HI

I just read Winds of Magic - and the Mutation book. 30 Pages without rules just fluff. That's they way RPG products should be. Nobody needs to know how many dices of this or that should be rolled, but how to became a wizard - how are the colluges to each other. Or What to the common people think about mutants.

Thanks

WK

W1nterKn1ght said:

Not to rain on your parade, but the second edition "Realms of Sorcery" where even better. try 250 pages of fun and fluff, (although 1/3 of the book contained rules). I think FFG still have a way to go, but they are getting there eventually.

Still I am glad you like the product. In away I did so too, but I suffer from the 2nd edition handicap. I compare everything FFG do with 2nd e. Like I said its a real handicap.

btw: cool nickname.

It's true. 3rd edition books are a lot thinner than in previous editions. Yesterday I browsed a bit through Sigmar's Heirs. Amazing just how much stuff is in there.

Previous editions were more writers' games than this one. Or maybe not. The rate at which products are released for 3e is pretty high. So you get thinner books, but more of them.

After the Adventurer's Kit, I'll be getting Winds of Magic. I don't have the crux of having read the past editions or owned them, so I should be good. I may keep an eye out though for some older books as fluff

It seems some people are off on math here.

Previous editions had 250 pages combined. But 1/3 of those are rules which were covered (revised and in my opinion made better) by putting them on the inch and and a half stack of action cards, the class sheets and the talent cards. So instead of having 1 book with 250 pages of combined - you get 2 100 page books, and the rules on cards.

The other upshot is writing quality. FFG may not put out the volume necessarily, but their writers are definitely a notch above the usual offering. Most of their books are a pleasure to read, and don't suffer from the vicious editing and grammatical problems that crop up in the average RPG text.

I couldn't get a 2nd ed WFR game off the ground, much less convince people to slog through the books. I have people clawing to get multiple 3rd ed games started after the demo's I ran.

Overall, no complaints here. WoM was a great box for the value, and I'm only disappointed I didn't pick up a copy of Signs of Faith from Gencon as its release date is up in the air currently.

This Quote have been edited

shinma said:

true about the cards weighting in. And I agree that WoM is worth every penny. But in fluff value the second edition is still better. it contains more non-rule information about the colleges of magic, practice of Magic, and almost everything that might be of interest for a GM how to handle magic in the Old World.

on another thread we had some discussion about the practice of magic in the Empire and most of the relevant information found there is from RoS not WoD. here`s a link Wizards in the Empire

Good Gaming

Shinma:

I don't own WOM yet, but does it really include rules for hedge wizards & warlocks (plus rules for hedge magic that expand the range of such spell casters), 4 runesmith classes, rules for runic equipment creation(with 33 runes), 120 new collage spells,(keeping in mind the basic spells for all of the collages where in the core, not just bright, gray and celestial), 6 Rituals +rules for creating your own, arcane marks, expanded tzeentch's curse, Familiar rules, potion creation and magic item creation (with 15 pre-made potions, 24 magic items, and rules to make more of your own.) ?

zombieneighbours said:

No. you got your facts mixed. Winds of Magic contain no rules for hedge magic or runemagic. it contain 97 action cards (mostly spells), 3 beastform cards, 5 location cards, 5 item cards, 6 miscard cards, 11 talent cards, 10 new careers, 20 mutation cards, 6 insanity cards, 3 Mark of Tzeentch cards, 31 NPC and enemy standups, 36 corruption tokens.

hmm maybe you meant Realms of Sorcery? the magic supplement for wfrp 2nd edition.

in that case yup you got your facts straight.

sorry about that.

Sorry for not being more clear. Shinma made the claim thats 1/3 Realms of Socery was rules material that was also covered in WoM. I responded by listing the Rules content from Realms, and asking if WoM really covers all of that material. My working may however have been confusing.

zombieneighbours said:

LOL

No my head was confusing, I read it late at night. Now in the light of day, your post makes perfect sense. Its my erratic mind at work here.

anyway it was funny...and you make a good point.

