... so here are my impressions, for all that you don't care

All those shiny bits and peices:

First things first. The materials are very high quality, I can't fault that. Though a fair old number of them really do feel like they arn't really needed. The various PC and monster counters for instance feel like something i could really have done without. I play WFRP 1st and 2nd as well as WFB, models i have, in abundance. From first glance at the rules, almost all of the player aids other than the Dice and the stance & progress trackers would have been from my point of view, as well or perhapes even better handled by being in the book.

Faffing around with cards and tokens has never really been my thing. It also leads to the problem that i may well need duplicates of many of the items (or to atleast design a character sheet where the details of talents ect can easily be copy pasta'd in) to handly characters who wish to play the same career, or who have duplicate talents.

I can handle looking up spells and backgrounds/feats in mage: the awakening and DnD, so i don't see why I can't be trusted to do the same here. A well made character sheet and PDF referance sheet could handle 90% of this dross, allowing for it to be sold as a book at a price where i could have purchased it months ago.

Summation: Well made, but something i could have done without.

Funny Dice and that Nagging colour problem:

Firstly, i am colour blind, and who ever thought colour coding the dice was a bright idea, please give your self a slap upside the head. The Green and the Red are troublingly similar as are the Blue and Purple To make matters worse, in both cases these similar coloured Dice are of the same type, so it isn't even like i can reason that the Green dice are Characteristic Dice, which are D8s, so the D10's that look like they might be green must be the reckless dice. No rather, it is a toss up between two sets of D10, which look pretty similar and two lots of D8 that look pretty similar. I can already tell that it is going to make me scream with frustration.

All that said, what i have read of the rules so far, i really like the Dice pool system, in as much as it appears that you can get some very interesting combinations of pools. I am not sure i feel that the symbol system makes them much easier to read, but well see how that works in play.

Fate seems to have completed its meta-morphosis from something sublime into something base(not neccissarilly a bad thing). It now reminds me of the fool arcana in artesia: adventures in the known world.

Summation: Grrrr...Colours!!! Hmm...Interesting.

Zelots and Watchmen and Roadwardens, oh my:

The careers are pretty standard fair for WFRP. I am vaguely pissed off that fantasy flight they appear to have intentionally done a 'players handbook 2'(absence of gnomes, half-orcs and so on) on us, having not included certain Iconic careers in the core box, but provided them in another product so that you have to buy both if you want your small but vicious dog. Atleast, and this is a saving grace when engaged in such obvious attempts to 'force' purchase of additional material, fantasy flight had the good sense to get the The Adventurer's Toolkit out almost immediately after the corebook, rather than a year later.

Ofcause, none of this really deals with the mechanics, but once i have read the rules can re-read the careers i will re-visit them

Side note: The inclusion of Wardancers, swordmasters and iron breakers in the The Adventurer's Toolkit, does leave me to question asking my self 'does fantasy flight 'get' WFRP. These are careers that feel entirely out of place, and looking back on that climactic battle at the end of 'the power behind the throne', where my character gustav, third son of minor nordland nobility, student and agitator, struggled with KHV at the edge of the via duct, before finally throwing him to his supposed death, it just wouldn't have been the same with a swordmaster tagging along in the group.

Summation: Where's my Small But Vicious Dog?

A merry band of murderers:

The party sheets is an interesting touch, but not nearly as original as Fantasy flights promo video makes out. Just of the top of my head, Werewolf: The Apocalype was doing the same thing more than a decade ago ago using the pack totum. Orpheus, Promethean: The Created and Changling: The Lost have also all trodden this ground and that is sticking with one major player like white wolf. Pretty sure indies like house of the blooded and . At first glance, this is an interesting variation on the idea but nothing ground breaking.

Summation: Interesting, by recycled.

Ofcause, all this is just my very first, had less than an hour of reading, impression. More will follow as get deeper in.

Interesting article and good review. Thanks for sharing.

I've had similar thoughts about the system. You are more kind in your review.

Lay out of rules and the writing:

The books are badly put together, with elements of system scattered across the books in a fairly higgledie pigledy manner. It takes time to track down concepts pertinaite to combat and skill checks, which are kept in whole other books.

The language is far more clunky than i would like, with certain sections being explained poorly. In many ways, i think the entire system could have been explained much more clearly in perhapes half the space.

However, once past these issues it gets better.

The system basics:

The underlying system is interesting. I actually love the concept of pool, though i am still having difficulty reading the results quickly. Despite that, between the various different dice, a wide rand of outcomes is possible, which allows for great narrative conclusions to the roll.

