I'm a lifelong RPG player. I started D&D at around age 8 and I'm not 41. My point to this is that I'm a veteran of some of the best and worse games in decades. Over the last few years I've become more and more busy, with less time for RPG's. It used to be you only had D&D and so the worry was which "campaign" to use. Now, we have so many games to choose from that it's a little more of a chore to figure out what to invest time and money into.

I came in on WHFRPG a few years before the newest edition was released. When the new edition came out I pushed away due to the fact that I liked the older edition, but also felt the new edition looked too much like a board game. I instead spent my cash on D&D 4th. I spent several months reading and rereading the rules and the more I read, the less I was drawn. The game is much more mechanical now and the realism I crave seemed a little shallow. Playing this game has seemingly justified my fears. As a player it seems I'm mainly going from room to room and the game is essentially a board game based on battlemap tactics.

Somehow, I ended up back on Amazon several months ago and read more recent reviews of WHFRPG> The reviews were stellar and I took the bait. I actually dusted off the box set I'd purchased (But never opened) and dell in love with many aspects of the new system. It all made sense. More emphasis on story and also an amazingly descriptive dice pool that was totally cool. I immediately ordered all the supplements as this was obviously the game I needed to run. I praised it to my friends and read and reread the rules.

I'm a little hesitant right now after going through some character generation. This is essentially based on the cards and tokens. At first, they seemed amazing and well thought out. I loved all the extra punchboard tokens. I'm beginning to wonder now if they won't just hinder, or get in the way of a smoothly ran game? After character generation it seemed a little pained having to sort through the stacks of talents and action cards. Trying to figure out if this character could do this, or that, etc. It almost seems like you need your own cubicle to put out your PC sheet along with stance marker, along with action cards as well as the card and PC sheet. I don't mean to sound negative at all, but I just want to make sure that this will work before I invest the time to create. I thought I would post this and ask those who have already put the system to goo use. Am I merely a paranoid GM who is worrying too much? Does it all work amazing? I wonder even more when I see that FFG are moving to HB Books now w/o tokens. Is this stemming from my written concerns?

I'm also curious. It seems with high level characters that most current RPG's are hard to keep the game balanced. D&D 4th, Pathfinder, etc. How have you seen the new edition of WHF work at higher ranks? is the game staying smooth and balanced? I would appreciate anything you can offer as far as input is concerned and thank you for the time!!

Peace,

wOOkie

sugarwookie said:

I've not played any high level games yet, but the Rank 1, 2 characters work really well.

Regarding having talents and special actions on cards, I've found that they work just fine. In 2e, you had talents, they just weren't on cards. 3e adds special action cards (beyond basic attacks and whatnot). 2e's special actions were: "would you like to attack with two weapons or just one?". Since each character only has a couple going at once, it's no big deal and the fact that you can recharge them while you're fighting/socializing is evolved (e.g. systems like D&D have them daily/encounter/at-will, which doesn't allow recharge).

I just ran a game on Maptool virtual tabletop last night and we didn't have any difficulty with the situations and the "what happens with great successes, delays, failures, and chaos star effects" really gets our imagination spurred-on. Not that you couldn't do that with a percentile system in some way too, but here it's definite.

As long as you've got a copy of the UHead's Rule summary, you'll be fine. There's also a one-page summary of the basic actions, which is way less cluttered than having all those basic action cards on the table: www.gitzmansgallery.com/WFRP3_Resources/index.html

I made up one character for each career in the system so far and they will appear in the upcoming Liber Fanatica fanzine #7. Watch for them. They're demo style like the download adventure on the catalogue page, but with the talent slots on the side. Take a look at those when they're released. It should also ease some of your worries on complexity of character mechanics.

One of the disappointing things about the new system for me, as a GM, is that characters don't die as easily. Personally, I like mowing through PC's like leper's at an alligator farm..but sigh, that is not to be in this system.

jh

..

You do need a bit of space to sort out your character stuff, it's true. That said, it makes playing the game very easy from a player's perspective. Everything mechanical that you could possibly do is set out in front of you. It is especially useful for inexperienced RPG players. My advice would be to just give it a go.