Still it can be difficult to compare between the two, since in a sense Winds of Magic are yet not complete. We still lack rank 4 and 5 spells. And rune magic will be covered in the Black Fire pass. But arguing that WoD is better than SoR, well that is just bad taste.

I really didn't want get into edition war stuff, but really, claiming WoM contains anywhere nears as much content as RoS, is spurrious at best, and RoS certainly contains a truely awesome amount of Setting material. Ideally, i would suggest picking up RoS(2 ed) for the setting material, even if your a 3rd Edition player, just like i would advice that anyones second purchase for 3rd ed should always be Sigmar's Heirs for second edition, because it functions as the setting book that the core box so desperately lacks.

All that said, i will hopefully be picking up a copy of WoM soon, though to be honest, if needs to be a LOT better than the storyteller's kit was, else i might well not be purchasing more 3ed material, that said, i think the risk of that is pretty low.

zombieneighbours said:

I'll try this point by point.

* hedge magic: This is a minor and inconsequential part of the magic system of WFR (yes, I can ward off rain yay. oh I can make something glow, double yay). The rules for this I believe were announced for the winter edition of 'Witches Song'. As for warlocks...

* Tons of dark magic spells, tons of Tzeench cultist powers (including flavor, stats, mutations) - but I'll get to that in a second.

*4 runesmith classes: Already announced for blackfire pass. This focuses on the empire colleges, and magical threats via Tzeench (the Liber Mutatis). So no, not there, looking forward to more in depth rules than 2nd ed in Jan, again not in this set.

*120 new college spells: Yep, got that. Tons of new spells of 3 separate tiers for EVERY school. Many of which blow the 2nd edition ones away in terms of redesign and clever new elements. (See the Amethyst school spirit summoning one for example).

* Rituals? Yep got that.

* Arcane marks - Are you talking about taint and or mutations? Because it has that in spades.

* Expanded Tzeentch's curse? Yep, got that.

* Familiar rules - Not that I saw, but I haven't finished reading the book. I really WOULD like to see more 'vicious little dog' like cards

* Alchemy and Item creation - see Gold Order. Yes on some items, not that many.

In Addition you get:

LIber Mutatis. THE definitive info dump on Tzeentch in 3E. Includes tons of rules, themes, fluff, info, dozens of monsters, expanded rules on Dhar and Chaos Magic.

Expanded rules Mutations, including how to involve them in your NPCs cultists and monsters.

Expanded rules on Taint and how to handle the taint of magic in greater detail.

A rather well written and prop included adventure that does a really cool time-based sandbox that showcases how the step1-step2-step3 location based adventures can be just bypassed using 3rd ed rules.

I don't have the 2nd ed RoS book, but I will take a peek to see if its in the bargain bin at my FLGS. (Sadly my GM doesn't have 2nd ed stuff and won't read or pursue it at the moment)

This isn't so much a WoD vs RoS contest (as I lack the second to compare directly, so I can't make grandiose claims as to which is 'better' or 'has more info'), which seems to be erroneously what people are assuming I'm talking about. My intent in posting is a few other things:

- A post about the great things in the box set (reference original poster, and what this thread was about), and clarify any questions people might have about stuff contained therein.

- A much more correct Apples to Apples correlation between the editions. For example its pointless to talk about Hedge Magic or Rune Magic in a supplement that is about the Winds of Magic (college and tzeentch), and its also massively erroneous to compare the size of the content without including the cards (which all of the 2nd ed fans seem to be doing).

In reply to ZN - I found WoM to be a great set that adds alot of flavor, options and info to my WFRP3 core. I've also heard some great things about the Adventurer's Kit and am hoping to snag it once the reprint hits the stores. I haven't picked up the GMs kit, and I'm curious what you found lackluster (or lacking in specific) with it?

Shinma makes good points on content of crunch..on the otherhand...

Realms of sorcery was a superior product for it's time. Thick, juicy, and full of content.

Now we've got hyper-refined, encyclopedic entries with the classic FFG "Lack of Useful Examples" approach. I need new, specific examples and Warhammerisms that include NAMES. I know they're going to supposedly address some of this emptiness in the hardbacks..but by Nugle's infected nipple-ring, this current writing, although improving, is still pretty dang boring and empty stuff mostly of very little use to a GM in inspiring campaign ideas.

