To start, I just want everyone to know this isn't a flame post against WHFRP or an attempt at trolling. Its just some thoughts I had during our most recent session, and its only our second (So about 18ish hours worth of play time).

To me, Warhammer Fantasy is strongly reminding me of my Sea of Blood experience. When Sea of Blood was first revealed, I was very impressed by the concept. Cool pirate ships, an expanded campaign rule set. It sounded like it had everything. Even the first sessions or two, which were a little bumpy, were still a lot of fun. However, after playing it for awhile and really coming to understand the mechanics, the game system began to fall apart. There were too many loopholes and unexplained situations. As long as the playgroup was willing to gloss over the holes in the mechanics, everything was great, but as we started really examining things, researching on the forums, ect. it became apparent that the game itself wasnt well crafted (In our opinions. Please dont take offense if you love Sea of Blood).

We are running into the same problem with Warhammer Fantasy. We just made it through the introduction adventure included with the base set. The story itself was great. As long as we were role playing, everything worked smoothly. HOWEVER, when we started applying the game mechanics, things just dont seem to work well. Story mode and encounter mode dont mesh well. So much of the rules, such as how story mode functions, seems to have been glossed over. Tidbits of rules are scattered EVERYWHERE. There are a lot of great ideas in the game, but once you start applying the mechanics they seem to not really work well. NPCs suffer a damage instead of a stress/fatigue? Sounds simple.. except that really sucks the flavor out of a lot of action cards and critical hit effects that cause them. Minions get one pool of hit points and move together? Sounds good.. but five beastmen do the same amount of damage as one? Not to mention all the extra points the GM needs to track. We play with five players. Once you start scaling the combats up, things really get bogged down. Tracking the extra dice pools each monsters get, all the wounds, conditions, ect. It gets out of control.

It could be that we are playing the game wrong. We are self taught, so there would be no way to really know. However, we as a group have played MANY RPG systems and never had this many problems.

Anyone else becoming disenchanted with the new system, feel that things will get better with the new hardcover rulebooks, or have any other insight?

I am sorry that you aren't enjoying the game. It sounds like you are expecting the game to be more rigid than it is.

Story mode and encounter mode dont mesh well.

What isn't working for you about them? Story mode is the broad gameplay, while encounter mode is the "zoom" into combat.

Tidbits of rules are scattered EVERYWHERE.

Agreed. FFG has also acknowledged that they are a bit roughly done, and have planned for reorganized rulebooks with the upcoming hardcovers.

NPCs suffer a damage instead of a stress/fatigue?

This simplifies things so that there is less to keep track of. Of course, like anything, the GM can do it differently, especially for main NPCs.

Sounds simple.. except that really sucks the flavor out of a lot of action cards and critical hit effects that cause them.

<shrug> It allows those cards to do additional wounds, which isn't a bad thing. However, the game is meant/designed to encourage roleplaying and GM control, so if you want the effects to apply to an NPC, then do so.

Minions get one pool of hit points and move together? Sounds good.. but five beastmen do the same amount of damage as one?

Henchmen actually do more damage, in general, because they have more dice and thus more chances of rolling more successes and boons. They do more damage, but die a alot faster. Honestly, I've never used henchmen though. They're good to let the players mow down hordes of enemies, but individual enemies provide a bit more of a challenge.

Once you start scaling the combats up, things really get bogged down. Tracking the extra dice pools each monsters get, all the wounds, conditions, ect. It gets out of control.

Really? I've never run more than 4 players at one time, but I've never had an issue keeping track of NPCs wound cards, conditions, etc. even running multiple monsters. I've make separate piles/area on my GM area for each of the NPCs, and I've got tokens that keep track of recharges. It's no harder, IMO, than keeping track of multiple NPCs in any other RPG. Of course, a GM could always use pencil & paper if they'd rather or found it easier to handle. Keep in mind that the basic method of the rules is that all enemies of the same type have a single dice pool and have a single set of recharge of the action cards (for simplicity in record keeping), so really the only things a GM needs to keep track separately, unless they want more of a challenge, is wounds and conditions.

Anyway, feel free to ask for suggestions on GMing or any issues running a game. I'm positive many people will offer help and ideas to resolve any issues/difficulties you're running into.

It looks like your issues break down into these main areas...

1. rule book is poorly organised

2. stress/fatigue = damage for NPCs

3. Henchman mechanics

4. Too much tracking during combat

In answer to your first point, this has been a point of issue for many people (but not everyone). The hard back books, i think, are in partial response to that issue from the community; whether they do help or not we will have to wait and see. Having said that though, there are actually not that many rules in the book that the group needs to understand, certainly less than some other systems out there. There are numerous crib and cheat sheets available from various forum users to help with this and I would reccomend getting some of them if you haven't already, once you have read those, use the rules forum to post specific questions about something you don't understand and rest assured someone will normally respond promptly.

I'll handle 2 and 3 at the same time..

FFG have implemented (or at least tried to) simple mechanics that allow the GM to handle combats with lots of NPCs relatively easily. The NPC mechanics are simplified compared to PC, but i think that is intentional. The PCs should be the stars and so the majority of the mechanics should revolve around them. in the GMs toolkit they do introduce nemesis characters who are dealt fatigue and stress in the same way as PCS, but in the main the PCs should figure that fatigue/stress is the equivalent of a wound for NPCs and then use that information accordingly when deciding tactics.