@Jay: First of all I KNEW you would be the first person to post in this thread. Secondly, I'm sure you could kill characters quickly if you wanted to. If you hadn't called off the Wargor/Gors last night, I'm pretty sure we would have all died.

LOL, loved the reply! Thanks for the break down as well. Are you actually running something online? If so I'm curious what you're using to make it work? I found the dice app and it's pretty cool and also found the link to the site you mentioned!! What a wonderful little treasure trove, eh!?

Are the new hardbacks going to offer a play style without the cards? I would imagine so, but maybe it's not such a hard thing to do other than to just modify the character sheet

we totally had that under control. i could have suffered at least 2 more critical wounds before kicking the bucket. Besides, we just got the merchant to use as a human shield, we were poised for a comeback!

Gitz

Weren't you toughness 3? Meaning you could have worn ONE more critical wound before kicking the bucket. You did take critical wounds at an astonishing rate. I think the fact that none of our group has more than strength 3 is a downside.[/thread hijack]

Well now you are just getting into the details, Konrad Weissman has survived his first encounter with Beastmen and is stronger for it! (though throroughly crippled too!)

Gitz

sugarwookie said:

Check the other thread about playing online, we cover the tools, setting it up, all that jazz. We can try to make sure you are part of the next game if you like.

Game on!

Gitzman

And now hopefully for some helpful input that doesn't focus on a new game starting ^_~

sugarwookie said:

So this question has come up before and actually been discussed at length. I'll point you at the post:

How well do all the new mechanics work in your view?

Oppinions vary on the individual bits. Overall most of us seem happy, with a few folks using some parts less than others (my extensive post is there as well). Most of the time I would say that the extra bits help although sometimes we use dice to track just so we're not passing baggies back and forth (as GM though, I reserve the tokens for the most part). So far we've had things run very smoothly in my game, and I know there are many people that have been running longer and can vouch for it.

sugarwookie said:

I'll try to organize my response here (and probably fail wildly).

The downside to having all your cards in front of you is that you have a good chunk of the rules on cards. I want you to think though about say DnD 4th (which you mentioned playing/running earlier). The game has books upon books of powers. Looking at my shelf in the living room I see maybe 1000 pages of info for just players. A player has a greater limitation on powers that helps them decide quickly on creation, but if a player wants to be informed about all the classes and all the powers and HAS NOT memorized all the information, it would take days of reading to get through all the texts. Those power rules are on cards in WFRP3. In terms of informational content, there isn't much difference. Half the rules are in the book, and the other half are on cards.

If you want to demo a game, but still give some choices to players, you can separate the cards into 'suggested powers'. When I first ran a demo for my players (to see if they're interested - they were wildly so) I put down a stack of maybe 10-15 cards in front of each based on the career they picked. I had read/gone through all of them and had some ideas of what works well together. A few of the players asked to go through the rest, which they did while others finished up (as not everyone necessarily moves at the same pace). This way you can create a smaller sample to speed up creation. HOWEVER, if your players want to get the whole ruleset down it will take some time. At this point I can juggle card names in my head from experience, and I expect that I don't have to eyeball every card in order to make a character (I've actually made a bunch for demos etc, it takes less than 15 mins at this point for me to go start to finish for most).

Here's my take on it. You aren't paranoid, you're concerned and asking for info and help. I think if you keep reading the rules, keep making a few chars, and keep asking questions, you'll have all this down in no time. It does work amazingly well. Clearly you care about your game and players and that's a good thing.

FFG is moving to hardcovers for a couple reasons. Many (if not most) gaming groups split the costs of a system. Players pick up players guides, GM picks up some GM books and so on. The problem with the box sets are as follows:

1. The information rests with the box. Without a significant (hundreds of dollars) investment, players don't have their 'own set' of cards to take home, browse and think about.
2. The system is very very new (I think less than a year old). Its also very different and innovative (and I'm not trying to pick a fight with some people that might disagree here). By that I mean that some of the rules are not ones that we're all familiar with and have been hashed out to death over the decades of the hobby. This means questions have cropped up, clarifications are asked for, indexes are needed and so forth.
3. There are still some folks who come to 3E only forums to yell about how it's not 2E and complain about the new format.