Anyways, enough of me ragging on the empty words of the current products (sorry if that's hypercritical), Winds of magic glazes over a 3rd of RoS and some of ToC. Blackfire pass will 'glaze over' runemagic and Witches Hollow (or whatever) will 'glaze over' Hedge wizardry.

There is some beauty to the FFG releases: they get to the point. Things that took 25 pages in ToC or RoS only take a paragraph or two in 3e. Now, if they could make the word selection a bit more interesting, perhaps it would be more ground-breaking.

I suspect perhaps too that the presentation of the paragraphs is also at issue. There are no bolded or italicized words and just like the Core set, anything of importance is hidden in empty paragraphs. I just don't feel it's readable. It looks too clean to be able to distinguish important parts of the paragraphs. It's like reading a dictionary and thinking that because all the words are in there in a standardize format that it could easily be put together as a story..nuh'-uh..it don't work that way homey.

Also, I get annoyed when there are no captions under pictures. Follow National Geographic's lead: your pictures are enhanced by explanation. All this great art could use a caption or two. NAMES of people, places, and things in those pictures go a long way towards giving me stuff to use in my games..a lot more than empty paragraphs.

So, to summarize: I need the writing to cater to me as a GM for content and ease of use. They either need more sidebars of specific examples with names or to write more of that stuff into the paragraphs. For example: the dwarfen engineers guild is mentioned in the runemagic portion, but nothing about a leader, location, or anything useful whatsoever other than there's a dwarfen engineers guild. This is a perfect example of the "too clean/too empty." I'd rather have mis-spelled adjectives and skanky, grimey-Warhammery references than empty fluff. The crunch on the otherhand has been excellent.

Ever the critic while still enjoying this stuff,

Jay H

..

shinma said:

I initially limited discussion to comparing RoS and WoM, because you stated that it compared favourably on mechanical grounds, and i disagreed with that statement, but if you really want to bring in other suppliments, I am happy to oblige and do the same. You see, for the list price of the core box alone, I can bring the core book, RoS and Tome of Corruption, by the time you add the ruinous powers cycle and adventures vault, just to keep up with the content of those books I have most of the WFRP 2nd ed line to play with. 2nd Ed was simply better value, at least in terms of volume of content to for your money.

Was it as good? Opinions differ, certainly, if i was a robust game that I could play week in week out for the next decade, without further support, i would choose 2nd core over 3ed core. And i have frankly never had as many problems running a first session of a game as I had with 3ed, and the lay out and writing of the core is terrible, well editied(on the grama/spelling front, but vague, unhelpful and wordy). Ofcause, 2nd ed had huge issues in so far as spelling and gramma went, and 3rd ed has some really awesome innovations.

But onto specific responce.

Hedge magic :

Sorry, but your wrong on this. First of all Hedgemagic more than just one set of petty magic spells. It was also the Witchcraft trait, which allowed the unsanctioned wizard to choose almost any spell in the game, as well as a number of other traits which fiddled with the way the magic system worked. In a single £50ish worth of product (less than the core box alone) A hedge mage character in 2nd ed got three career ranks and 250 spells, not including lesser magic and profane lores, where the number goes up to over three hundred. I suspect that 'witch's song' will struggle to keep up with that.

It is also worth noting that the petty (hedge) magic spells are profoundly useful. Protection from rain is for instance a life saver, literally.

Add to that it wasn't in WoM, so it does contribute to my point that RoS had more content than WoM. oh and we don't have the rules for it yet(they have not even been officially anounced, only hinted at).

Rune magic:

Well it aint here yet, it might be terrible and it isn't in WoM. See point above

New spells: WoM very clearly does not have 160 new spells, it only contains 97 action cards, not all of which are spells by my understanding. Seconded core had more spells than that for player characters in the core book, and added another 160 in RoS. So again, 3rd lags behind on this, undermining your claim.