Combat:

Combat actually seems to be a really good, with thhe narrative elements of the dice system coming into its own throught its a ability to tell you about whats actually happening within a fight. One or two of the action cards are a little wonky, but for the most part the action cards achieve what 4e d&d powers set out to do, but manages to out strip 4th editions by some considerable amount. The actions allow for characters to really interact with the combat, setting up attacks for one another, debuffing opponents and generally weaving and interesting story around the fight scene. Their is a large part of me which would very much like to use a modified version of the system to run Exalted.

Damage, in is many and varied forms:

Between wounds, critical wounds, stress, conditions and fatigue, you have what is probably the best wound mechanic in modern roleplaying. If I had to point to any single element of this game which i love, it would be the wound system. I have yet to see how it plays out in game, but it appears to be one of the only true innovations the game makes, and one that I hope other games will take up.

The damage mechanic is woven into the narrative nature of the system, so that, in combat you can have events like a PC getting head butted, and suffering a broken nose, or getting blood in ones eyes after a scratch to the forehead, through to having limbs broken by vicious blows, and every outcome had mechanical effects which appear relatively easy to impliment.

A/C/E dice! Sorry, what?

This is probably my biggest single problem with the game, and one that it shares with 4e DnD. The game treats monsters as fundementally different from player characters, and condenses them down to a tiny stat line, using Agression Cunning and Expertise dice as an abstract to replace the details the monster is missing, Similarly, most treat stress and fatigue simply as wounds.

This is one of the clearest signs of gamism being a driving force in the design of wfrp 3e, and in a way points to why at a gut level WFRP 3e feel wrong to me. Traditionally most incidental thugs or enemies had names, full stat block, and those stat blocks could often tell you a lot about them, and help you deal with the changing nature of an encounter, should a PC do something unexpected. By contrast, 3e treats them at a mechanical level, as nameless, faceless mooks, not living people within the world. For me this is a real sadness.

On the one hand Falling, on the other hand swimming

The enviromental damage rules are...annoying. Firstly, they suffer from the 'why is it here' syndrome much of the book suffers from. Secondly, the wording and examples are not brilliant. thirdly, the falling rules are daft. With the rules as written, you cannot dies from falling off a building, if you role for it. Falls are either entirely non-leathal (though they can be horrifically debilitating, which I do like), or automatically leathal by GM fait, with no middle ground between. Fortunately, if offers some ways of making such an insta-death fall avoidable and interesting threats, but falling out of ans second flaw window, or from a roof, something that should be very dangerous, is treated as no big deal.

By contrast, the drowning/swimming rules are pretty much the best treatment of the subject i have ever seen. Being swept down steam in rapids has never been so fun or dangerous in an RPG

Money

The changes to the money system within the game setting seem really stupid...more like bad research than a concious choice.

Future of the game:

I hope, first and foremost that we will see a lot more monsters and NPCs published in the near future, and I appears that it will be the case, along side a great many new powers for them. As things stand, the availible monsters will get old pretty quickly.

In the longer term, WFRP3e has one very, very exciting possiblity, which is that it seems to be a game that was almost designed to be played using surface computing, and/or AR. I hope that within seven years, we will see a 4e version, which is full compatiable with microsoft surface, and the compitions that will eventually arrive for it.

zombieneighbours said:

Amen brother, amen. The execution of the layout is a horror and an abomination that kills message transmission and the writing is a crime against all that is right and good in the world in the rule book, the other 3 books are ok and work just fine, but the basis rules are just not good enough. But hey what do I know.

Talent slots? O RLY?

The answer to that appears to be Y RLY. The socket in nature of the various talents to me, seems entirely counter intuative. People don't decide to turn on and off their abilities, I don't stop being able to scuba dive, when i am rock climbing, yet the slots system seems to assume that some one who can charge, forgets how to do it while he is in combat and helping his companion flank an enemy. The system seems to exist for no other reason than game balance, i really struggle to see a narrative use for the talent slots.

If you're colour blind you can simply pick up the dice by symbols. I mean that Green dice have delay symbols, Purple ones have Chaos Stars, you know...

Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

Armoks said:

Sure, you can do that, but it takes more time than picking the right colour does for normal people, which takes more time than selecting the a mixed pool on dice shape alone, which takes more time than just grabbing the right number of D10s. It's a mild, but fairly annoying issue.

Since 7-10% of males are colorblind in the U.S. you'd think that would be a significant enough number for a company to take into consideration when developing a dice coding system. If your primary purchaser was female, this wouldn't be a concern since less than 1% of women are colorblind in the U.S., but that was their decision to make.