The books resolve a number of these issues. While somewhat pricey, they provide significant examples, clarification and most importantly a physical source that a player can buy to keep rules at home and provide easy reference. The 'part-less' tables they tout are nothing other than a list of the cards you have with some numbers next to them for a percentile roll. FFG and the creators have stated very clearly that the game will continue unabated in the 'part-filled' format, this just gives the people that want it a way to cut out a few of the component pieces. Dice are still the same, actions still the same, cards and rules unchanged - this just lets you cut some bits out if you choose to, or at least view them all at a glance when you're not with the box-holder.

I wouldn't take this as a sign to panic, or to believe the format is changing. Its just a move that helps everyone, and might bring some of the 2Eers on board (aaaaaand some not, but that's ok too).

sugarwookie said:

I haven't had a lot of high-level experience and because of the recentness of the game, I'm not sure many have. What I can tell you is that PCs gain more options, and often hit much harder as things progress, but defenses don't change that much, and soak and wounds don't go through the roof. I saw a wargor with a greataxe chop a group tank in half early on, and he's small potatoes compared to some of the demon princes and the threats presented in the Liber's that have come out. I think you don't have to worry about the game being less dangerous for high-levels, and unbalanced.

I know Emrikol up there said he has trouble killing PCs but its simply not the case. The game is deadly as written, and can only be more so if you use all the rules presented to you. A character can die from damage, can be unplayable from insanity, get tainted to the point of mutation (which leads to unplayability/death), and become useless before dying horribly of disease. Never fear that you can challenge your group, even after some time of play.

I hope that answers some of your questions, and helps a bit. Feel free to ask for any further clarifications and confusions you might have.

Oh and to cover your 'cubicle' question?

For our games most of the PCs and I myself (GM) use a little TV dinner/food stand/tray to keep our stuff on, and keep the middle board for the party card, standups, maps and location cards. Your mileage may vary, but without hexes/squares the action area has a much smaller table requirement.

sugarwookie said:

We've got it set up to play on the virtual tabletop MAPTOOL. It's free-softy-ware. The dice roller in there is excellent (Gitzman put it together). Otherwise, playing on Maptool is no different than playing D&D or Pathfinder via virtual tabletop. In fact, I think that it's a wildly fun way to play internationally.

Here's a screenshot of day late, shilling short where the Coachman let his wife drive and she ran into the Beastmen's Herdstone. It's no wonder they were so pissed in that scenario and why the package was never delivered (download here : www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_minisite_sec.asp). The Beastmen just planned on holding it as collateral until the repairs to their Herdstone were assessed.

..

Regarding high level chars power and such...

While never having played D&D 4th, from the earlier edition high levels are monsters of power.

In Wfr 1st edition high "level" players were very strong. 4 attacks, dwarves with 8 toughness, Warhammer Fantasy Battle magic, with no risks involved. Players could fight really powerfull monsters, re-rolls from fortune points helped greatly here.

In 2nd edition it was toned down a bit, first of all by changing damage dice from 1d6 to 1d10, thus increasing chance of the weak goblin penetrating the tough dwarven skin. Attacks were also downed to max of 3, and increases to stats were made more expensive xp-wise.

In 3rd edition it's all been toned down once again imo.

Chars start of stronger than in 2nd edition, due to what many believe are to many points given from the start. But after that chars don't increase power very fast. It costs a lot to increase stats, and buying action cards won't solve your problems as you can usually only play 1/turn anyway. You no longer have re-rolls, and no fate points to save you. After 30 sessions in 1st edition you'd have around 3-4000xp, and put you in the good advanced careers, with the 4 attacks and toughness gone from 3 to 5 etc.... But in 3rd you'd have gone through 3 careers, and maybe increased 4 stats, some skills, actions etc... so instead of toughness 3 you'd have 4, some more actions to chose from etc...

But while you'd in 1st edition would cut through 4 orcs with relativly ease, you'd still struggle immensly hard in 3rd edition, in fact they'd likely have given you some serious critical wounds, which would take weeks/months to heal up.