Rituals:

Now it is entirely possible that i am wrong, but i see nothing to suggest that WoM contains rules for player usuable ritual magic or rules for creation new rituals.

Arcane Marks:

Nope, they are a distinct and seperate element to mutations and the like. They are specific effect that users of the collage spell system aquire. The closest analogy I can think of would be marks of chaos(though much less powerful), but associated with each of the eight winds rather than the powers of chaos.

Miscasts:

I can see some miscast where added, i would need to check to see which supliment added more.

Familiurs:

I would also love to see more small but vicious dog style cats in the game. But yeah, another point where RoS out did WoM.

Items creation: More importantly, rules for making your own unique magic items?

I personally think it is pretty bad form to mix in the treatment of the gods with other rules, it is messy.

On the issue of apples to apples: I am not comparing word counts, I am comparing content to content. We have 260 spells to 97ish spells. Their is a massive like for like content difference.

Rituals? No - WoM does not contain any rituals nor provide the GM a way to craft his own. Which is a shame, because Rituals were one of my favorite aspects about the v2 magic system and I LOVED RoS rules creating new ones.

Arcane Marks? No - no arcane marks in WoM. I am a little ambivalent about this though. I thought they made for nice flavor, but I can't say as I really miss them.

Item Creation - via the Gold order in WoM doesn't hold a candle compared with the item & potion creation of RoS v2.

Wow SoR has 260 spell cards! I didn't know that. That is great I will have to look for that.

What no cards and no bits, I guess I will just have to be happy with WoM which has great bits, nice cards, and a nice adventure.

I guess it is personal preference if you like bits WoM is way better. If you like the old system (I didn't) and lines on a page then SoR is better. It is all personal opinion.

I do agree that the Gamemaster's Kit is the weakest 3rd supplement. WoM is great in my opinion.

Youper: That is fine. And an expression of you personal taste, but your not claiming that one is better than the other, on grounds that don't exactly stand up to scrutany. Would your game benifit from also having a copy of RoS, for background, almost certainly yes. Does it contain mechanics which would have been well suited to inclusion in a magic suppliment? Hell yes.

On the matter of chits: Look, i am glad you like them, so do i, but they are an accessory, and one that is easy to loose and damage. If i am to continue playing WFRP 3rd in the long run, i will need these same rules in a rule book. Losing a card, and losing rules content is a very real concern. Also, why should you or i be subsidised in our us of chits by those who do not wish to play with them? Those people who do not use them are paying considerably more than they otherwise need to, to play wfrp, so that we may play the game with the chits. That is unfair on them.

It is because of the issue of subsidy and the need for book versions of all cards which makes me feel that the Chit only approach was a fundimental mistake.

It looks that most us agree that RoS was by fare better than WoM, because by content WoM was lacking (see Emirikol`s excellent review). And I agree...

but I must stress out that WoM is not yet complete, we still lack 4 and 5 rank spells, familiars and Rituals. Which I suspect will come in another suplement (WoM II).

I do remember that FFG did not indend to simply produce the same 2nd edition materials as converted 3 e products, they would do it differently. (from an interview)

still WoM is a good product by the 3e standard. The way how magic from the different colleges worked differently mechanically was a nice touch I think.

Good gaming

Can we please avoid the whole price comparison subject? That's been done to death already. If you're on a tight budget, 3e is just not a great choice.

I understand what is meant by "mechanical" benefits. It's not about volume of content, it's about how that content works. 3e mechanics do allow you to do stuff easily that would be a lot harder in previous editions. On the other hand, WoM just doesn't come with as much stuff as RoS did. Just like the core set doesn't have as many careers, and 3e has less sheer stuff in various other areas.

This difference in amount of stuff comes down to a fundamental difference in release strategy. One that's been bugging me for some time, but I understand if enough to explain it now: in previous editions, every supplement tried to be the definitive work on that particular subject. A book on Middenheim would tell you absolutely everything about Middenheim. A book on magic would tell you absolutely everything about magic. A book on dwarfs would tell you absolutely everything about dwarfs.