Since the announcement of the upcoming hardcover books, I'm hoping that FFG decides to include an index in the back of the rulebooks like most other companies do. One of the main issues people run into as an issue is finding something in the rules right when they need it. Flipping through a book looking for a small piece of text is nerve-wracking and can easily break the mood of a good game. If they can't include it in the book for space constraints, please develop and online index for us that can be printed out for our use.

You are aware that there is already a living index that they keep online. The link to it is in the rules section of the forum.

Kryyst said:

Apparently, I am not.

I feel foolish.

zombieneighbours said:

Yes it's a gamist approach, the entire game is fundamentally gamist rather than simulationist. I see this as a good thing. I can't get into a story if having to worry about everything being as realistic as possible and having to simulate each and every swordstroke.

But I don't see what the problem is? If you want NPC's that are more fleshed out and have skills/extra actions/talents rather than the ACE budget, there is nothing stopping you in the system. If you don't want fatigue/stress to cause wounds, then just don't use that rule. Just use the given stats and tweak them. I always do that in any game I run, standard enemies from the rules are just boring. Furthermore, tweaking the enemies lets you build encounters that are more inline with the capabilities of your player group.

The ACE budget is just a way for the GM to create enemies on the fly if needed. I do agree that the fluff for enemies (and in total) is a bit lacking though. If you have no previous knowledge of the Warhammer world it will be problematic to play the NPC monsters believably.

I'm not sure I get your comment on talents. Some talents work the way you want, giving a permanent bonus, others can be used occasionally. Why would you be able to use a talent all the time if it requires a lot of effort (say for example, "Shrug it off")? That if anything would be silly. The slots represent what focus you have at the moment, you cannot do everything at once. Again, if you find that so hard to explain just ignore the slot restrictions, you will not "break the game" by using house rules.

Some people think that having to use minor house rules to get the best possible experience in a game makes the game inherently bad. I just can't agree with that, if you like the base mechanics of a game, why not tweak the rules the way you want them? There is a limit of course.

UncleArkie said:

Agree here. I am not some enlish major but the layout for the player guide was very bad and seem random.

gruntl said:

WFRP is Gamist? I could not more profoundly disagree. Nor should it be.

I believe you are confusing system abstraction with gamism. Yes the system abstracts actions so you do not model every sword swing, but the system is, especially with regards to combat, one of the most simulationist games produced by a major publisher.

Why do I say that? Well for a number of reasons.

1. Attacks are not yes/no results:
A PCs actions can result in a spectrum of results from critical hit, with bonus to critical failure, with baneful effects. More importantly, you can have a mix weal and woe, which is far closer to realism than most games ever get.

2. The system encourages you to use Different attacks
Not only does the system provide a range of attack options, between the recharge mechanic and the varying effects, it forces you to flow between options creating a fluid and dynamic set of battles in which internal logic of a battle plays a part

3. A non-linier wound system
The wound system is not only the best I have come across in modern gaming, it is also the most simulationist. Because it disassociates high damage, and wound penalties, it allows for the opening head butt of a bar fight to leave the recipient unthreatened but debilitated, or for some one to take a nasty wound, but fight on, mostly unimpaired. It allows for characters to suffer post traumatic stress, to become exausted by combat and much else besides.

And the list goes on and on.

It has never been in the nature of warhammer fantasy roleplay to be gamist. It has always treated the old world, and the systems of the game, as something which should be goverent by internal logic, not the needs of the game, and this is why, for me, seeing weird little gamiest touches in the system is so jarring.

Book layout - couldn't agree more with these problems. Fortunatly I find it a game where I don't have to refer to the book much, but when I do .. o boy, game grinds to a halt "Wait a minute, it's here somewhere"

Creature Statline (ACE etc) - this is something i actually like. After ... too many years GMing .. I can safely say that the whichever system I am using the NPCs are far more simplified in my head. "Hmm, did he suceed in pulling that bird, die roll seems a bit close .. but I think he's a silver tongued cavalier so lets make it a success". I don't want to have to remember he has Talent: Witty +WW to all charm and seduction attempts. But this is a conversation that has gone back and forth on these forums, as it's a personal choice for people within thier games.

Colourblind dice - yeah, bit of a clanger here. They choose what seemed to be good intuitive colours (red and green are such a great pairing because of what they symbolise culturally), and it's just one of those questions that no-one raises until the first problem occurs. The comment above that you can check the symbols really doesn't cut it, as you have suddenly slowed down the dice picking to a frustrating level (obviously the best solution is getting your non-colourblind mate to pick out your pool for you - but none of us like relying on other people)

Talents - I don't like the arguement about 'why would people forget/switch-on/off' etc. To me talents are almost like the what mood are you in, or how are you feeling now, or get with the plan type changes to our daily mood. They are not abilities or skills. I quite like them, but am wondering if they add an unnecessary layer of compliction to peoples characters. They are part of the personalisation of characters though

Can;t remember what other topics were in this thread now.

