On the whole I really like the new system, but there's one thing that's really frustrating me. I'm trying to convert characters from a (very) long-running campaign, but since we are missing so many careers in WFRP3 - most notably in the arcane and priest careers - I'm stumped. I do find it a bit of a shame that the core set is so clearly weighted towards starting campaigns, and there's no support at all for those of us who would like to convert existing ones. Just cards for the priest and spellcaster career paths would have been fine.

I suppose I have to wait until a dedicated Magic expansion set comes out before I can convert my players' Anointed Priest and Master Wizard characters, and thus start playing WFRP3...

End of whinge.

You cannot convert characters yet (IMHO). The core set is only really for RANK 1 characters. Although it includes a couple advanced careers, they really dont' have any supplemental material to work with.

jh

You're right. I've been trying to do it for the last couple of hours and it's near impossible to match the old skills and talents to the new system.

And it also made me wonder - what the hell do you do when multiple characters have the same skill or talent? Since we only have one of everything, what happens if 3 of the 4 characters decide they want the same action card?

My initial enthusiasm for the new system is starting to wear a bit thin, unfortunately. As I discover more and more how limited the core set is, it's getting a little bit annoying. I'd hate to change the ranks of complainers, and I am giving it a go, but us 'old' players seem to have not been catered for at all ...

It's been said in several places that the limitations of the cards are meant to encourage party diversity. Still, a quick stop at a photocopier would make it easy enough for your players to duplicate key actions.

How high level are the characters you're wishing to convert? It's not really that surprising that FFG'd leave out high-level careers for a later supplement, but I feel your pain. Your players wouldn't consider starting over? (You could always have them meet their former characters as 'feature characters' in the new campaign. I found that fun when a GM once did that for us during another system's conversion.)

The characters are all into their third career. So the Anointed Priest and Master Wizard have no new rules, plus the Spy's career isn't included - hell, neither is the last character, the Champion. Since three of these characters have been going since 1987, the players have no desire to retire them, understandably.

I'm putting off the change to v3 until we have a full game available, because at the moment it's impossible to make the transition. The limitation with the cards at the moment seems to me like a design flaw, because I see nothing wrong with characters choosing to have some of the same skills and talents (as they always have, and can in any RPG), and at the cost of the game I don't feel as if I should have to start using colour photocopies, or have to buy multiple copies, to play it.

Frankly, I'm a bit annoyed that the Adventurer's Toolkit missed the opportunity to expand on fundamental careers, rather than choosing to dedicate about 8 cards to the goddamn ratcatcher's dog!

We converted characters that we have been playing for a while, but we did it in a 'line of best fit' sort of way. You have a Champion? Why not start at mercenary or soldier? You will never get a direct conversion becuase the system is so radically different, but you can get a close match that recreates abilities with a little bit of tweaking...

As for the wizard, use Hurlanc's Strange Eons expansion to rereate some of the spells he had (same for priest), this is what I did so my player could have his favorite spells back.

Its do-able, but takes a little work.

What did you do for skills and talents? There's a challenge...

You can easily find equivalents (well, we did anyway) that do basically the same thing... The only problem is that in v2 you had all your talents 'active' all the time, in v3 you cannot. Thats just something you simply have to deal with.

Its easy to construct barriers to this exercise and no-one is going to force you to convert the characters to v3. I am just saying that if you really want to, it can be done to a satisfactory degree where your characters have most of the abilities they had in v1/2.

UniversalHead said:

We've all but done away with the original cards Problem solved.

jh

UniversalHead said:

Just share the card. Give each player with that skill or talent a post-it note. Write the ability's name and recharge rate on the post-it. During play, if any player needs to refer to the information on the card, just hand it to the player who needs it. Keep track of its recharge status on the post-it note. If that's too much of a problem, photocopy the card.

But really, I think V3 expects that players won't overlap on many abilities. I think this is intentional, and I think it's a good idea.