Not so in 3e. Here, each supplement gives you just enough to continue. The core set gets you the basics, and every supplement beyond that gets you a bit more. This leads to weird situations like the Servant career being in the magic supplement. You can make up some fancy justification for it, but the real reason is that there's a limit to how many careers were going to be in the core set, and Servant was just not considered important enough. Its turn comes a bit later, just like the core set would have only limited magic stuff, and more spells and wizard-types would have to come later.

Is it better? Personally I like definitive works. You know where to look. But I understand FFG's approach. It means they don't have to explore a particular topic fully, and neither do they have to postpone everything until later. Would you rather have all careers now or all spells now? FFG gets you a bit of both, but not even close to everything of either.

Lack of definitive works means it's never completely done. What's left to publish after you've published a magic supplement, a priest supplement, a dwarf supplement, an elf supplement, a Border Princes supplement and a career supplement? Not a lot. FFG's approach means the system has more commercial longevity. And yes, that means more long-term drain on our wallets. It means that in two years, FFG can publish another magic supplement, and everybody will buy it. They don't run as much risk of running out of commercially-viable subjects.

And it works well for people who start out with the system and the setting, and want to grow with it. It doesn't work as well for people who want everything now, who want to convert all of their 2e goodness to the new edition as soon as it hits the market, not does it work well for people who get into the system later, and either want everything (which costs a ton) or want to know what they need to get in order to run the campaign they want (because it maybe be all over the place).

I've been waiting to get a reliable game going before buying the Winds of Magic supplement, but I think I'm going to go on ahead and buy it. I'm confident I'll find a group some day!

mcv said:

Great post mcv - although just wanted to point out that the hardcovers (which I highly doubt won't be re-printed every 2-3 years) have all the data till current in them. Meaning they at least have the cards on page. Thus people that join later would have to get the 'latest' hardcover set and work from there. Albeit, that leaves the question of 'bits' and what will be in the vaults - but I suppose only time will tell.

Emirikol said:

Well Jay, you and I have to disagree again on most of your points.

Honestly, the magic is not being "glazed" over unless you are talking the "fluff." And I can't say for sure about that either. WOM did not "glaze" over the fluff in my opinion, it hit it on the head. We roughly have twelve spells. The second ed. magic book had roughly 12 spells per color as well. The "spell tree" was also very strict, with most games seeing beyond level 6.

WOM did a great job of walking you through the life of being a Wizard, from the very early stages. That was its POV and they left the higher levels more mysterious, giving the game-designers, writers, and players freedom to make it up for themselves. If they were to say anyone who uses dark magic is instantly burned at the stake and are searched for by a super-secret panel of hunters, they are stuck with it from this day forward as are gamers. It becomes simply harder to break the rules. Which leads me to my next point:

Will a name really help create the game? Do we really need to know that the picture of a Nurgling is a Nurgling or a Nurgling named Jimbo? Once you begin to codify a genre, you also run a risk of codifying too much. Look at World of Darkness. The line died because it's meta drove it to stagnation. Sure, as a GM you can override that Baron Von Wolf-britches is the chief inquisitor, but at LGS and pick up games (and to a great portion of gamers) they play for the plot/story. If a company codifies the meta, they expect to receive the meta. The stronger the meta is codified the more meta-rules are put into place and become as unbreakable as the core rules of the game. So codification yes can take place, but at the right time, in the right way.

As I have a friend who is an editor at world book, we were talking about page layout, etc. at FFG and the differences between the two beasts. It's easy to codify pictures at an encyclopedia company because those are real things, real places, and are indisputable. In a fantasy world they are not "real" so can be challenged. Though this bad-ass Witch Hunter may inspire some to say he is the leader, for others he may look too weeny or not right to be the leader.

I feel their model and their way of doing things encourages creativity all around, not in just a single direction.

Have you ever heard a picture is worth a thousand words? Can't the picture of some bad-ass witch hunter make you turn around and say, wow, this is the head of the witch-hunters. His scar came from such and such. His bloody hand is after he killed so and so, then fill in the details from there?

