superklaus said:

I'm playing WFRP scenarios with my kids using the Talisman ruleset. There are only two checks: d6+ strength or d6+ craft.

I couldn't agree with you more that piling more **** on a gamesystem does not improve it. Instead it turns it into the D&D4e Rube Goldberg machine. Thankfully, most components of the WFRP3 system are completely optional: party sheets, nemesis organizations, stances, fatigue, stress, etc. All are parts that can be removed or used at will.

I just picked up SW recently. Interesting system. Funny simplistic systems are..our brains have been trained to think that we NEED all kinds of crunchy crap in order to play and we read them thinking THAT'S BRILLIANT! (Sorry for the Yoda-ism)

jh

..

Emirikol said:

One thing I've learned over the last decade of gaming is to customize rules crunch from one adventure to the next, or even from session to session, depending on the needs of the adventure. e.g. If Alchemy is only used once per adventure on average, then single-roll resolution is perfectly adequate, but if there's a guy for whom Alchemy is his "thing", then it might be worth using more nuanced rules for iterations, ingredient properties etc. If the alchemist PC dies, you can revert to single-roll Alchemy tests but maybe add rules for something else instead.

I like D&D 4e, WFRP 3E, and Savage Worlds all quite a bit, but for different things. I think they are all fantastic in a different way. SW is nice and free-form, simpler, and can be grafted onto any setting with minimal fuss. I've never had more fun in combat in an RPG than with D&D 4e. D&D 4e marks itself out as a specific type of game and when you run it that way; I think it works well. It is definitely, in my mind, more complex than it needs to be, but I think it is a fun game for the right type of party. It's a bit limited though, in my mind, especially since it puts about 90% rules emphasis on combat and dungeon crawls (even if the "dungeon" isn't technically a dungeon, most of the adventures move from "room to room" with a different fight in each). It's treasure system is a bit rigid and it's balance between the classes is a bit stale if you zoom out and look at the numbers alone and realize each of the different roles is essentially the same. But it's still fun for me and the right group of guys who like to that sort of game.

I've described WFRP, in a positive way, as a sort of hybrid of SW and D&D 4e. I feel like it takes a lot of the positive inspiration from both systems and then ventures out on its own and does a few things totally unique. Now, I'm a sucker for board games and "fiddly bits", so I absolutely love all the cards, tokens, party sheets, and stand-ups. I think that they do ultimately enhance play and make things move faster once everyone has a good grasp on how to use things. I love that even though there's enough crunch to make all sorts of scenes tactically interesting (in social or physical "combat"), there's so much room for the GM to adapt on the fly and keep things focused on the story. All while putting a wealth of choices in front of the players. They have so many options and the heat is on, because the world is dangerous and scary.

When I play D&D 4e, there is almost zero fear of a character dying. It has only happened twice in two years of playing D&D 4e games every other week: once when the player was new and did something stupid and once when the player wanted his character to die for story reasons (and to roll up a class from a new book).

I feel like the melding of the mechanics with the setting is seamless and really enhances the entire experience. The only downside of the components, to me, is that it takes up more table space. I can't imagine tracking recharge without the cards and tokens or dealing with critical wounds without the cards. What a slog! I love that the decks replace tables and I can customize and expand these "tables" by changing the cards in the decks. I roll my eyes when I hear people say they prefer a table in a book. So someone out there actually wants to open a book, roll some dice, find a result, and then copy that result down on paper somewhere instead of simply drawing a card from a deck? And realize that if you have a table in a book, that's it. It ain't expanding or growing or changing. You're stuck with that table unless you want to create your own (what a pain) from scratch. I am boggled. But hey, to each his own. Maybe some GMs like to take more time looking up results while their players wait restlessly at the table, getting pulled out of the narrative and throwing Funions at each other.

Note: Being an avid iPhone user and developer, I'm going to go ahead and avoid the bait and just agree to disagree that the iPhone is anything but fantastic. It's smarts are precisely in how simple it is to use while increasing functionality exponentially, and keeping a streamlined aesthetic. If you don't like it, I have to ask: have you actually used one? I wasn't a big fan until I got one in my hands.