I understand the frustration about not being able to easily convert characters, or the fact that WFRP3 doesn't cover the entire range of character abilities from beginner to master. But I don't think it's a complaint one can take seriously, because nothing about the new edition implies that it's designed to accommodate characters from earlier editions.

I don't believe V2 ever provided a method for updating characters from V1. What's worse is that there were some significant changes that simply can't be completely remedied. The Attacks characteristic in V1 is far more important than it is in V2, for instance. Some of the skills and talents in V2 have no equivalent in V1. A V2 talent that reduces reload time by a Half-Action doesn't have an equivalent mechanic in V1. There are entire magical traditions that can't be converted from V1 to V2. Where are the gnomes? Where are the hobgoblins? Where are the fimir?

It's relatively simple to convert from V1 to V2 because there isn't that big of a change between editions. Looking at it now, V2 really is more like V1.5. It's an upgrade, rather than a full re-think. V3 really is a new game, not just a new edition. It's still an RPG, but it's not like V1 or V2. It still has some of the same features, but it does a lot of things that the earlier editions don't. In time, I'm sure V3 will cover just about everything that was covered in V2, but let's not forget all of those threads from players new to V2 who asked "which books should I get?" Oh, just the core rulebook, the Old World Bestiary, the Tome of Salvation , the Tome of Corruption and Sigmar's Heirs .

But conversion is a two-way street. If you're going to complain about the fact that you can't easily convert V2 characters to V3, then you should think about how V3 players would cope with moving their characters to V1 or V2. "How come there are no rules for getting tired or stressed out? What's to stop me from just doing the same action over and over? Without a party card, what's the reason for adventuring together, and why can't we share abilities any more? If I had access to the Swift Attack option, why would I choose anything else? When I roll 3 degrees of success, why isn't the GM being consistent about the results?"

I think V3's characters and play style have greater depth, and the realities of production costs means that FFG could only include so much material in the core set. It's a starter set, to be sure, but it's really good at handling those first couple of ranks of characters. I feel like I have a lot more to sink my teeth into as a V3 player. The "fiddly" bits that raise some players' hackles are exactly the sort of character-management tools that make me feel like I'm in control of that character.

Ultimately, if you're happy with a certain edition of WFRP and you want to continue playing your campaign with the least amount of disruption from the system, stick with what's working for you. It's not V3's fault that it doesn't accommodate your old campaign, because it never claimed that it would.

DagobahDave said:

This is somthing I absolutely agree with, and it's a major step forward.

In our V2 campaign, we have a duellist PC, who although he role plays this reasonably well, and he uses a rapier and has strike to injure, etc etc, when it actually boils down to combat, he doesn't act in combat all that differently to our dwarven mercenary, certainly the V2 rules don't really offer much in the way of personalisation of the two very different fighting styles.

That is gonna be completely different in V3, the array of action cards and talents really allow you to very much personalise the PC AND this has an effect mechanically in the game that is clear to everyone.

Our group also found the lack of mulitple cards a bit annoying until we decided to do away with them and "play" the cards off a character sheet!

It's a bit more work for the players initially, to copy down both the stances of the card, but it makes the gaming table a little less cluttered, the players can have the same talent cards and the recharge tokens just sit on the sheet nice and orderly! The only time we need to use talent cards is when the players attach them to the party sheet.

Ebon

Well, thanks folks, I really appreciate those opinions. I'm not here just to whinge (despite the title of this thread), and I've already spent many hours making a rules summary and reference for V3, so I want to use it. While I never thought it would be easy to convert players to the new system, it is a bit frustrating when I don't have the basic tools to do it. I started the same way I did V1-V2, which is count the total number of advances they've made in their careers, and 're-build' the characters from scratch. I just felt stumped when I came up against a totally different skill and talent approach, no matching careers, and most notably, no caster/priest careers beyond rank 2.