In 1st edition you'd NEVER get tired, freaking Duracell bunny! In 3rd edition you won't have those fights where 1 dwarf holds back 20 orcs in a narrow corridor, because he'd be worn down from fatigue.

And back to D&D (2nd edition which I know), where a level 8'ish char would finish his drink before even thinking about defending himself against the punny 4 orcs trying to kill him.

Much of what Shinma says is true, but I feel I should add these points:

My major point is, yes the chits and cards are a move away from what we are familiar with as gamers. We are not used to information given to us in this format so it seems strange. We are used to books (typically hard cover), that present all the information on a series of page layouts. However, the more you use the decks, the more you move away from simple familiarity with information-distribution, the more you'll find the massive benefits of the decks over a book. One, a book can only access a single user. So, during generation, only one person can look at "powers" at one time. The rest wait for the book to pass. A deck can be divided, sections passed, browsed, favorite cards pulled, before looking at the next pile. I find the decks actually speed up generation.

Next, the decks, if used before hand can seriously help a GM plan an encounter (by pulling the cards to be used that night) or to draw a random card to give an NPC an edge in scene (such as this Orc Warboss has...double strike).

The next massive advantage of the cards is their mobility over static information on a character sheet. Talents can flip into/out of the party card, rather than the players having to "remember" what cards are socketed to the party sheet. And that in itself is the greatest advantage. Between talents, action cards, basic abilities, weapon statistics, critical wounds, insanities, madnesses, mutations, conditions, miscasts, etc. the amount of information the cards actually communicate is enormous. And they do so while making information easy to reference and in its complete format. The cards do not tell you to reference page xx. It's on the card. Also, they are not designed with player short hand. Or lost in a see of erased scribbles or sandwiched between other stats or in a box where their handwriting has ran out of room, so now they are trying to print really small and they can't tell if they meant a bonus white or yellow to the roll. Honestly, the amount of table space to lay "everything" out has to be smaller with the cards, small character sheet, talents and actions per player than the two-four pages of character sheets required to cover all the actions.

The true magic of the components is the way they do interface with the player, making information clear, accessible and at their disposal. It also makes it readily available to the GM. For instance, I can now clearly see the fortune, fatigue, stress, and health of each character at any time, as it is all out on the table in front of me.

These innovations, again, go against what is familiar to gamers, but are, to a vet who has been gaming for 27 years they did take some getting use to, but now that I've seen them in action, I'm never going back. I truly hope other RPG companies jump on this bandwagon and get rid of the familiar. Does this make me a fan boy, no. There are things I don't like about the system, but the components just so happens to not be one of them.

The game is alright at higher levels. Honestly, for now it plays best ranks 1-3. But, by rank 3, you are a very powerful character (I'd say roughly 15 dnd terms). I had a group playing regularly at high levels and the system doesn't fall apart. It does a good job making things still dangerous. However, it does become much harder for PC's to fail at anything...but that's not really shocking as most games are like that at high level. Of course, that is typically in the area they have focused. Other areas they are not so specialized, it can be very difficult for them to do anything. It does take some ingenuity in scenario writing, but that largely depends.

This is from 2 months of play where we ported over some 2e Nights Dark Masters vampires and are continuing our campaign (well, ending it...so we can end the world). Anyway, it does work well, just not as well as it should...but I've never seen a game at high level ever really work well...period. Ever play Masters of the Art for Mage the Ascension. There is a gaming nightmare .

Anyway, give it six weeks, and encourage your players to make use of the components and every chit (definitely try out those trackers...they are fantastic!). One thing is, it is a "group play" game so make sure you encourage your players to contribute to building their own pools, own boon/bane interpretation, and make sure they use the hell out of their party card. Do that, and trust me, they'll love it.

Nine out of my ten gamers agree, there is no going back after this one...

I totally know where the OP is coming from as my group originally started with the launch of D&D4e. After a year or so (I think) our GM just gave up on it since it took for ever to tell a story in a system that bogged you down in a strategy game each time there was a fight.

