My first play experience was with the downloadable PDF "A Day Late, A Shilling Short" in the support section of this website. Give it a dry run by yourself, and then try it out on your group. (You might grab the coach location card from Hammerzeit.) When I played we had a great GM who made it really dramatic, and we had a great time! The thing about the WFRP3 system: it is really, really fun to play.

First off Dustin, your the first person I have seen how went "I don't like this" without being a d!%& about it, so now we are actually having a conversation with opposing views on a forum with almost no trolling (me posting makes it some trolling).

I know exactly how you feel, opening the box the first time I had the same issues, where the hell is x? Why is y not included? And so on and so on, I decided to give it a go and use the rules and boy it was fun. THe group I ran it with was new and only one of my 4 players had actually played a roleplaying game before and they all loved it. I taught the the rules in 15 minutes, character creation took another 20 to get all 4 done and we where off on adventure together. No one had to look anything up in a book, there was no waiting (remember when you started playing 2nd ed and only one guy in the group had a book, none of that) which appealed to the crowd because it freed up my time as a game master to interact with the player and role play. As for location cards, remember, you can print your own all they are are reminders where a character is. If the party if at the inn and 2 of them wander off to the cemetery to investigate something then you move their standup to that location and then it reminds you, who was at the graves again? Also it prevents that player (we all met them) the guy that always goes no, I went to the location you just wasn't listening cus your a bad GM guy from trying to argue that he was here or there (or in some cases in both locations) because something interesting is happening in one location or something that he wants to avoid in the other because he is where he placed his standup.

No its true that there is nothing in the game that could not just have been in a core book with some tables and then had the lot of us do what we always do with numbers and so on, but this is more fun and colourful.

Hey guys, I really do appreciate your support!

The other GM in our group is reading through the box set right now. In the mean time, he has never played Warhammer 2nd ed., he has only run the game. I told him that I would be more than happy to run 2nd Ed until he has had his fill on the game (there were only seven adventures he never read from the 2nd edition). Then we plan on moving onto the 3rd edition (**** straight, since I paid for it!

It may seem strange to go about this the long way, but he spent a lot of money on those old books and a lot of time running the 2nd edition for us (and he runs our Dark Heresy games) and before we plunge into something that is a bit different, I want to give him what he wants.

Thanks and Rock on!

Dustin said:

Well we try

Before I start, I have to admit my group of players has been doing some play testing for FFG on some of the products, both announced and unannounced. We have a group of seven of us, including up to three GM's including me, based around two core sets of rules. Some of us use all the stuff/ paraphenalia in the box, while others make do with the character sheet from Hammerzeit plus the career and action cards, each to their own way of doing things. I prefer the 'paraphenalia', others in the group don't. We also haven't used the location cards so far, the two of us who have GMed haven't seen the need for them. I will look at them again when I get round to GMing. What we do agree on, is that the game is an awful lot of fun and the stuff we have playtested can only make the game better. To those people who say combat is too easy, I say, give some of your NPC's Enhanced Dodge, Parry and Block, and watch your players moan about constantly missing. It happened to us in one playtest! That second challenge dice can make a hell of a difference to getting hit.. V3 may not suit everybody, but I would say, try it out for a while with an open mind, you may be very surprised.

I have skipped the location cards as well. But quite frankly I can see why they are in fact brilliant. We were having a fight in sewer tunnels and suddenly I remembered one of the location cards. I pulled it out and the special rules applied. The reason I disregarded the location cards were because they seems too restricted to special areas. With more and some general in nature like "The old dirt road", I can see how they give the GM and players nice consistent rules and add more spice to the game.

Considering them 'location conditions' or 'environmental rules' makes them very useful. You could turn the burning building into a sinking boat with pretty much the same rule effects as well.