The hench men rules are again a GM tool to make combats simpler, if you don't like them, don't use them. They are there though to aid battles and being attacked by lots of henchmen can actually be a trickier combat for a PC than with one of two regular NPCs. To explain the difference in damage remember that henchmen are supposed to represent the poorly trained, ill disciplined, smaller members of the NPC group. Consequently, they work as a group, and probably land less telling blows per round than a properly trained NPC. This is why the damage levels are comparable for a group of henchmen vs. a single trained regular.

I'm not sure what you are tracking but I do struggle to see why you think there is more tracking to do than any other of the many RPGs you have played? All systems have a wound mechanic (and again for NPCs in this system, i think wound tracking is relatively simple), admittedly, there are lots of tokens offered up as a way of tracking this stuff, but if you don't like that, do what lots of other people are doing and just write the stuff down. The dice pool system is quite different and does take a little getting your head round, but once you do get your head round it, it becomes very very natural, perhaps for point 4 it is just a case of giving it some time, unless you have any specific issues, in which case list them and the rest of us might be able to offer so advice on how to resolve those specific problems?

I'll admit, I am fully behind this system and think it is a real breath of fresh air into the industry, and our group are more than happy to go with the flow and simply go with our best judgement when something doesn't totally make sense, just to keep the game moving rather than getting bogged down in rules discussions. I think crib sheets for your group will really help, and it could just be a case of giving it some time, but i do think you need to get into the zone a bit with WFRP V3 and in some cases forget what you have learned from previous systems.

hope this helps, a bit

I would also like to avoid henchmen rules, but it's been hard if not deadly for the PCs so far. I play mostly published adventures, and they use Henchmen rule, so I have to substitute the henchmen groups with normal adversaries, but I always mess up the numbers and the encounter ends up being a lot more harder. Is there a simple formula? 3 henchmen = 1 normal enemy?

I am also struggling with social encounters. They seem forced. For instance in TGS the social encount in part 1 had my players arching an eyebrow. They wondered if this was necessary. And it also broke their immersion. They asked me, what was so important about this social encounter that required rolling dice?

I understand your issues

But i do feel the advantage of the hardback books will be you better tailor the game to your players.

Now there is a lot about warhammer i love especially in this new version however i love the fact that i will be able to make the game in my groups image...

So stick with it.

The forums are a good place to get suggestions to problems so i have found...

Hope that helps...

Our group will be sticking with it for awhile. Weve already spent a good deal of money on the RPG and will at least try and make it through all the published adventures that we have. The examples I gave above were only some of the issues we were having.

For example, when i said story mode and encounter mode doesnt mesh.. I understand the concept of story mode, but the mechanics dont seem to be expalined at all. I know its not just our group, because there are several posts in the rule forums regarding this. How do cards recharge in story mode? How do aggresion trackers move? How do you handle the gaining/recovery of stress/fatigue? A lot of people see these situations as "GM Decides" things, and that great for a group who likes "flexible" rules. To me, it doesnt feel flexible though. It feels undefined.

In my eye, the game is trying to appeal to epople who like mechanics. Agression trackers, patry tension trackers, progress trackers, cards for every action, tokens, tokens, tokens, and then more tokens. Tokens for recharge, tokens, for channeling magic, stress, fatigue, corruption. Dont get me wrong, I love all the cards and tokens and I think its what FFG is famous for. But at face value, all these tidbits suggest that the game is supposed to be gimick heavy. And in combat situations, the mechanics work fairly well. They just become weird in story mode and roleplaying. Real example: Call of the Wild. I play a hunter. We cant figure out how this card works in story mode. Apparently, from a RAW stand point, I can have it activated at ALL times. Assess the situation. Free fatigue/stress removal in story mode. Our group decided not to use it that way, but RAW suggests you can. There are a lot of examples like that. It feels like the game was almost created from a combat game, and not fully fleshed out as they added RPG elements.

Tracking. Let me give you the situation we had with it kind of going out of control. Remember, we are playing with 5 people so the encounter is bigger then normal. 4 tokens representing 5 ungor each. 2 tokens representing 3 gor each and one token that is a wargor. None of these are minions. Now, when a group of Ungor takes an extra manuever, which they did because they were trying to scale a wall, that creates five damage stacks. As they attack, its diffcult to track who used their special "dice pool" (I dont know what its called. The extra pool of dice monsters can access to add more dice to their pool). As you add conditions on top of that, powers that are recharging at different rates due to other effects and delayed results, ect, it gets really messy. Some of you mentioned that this isnt any better then any other RPG, but for some reason it seems to be. Maybe, in D&D things start out a little more organized because everything is snapped into its proper place on a grid. Monsters scale up better to fight larger groups, so you can help reduce your book keeping, minions are far more streamlined and balanced. In the World of Darkness games, the rule system embrasses the polar opposite. Positioning is weaved into story telling, there are no action cards, and monsters are very easy to track. Even things like damage tracking are more complex in WHFRP. Sure, you can get out a little peice of people and start tracking wounds that way, but thats not how the game was designed. Thats a house rule. House rules and coming up with your own methods for keeping combat cleaner is cool and all, but the fact is if it has to be changed to work better, then the original design is flawed.

I know FFG has mentioned the problems with rule orginizations, so this is the last time Ill mention it. Im glad some of you can find the rules easily in the books, but we have had some serious game stalling (Mainly because we want to make sure we get the rules right the first time). Two examples pop into mind. First, the wizard wanted to know how equilibrium worked when he was below his will power. Seemed like a very common question and something that should be easy to find. We spent almost a half hour digging through like 4 different rulebooks trying to find it. The game grinded to a halt... and in the end? Its not even in there. I ended up finding out that it was added to the FAQ. Last night, we couldnt find out how exhausted cards recharged. That was in the rulebook, but "exhaust" isnt in the glossary and we just couldnt find it. We ended up not being able to unexhaust cards an entire session.