LeBlanc13 said:

You stated that the Dragon Age mechanic is superior, I asked you why you though so. As for which dice mechanic is more nuanced, that is not a matter of opinion. It's simple math. WFRP3's mechanic gives more nuanced results than Dragon Age's mechanic, because it's output range is far greater. If you're going to come on the official WFRP3 message board and repeatedly make statements about how other games are superior to WFRP3, you should expect to get responses asking why. If you make factually incorrect statements you should expect to get corrected on them. I haven't been hostile to you in any way, so I'm not sure why you're upset.

jeffeoff said:

I'm not sure we are playing the same 4e. I've lost more characters in 2 years of 4E, than every other rpg I've played combined (in 20 years). This new dark sun encounters is so brutal I've killed 12 characters in 5 sesssions, running from the book missions. Meanwhile as a player on I'm my 4th character in 17 levels. Granted we never run a combat of our level, it's almost always printed from a publshed adventure or created at 2 levels higher, but it's been way brutal, amazing more so than the 2 cleric, people never die campaigns of 3.5,

Sinister said:

Wait, you regularly play adventures designed for characters 2 levels higher? If that's the case, then death being common is hardly going to be a surprise.

Playing with balanced encounters I've rarely seen a PC die. A friend of mine experienced a TPK using a published adventure, but we think it was because WotC had badly misjudged the difficulty of the encounter (apparently they used to underestimate the threat that Soldiers posed).

RabidWookie said:

Sorry if I misread the intent of your post Rabid, but your forum name implies hostility though.These are message boards after all and hostility is usually rampant on them. It's always tough to get a read on what is meant in text.

If I said it's superior, I meant "in my opinion" it's superior. That is related to the fact that you get a similar range of depth of interpretation of the roll with a much simpler rolling format. Overall, I'm REALLY impressed with the DragonAge RPG game. It's a very quick game to learn and it has quite a bit of depth to it without a lot of complexity. I look forward to their 2nd boxed set when it comes out. They really limited the level range in the first boxed set (level 1-5) from an expected total range of 1-20 by the end. I'm hoping they release it soon.

Sinister said:

Maybe our groups are just super optimized or something. Or maybe me and the other DMs I've played with are not designing the encounters to be brutal enough. I'll say that we've had a lot of combats where a PC goes into dying, but very rarely do they actually die.

Is your DM having the monsters continue to attack players while they are dying? I mean, that only makes sense for certain monsters, typically, and is generally discouraged in the DMG. Soldiers, especially, do not play well with characters of lower levels. They are tough to hit already, and can be nearly impossible for anyone a few levels beneath them to hit.

I've played in about 5 different campaigns of D&D 4E over the past two years and each has had different house rules, but only a couple of those campaigns had house rules that might make it easier for players to stay alive (and this was offset with harder encounters).

LeBlanc13 said:

I've just always thought the concept of a rabid wookie was funny

When I first heard that there would be a boxed RPG tie-in to the upcoming Bioware videogame I was psyched, because it sounded so old school. The Dragon Age RPG looks like a fun little game, but at the end of the day I'm not really willing to buy yet another fantasy RPG (especially when the 2nd box set is in limbo) when I'm already enjoying both WFRP3 and classic Rules Cyclopedia D&D, and have Shadowrun and several Savage Worlds games on the back burner.

RabidWookie said:

It is funny! A frothy mouthed maddened creature that already tends to pull peoples arms off when it loses a game is amusing to say the least.

DragonAge has a huge problem, IMO, since it's tied itself into a videogame franchise. It's subject to the popularity of the video game for it's sales. It took me a while to purchase it just because I'd never played the video game and had no frame of reference. Once I broke down and bought the game, I read through it and liked the setting and rules so much, that I then went out to purchase the video game to try. Now I'm hooked on both. So, for me it was the opposite that occurred, since I picked up the boxed game before the video game. What finally got me over the fence is I have younger children just coming into the RPG age range and the store owner stated that most people purchasing the game came back with feedback that the game is great for kids and new roleplayers while still offering a lot to experienced players.

Obviously, games tied to other franchises like Starwars have done well, but I think that's the exception rather than the rule. Hopefully people that didn't buy the video game will go out and try this game too, since it is really well made. I'm hoping they release all four boxed sets for it before the infatuation with DragonAge (the video game) subsides.

Very simple game to learn how to play, but it offers a lot of the depth of other, more complex systems out there.

DragonAge has an interesting character class array. There are only 3 classes (Warrior, Wizard, Rogue), but since most of the abilities you can purchase are open to all classes, you can customize your characters into a multitude of varieties. They have options for a bard, barbarian, etc... You just modify what skills you take to make the base class what you want.

