best with a game master and less players, such that the GM may spend more time on exploring the characters' stories, development, relationships, etc, on top of advancing the main campaign storyline.

Complaints wise - I would agree with the comments on the layout of the rules. Some of the rules such as advancement were pretty obscure, and it took many repeated readings for me to understand what one can do and cannot do to advance one's character. Also, some important stuff were lost in huge paragraphs of explainatory text.

I'm also not a big fan of the abstract distances. While it makes sense story wise and mechanically, I have a feeling that it could potentially get quite messy with more enemies.

Thoughts, anyone?

I have a group of 6 players. I really do think the game is a more perfect match for 2-4 players. I think also that having less players means less monsters which makes the movement of monsters, and tracking them easier.

As for the other concerns. The rules aren't layed out well and the books are full of typos. I'm concerned too that there could be lots of card "errata" which would suck.

I like other the other aspects of the game however. I'm enjoying it.

For me, one of the strengths of the system is the synergy between the mechanics of the dice and narration. You can ignore that information if you wish, focusing on simple success and failure, but I think you lose out on one of the major advantageous of the game. However, engaging in that kind of descriptive storytelling takes time. Describing the detail of each dramatic moments works far better in a game with a small player base.

In addition, the layers make important mechanical choices on their turns. However, they rarely make important decisions between their turns. If you compare this to a game like 4E D&D, where certain types of characters make their most important decisions during other peoples turns, there is less to hold a players interest when they are not on stage. So, the game works better when individual players are acting more often, rather than left waiting and passively observing.

It's a perhaps little unfair to suggest that people aren't talking about the short comings at this time. Many of us are very enamored with this system. It's new and shiny. A lot of us are putting it through the paces right now. I can't imagine anybody has already run a complete campaign from beginning to end yet, which is often where you're going to see the flaws.

I'm not saying that this person doesn't have a right to leave, just that it's natural for many of us to be excited about it.

I think the biggest short coming is simply that some of your options are far less than V2. There are 8 Wizard orders, but only three of them are given, and the number of spells in each order is pretty small. Exact same problem with priests. Similar thing with races (no halflings but two elven races and technically only Reiklander humans allowed).

The system takes a learning curve and because the book is not put together well, I think that it'll turn a lot of people off.

And as expressed the player number, but I personally think a lot of games fall apart at 5+ players. I mean you can certainly run them, but they get a little bogged down. This is intensified in V3. I would definitely say your player sweet spot is either 3 or 4.

I'm going to sound like a typical autistic RPGA gamer when I mention these trivialities, but in no particular order, here they are:

#1-Bad writing and poor editing (rules only AFAIAC). Specifically what bothers me is not the bad writing itself, but instead the organization. All the rules are in there..somewhere..but unless you've got endless hours to memorize mountains of fluff or want to mark up your book severely, it's not organized very well at all. There shouldn't have to be a "learning curve" for this kind of stuff, especially considering how gaming instruction manuals (i.e. D&D, Savage Worlds, WFRP2) have evolved over the past decades.

#2-374 Lack of sample characters for each major category to get the game off to a quick start. Pictures only for one sex of a career. Lack of even a rudimentary list of sample equipment. "Just use common sense" is what I call lazy writing. There is an entire book dedicated to GM's who have never GMed before, but heaven forbid that there be an equipment list for players whove never gamed in the Old World before. Dependence on stuff laying all over your table. It doesn't need to be that complicated with "stuff." For example, there doesn't need to be a seperate card for career abilities and basic actions. Having a space on the character sheet for career sockets could have eliminated 50% of the crap on the table. A glossary or highlighted game terms would have been a good idea too. Lack of individual player entry product. Lack of longer/more scenario material right off the bat ( I WANT MORE).

It is a very good system IMHO otherwise though. You can tell that the author enjoys the system and the world. I love the misfortune dice instead of "+2/-2" modifiers.

That's about it for me. Nothing special really, but when I find myself frustrated, it's usually due to those little annoyances.

jh

@Emirikol - I do feel that you're right about the 'stuff' part - I did feel that the stress and fatigue tokens could have been handled by writing a couple of numbers on the character sheet. This is a pertinent point especially when some tokens start getting flipped over to the wrong side and players and gms alike start getting confused about the tracking. My belief is that if the tactile bits become a source of confusion rather than advances the gameplay experience, then perhaps it would be a good idea to do without them. I know this technically doesn't come under 'system', but just my comments.

I'm slightly disappointed that they didn't make each career a little more unique in terms of advancements. Other than the career special ability, there is nothing else truly unique about the careers. Which Characteristics and Basic Skills are slightly easier to train and which of the few available Advanced Skills you can access don't differentiate enough. All action cards and all Talent cards are available to all characters. Yes I know that the sockets on your current career sheet may influence which Talents you look at, but all Talents are available for selection. It would have been nice is some of these were tied to specific careers. I'm looking at Swordmaster, Iron Breaker, War Dancer, and Slayer as examples where they could have tied action cards to careers to give those careers some unique abilities. Doing so makes such cards less generally appealing which could have hampered sales and it's easy enough to house rule as many of us are doing anyway. However, it's possible to end up with the same Talents and Actions going from Coachman to Roadwarden as it is going from Scout to Soldier. There's nothing you can tell from the Actions and Talents one has that immediately give you a sense of the career history of that character.