Let me end this by saying I dont think the game is horrible or unplayable. Maybe my expectations were a little too high or Im being a little too picky with things. Personally, I do feel the game needs to be polished up and some more work needs to be done on some of the less defined aspects. I know.. as a gaming group we can come up with our own rules and interpretations. Just remember though, the staff at FFG get PAID to write these rules for us and we pay for them. How would you feel if you bought a new car, only to find out the tires were in the trunk and you had to attatch them yourself? ;-)

Dietcokeofevil said:

If you need to track stance, or fatigue and stress and things like that, you should think about being in encounter mode. Story mode is more undefined because it's more about the story than the stats. I'd suggest you just go with it, as best you can, and think of it as undefined and free form. Use Actions, etc, for checks but don't sweat the details, and use common sense where you can, and see how that feels. If that isn't working for a particular situation then those are all signs that you should really be in encounter mode.

PS I'd be more upset if there wasn't a tire in the trunk of my car, when I bought it

I see the critiques you're giving/issues you're having. Not feeling disappointment myself, still having fun and expecting to keep on.

re Stress/Fatigue = wounds, I'm right there with that being problematic though I see the design intent and appreciate it.

I use the "Fatigue blows Aggression out of the Monster Budget and Stress blows Cunning, both defaulting to Expertise" approach and with a "big mook" go "almost Nemesis" rules as I allow them to recover A & C at least with double boons (don't bother tracking that for bunch of zombies). I only go to "they cause wounds" if all that is gone (and the monsters are starting to get weaker, less interesting then anyway, time for them to fall).

I've not found henchmen problematic. I like the narrative concept of "groups of unworthy foes that go down fast and don't require tracking x-many mooks" with the risk of "but when they do mob you that whack of extra white dice can make the effect nasty". I have found this worked best with special zombie attacks etc. I suspect the math of them may get punitive at the 5 PC level (most of my sessions have 5, some have 4 or 3 depending on turnout) as "henchmen # = PC #" means 4 white dice for a fresh group - hard on the PC targeted. I'm not really sure about that though.

I agree that Story - Encounter mode and how Story interacts with things that seem all written up assuming "it's always encounter mode" can really go off the rails. It's one of those "different tables will take it in different directions with different results things". I find, for example, that stress/fatigue in Story Mode are irrelevant unless "there's an encounter in the offing before refresh cycle hits" (in which case a couple of stress and fatigue here and there from the afternoon's events do matter when zombies kick in the door before resting).

I actually had my first "3 player" session last week and perhaps it wasn't accidental that it flowed very smoothly.

Rob

I guess I'm very understanding abou any rules organization issues, as well as how we deal with all this stuff FFG has brought us. This edition has changed the way we used to deal with RPG and implemented many things. Those new things could be seen in many different ways, and that is the explanation, I think, to why a lot of RPG players has seen the news about 3e and thought it was like a D&D4 mixed with a board game; at the same time, there were a lot of RPG players listening carefully every time one of the announcements used the word "story" and hoping we would get a game that got the Warhammer tradition of being story-focused to a new level.

Being a 2ed enthusiast, I started in the first group and later changed to the second. As my boxes arrived and I started playing, at fisrt I got upset with all the tokens we were given, thinking they were needing too much attention. Right now my feelings have changed and I'm starting to meddle well all the new mechanics with the storytelling.

But I agree that the way the books present the mechanics don't help us dealing with them. I think FFG acknowledges that. I expect the hardbacks to be a great evolution in game organization. I also expect they are having A LOT of work organizing all the mechanics and the text of the original books to a text that serves as easier reference and is easier to understand.

All of that being said, I'm not having a lot of trouble with the rules because I have spend a lot of time preparing to experience this game. The first time I've tried was months before the second, and that because the first group didn't work out as a group (different disponibilities) and because I got a lot of work. So I already had some impression of the game, and I also had a strong feeling of wanting it to work. To tell you the truth, it was because of this forum that I got excited about the game again, seeing a good dal of people that seemed to have the same interested in RPG that I have (to experience a good story) achieving that with 3ed.

So what me and my group did: we didn't started with the adventures per se. We started playtesting, using the characters we would use for the campaign as they were moving on foot from Altdorf to Auerswald. With the playtest, we saw how we weren't being able to translate the explanations of the rulebook into actual gameplay. So I invested more time readnig the FAQ and more forum threads. And I understood I had to organize better.

I'm not good in organizing things in general, you know. And it's been a great experience to have to do that for this game. I'm ok in catching rules, so the playtests we ran helped me get the feeling to where to look (always start with the FAQ). Also, I understood right now we don't have a book that works as last time reference. I hope that'll change with the hardbacks. So you'll need time to grasp the rules before being able to experience the game without needing to break the mood searching the book for rules.

The good thing is you can do that in no so much time. As it was already said here, there aren't really so many rules to catch. Much of the game is organically based on GM and players judgment, and that not as a flaw, but as an intention - and one I'm seeing works well when you let go of something we have been investing as RPG players for long, something that involves having specific rules for specific situations. I don't see any problem with specific rules, and I think we will probably start to see more of that in WHFR 3e, but I do like the idea of having a system that works those specifics with flexible rules that you can apply. Like fortune and misfortune dices. That could easily cover almost every situation. On other thread there is a person hoping to see rules for mounted combat in the hardbacks. I don't mind having them, but I think we already have rules for every type of combat, if we can see the rules we already have as that.

