My 11 year old son, I'm trying to get him into roleplay. But it's going to be better if I can sell it as a kind of boardgame. I know 3ed isn't a boardgame, but the bits would definitely be a strong selling point. My question, if I buy the 3 hardbacks, how could I get hold of all the bits? Things like creature card figures, the stance track, crit hits, party card etc? Do they sell them all separately? What's my best option?

Thanks all

EDIT: Is there a way to subscribe to these threads? I can't find it

The Vaults contain the cards & bits

The Guide still describe all the cards and stuff (tables, etc.)

The Vaults contain all the components you're looking for. Every component that is referenced in the Guides with the "laurel" icon is included in the Player's Vault and the GM's Vault.

Awesome stuff

Thank you

It sounds like you'd be better off getting the boxed set to me. If you're starting off, especially with a young player, you'll have more than enough rules and options to keep you going for a long time. The box has everything you need - rules for players, GMs, cards and components for players and for the GM to run games, plus an introductory adventure.

Sure, you'll be missing expanded rules for magic, disease etc, but most of us have done okay without these for some time, and you'll have more than enough to keep you going for quite a long time.

And it's cheaper to get the box (especially from an online discounting store) than all the guides and vaults. Plus you'll get plenty of dice.

Plus, it will 'look' more like a board game, and more accessible to your son. The rule books are shorter, it comes in a box rather than a big hardback book, and has loads of components that can be sorted out and flicked through.

I considered this, however I heard the books in the boxed sets are a bit of a mess concerning layout and organization of rules.

I should add that I also have the pdf of the 4 core rule books, and they've recentley been 'updated' as well. Quite what that means I don't know. Pdfs are all well and good but it's a lot easier to have a book at hand so to speak.

Oh, the books are not a mess or ogranization, they just aren't easy to read. Important words aren't highlighted and many rules are buried in the middle of fluff text or one rule is described in two different paragraphs. Once you've learned the game, these make perfect sense, but when I was trying to learn from teh core set to run the DEMO, I kept asking myself why they didn't hire a manual-writer to write the manual. It could be that the seperatation between books and chits wasn't easy to write for, or it could be that it's just not written for new players.

Anyways, I really enjoy the system now and it's not hard to find any rules I'm seeking..but I had to underline and highlight in my Core set just to figure out simple stuff like healing. There were a lot of ambiguous and semi-duplicate terms that I had to sort through.

BTW, here's a chat place for discussions: www.penandpapergames.com/forums/misc.php

Thanks for the information.

I just found out the Player's Guide does not contain the 10 careers from the Adventurer's Toolkit?

Honestly, if I were in your shoes, this is what I would get:

The Player's guide.

The Core Box.

From there, pending on where and what he does, I would consider picking up either Winds of Magic and Signs of Faith.

Here is why. The Player's guide is the only guide that is hugely improved over the original core manual. The Game Master's Guide does contain some of the expansion rules (corruption from winds of magic and disease from signs of faith) and a few other tidbits. However, the original books (including the original Tome of Adventure) have a great layout already concerning these rules and are well written. Those books were never confusing, the core manual was.

Also in the core box you get all the cards in the players vault and game master's vault (minus the corruption tokens) plus you also get more than 4 sets of dice will get you. In the end, if you plan on buying any expansion at all, this ends up being cheaper long term. If you plan on getting the later expansions (such as the Adventurer's toolkit - which has a number of great action cards and the small but vicious dog car - or Signs of Faith or Winds of Magic, you will get all those rules in those supplements plus all the cards.

At base cost, this is what you are looking at in USD:

Normal buy in:

Players guide: 50

GM'S Guide: 40

Players Vault: 40

Gm Vault: 40

4 Dice Packs: 48 dollars.

Total of: 218.

My Purchase layout:

Players guide: 50

Core Box: 100

Total of: 150

With my layout you get all the cards in the vaults, enough dice and everything you need to play the game. The only thing you lack is the disease, mutation and corruption rules introduced in the Signs of Faith and Winds of Magic. However, you can add those to the stack (at 50 USD each) with my purchasing scheme for a total of 100 dollars, landing you at 250. True, in the end you have paid a little more, but if you plan on using all the components and want the mutation, disease, action cards, career cards, as well as all the additional location, condition, magic, and other chits and corruption tokens, etc, you will have to buy these sets anyway. So again, you end up ahead at 250 compared to 318. My layout is simply a better buy (for new component users).

Thanks for that commoner. It clears a lot of the confusions up.

The players & GM guides and vaults are only slightly cleaned up versions of what is in the Core Set. There is nothing from any of the expansion/supplements, not even the Adv.Toolkit, in them (excepting the GMG has rules for Corruption and Disease in it). Thus, all of the supplements are still worthwhile to get.

Dvang,

You are incorrect. The guides DO contain all the information from the Adv toolkit and all the other guides. I'm holding the players guide in my hand as we speak and all the careers are in there.

jh

Rat Catcher said:

I'm still waiting for my copy of the player's guide and GM's guide, but I'm not hearing anything that convinces me that they're completely different from the books in the core set. I would suggest downloading the rules summaries - I'm sure others will provide links - and having those to hand, both when you read the core books and when you play the game. Given all the advantages of the boxed set, I doubt it's worth paying all that extra to get all the 'revised' information in guide and vault format.

Although if you can afford it, as commoner says, it sounds like the player's guide would be a good buy. But if you get one thing only, I'd suggest that the core box will pretty much set you up with everything you need - especially with the free dowloaded summaries.

Although the Guides are comprehensive up to Signs of Faith the Vaults only contain core components. So you can read about the careers from the Adventurer's Toolkit in the Player's Guide the career cards are not in the Player's Vault. The only exception I know of is the disease and mutation cards in the GM's Vault.