So after trying a few different RPGs, the new edition of WFRP came out, he bought that and we've been playing it since. On the surface it looks a lot like D&D 4e with its cards and gimmicks. But once we'd played it a while I realized it was, for me at least, what D&D 4e should have been. The cards, tokens and trackers doesn't make it into a board game because they're really just fancy and easily managable representations of all the stuff you'd jot down on you character sheet. When I'm playing now, I allways know what abilites are available to me, because I'm sitting with them like a hand of cards. As opposed to most other RPGs I've played, where I've written rules in teeny-tiny script on my character sheet to fit all the rules in there. Which then are just forgotten in the heat of the moment until I later go "Oh wait, I have this ability which I should have used back there. ****."

And the dice system rocks. At first I found it unnecesserily complicated and I was annoyed that you were forced to use custom dice. But after having gotten used to them, I'm really enjoying them more than regular dice. Sure, it's harder to predict exactly what you're chances are in terms of numbers (unless you're a bit of a math wiz or use one of the online calculators) but I prefer to just "wing it" anyway and hope for the best.

If I was going to introduce someone to RPGs, this is the system I'd use because it's so visually simple for people to get into. You can basically just hand them some cards and dice and set off without having to explain a bunch of rules first. And for a person not used to thinking of everything presented in numbers, it's a lot easier to grasp White/Blue Dice: Good, Black/Purple Dice: Bad

Ralzar said:

This is precisely what I'm talking about. What is true about the dice system here also applies to the components. I generally find those who are against the system simply won't budge from what is familiar. Once they let go of how gaming is supposed to be with all its familiar trappings (polyhedral dice, pens and paper, standard sized character sheets), they find all these components not only to be a welcome addition, but they typically vastly improve the gaming experience.

Especially trackers. It allows for such clear communication and can be used to take every scene from either talking or rolling dice to a clever mix of the two, and help the GM define to the players not only exactly what they're thinking, but encourage players to use creativity and focus on the elements of the story. For example, instead of scene where players need to escape while they are being chased by guards becoming simply: well, we have to slay all the guards because God knows how long before the GM makes the door spawn, it becomes: the GM says we have these many spaces before we get to the door. So now if we just run, or use some clever tricks, or fight the guards, or whatever they choose to do, we get advances that put us closer to the door. Another ready example is combat can become less about killing "all" the bad guys and serve as a battle of morale, with a tracker representing both sides. I have even used it against my players. As they take critical wounds, as they fail to kill their opponents, the tracker represents their overall fear and desire to run away. My players loved it and using actions such as Inspiring Words and Guarded Position could fight against the trackers descent to when they ran away. Trackers, besides the dice, are possibly one of the greatest features of the new system and should not be ignored.

Get used to all the bits, accept them, try it out with an open mind for four-six sessions and I think you'll find, once they become familiar, you'll wonder how you gamed at all without them, lol.

We now joke, when it comes to the dice, how we can't even read standard dice. After all, what does a 6 "mean?" LOL!

Okay. I have to say that out of all the board posts I've created in all of the arenas I've played in that this was probably the best as far as amazing responses! Thank you all so very much for the intelligent and thoughtful opinions and advice! You've taken all of the doubts, or questions I have about the system and essentially answered them all (Sure you guys aren't GGF spooks!?? LOL)

I totally agree with everything and will go ahead and throw my creative endeavors into making this my next stab at being a GM again. I should have known I was on the right path when my GF walked by the latest set of Prayers unpunched token boards and said "Ooooooh, what are these?" LOL! Last campaign I ran was using 2nd and everyone loved it. I also have a feeling they'll love the new edition. I think I tend to over analyze to be honest. How many campaigns make it to high level anyway?

Gitzman, your tools are amazing and they will be used and appreciated by this GM for sure! I'm wondering what you all use to place the info sheets against? I need to find something.

Emirikol and Shinma, along with the others! Thank you again for the efforts and thoughts! I would definitely be interested in playing online and will read more into the link when I get home from tonights DnD4th session (I'm a player). It always seems that I run the games I'd most like to play sadly, so online would be awesome if I could fit into your scheduled games.

Sincerely,

wOOkie

We've got an opening for a player for sunday's game if you'd like to try out maptool. Sign-up is here: forums.rptools.net/viewforum.php

jh