I'm starting my WFRP3 adventures as a GM this weekend. The biggest concern I have is really the overwhelming number of action cards and traits available to my players when they are creating their new characters. The career choices aren't so bad because we are going to let fate decide, but after that? One player is actually completely new to RPG'ing and I don't want his head to explode as he flips through the binder of action cards and traits. I also don't want this to take hours as the four of them take turns pouring over every card.

Can other GM's recommend maybe a short list of "sure fire" general action cards that I can point them too? I've been trying to go through the binder myself, but as I'm a WFRP2.0 GM, the system is fairly new to me as well.

I thought about giving them also a first session of "gimmie" card selections. That is, after our first game, I'd let them swap cards out one time. What do folks think about that?

Thanks for any info and also for the remarkable amount of great GM'ing info I've been reading on this forum.

Game on, one way or another!

~Fry

Yeah, letting players swap out stuff works well, ime. Some people are against that sort of thing and I've had some GMs be strict about it, but I've never really seen any reason not to allow it, especially for new players. I'd give them several weeks to see if they get use out of abilities, and if they can't juts let them change it. If they know they can change then their choices become less critical and they should be able to choose more quickly.

Also, even as an experienced GM I have trouble really getting some Actions on a simple read through, and some need to played a few times to be appreciated. So, I would recommend the players just read the title and the success lines, say, to get a gist of an Action, and if it appeals, let them have it for a trial run. Most of the titles are pretty evocative so they can go by that.

thanks for your input, monkeylite!

i'm now thinking i like the idea of letting them swap out cards at least until the end of our first adventure, an Eye for an Eye, naturally...

that'll give us all a chance to see what they do.

To help with this problem before the character creations session I split all the cards etc into groups - eg missile, defence, 2h weapon, etc...

Then once my players had a career I got them to come up with a concept and then fed them the groups of cards that matched the concept. They then chose from the group rather than wade through all the cards (though they could do this if they choose).

So, for example we had a scout. He wanted to be a outdoors type missile expert - so rather than have him go through every card I gave him the groups that fitted the concept.

I think this streamlined the whole system, and let the players get pretty much what they wanted.

that's a great idea, Munchkin. if only i had enough knowledge looking at the cards how to separate them! i started working through the support cards but they aren't as easy to organize as i thought.

Fry, the abilities have little symbols up in the corner. Flag, Fireball, Prayer Book, Pistol, Sword. Once you get the basic cards out these equate to: Support/Social, Wizard Spell, Priest Spell, Ranged attack, Melee attack.

Its not quite the perfect breakdown, but it gives you smaller piles for them to examine. Hope that helps a little.

shinma said:

Yeah, support ones could probably be split further into social, non-social, maybe.

monkeylite said:

I'm sure they could, but they probably don't need to be. I don't think that glancing through the support cards will take very long, if you just pick out any with names that sound interesting.

I wouldn't be surprised if some players are more interested in the various combat cards and so don't care about the support cards. And those that are interested in the support cards are fairly likely to have some idea what sort of character they're trying to create, so they should (hopefully) find that the titles of some support cards just jump out at them.

I see. I see. The whole card class breakdown. It just seemed like from Munchkin's description...

Munchkin said:

...he was breaking them down even further. I'm guessing that takes a little more digging. I don't think it will be too bad for my players. I have them separated by class and then put into binder sleeves. It should be easy enough for them to flip through all of them and get an idea of what's out there.

Well, we start our campaign tomorrow. Hope I've absorbed enough rules and printed out enough reference sheets! I'll let you guys know how it turns out.

I had broken them down further - but It was a bit easier for me, as I had a good idea what my players would want to play and so could break down the cards to suit those choices.

I totally feel your pain we sat down to a character gen session that I hoped would end with a short play test. 6 Hours later and alot of good socializing I still had my resident number cruncher trying to pick his cards. As a group of friends BSing we had a good time but as a game session it was a total loss.

Keeping in mind we are all in our late 30s and early 40s we only gather about once to twice a month so it kind of hurt our play time.