Regarding social encounters, IMO that is the biggest flaw of the rulebook. Is such a great concept, but it differs from the way we usually experience RPG. So FFG could have spend on chapter on it. And to help us use it without necessarily making a social encounter as a combat one, with rolls translating almost every action.

As for story mode... I didn't experience much difficulty. If you are in story mode, keeping track of time is not a real issue. If it is, so you are in encounter mode (possibly social encounter). Encounter mode doesn't necessarily means that a turn is just a few seconds. You could play a whole week of game in encounter mode, every day being a round. For that type of encounter, you don't need to roll initiative if you don't want to - or don't think the order of actions matter. A card would need the same amount of turns to recharge - doing a Formal Diplomacy in an encounter that is measured in days means preparing a lot to do it. If you don't think that recharge rate would apply, you could take some tokens from it, state that an action could be made every day, or abolish the recharge rates for that encounter. You could also allow more than one roll for every turn, dealing with every thing a given PC wants to do that day generically.

But if you are in story mode, tracking time is not an issue. So you don't have to worry about recharge tokens. As for stress and fatigue, they don't regenerate instantly. There are specific things that makes stress and fatigue regenerate and they can be translated to: everytime a character has the opportunity to slow down, calm down, catch his breath. Just deal with it organically. If a player describes his character entering a pub and ordering some ale, take some stress and fatigue from him.

Ok, there is another great flaw that I find ni the rulebook. I think maybe this is the point why it gets so hard to understand this new mechanics. I don't think we have a great emphasis on what every rule concept means as a concept. What exactly is a Rally Step? A situation in the middle of some action (social or combative) when every character can breathe and observe what is going on. So every situation like that should count as a Rally Step, and you don't have to be making statements about entering a Rally Step. All this you can find written in the rulebook, but I think is not as enphatic as it could. If you grasp the concept of every rule, you could apply it as a concept, not making statements about the rules. Rally Steps occur often in story mode, so often that you forget about them as Rally Steps. Every time a character takes a breath, you could simply remove one stress and one fatigue from his sheet. Or you could let the player do it freely, if you agree before that you are working together for the story, not trying to get the best of it for character's side. And, as GM, you could remind everyone what fatigue and stress are: they are not numbers on a sheet, but ways to mechanically measure how much stressed and fatigued every character is. You don't really need any rule to giveor take stress and fatigue from a sheet if you understand them as that. Every Action that states a character gains fatigue from some result is simply saying it is a tiresome action. If you think in a given situation it is not, don't give a fatigue to a character just because it says so.

That is what I find so innovative in 3e: to remind us that every mechanic in an RPG should have a clear meaning in the storytelling. It is like what the New Circus movement was for circus. I think that should a be a clearer focus in rules explanation.

On a side note, having been a In Nomine player, I guess I just got used to run a rulebook back and forth looking for explanations. As I was on the players side in my group at the time, I always carried my copy of the book and helped everyone as rules librarian, trying to accelerate any issue and preventing mood breaking. :]

Dietcokeofevil said:

Well, if none of the beatsmen described were hechmen (minions?), the damage the 5 Ungor would take as the fatigue for an extra maneuvre would mean 1 damage each. They hurt their hands, or the muscular effort wounds them a little.

If they were a group of Henchmen, the 5 damage combined they would get would apply to the same pool. That would mean that probably one of them would die just by taking an extra maneuvre. But think of it: they are a poorly trained mob in a medieval-like combat. Casualties by movement happened all the time. One of the Ungors cuold have fallen if the wal and broken his neck. The others wouldn't be affected individually, but as they are working together, their strenght in combat would diminsh.

As for Agression / Cunning / Expertise, they are shared by the same type of creatures even if they are not Henchmen. You don't have to keep track of who is using those pools, you just have to subtract one each time they are used. You would need three pools set for a combat in which there are 3 types of creatures. Personally, I prefer to write things, but using tokens doesn't seems a bad idea if you put them above some paper where you've written what they are for. That's the type of organization I've never had and I'm gladly starting to adopt.

Also, about a group of Henchmen making just one hit, remember that one roll doesn't mean one swing of a sword. The concept of one round action meaning a lot of movements is with WHFR since... I know about 2ed, but maybe since 1ed? That being said, you could imagine a group of Henchmen attacking in a not so oriented fashion, and one hits with a puch, the other just thrusts his arms trying to hit his opponents face but making avoiding the third's blow an impossibility.

I was disenchanted before I got the hang of the rules. The sh*tty rulebook writing is pretty inconsequential once you actually learn the rules. Plus, there is UNIVERSAL HEAD'S RULE SUMMARY, which blows the rulebook out of the water (the full version does at least): www.sweetwatercakery.com/_jesse/WFRP3/WFRP3%20Resources/WFRP3/WFRP3%20Rules%20Summary%20-%20Universal%20Head%201.pdf (I getirritated everytime I have to write/highlight buried passages of what should be easy-to-find rules in my rulebook..but the upcoming hardbacks are supposed to solve this problem..but if it's the same design..ugh).

Also, coming from a D&D background where you pretty much have your hand held in terms of rules, it was a switch for me to say "what? no chart defining how many plusses for each 5' of elevation, pronation, or because I have a rock in my shoe?" It's hard to get out of that mindset..but it takes you back to roleplaying and determining more with the dice than anything else. It's definitely better as a GM (opposed to a game system that tells ME what I did..like D&D 4e).