Fabs said:

Thank you. It's nice to see some one who can disagree with some my observations, agree with others, and not treat the entire thing like i9ts an attack on the game(which is precious perfect and beyond critism, as the greatest work of human endevor in history/an evil blight upon the world, that must be expunged lest it corrupt the perfection of second ed. )

Oh, and i like your take on the Talents, i might take a look at them again, and re-evaluate them based on that mental filter. Cant garentee it will change my position, but its an argument that will atleast encourage me to rething it.

zombieneighbours said:

I think we have quite different ideas on what defines a simulationist game, so I think it will be hard for us agree. My main reason for claiming that WFRP3e is not simulationist at all (note that to me not being simulationist still means that a game can be realistic) is that 3e works a lot more with abstractions than any other game I've ever tried. This is really what I love the most about the system because it makes storytelling so much easier for me. Take the combat round as an example, in WFRP2e (or D&D) the round is a set time while it is no such thing in 3e, a round of combat can be whatever length you want it to be.

I think the system is gamist because it has actions/talents/resource management that all can be used tactically to achieve better results. Keeping track of these things is a game in itself. Through the dice rolls and flavour of the cards this is tied to the narrative aspect, so again I think this is very nicely done.

zombieneighbours said:

It helped me to think of talents as 'edges': the edge you get from doing something daily, for a living. Even in your spare time your mind tends to be focused on it. If you change careers into something with different talent slots, it means that your mental focus has shifted to something else. It doesn't mean you forget things, you still have your skills, you just don't have that edge. Of course, you could get it back, by getting back into practise again; that is, changing back into your previous career.

For example, let's say a soldier quits his job to study at the University of Altdorf. Even if he still practices with his halberd every day, he no longer has to be mentally prepared to risk his life on the battlefield. He loses his edge (for example, his catlike reflexes). Should you put him (ex-soldier, currently student) against someone who is his equal as a fighter (as far as skills are concerned), but who is currently making his living as a soldier, then it's reasonable that the latter should have the benefit of the 'edge', I think.

It would have helped though if the description in the rulebook had taken the narrative point of view into account.

It is an interesting review, and you have some good questions although I personally fear you are interpreting things incorrectly.

All those shiny bits and peices:

My group loves not having to mark up their character sheets to track things like fatigue, wounds, or recharge. They also like having what their Action Cards do and what their talents do right there in front of them. They can easily look through them to plan what they want to do, or to show each other what they can do. <shrug> To each his own. My group likes the shiny bits, and feel like it makes the game simpler and they can concentrate more on playing than recording stuff. Yes, there can be minor issues if players want to duplicate certain actions or talents. This has been brought up before on the boards. This is rectified by getting a second Core Set, or by waiting for FFG to produce the upcoming Player's Vault sometime in the next year.

Funny Dice and that Nagging colour problem:

Color blindness is an interesting challenge, and one I hadn't thought of. I'm not sure how you would go about adjusting it, except maybe making charts to roll on instead. I'm glad you like the idea of the dice pool. It does take playing with them a few times to really realize just how much they can add to the play experience.

Zelots and Watchmen and Roadwardens, oh my:

With all the stuff that comes with an individual career, to keep the price down for the Core Set I'm sure they needed to limit the number of careers included in the Core Set. It's a pretty good spread, and it is fairly easy to make your own career cards if necessary. IMO they included the Ironbreaker, Wardancer, and Swordmaster to provide something "exciting" for the non-human fans.

Lay out of rules and the writing:

Yes, this is known and has been acknowledged by FFG as an area that could have been improved. They made the Living Index, the GM screen has information for the GM, and the new Guide books are going to be better organized.

A merry band of murderers:

I am not totally familiar with the play of those games. The fact is, it *is* pretty different from most RPGs. I expect it also works differently than those games you mentioned as well. So, while the entire concept of "a party sheet" might not be the very first occurance of the concept, the implementation and usefulness of it is quite original.

A/C/E dice! Sorry, what?

Most RPGs don't treat every single NPC as if they are a PC, and most incidental thugs don't have names, so I'm not sure why this is shocking. The characters are Heroes (whether knowingly or not), and are thus fundamentally different than the majority of NPCs. Now, the GM *could* make an NPC using the PC creation rules. There is nothing to stop him from doing so (although non human/elf/dwarf would be somewhat difficult). The GM is also free and encouraged to customize special NPCs with their own action cards, talents, and even organizations. If an NPC feels like a nameless, faceless mook (which is not really unusual in an RPG), then technically the issue lies with the GM. There is *nothing* stopping the GM from naming every single NPC the PCs encounter, and trying to give them a history and/or special/unique abilities. The A/C/E is a way for NPCs to act a bit different, or put extra effort into a certain task. They are (sort of in a general sense) like the PC's fortune points.