They could have included the Career Special Ability on the Career Sheet and just had a spot on the Character Sheet for those that became permanent character abilities due to taking the dedication bonus. We probably didn't need cards for these.

I'm one of the few it seems that didn't have a big problem with the rulebook. Maybe that's because by the time I got it and read it I already had copies of the excellent fan made cheat sheets that have all the important bits already called out so that referencing the rulebook during play isn't necessary. Perhaps I would have felt differently if I had just read the rules first without the benefit of having played in the demo, read all the previews, and already had the cheat sheets others created and was stuck trying to remember the rules, create my own cheat sheets, or look stuff up. I found the rules easy to read and fairly clear. I've also stated previously that much of the FAQ didn't change my understanding of the rules, but I do admit that there were parts that could have been clearer from the start. I don't count intentionally spelling armor, armour or specialization, specialisation as typos. Maybe others do. If there are other typos, maybe I just don't notice them, but I'm not aware of massive numbers of typos either.

I agree that while there is plenty of stuff to get you started, I am concerned about how long a campaign can be sustained and whether FFG can get much needed supplements out in time. I don't mind the lack of Halflings or the fact that they've narrowed the focus to the Reikland, but rather that a Priest character will have no option but to leave his faith to advance after he completes two careers (Initiate and Acolyte). I fear that if we have to halt and set the campaign aside while waiting on additional material that we will move on to something else and not necessarily come back when additional material is finally released.

The rules layout and explanation is by far the biggest weakness of the new system. In no particular order:

Lack of examples: there are very few examples throughout the book, things like character creation have no examples.

Core mechanic: creating the dice pool is very badly explained. Things like expertise dice are not repeated from their brief mention during character creation, there is a good dice/bad dice box out but it has no visual element. For instance it says 'training or specialisation in a skill' without reinforcing that the former means a white dice and the later means a yellow dice.

Lack of repetition: It is actually ok to repeat rules, especially when they are important. Like the fact that sigmar icon can trigger critical effects.

Wrong order: Things are just not in the right place a lot of the time. For instance encumberance, which is mentioned as part of character creation, is not calculated until the gear section at the back.

There are other things, but I am working on a first impressions review and would like to not repeat myself too much.

I do really like the game, really looking forward to playing it, but I fear the terrible rules explanation may confuse and infuriate people.

Cheers

Iain

Honestly, my biggest gripe about the system is that there isn't enough information to play an Amber, Amethyst, Gold, Jade, or Light Wizard, or a high elf mage. I'm sure that will be rectified eventually, but it's still annoying.

Sure, we didn't get a lot of information about wizards in v2 until Realms of Sorcery came out, but all the information we really needed to play those careers was in the core rulebook. The same cannot be said for v3.

Sarim Rune said:

I certainly wouldn't want to run an 7+ player game of 7th Sea or L5R, they are good "story systems" but the declaration of actions and the number of dice rolls one has to make makes it horrible with more than 5.

A couple of story telling systems that do run well with 7+ players are Call of Cthulhu and Amber. Both stress the story, both are heavy story focus. Granted Amber runs diceless and many people can't grok it.

I think the "real" fun of this game is the small group. Granted I don't have that right now, but a couple of years ago it was very hard to find gamers and playing DnD with 2 guys just didn't feel "fun" because you didn't feel like a whole party. I think with this game though, 2 player games could be a real story telling blast.

Paulus Maximus said:

I'm pretty sure that this will be either the 2nd or 3rd box/book/expansion that we are going to see for the game, its strongly hinted in the teaser and boy I can't wait to get my grubby little hand on it, think my female companion and much better half wants to play a high elf mage, so far she has settled for setting stuff on fire.

I guess, IMO, another short coming is quite simply, that even after a few sessions now, me and my players are still having a bit of trouble creating the dice pool. It does get better over timel, but it's still a memory checklist of trying to remember everything that applies. Stat + Stance conversion, Skill, Talents for Fortune dice, Check card in multiple areas for extra Challenge/Misfortune dice, GM input for Challenge/Fortune dice, etc, etc.

It certainly becomes easier to read the numbers, but it building the pools still takes a while. My players suggest however that this will get much easier when the dice packs come out and everybody buys their own dice (since most the players were pre-building their pools if they could). But things like Wizards who can often take more than one action (Channel & Spellcraft) can still run into some difficulties.

I still love the system. Just this will probably turn a lot of people off.

Stuff I don't like:

Tame Criticals - Compared to previous editions, the new criticals are really girly. No gouged eyes, hacked off limbs, or decapitations with fountains of blood. Instead we get some arbitrary skill penalties and crits that are only dangerous if you accumulate too many of them.