This is much more of a ROLEPLAYING game than a CRUNCH-HEAVY game. It's not for people that need heavy definitions for everything...but yes, the rules are good, but the rulebook is a total piece of crap. (rant on: everything from no bolded text, equipment readability, no horses for sale, rules scattered hither and fro).

I enjoy this game however as much as I ever did with WFRP2..and much more than the ruleset for D&D 4e's Rube Goldberg machine or magic-item-crutch-D&D3e/Pathfinder.

Make the best of it man!

jh

plutonick said:

We've been discussing this in the "Career Summary in Actual Play" thread, where the conclusions are thus:

1. Just like combats: if a social encounter doesn't need a dice roll, why bother roleplaying it? (the same can be said for combats where the GM just say's, "you ran into some snotlings on the road but you're so dang powerful that i'm not going to bother rolling for it.")

2. Just like combats: if you're not saying to players "Ok, go ahead and make a roll" you're really doing a disservice to players who aren't playing combat-oriented characters

3. Otherwise, you just get terrrible, terrible metagaming where the player with the biggest mouth runs the entire game, does all the NPC interactions and then everyone else just min-maxes their combat options. What was the point of having a high fellowship again?

jh

It`s like Emirikol said (just in other words)

the WFRP system doesn`t instruct you or tell you what to do, it guides you- albeit sometimes poorly,- towards your own decision making. And as Emirikol said, it takes time to get used too. It was that for me, and at a time I wasn`t sure if this was a game I wanted to play. But than we started on The Gathering storm, or more importantly we began in earnest to explore the rules. And game starts to look better and better for each session.

I gave up having a totalitarian approach to rules, so we began to colleborate as a group on the rules. And the game truly opened up. Take condition cards for instance, how often do you use them? me? not before now, it takes GM several sessions of play to mastering the use of condition cards. But when you do, you will be rewarded. Take a look on page 21 of ToA, "Random Environmental Damage & Effects". this is a hidden treasure. ever used that rule before? will you be using it from now? I bet you will.

on the subject of "falling short of expectations" not for me. WFRP 3 might have come out with a tough shell, but once you pry past that, you will find its pearl.

Find its pearl!

good gaming.
btw Emirikol, lovely poster

I wont offend anyone but...

Henchmen rules are unnecessary. I dont't use them and my players and me (as GM) are happy with it!
The rest of the rules I don't like, I change. If rules are missing in my opinion, I create them, the same with action cards.

So if you don't like some rules or parts of WH3 just change it. Ok, it's a bit work, but just play it and tweak and change the things you don't want.

Greetings...

DC,

First off - welcome to the WFRP forums! Second, very sorry to hear you're having some troubles with the game. I, much like yourself, have only recently started playing. So let me try to address a few of the issues that you've brought up.

In terms of game design, I'm afraid I'll have to disagree. This game enhances and drives storytelling and narrative flow - which is something that I prize greatly in a game. As I read more and more of the box sets, information, setting material etc. I only get more filled with ideas and stories I want to explore. In that regard it has gone 'above and beyond' expectations.

Your major problem seems to be with the rules, and the complexity of tracking - and I have to tell you, having run some wild demos and now playing myself, I can't really disagree on a few of your points. Let me tell you how I address it without house ruling if you will.

What you're encountering is what I term an old-form vs new-form game. WFRP really harkens back to the older days of gaming, when rules weren't so 'crunchy' in terms of detail and positioning. In DnD many scenarios that you bring up are addressed, but many are not. Allow me to elucidate: Say I have a power that allows me to teleport away from an enemy. We stand on the edge of a big pit. I leave and come back with a rat in a bag. I toss it on the ground, poke it with a stick a few times till it tries to bite me, then teleport away from it over the pit. The rat is attacking me, I view it as an enemy, according to the rules I can do this. But this is drastically against the spirit of the story and the game, and not only should I be ashamed but clearly the GM should intercede to say 'no this is not appropriate'. In my example here, I would be trying to break the spirit of the game, by quoting the letter of the game (RAW) instead of a power's intended purpose.

Stress and Fatigue are supposed to be very temporary issues. You lose your toughness in stress and your will in fatigue at the end of every encounter, as well as after a long night's sleep. Recharge in Story Mode is generally swept aside. Its assumed that most of your relevant abilities are applicable. If you are supposed to wonder how many times you can use something, its probably best to jump back into encounter mode. 'Assess the Situation' is meant as taking quarter. You take a second to catch your breath mid-fight, focusing on keeping an eye out for attacks incoming. Is it applicable to be used while walking down the street? Probably not. What if you and an ally 'stage' a fight so you can use it? The universal boon rule lets you recover a stress/fatigue on 2 boons. Why don't you just do 0d athletics checks to see if you can skip down the street? Again, its mechanically feasible, but so is carrying around an angry rat so you can teleport every 5 minutes (short rest) in 4e. Try to just use your judgement about the spirit of the game, and don't worry as much about breaking the rules by using RAW.

Theoretically Jay and crew could have written two systems of recharges and stress/fatigue that correspond to Story Mode and Encounter Mode, where one is converted to the other at the end of Encounter mode - but this adds severe levels of complexity to rules people already struggle with. I disagree that this is a 'battle' game with an RP component tacked on. There are more RP (non-combat) cards, abilities and methods of system/encounter design in here than I have seen in most of the more 'popular' systems on the market. Certainly the combat section of the main text is there, but the Tome of Adventure with their design and layout of acts and suggestions clearly focuses on the less crunchy tactical scenarios.

As for troubles tracking.