On the one hand Falling, on the other hand swimming

Why wouldn't they include ways to handle environmental damage? If they didn't include something, then you know that people would be complaining that there wasn't something in the rules to cover it.

Money

Well, it might not be the same as it was in v2 ... but it actually makes it easier for casual players and GMs to understand and handle. What is it that makes you think they are stupid?

Talent slots? O RLY?

Nothing stops a PC from changing talents in combat, it just stresses/fatigues you. You never lose talents you purchased. You need to prep yourself. The PC doesn't *forget* how to charge, he just isn't prepared to.

Stick with it. One of the great things, IMO, about WFRP3 is the freedom the GM is given to tell the story and the tools he can use (or not use) to tell it.

Okay.

Ran the game for the first time on tuesday.

A lot of the issues with the game came up to bite me on the arse. I thought i'd gotten the basics down pat, but fairly quickly realised i did not know how many action a character could take, or how active defense worked, or how passive defense worked.

The writing issues meant that it was almost impossible to check on the fly.

I got something workable out of it, and we had a good deal of fun, but i don't think i will be running it again until i either have the hard cover, or i have played a few games with some one else.

It's a pitty, because i did catch a glimpse of the awesome game that lays under the issues.

The game is such a departure from how I was used to running RPG's, it's worth putting some effort in to 're-learn' how to play As always is the case, we can read all we want, but until we put it into practice, it doesn't really click.

Before I ran any games, me and one of my mates sat down and ran through some sample combats etc to get an idea, and be able to look stuff up without worrying about a game breaking down. I normally do this with any new system.

To answer your points ... defense (in the case of armour etc) adds misfortune dice to opponents attack rolls (we got that wrong on our first work through). Active defenses are 'reactions' (see the card). These are used when certain triggers occur i.e. if someone attacks you, you can parry as a reaction as long as it is recharged. These will also add misfortune dice to the opponents roll (the player does'nt have to make any form of check to see if they parried, it just makes the opponents task harder). In a round a charcater can normally make 1 action and 1 maneuver.

And I'm pleased about your last comment. Doesn't that certainly make it worthwhile to put a little downtime in, to run through some sample encounters etc?

Fabs said:

With a decently written cheat sheet, i might return to it, I am sort of writing a couple of adventures for it at the moment, but ideally, i'd rather play a little fiirst, before returning to it as a GM.

I do like it, i have right from the beginning said that there where things I liked about it, but they have always been smoothered by the issues. What Tuesday showed me was that it might be worth persisting with.

All that said, i am not convinced it is actually as good a game as 2nd ed was, i'm really not. Second edition was just so robust and simple. You could literally pick it up, spend ten minites reading, and then start into play making a character and then play. it was that simple. £e doesn't do that.

As a player, 3ed seems okay, i'd probably like it a lot less if i where not already so immersed in the warhammer setting.

As a DM, it seems like a fair amount of work at the momment, due to the absence of most of the monster i might want to include and very few examples of NPCs.

The writer in me does love the prospect of writing an adventure for 3e. Location cards, and condition card, as well as really interesting attacks that you might make up for an advisary, all provide tools that would allow you to make really interesting and deep encounters. Possibly more so than any other game I can think of.

zombieneighbours said:

But, but this is warhammer, no d&D so there arent gnomes or half-orcs, ok i know that in early editons of WHFB where gnomes and half-orcss, but no more, so no pPHB 2 for races that doesnt exist, and is hard that ina same party where a dwarf and a skaven together....,

ugrosh said:

Perhaps if you had read that section as a whole, you would understand that half orcs, and gnomes are given as an example of material missed out by players handbook 2.

The issue isn't that WFRP has missed out either of these race, but rather that it has fallen into the same trap that DnD 4th fell into, by not including well liked careers and races which had historically been core element, for instance, halflings and Rat Catchers.

It is also worth noting that Gnomes have never(to my knowledge) been officially removes from the warhammer world, they have simply not be detailed in a while, it is entirely possible that in the grey mountains of 3ed WFRP, that a dwarf sub-species tinkers away, far form the holds of their ancestors, and it has simply not come up, because it isn't an area that has been detailed by the war game.

zombieneighbours said:

I think not even being mentioned officially for many years and editions qualifies them as removed.