As for page layout. A company only has so many pages they can payout for with each supplement based on the projected sales/cost of the future product. While I do agree improvements can definitely be made to improve the layout, overall it is always a trade off between layout and content. I, for one, don't want to lose content to make way for better layout. At times, it would be truly helpful and I believe some content could have been trimmed down to make it work better and clearer, but bold face and italics are not the only way to communicate information. One idea I've always had for manuals is to keep the flat out, content (rules and special rules) in side boxes or to have the paragraph differently colored so a player can quickly and easily find it amongst the background information/rules explanation. For instance, in DND roll a d20 above your base attack + your opponents armor class, would be drawn out from the text. Large, important rules would be side-boxed or side barred (even if needed to be repeated).

Inspiration? Well the modules they have put out, so far are great for that. Sure you may not love it all, but you can definitely cut, rip, tear here. Those are also very codified, with clear-cut images of whose who and what's what. I believe TGS has a whole page with picture dedicated to the Nemesis in that module. Also, I know you rip on the GM Toolkit, but the 12-15 scenes are absolutely fantastic and though I've been gaming for 25 years, helped me figure out many a moment in game when I was in doubt. Also, there campaign section if I recall was well done as was the optional rule section. My only complaint about that supplement is it could have been longer and a bunch of how-to, etc could have been included in the book. Hopefully, the GM Guide will help fix that.

I also don't find their writing flat. Sure, their word choice is not necessarily the most diverse or strongest, but since you sited an Encyclopedia, have you read a new edition recently? Take a look at the Chicago Newspaper called The Red Eye. Fact is, language has dropped significantly in grade-level over the past decade in terms of literate-competency. (I believe 4th grade is now the average). A gaming manual has to be understood by the broadest audience possible. Language is the vehicle to understanding. While I do agree many parts of it can be improved (especially the narrative splash pages), they do a decent job since language must always serve the funciton of communication. Quite frankly, LOL and OMG is more often used these days than words like: excitement, hilarious, dire, ominous, chill, etc. It is not easy to write something, and write something well to hit an audience as diverse as gamers.

commoner said:

This touches on something I recently realized: many big settings seem to be more fun in their early days than a few decades later. I'm noticing this with WFRP, but also for example with Traveller. In early days, everything is still open and free, ideas float around, and there's room for really awesome new ideas to be introduced. I still remember when Nurglings were introduced, for example. In TEW, Morrslieb is creepy and new, and the twin-tailed comet is a mysterious omen. Nowadays, Morrslieb is cliche and the twin-tailed comet is stamped all over the place. Everybody seems to know what it all means. The awesome new cool mysterious ideas have become codified, regular and mundane.

commoner said:

I get what you're saying. FFG is doing their best to steer clear of codifying even more. They are trying to focus on the areas of the setting that are still open, mysterious and unknown. But at the same time, WFB has cast so much of the setting in stone, that it's impossible for FFG to undo all that damage without kicking out all the WFB stuff completely (and I suspect they're contractually bound to stick to WFB canon). They do try to reinterpret it in a few places, and they do try to keep their own stuff open to interpretation wherever possible, and that really is an impressive job. But the setting still lacks the vibrancy and openness that it had in the days of the 1st edition.

commoner said:

I agree. This would have made the rules a lot more accessible. In fact, I'm doing the same thing in an article I'm writing for Liber Fanatica. Meandering prose describing my reasoning until I get to a rule, and then I repeat that rule in a box, to make it stand out.

mcv said:

The problem is that Warhammer's icons have been frozen in creative stasis by GW and they're not allowed to evolve. Nurglings are only little poop gremlins that you chop down with a sword. Morrslieb is a Chaos moon that portends evil, period. Twin-tailed comets are righteous signs of Sigmar. However, if Nurglings were also able to possess small children, or if Morrslieb could sometimes be considered a good omen, or if twin-tailed comets held an entirely different meaning for Elves, the setting would become more versatile for roleplaying. It's up to the fan community to inject vitality and diversity into the Warhammer roleplay setting because GW's primary concern is to promote a strong brand identity for the wargame.