It is a great product because of it's simplicity while still offering a good variety of options, IMHO.

LeBlanc13 said:

Hmm...okay, I'm kind of interested again. Do they do a good job with Ferelden? Part of my reason for avoiding this RPG in spite of my love for the video game was that I realized that I didn't much like the setting of Dragon Ageit seemed rather derivative, as were the classes and abilities. I LOVED BioWare's character writing, as I always do: that's what kept me hooked through the eighty batrillion hours of video gameplay. Without the BioWare team coming to my house and creating my NPCs for me, though, I didn't much see the appeal. Do they manage to differentiate the setting itself from other cookie-cutter DnD-type settings, or does that not matter so much given how (and for whom) you want to run the game?

Ferelden is detailed as well as most of the creatures used as challenges for the low level areas of the video game. This boxed set has the basic rules and Includes levels 1-5 of gameplay, so the challenges are geared towards lower level characters. My understanding is that with each successive boxed set, new starting backgrounds and races will come into play as well as Green Ronin including more on the background of Ferelden until the setting is fully fleshed out by the fourth boxed set.

For me, $30 bucks for the first box is not bad at all. The GM screen is highly useful at $17.00 and comes with an adventure. It's priced a bit on the high side, but it's still within the price range of other similar products.

In the box, you get two books including the main rulebook and a GM/Setting Primer. You also get a set of 3 d6 dice.

- You get 3 broadly defined classes (Warrior, Wizard, Rogue) so while there are limited classes, they can be refined in character creation and as they level to focus on a plethora of available abilities.

- Three races with various backgrounds (Apostate Human or Elf, Circle Mage Human or Elf, Ferelden Human, Outcast Elf and City Dwarf) with explanation that future expansions will add new versions of each race and include some additional backgrounds for more variety to add to beginning classes. I think there is one more Human Background I'm forgetting that's a barbarian human. Each background comes with a starting package that makes it different to play than the others. Each human coming from a different background will be diverse right from the start within the game. Same with the Elves and with additional boxed sets, the dwarves.

- Includes a primer on the setting. I'm about level 10 in the video game and the book contains more information than I've experienced in the setting so far. The timeline starts off before the events in the Video game take place. Both Teryns are still subservient to the king at the start of the boxed game setting.

I've found character creation to be simple, but with lots of options. I think you could create most of the character classes from D&D with just these three base classes. Since Wizards have the ability to heal, they could be created with more of a clerical bent. Obviously, if you're familar with the setting you have Circle Mages under the care of the religious group while Apostates (a background) are unregulated mages. Blood Mages are not in the initial box, but there is promise of these being included in a future supplement or box.

For those looking to read the rules for a lower price point, Green Ronin has it available on their website as a digital download for a smaller investment amount.

RabidWookie said:

FFG puts less stuff in a product, and that makes you happier? I'm afraid I just can't grasp your world view.

superklaus said:

It keeps slipping out of your hand?

(sorry, maybe this is not the right thread to poke fun.)

mcv said:

I think he's happy not to feel like new players are going to get a big break, price-wise, compared to the "early adopters" who bought everything up until now.

mcv said:

It's not that they put less in a product, it's that they didn't obsolete products released only months earlier that all of the game's loyal supporters already bought.

jeffeoff said:

It's really not about the money; if FFG held a special sale where they bundled together all the supplements for half price I'd have no problem with it. It's about the products themselves not becoming obsolete only months after release.

RabidWookie said:

Like I explained to you before, that's not what "obsolete" means. A new budget release does not in any way invalidate existing products. Sure, it might hurt your resale value, so if you're planning to sell your expansions, yes, a new release might hurt you. But the information in your stuff is still every bit as valid as it always was (except for the cards that have been errata'd, obviously).

Obsolescence means that something is so out of date that it'd become unusable and needs to be replaced. This is simply not true for existing expansions after the release of the new guides if they'd included all the expansion stuff, because it would just have been a repackaging of the exact same stuff. For example, if you buy the 1st edition Realm of Sorcery book, the magic rules in your 1st edition rulebook are obsolete. They have been overridden, and are completely unusable with the new magic system. Errata'd action cards might be considered obsolete (and the new upcoming releases have nothing to do with that). If you invest in a new edition with a completely different set of rules, all the rules from your older editions are obsolete.

But we're not talking about a new edition here. This is the exact same game presented in a different format.