Dustin said:

You seem to be missing the point that others are trying to illustrate: this is precisely the point of the hardback books: to play the game without cards and chits. It just so happens that they also make great comprehensive references for those people with all of the content put out thus far. If you want to go regular pen and paper, then the hardbacks are the way to go (+ dice). Now, if you feel that it's still too expensive this way, then so be it. But the point of releasing the hardbacks is to enable players who want a more traditional p&p system. Says so right in the product information.

Hope that helps.

HedgeWizard said:

yep totally agree with HW, i think you could get what you are looking for from the hard back books only. The dice along with the underlying mechanics are what make WFRP so interesting, whether the action results are on cards or in a book really doesn't matter, although having them on cards (even if you don't use tracking tokens etc) just seem so much more convenient compared to flipping through the book.

The one thing i am interested in is how FFG suggest tracking recharge without using tokens. I hope its a bit cleverer than just keeping a running crib sheet or something, but we'll see.

Even I may pick up one of these books to check it out. See if there is anything I can port over to 2E or if it is just largely the same fluff.

Honestly, if FFG did this from the gate, I might have been on board, as I was turned off by the chits and bits.

But its nice to see FFG try to lure people in with different format approaches.

Peacekeeper_b said:

What hurts for me is that I love most of the chits and bits, but really want a full reference manual for outside of the game (vs. flipping cards or binder sheets) or when I need to GM something and a player has the only copy of in front of them. Ultimately, the core books should have had this in the first place, IMO. No bells or whistles, just each set of action cards/status cards/etc detailed in the books as well. I'd rather drop an extra $10 or $15 on a product which includes both the cards and the reference pages.

I hope they'll release these as PDFs at a serious discount since buying two $30 and one $50 hardcovers as references for my $150+ of chits and bits isn't exactly cost effective.

Dustin said:

Actually it didn't. As a Rogue Trader, Dark Heresy, and Deathwatch player, I have to say that not all the information of the game just came in the core set. Already each stand alone game can be played together. Furthermore, the supplementary books adds more careers, monsters, powers, and I believe some weapons to the game. These are called expansions. If you took a summary of 1-2 years of Rogue Trader publications and tried to cram them into a single volume, they wouldn't fit either and would not come near to 50 bucks. These aren't a small list of creatures in this guide...it will be exhaustive. The expanded rules released from 3 core products are crammed in these books. The magic, player information, etc of all three of those volumes are also crammed in those books. Not to mention, from the way it sounds, bits from the modules as well.

So yes, rogue trader costs you 50 for a book as complete as the original 90 dollar box set, which you can buy as pdf's for roughly the same 50 dollar price as a rogue trader core. But in essence, you are getting $100 core box + $30 dollar adventurer toolkit + 2 $50 dollar box sets worth of magic expansion material including the rules for mutation and corruption. Now, just to stop this high horsing before it starts, the components contain the stats. Very little of the components actually are tracking tokens and cardboard stand ups. The printing on cards is similar to the printing in books. If these would have been released as separate hard backs, once you include the art and everything and the cost to bind a hardback versus a soft back, they would have came in for roughly the same price tags given the amount of information contained in the sets.

So these hard backs for 90 off of Amazon give you 230 dollars worth of material. I'm sorry. Rogue Trader books DO NOT offer that much in their core product book. It's a lot, but DO NOT include their expansions. What would you rather have them do? Print one core 50 dollar book. Then reprint all the existing supplements as stand alone products. Then you are still looking at roughly the same price. Even being generous and putting the two magic tomes and 40, you are spending now $80 dollars for the magic tomes + $30 dollars for the adventurer's guide + $50 dollars for the core. That's 160. Who knows the Amazon discount there, but I can promise you, you'd come out to roughly 90 bucks there as well.

I really don't see FFG as being unreasonable with the prices. Especially since they are actually taking a loss from the individual component boxes to this new guide format.

Last, but not least, You can run the game sans chits with these books. Straight up, in my opinion, it will blow chunks in this format, but hey, that's your deal. I love the chits, you don't like them, so to each his own. And I wouldn't suggest you take my advice since, as I pointed out, I'm biased.

So chill, realize what you are actually paying for and the conversion between products, and just enjoy this game.

PS. Since you still play second, the main book didn't contain all the information in 2e either. Careers were splattered over every supplement. There were two separate magic books, a creatures guide, a tomb of corruption, that really helped finish out what could be called the "core" book. In this case, you get all of those books combined into a single three volume compendium. Really, not a bad deal now, eh?

If you also remember, the pattern of DH was determined by Black Library. Who knows what FFG would have done if they would have original creative control, but now you can see their direction with this and I imagine it would have been similar. They kept the format because it IS the format of those highly successful games...unlike its highly unsuccessful fantasy brother.

Fabs, my wednesday group is starting up the Dresden Files rpg, and it is similar were it changes the way you roleplay. I can't wait until my head stop spinning so I can start understanding how that FATE system works (it seems really cool so far, but it is a lot different that what I am used to).

Since the original question on this topic was answered, then I will not feel guilty anymore on going a bit off topic.

For the record, I like how 2nd ed had a good starting point with the core rules. I don't ever expect to just buy one book because we love buying stuff, right. I do like the idea that all the rules are in one book. But, that is not going to happen any more, so too bad, so sad.

The fact that one of the GMs in my main gaming group has most of the 2nd edition collection (and because we have still not gone through al of it because we get together twice a month and play other games too), that kind of put a wrench in the cogs for trying out 3rd Ed. Even my wednesday evening group (the one that finished Dragon Age and are moving on to Dresden) is dubious about it.

When FFG mentioned the hardback books, I wanted to inquire because it might be a gateway drug for the other GM, but he is not as picky as I am about playing out of date games (take for example, I love the the new D&D, but he despises it with a passion and loves Pathfinder's system instead, which is crunchy as hell).

I do appriciate the support and people answering my question (and giving advice).

Oh, btw: FFGs might want to do something similar to the GAMEMASTERY's magnate inititive tracker as opposed to using the loose cardboard pieces. They could come out with a player's tracking pad and you can use magnates and dry erase pens for it. It might be a little less clutterly than all the chits and accomplish the same thing.

Dustin said:

The FATE engine is ridiculous awesome, and I can't say enough good things about Dresden. It doesn't hurt that Mr. Hicks himself got me hooked on FATE with Spirit of the Century (Origins ... 2 years ago I want to say?), but good luck and have fun with that (although it pretty much sells itself).

As one fan of games to another though (and this is strictly my opinion), your Dragon Age/Dresden group has a better chance of liking/enjoying WFRP3. It's definitely light on crunch compared to 3.5 (and Pathfinder), and got a much more DnD Meets Cthulhu + Rules Lite vibe. Folks that like the minutiae tactical combat of 3rd edition will probably not like the more Narrativist structure of this game (yes yes I know its not true narrativist, SHOO you forgians, away) but its kind of a wierd mid-point hybrid in my opinion.

Again its my 2 cents, for what that's worth.