I have nothing against FFG completely making WFRP their own. I do think I have two complaints that have some validity however:

1. FFG never said this was just a 'starter set'. Since full magic-using career paths were provided in earlier editions (albeit without the extra detail that later magic supplements provided), not having them was a disappointment and a bar to using our old characters. I still think these would have been more useful than action cards for your pet ...

2. I do think that if you make an expensive new system that is completely dependent on cards, you should not have to start using things like Post-It notes.

In any case, all your arguments are completely valid and it's good to hear the opinions of those that think the new system has more depth. I really hope so. I can't play it with our characters yet - mostly because of the current limitations of the spell-using careers - but I've been playing this game since 1987, love it, and am very happy to see it evolve - as long as it's in a way that improves the game experience!

we got 4 sets of core boxes and 4 sets of tool-kits between us, 5 players and a GM. (really only 2 core sets and 1 tool-kit, as we are eagerly awaiting the rest to arrive). And still I am worried that we will run out the talent card "cat-like reflexes". Some talents cards in my group is like the latest fashion in Altdorf.

"No really everyone should be athletic, and have gracefull reflexes, like of a cat. The Baroness allready showed of her new reflexes, so its pretty much a must for anyone who wants to be somone".

And so to the guy who wrote "a bit of a whinge". My message is sharing my friend. share the action card, share the love and the rainbow. Write down the action card or talent card, and share, you gotta share man...Or buy more core boxes.

Mal Reynolds said:

Why not put that talent into a party slot? Sharing achieved!

Rorschach Six said:

This is EXACTLY what my party did last night - wrapping up the last few folks before character creation and two of them took a talent - JUST to be able to slot it in the party slot and help everyone out. It was nice to see!

Rorschach Six said:

And how would you do that in a roleplaying aspect of the game? "Cat-like reflexes" are pretty much an innate ability that you either are born with, or have trained hard to achieve. Sure you could do it according to the rule, but in roleplaying terms it don`t seem right with me. Sure we have "flanking manouvers" put in the party slot. We roleplayed it that the holder of the card, trained the other players for a few hours. The trainer, a dwarf captain (soldier) is trained in leadership and drilled the party.

but "cat-like reflexes"? hmmm, maybe the dwarf captain can teach them yoga.

Mal Reynolds said:

I know this is a bit of a stretch (and my group hasn't even used the party slot yet) but why not RP the slotted party card being used as if the character it belonged to did the action instead of the active player who actually used it. Describe the "owner" doing some feat to achieve the result in place of the active player. This might work in some situations and not in others, such as if they were KOed.

Mal Reynolds said:

I don't think having the talent in the party slot should be narrated as the other PCs learning that talent. This just causes issues if the talent is changed as all the PCs but 1 loose the benefit of it.

A talent shared in a party slot is more about when 1 PC takes on a more prominent or leadership role in the group. For example, if the PCs enter a tomb filled with traps, putting Cat-like Reflexes into a party slot is like appointing one PC lookout to coordinate the other PCs actions as they venture within.

Adding Foul-Mouthed into the party slot doesn't mean that everyone starts swearing. It means that the group has chosen the PC who swears to take a more prominent role in any discussions. Sure some of the foul mouthed may rub off on them too, which is just fine

For flanking manoeuvre, this represents one PC being put in charge of the PCs group battle plan. Again, it need not be about 1 PC training the others in his particular ability.

You could alway "Star Trek 09" them. That is- have the long lasting party be part of a story that ends up changing the whole story and they start over as the same characters but living through a similar but different storyline. just a thought? probably not a great one- hahah.

hmm good answers everyone.

I would do a mix of them. in some circumstances like with tactical talents card, they might train togheter. And in other circumstances It is one player who take the leadership and assist them or help them, and the others catch on. But still I like the idea of roleplaying the actual sloting of a talent. like "remember to smile alot and with confidence" than sloting the winning smile. it doesn`t need much.

thanks for your positive advices and answers Genesis, skywalker and the others.