I love the Old World setting of the Warhammer tabletop game and have even converted it to D&D to use in my games because I enjoy the feel. The 3E system sounds interesting, but I still have some bad tastes in my mouth from 1st and 2nd edition, as well as FFG products Doom Boardgame and Arkham Horror.

Both FFG boardgames are way too difficult from a player's perspective. We found that the Doom Boardgame was nigh unwinnable and that Arkham Horror was next to impossible to win. For WHFRGP 1 and 2, the difficulty is such that even the most lowly creature in the game is 50% likely to kill a PC.

Has the new edition stacked any of the odds to the player's favor? I'm curious about the system, but a TPK in the first or second encounter promises that my group will abandon it, and I will have flushed away $100 for the game.

Thanks for the input,

Doc

It's not difficult in the "you'll wipe the PCs right away" sense. In fact, many people who have played old editions of Warhammer find it too easy in that respect. Truth is, though, you can scale your encounters either way, and you'll probably have to scale a bit depending on your PCs' experience and style of play.

In terms of ease of use of the product itself, that seems to depend largely on your background. If you're a visual learner or have a lot of boardgame experience, the system will likely seem intuitive to you with its charts, cards, and abstract movement. If you're a huge fan of charts and %s, you may find it to have a bit more of a learning curve. Still, even those who don't love the mechanics at first tend to find that after a few play sessions, they get the hang of them and the mechanics fade into the background.

I'd say read around a bit about how play unfolds and see if you think that it'd fit your group's play style. The sticking point for most people tends to be the cards and the trackers; some people just find that their group can't stand messing with that level of micromanagement. (It's really not so much micromanagement, but it can seem like it at first.)

I used henchmen yesterday and that made the game quite easier. I think it's a good way to make player feel they are heroes, more capable than a bunch a scoundrel in example (henchmen rules), ordinary thieves in town (henchmen), or isolated snotlings (henchmen). As they approached a real waaagh, snotling became tougher (true NPC), as orcs and goblins... Same for beastmen...

Henchmen are good for feeling heroic. I also used it during the end battle in Eye for eye to represent a continous flow of lesser-than-ungor beastmen running around a few powerful Gor and one Wargor.

First off it reads to me like your more of a board gamer, be advised, this is not a board game its roleplaying. If you have that down then no its not hard at all, the information that the players need is available on the cards for easy reference and most of the rules are intuitive and fast. Once you have a go at it you will realize that this is the iPhone of role playing games, faster, sleeker, more intuitive than your used to the only down side is that it comes at it from an angle that we'er not used to so it gets a little odd (see mini rant below about the core book).

The only thing that is "hard" about the game is the rulebooks, while the rules themselves are easy to understand and fast the presentation is horrendous, I would actually be willing to pay for a rewritten core book with the rules (the others are fine, its just the basic rules that are craptastically presented), both the lead editor and the layouter on this one should be forced to spend some time in the boss' office while he yells. All of that said, do not let it discourage you, its a great game very different rules wise from whats out there, good fun.

Think of the movie: Starship Troopers.

At the start, each bug was SUPER tough. It took half a dozen guys, easily just to take one down.

Towards the end, the main protagonists were so experienced that they could take them out in only a few shots.

Henchmen rules are also great to show how better experienced PCs are- especially in dealing with a foe that they've fought before.

I don't like to think of Starship Troopers.

First one was fun, especially seen in the light that Heinline who wrote the book actually meant it seriously. He then after having been a borderline fascist rightwinger most of his life turns into a hippy freelove proponent and writes "Stranger in a strange land" which is a manifest of the freelove movement and dies a very happy grenola chewing longhair in a hippy commune. But if you like hardcore science in our science-fiction then he is your man along with Asimov, C. Clark and so on.... That went off topic didn't it

UncleArkie said:

The movie Starship Troopers is only peripherally connected to the novel Starship Troopers. According to an interview I read at the time, Paul Verhoeven had already finished scripting the movie and was looking around for a title. Some chucklehead suggested Heinlen's novel, and Paul threw in a few names to make it seem that his awful script was somehow related to an excellent novel.

The novel is also less about being a "borderline fascist rightwinger" and more about personal responsibility and how we would be less likely to commit to frivolous wars if those voting for war had actually served in the military and thus understood its horrors more clearly. Yes, I do mean voting; in Starship Troopers the novel, humanity is not a fascist state, but a republic, albeit one in which military service is a prerequisite for voting rights. You're also quite wrong about Heinlen somehow having a conversion later in life; Stranger in a Strange Land was written concurrently with Starship Troopers.

That there is not much that ties the movie to the book I will give you, the book is a work of art, it has one of (if not the) introduction of power armour and it has a lot of good points about the folly of youth and idealism, but it is in it's basic outlook fascist. There is 1 party and the president is not elected its a general.

For example, his 1959 novel Starship Troopers was regarded by some as advocating militarism and to some extent fascism, although many passages in the book disparage the inflexibility and stupidity of a purely militaristic mindset. By contrast, his 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land put him in the unexpected role of a pied piper of the sexual revolution, and of the counterculture, and through this book he was credited with popularizing the notion of polyamory.

- The not always accurate source wikipedia.

I must admit that reading up on this I find my knowledge of this guy severly lacking, thank you good sir for some good reading while bored at the office

Pretty much all the STS the movie had in common with the book was that humans were at war with bug-like aliens, and some of the names from the book were used (but not necessarily the same character).

The movie is a relatively fun sci-fi flick, just don't believe it is anything like the book.

The culture in the book is primarily about personal responsibility, like Haggard said. The action in the book is also way cooler, and would have made a way-better movie.

I mean, the soldiers are in these 1-man-army type suits, toting around mini-nuclear rockets. The in their suits from orbit, can leap from building to building. It's like having an army of soldiers in Iron-Man suits (although bulkier).

Anyway, back on topic a bit...

I haven't played Doom, but I have played Arkham extensively. Part of the fun of Arkham is that it is a challenge. Since you are not competing against the other players (it is co-op against the game), the challenge is the game itself. Once you've played it a few times, you can get the experience to know what works and what doesn't, and which characters work better than other ones. My wife and I probably win the base game about 75% of the time, although every game is different regardless win or lose. It's our favorite boardgame ever.

WFRP seems to be pretty easy to understand and play for the players. Making the dice pools is probably the hardest part, and takes the most time to learn, although that isn't too bad as it is. As a GM, it can be somewhat challenging, maybe more so than some RPGs. FFG wants the game to be cinematic and a story ... so there is a lot of stuff that isn't rigidly defined for the GM. The game gives the GM a lot of flexibility to handle things in a way best for their group. This is great, but can make for a steeper learning curve.

dvang said:

Fixed that for you. OOOOOOOOOHHHHHH!!!

LOL.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that. I certainly didn't think "fascist state" when I read the book. I thought his sentiments on personal responsibility were pretty interesting, although obviously a bit hyperbolic and unachieveable realistically (too many people don't want to take responsibility for their actions).