I struggled with this for a bit when throwing demos together. You quote WoD as being 'simple' but I disagree. Try putting 20-30 vampires up against a group of 5 and see how long that combat takes (probably the whole weekend) as you flip through sheets, check powers, adjust blood usage, tick off health levels etc. You probably have some non-house rules shorthands. You might all the health level boxes onto an index card and just keep the blood tally above them with some quickie notations for which 'type' of enemy it is so you know what powers they're using any given round (oh this one has celerity and potence so let me tick off blood for celerity and his die pool should X dice on attack). WFRP is not too different. When running an encounter I keep 2 sheets in front of me. One is a page with basic abilities, and one is a page with the monster abilities printed out. Remember that according to RAW the recharges are shared amongst the same critter type. Then I make a pile of tokens (I have some glass counters, or just use a d20 or a d100 (2d10) to indicate ACE values for each 'cluster' of beastmen/goblins etc. I decide beforehand roughly how I'd divide up their die usage (oh this type has 4 aggression 1 expertise. Blow the yellow on the first attack since he might not live long, and use 2 aggression to attack on the charge, and 2 black dice on a defense for the first round) and just pull my tokens as the attacks go, and the defenses do. If you happen to add 2 to one monster or another it evens out in the wash.

Similarly for tracking wounds, I just keep a tally per engagement, and heap all damage on 1 target till it dies, unless the players specify their targets for strategic reasons. Overall this is the WFRP method of making that cheat-sheet index card for speeding things up (and not necessarily a 'house rule').

The only last advice I have for you is to make a quick ruling and write down any rules questions on an index card then look things up later (unless a PC will die from it). It helps the flow of the game, and puts the laborious 'book searching' that interrupts game. If you can't find it after a bit of looking, feel free to ask on the forums. I know I have and there are people here with encyclopedic knowledge of the books who are able to fire off rules pretty quick (plus most folks are friendly and helpful).

So far I've had alot of fun with this game. Maybe that wall you're describing just hasn't happened yet for my group - but I certainly hope that things pick up for you. And if you have any questions ... keep them coming!

Lautrer said:

Henchmen rules are great and though I was reluctant at first, I now use them all the time. All they need to make them more viable is the GM Toolkit option that allows additional successes over the max success line of an action card to deal +1 damage per success. My own house-rule goes one step further stating they can trigger their critical effect multiple times (up to the number of henchmen in a group) based on the number of boons rolled. So if the group armed with swords roll 7 boons and one comet, they deal 3 critical damage if there are 3 or more henchmen in the group, but 2 henchmen would only yield 2 criticals. Then it works absolutely great, allowing the numbers to deal more damage per henchmen group.

It is a very helpful rule to manage fights against a frenzied mob in a town or a large number of enemies (like a large warparty of orcs) where as running each one would simply boil down to tedium. Though typically I would do these fights in Story mode rather than encounter mode, but it has come up now twice that such a scene needed to be played out in an encounter.

Yes, I think WHFRP3 just needs a change in the mindset from other more 'crunchy' RPGs currently on the market (ESPECIALLY vs D&D4.0). I think WHFRP is more concerned with the 'story' whereas D&D4 is more concerned with the 'mechanics'. Both are valid depending on what you are looking for.

I play in a D&D4 campaign (Paragon tier) and I run a WHFRP game of my own. I ran D&D4 for a while, but really just never had fun with it. It was more about dealing with rules disputes and trying to play the 'mobs' tactically than it was about the story IMO. And D&D4 is VERY light on non-combat functions for your characters. Almost every single power/spell/whatever is combat-oriented. WH on the other hand, provides quite a bit for non-combat situations.

Given that, I'm less worried about tracking everything exactly. I have a sheet with boxes for A/C/E dice and I stack tokens by the minis/standups representing the opponents. I pretty much follow the recharge rules for the monsters, but if it fits the story better for something to recharge faster or not to be ready, I just do that instead. I'm less worried about tactically 'balanced' combat and more concerned about advancing the storyline and lemme tell ya, its SOOOO refreshing to have a system like this now.

For fatigue and stress in non-combat situations, again, I sort of just 'wing it'. If the party is doing something stressful or tiring, I just the points on them and those points stay until they fully rest or we enter 'encounter mode' in which case they can be removed normally. In essence, I just use non-combat fatigue/stress as a 'starting point' that the characters have to deal with. For example, if the party is climbing rough mountains, I'll give everyone a Fatigue point. I might require an Athletices check and if they fail, they get another one (or maybe a Stress instead). These points are 'semi-permanent' in that they can't just stop for 5 minutes and get rid of them. If they enter an encounter, they start out Fatigued/Stress and can get rid of those points normally. After the encounter, if they start climbing/hiking again, I that point right back. It's just accepted that if they are doing fatiguing/stressing things, they are going to have that 'tax' added on for the duration of the activity. The same goes for not getting sufficient rest. If a character stays up all night on watch, the next day I give him a 'permanent' fatigue and stress that always renews until he gets some real rest.

Playing this way has greatly encouraged my players to stop worrying about what the RULES are and start thinking just more in terms of what the characters would be doing. I can't tell you how much better that makes things flow than in our D&D4 game where everyone is trying to see how they can utilize the rules/powers/etc to maximize every effect regardless of how 'silly' it seems (see D&D4 'cover' rules for the height of sillyness IMO).