Bland Career Advances - With the change in granularity of advances, many of the careers have become very samey. For example: Troll Slayer & Giant Slayer are basically identical.

Opponents - I don't mind exception based game design, but the management of monsters in combat is a bit of a pain (recharge token for Goblin #1's Ability X, How many points are left in Orc #2's Expertise Pool, Remembering that Goblin #3 has got a crit that adds one Peril Dice to his Agility Checks, etc)

One or two too many dice types - I think FFG could have dropped a couple of dice types without impacting the game design significantly.

Box Content - The assumption that a typical game group consists of 1 GM plus 3 Players.. what were they thinking?! I understand and fully support the need for expansions and supplements, but this is a bit cynical.

Whilst I understand most of your criticisms here HorusZA, I don't think your opponents one is correct. Now I am still to run the game, but groups of enemies can be henchmen and thus you don't need to track individual hit point pools, or ability triggers. It is my impression that most encounters will be made up of henchmen groups, led by one or two individuals who you will need to track. Is that wrong?

Cheers

Iain

HorusZA said:

HorusZA said:

Given how hard it can be for many people to find enough players (I certainly have that problem), I think having some more RPGs specifically designed for fewer players would actually be beneficial to the hobby. That isn't to say that a game shouldn't provide for more players, but starting with three is potentially quite helpful, especially for those trying to set up their first gaming group

Cheers

Sparrow

ihmcallister said:

No, I think it's a valid concern, but not a huge one, personally.

Your henchmen group will still have a Wound pool and their own A/C/E. You use Wound cards to keep track of the pool but I can see forgetting how much their toughness to determine when one dies. i.e. three Ungors have a 12 wound pool but you have to remember that every 4 damage kills one. Simple on paper but not so simple in a new game where you are guiding the players along and are trying to track a million other things.

The A/C/E pools are even more tricky. There is nothing that aids you. Really you're back down to the old pen and paper method, which this game was trying to get away from. You've got an A/C/E pool for your henchman and a separate one(s) for your 'boss' monster(s). When you're new, it does get a bit much.

But it's all solved by going back to the pen and paper thing.

As far as their personal cards go, which I really like, the problem that I knew was going to happen (which happened) is that the book does not lie flat & will never just lay open to the page that you want. I found it hard to keep the book open to the right page. It would be impossible to actually place a token on the abilities that need to be recharged. So...pen and paper again.

Their bestiary should come as a coil bound book, to avoid this problem. (Some people suggest cards but I'm against that personally).

Each group of creatures shares the ability entries shown in the book, so there is no recharge counters on Goblin 1's x ability, there is just recharge counters on the x ability and no one else can use it while it is recharging. I made copies of the pages I needed rather than try to put counters on the page in the book. Others use Nezzir's monster tracker sheets to drop tokens on.

Each group of like creatures shares a single ACE budget, they don't each have their own, so there are only a few at best to keep track of. An Orc leading some Goblins is two ACE budgets, regardless of whether or not the Goblins are Henchmen or individuals. The book says to use tokens to represent the ACE budgets available, so for Goblins you would have 3 stacks of different colored tokens representing the 2/4/1 ACE budget. As any of these are used, you remove a counter from the appropriate stack and return it to the supply. As someone else said, you could also track this on paper; I'm just pointing out that is is possible to do it using the tools provided and not have to resort to paper. For that matter, most creatures don't have huge numbers of ACE available, and I can keep track of it in my head for a simple encounter with one type of creature.

There is no assumption on group size based on the contents. The marketing text only claims that the Core Set is ideally suited for 3 players and a GM. This is because there are only enough basic action cards in the Core Set for 3 players to have their own copy. FFG could have included 6 copies of all the basic action cards at slightly higher costs, but then you would have had people complaining that they only have 3 or 4 players and they don't like paying for stuff they'll never need to use. FFG had to balance cost with utility and determined that 3 in the Core Set and another in the Adventurer's Toolkit were the optimal numbers. As has been discussed in numerous other threads, you can make copies, share, or write the information down on paper. It's unfair to categorize this as a short coming of the system, since the system itself doesn't have any such limitation on group size.

mac40k said:

DUDE! Get out of my head! This is the third or fourth time you've said exactly what I was thinking.

HedgeWizard said:

DUDE! You're the HedgeWizard. Obviously you have been projecting your thoughts at my simple mind and I've just been your mouthpiece.

Something that has been bugging me is the magic system. In our group we have a celestial wizard, a troll slayer and a waywatcher. The trollslayer and the waywatcher both deal consistently more damage than the wizard and they don't have to take every round to channel. Even a brightwizard can easily be outstripped by trollslayer for damage. This wouldn't bother me except that wizards and priests have an additional hoop to jump through to use their actions, and the actions that they gain access to by jumping through this hoop isn't noticeably better than something a non-casting class can do. Doing away with channeling/piety didn't change anything except that wizards and priest can use their actions on a normal recharge like anyone else.