Last Friday, I had intended to start up our first adventure of WFRP 3. But we didn't really get to begin the adventure properly because the players had spent all evening creating their characters. Afterwards they told me they thought the system looked interesting and fun but also much more complicated than previous versions.

It's strange because it didn't take me so long to create a character on my own at all after I had read the rulebook. Mind, the system was completely and utterly new to them. What are other people's experiences with this?

Same thing. It's like anything else new someone's learning. They'll take longer the first time out than subsequent attempts. I'll bet if you had them make new characters next meeting the time would be dramatically reduced.

things that slow character generation down:

1. one rulebook for the list of building points, have a few copies of the table handy.

2. What skills basic/advanced/specialization means. I think I explained it three times and they weren't clicking in. I finally laid it out this way: the points you spend on skills can be used to: 1. train a skill listed on your career once, 2. buy an advanced skill listed on your career, 3. specialize a basic skill (if you have any) that you've trained. And had 3 copies of the skills list handy.

3. Helping them understand the equipment and encumbrance rules. They spent a while trying to eke out what they could carry vs. encumbrance. I let a few things slide as it was lower on my priority list they were buried under gear ratings than actually playing the game.

4. Not understanding how the dice work. My players are not gaming novices by any means and the ones who'd played the demo session the week before jumped in with the action buys faster than the other players. Give the players a quick runthrough as to why each die is important and where it comes from.

5. Talents. Same as skills. What does 'exhaust' mean and how does that get fixed?

6. Actions. With one copy of the Actions and one copy of the Talents for everyone to look at this eats up the most time. I have mine sorted into melee/ranged/blessings/spells/other and have them pass the stacks around.

Ultimately it was a lot of 'what is this good for, where will this come in handy' that I get with any new RPG system. It wasn't more complex, just needed a nudge to move it along.

As a GM I created Test-Characters. the first took me about 45 min. But in between I also read the rulebook.

Now, when I or my players have a concept for their character and now which starting career to choose it takes only about 12-15 min. The point which takes about 5-6 min. is the search for the talents and actions cards.

btw: last week I was searching for the "preparation maneuver" action card. Guess, if I found it!

Judging by your emoticon, you didn't?

I mourn for your loss...

By the way, as for encumbrance... I don't use it in any RPG. Same goes for ammo (in Star Wars) or arrows. I hate keeping track of those things and just have the players run out of ammo when they roll badly. In WFRP, it could be a matter of rolling banes.

As for encumbrance, I just take into account how much they're carrying and when I think it's not realistic anymore I tell them to lose some stuff. But then my players tend to be realistic in these things also. I just hate having to think in terms of rules for every little thing.

But that's beside the point! :-)

So I assume the players will get along fluently with this game once we're rolling?

I have to agree on ingoring encumbrance, as long as players don't start being silly (i.e. I loot all the 5 guys who just got killed's chainmail). Arrows I prefer keeping track of, as it underlines that it's important to keep stocked up with these things. I'm usually pretty liberal in small towns being places with lots of arrows spare though...

Lautrer said:

btw: last week I was searching for the "preparation maneuver" action card. Guess, if I found it!

This doesn't exist. It's just a manoeuvre, not an Action.

monkeylite said:

Lautrer said:

btw: last week I was searching for the "preparation maneuver" action card. Guess, if I found it!

This doesn't exist. It's just a manoeuvre, not an Action.

i know i know!
After searching for about half an hour I noticed, hey.. it's an maneuver !

Using my character creation sheet (available on Hammerzeit,) a copy of the skills list, and one rulebook, I ran three players through creation at once, and it only took about 35 minutes. Of course, I don't have gamist/minmaxing players; I encouraged them to take skills that sounded neat and told them we'd play from there. Once we played one session, I gave them the option of going back and choosing different skills. The only thing I told them was set in stone was their career, and everyone seemed happy with his/her career.

I ran my players through the demo before chargen, so they already understood how the mechanics worked, but they still took forever to create characters. They did chargen individually in one-on-one sessions with me rather than as a group so I didn't have any issues with availability of lists, cards, or anything like that causing the delay. In my case it was due more to the players wanting to be thorough and taking the time to read every (applicable) card (on both sides in the case of action cards) before making choices. This primarily involved narrowing down the choices to a group of finalists, then agonizing over comparing those cards before making final selections. Combined with the fact that I have one player that suffers from analysis paralysis (there were really too many choices from how to spend points to what to buy not just which cards to pick) and it took quite a bit of time. I was happy to give them all the time they needed since I wasn't trying to do it as a group activity let alone kick off the campaign in the same session, so it worked out.

I find that character generation takes longer this time through because players are allowed to make more choices then previous editions. You have development points to spend, skill lists to see how you want to spend them and action cards to go through and pick. I'd say comparatively it takes about double the time with this version compared to last - assuming you used the previous editions random gen everything base rules.

I do think that this time around though your end characters feel a little more personal then past versions so that IMO makes up for the extra time. Especially since your characters life expectancy is better then before. Past versions we had a mind set that characters were often disposable, we don't have that same impression this time around.

My group of three players (and me as GM) took about three hours to create our first party.

I can make a complete character on my own in about 15 or 20 minutes, now that I've had some practice.

DagobahDave said:

Yeah I made 6 con/demo characters last night, took just under two hours to make 6 heroes. It's pretty quick to make one character in a pinch. The hard part is gathering all the cards.

mac40k said:

Point taken

Hey dudes,

Initially my groups character creation was a little cumbersome. I found that choosing action cards, interpreting the rules in the book and divying out points took the most time.

But on the bright side, i made a new digital character sheet so we can manage our characters digitaly on the fly and even save them in Acrobat Reader. I made the weapon and armour selection dynamic too so it adds their statistics automatically. This has cut down on character sheet management quite a bit and has also allowed for new characters to be rolled up very quickly with far less referencing the rulebook.

Check it out...

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=149&efcid=3&efidt=290134

Game on...

Gitzman

That is ridiculously cool, Gitzman. Thanks!