Overally, I'm EXTREMELY pleased with WHFRP. We've only been playing for a few weeks now, but I've already seen the players loosening up from the constraints of D&D4 and starting to enjoy the game for the story, not for the tactical exercise. And I think if WH had many more rules governing all these little bits here and there, we would have fallen into the same trap and played the rules more than the story. So I'm glad a lot of stuff is left kind of vague or up to the GM to interpret!

I did post an entire reply to this issue of Story Mode play as a response to three or four threads addressing the exact same problem, in hopes to start a dialogue on how to deal with this problem.

Honestly, though, I feel that the problem of recharge is simply recharge itself. Since this post is about 3e falling short of our own expectations, I'll go into mine here.

Recharge, the more I used it, fell absolutely short of my expectations of the game itself. So much of the system is about active risk management and how you (as a player) wish various elements of the mechanics to aid a player at a time. They can invest what they want into a check, knowing that they may not have it in the future or things could back-fire in their faces. They can activate their agent talent card for the bonus yellow on one roll, knowing they won't have it for the rest of the night. They can adjust into reckless, hoping for all those glorious successes and double boons, when they risk those banes and blanks. They can go Conservative on a check, knowing their roll may turn yield less successes and may roll a delay. It is all ACTIVE player choice.

Recharge does factor into that. There is a certain Active limitation in it when a player chooses to use Acrobatic Strike this turn, they won't be able to use it next turn. However, the recharge mechanism makes this choice by a passive mechanism. They can't use Double Strike again until x turn roll around. It would be the same as if you couldn't go double reckless again until your double reckless option recharges. This turns recharge into a PASSIVE, forced management rather than an active one (like selecting stance).

Action cards themselves have already some built in limitations. For instance, Accurate shot and Powerful throw allows the player to risk stress/fatigue for bonus damage. Obviously, they can't spam the power or they will go unconscious, mad, or not be able to do maneuvers. In addition, using the card without spending stress or fatigue is also utterly pointless, as it is simply a basic attack with weaker boon effects unless the fatigue/stress was spent. So why then, do they recharge? Does accurate shot really need to not be able to used for another 3 rounds, when you wouldn't want to until unless you had the stress/fatigue to spend? No you wouldn't. The recharge is a redundant, force passivity of the system to stave player choice simply to prevent power-spam, when these cards have a cost to even use them! This passive element eliminates a players active choice of sacrificing fatigue/stress to gain x bonus.

The second mechanism in place is action difficulty. Most cards stage up difficulty for more powerful actions. This is the same as pushing yourself reckless to gain more successes to do more damage. Because if you roll an action card with increased difficulty you are risking failure and lower yield successes and boons and other secondary, bad effects (chaos star results) for the chance to roll increased damage. Where as Basic Attack always delivers a good damage spread and has less risk of failure than a normal attack. A much better alternative would have been to scale up the difficulty of action cards higher, so if you want to double strike, the roll could have been something like 2 purple + 2 black base + character's defense versus a basic attack which is one purple + defense. Now you are risking failure and less successes, for the potential chance to do all that increased effects from the double strike mode. This method would "feel" and play exactly the same as the risk management of stance and fatigue/stress expenditure for beneficial effects. Under this umbrella, card-spam is prevented then by ACTIVE player choice, not by artificial, passive mechanisms. Because players would see in certain circumstances this action card is better than others. They would also ask themselves, though a roll may fail, is it worth what I could gain from trying to do it? This mechanism I am talking about is actually already in place on a number of cards and could have been pushed further in the mechanic to become the way the mechanic works. Instead, the difficulty is pulled back and the risk management aspect of the card becomes the passive control of card recharge.

The third mechanism in place is success trees or failure trees or condition trees. Again, it is a mechanism in place already that is hampered by card recharge. There are some actions that are triggered if a condition is met (such as Judgement of Vengeance and it's need to have a Critical Wound/Insanity). This could have been pushed forward into a mechanism that rewards you the more successful you are. How could this have played out? Lets say Shield Slam could have only been activated after a successful block action? That means you must first succeed to block, which opens up new avenues of attack, new options for the characters. There is a built in reward for each success you make, up until you reach the top of the tree. So several actions could have been designed to activate after other cards were successful and only then. So Block could lead to shield slam which could lead to an even better version of the card. This rewards players in the risks they choose to continue to climb up the tree to get a better and better effect. It also reflects the power by which the character can control a situation. The cards make this interface easy to manage because each one operates independently with its own special rules (as they do now) when and how they are used. It also makes characters choose when to invest a risk, hoping to climb the tree and brings up new risks when they fail to climb their tree. The risk is activating the tree, the reward is climbing the tree. And lastly, card spam is prevented by failure rate. So if the character can't activate the tree, they can't climb. If they do succeed at it, away they go. They would obviously have to keep successfully blocking (which they would be unlikely to do) in order to climb the tree. Then, they would have to use an alternative to shield slam. Obviously, this wouldn't be great for every card, but certain cards this could have been executed.

With all that in mind, I feel that the entire BOARD GAME complaint comes from the recharge mechanism alone. All those cards, tracking, do-dads and fiddly bits come from each action having to recharge independently. It becomes a lot of minute details to manage, rather than focus on the game. A player would not need a stack of eight action cards, they could get by with three or four. They would not need to track 4 pools of tokens (that then separate into a number of smaller pools as each action/talent becomes its own pool), and instead could manage three. If anything "feels" like a board game, it is recharge. It is the largest source of the number of complaints that are being shouted out all over about this system. I know people also point to the cards. The funny thing is, 4e also needs/utilizes cards. Though they are not required, they certainly make playing dnd 4e much easier. Therefore, the cards can't be the number one criticism, so all that we are left with is the amount of tracking and tokens required just to resolve an action each turn (because each pool must be managed each turn). This is the real complaint, not the dice, cards, or the way the mechanics works independently of recharge.

Of course, this problem also extends the system's confusion and lack of stream-lining between story-mode and encounter mode. It is easy to manage a series of action card recharge turn by turn, but it is impossible to gauge in story mode. Sure, GM's can figure it out, but it is so very important in the mechanic (delays, talents, career abilities, and boon/bane effects all rely on recharge rate), it is as if FFG left out how difficulty scales. Without recharge, there would simply be no problem between story mode and encounter mode and both would form seamlessly together.

With all that being said, I do love recharging cards as a way to track duration. It is the cleanest way to handle duration in the world. Using it as duration (as the system already does) would be another way to prevent action spam. If disorienting strike lasted while the card is recharging, then the action becomes excluded simply because it cannot be used again until it's duration ends. I love recharge in that respect, but only that respect.

So when I run this game, I run it without recharge. Exhausted Talents simply recharge at the next Rally Step. We take one about every hour, hour and a half (as per the mechanisms that trigger them per the RAW). I also redid all the action cards to reflect my problems as I outlined them above. Sure it took me a weekend, but it was well worth it in the end and we haven't ever had a problem with this game since. And my group, even the occasional at my second group at my LGS have ever said it felt like it was a "board game." They have never, ever said, "you know what I miss. Card recharge. Boy we should go back to that."

I support this game, love it, and I know many people who love recharge and I would not take that away from them and support them in it. I just feel, in this element of the game, the design principle fell a little short.

I was just discussing the boardgameyness of WFRP3 with an employee at Valhalla's games here in Colorado. A very interesting discussion on public opinion got going and he shared what people were saying when he "attempted" to sell them WFRP prodcucts (some things infested with insane rantings btw):

1. FFG is known for having trinkety boardgames. I believe the phrase he used was "There's way too much stuff in their regular boardgame boxes. Hence, when people think FFG, they think boatloads of trinkets.

2. There are trinkets in WFRP3 and it is produced by FFG, hence, it must be a boardgame.

3. Although D&D 4e uses cards, WFRP is not allowed to, because 2e didn't use cards and because WFRP2 is a complete game (sans an elf or dwarf product) with many, many, many, many careers, why would I want to have to re-purchase all those careers just for recycled artwork and a boardgame set of rules?

4. Because WFRP is a now boardgame, it cannot be played, but D&D is not a boardgame (even though it's played on a board with game pieces and defined squares of movement) and so it can be played..and although WFRP2 is also sesigned to be played on a grid, it is not a boardgame, because it doesn't have cards and tracking tokens. (I love the logic when these folks get started).

5. Price. It's just too expensive. When I told him the price of the upcoming players book, he said that he'll never be able to sell that. They don't even carry the boxed set anymore and only had one scenario boxed set sitting out. To be fair, my other hobby store, Colpar Hobbies, doesn't have more than a box or two of the non-core set out either..but they just laugh when I tell them I play the RPG instead of WFB.

6. There's currently no players book. Players are not going to buy the boxed set. This is where FFG's logic doesn't register on my puny brain either: why would you sell it only to the GM instead of like other successful games where you sell a players guide to 7 people (6 players and 1dm) . Really? Sell 7 games or sell 1 game that can't be shared with the players enough for them to take home a rulebook Hmmm, you do the math..I can't disagree with the guy on this one.

7. There are no players supplements to go with the "absent" players guide. Although there are additional boxed sets released (winds of magic), they are not specifically geared to the player, hence they are not being sold.

8. Fear of losing components, so nobody wanted to play it in the store and even the store owners didn't want to lose their components so they won't run it in the store.

9. I'm quoting the kid, "What moron thought to advertise this game as "This game's made for 3 players?" The guy went on a rant about roleplaying games being made for 5-6 players and 1GM and that advertising that a game is for 3 players makes people think that it can't be played by more than that (regardless if it can, it's advertised for 3 players).

10. Nobody is running it at any conventions that anybody had been to within a multi state radius. (Of course I ran it for 7 last year, but in fear of losing my ****, I did not bring it back to any further conventions).

11. Nobody knows where to get a complete set of dice. If you do get a complete set of dice, you can easily mix them up with other people's dice, hence you do not have your OWN dice and you're playing inventory at the end of the night.

12. There evidently isn't a character sheet (according to the other guy that came in..speaking on heresay), which makes it a boardgame; and also because you have to use the components out of the boardgame box (I think he was referring to the Career Sheets) in order to play the boardgame.

I tried to listen patiently, but if this is what's being said at game stores (in my area), and it mirrors what we've seen for online comments, FFG is making the right move to produce, at the very minimum, a players guide.

I do wonder however why they would produce the gamemasters card pack, as the GM is going to have all those components in his boxed set already.

It's fascinating talking to people about this The only time I've seen more superstition is when I go to Auerswald shopping wearing a red hat on Thursdays when there's a comet in the sky.

jh

..

I feel goofy, since my only post on this forum so far has been to say how awesome this forum is, but since I'm still working up to my first WFRP campaign I don't have much else to add.

So I'm going to do it again. This forum is awesome. I am consistently impressed by the comments on these different rules and storytelling questions. The more I read here, the more excited I get about running my campaign. A big thank you to everyone who posts their thoughtful questions and reasonable, courteous responses. From now on, if anyone asks me about this system, I'll be including the FFG forums as a selling point.

Andrew

Uncle_Joe said:

I want to play in your group