Fantasy Flight is kind of overwhelming me with their products. If I was, hypothetically speaking, in the market for some WFRP materials, and wanted to possess just enough up-to-date rulebooks, cards, dice, tokens, etc. -- then what would I buy ?

I could see several possible answers:

1). Buy the Core Set only

2). Buy the GM's Guide and the Player's Guide together

3). Buy the GM's Guide, the Player's Guide, as well as the Player's Vault

4). Buy all their products at once, then spread them out on the floor and swim through them like Scrooge McDuck

Which option would include all the latest rules as well as all the tokens, cards, etc. ?

Without gettign too into it, here is my suggestion:

For a well rounded collection purchase:

• The Core Set
• The Creature Guide
• The Creature Vault

When you are ready to expand (in order of importance)

• Winds fo Magic
• Signs of Faith

Thsi will give you all teh tokens you'll need to play, all the cards, and a very robust set of creature cards to play with. You can download the new PDF character sheet if you prefer to use the 'light' version.

if you need resources or warhammer maps check out www.GitzmansGallery.com

Gitz

I agree with Gitz ...

Once you have the above (and maybe an adventure or two) the first non-essential item I'd recommend is the Player's Guide ... it repeats some of whats in the Core Set but it has an index and a lot of the topics are cross referenced and in general it is a better reference book. Unfortunately, buying the Player's Guide, Game Master's guide, Player's Vault and Game Master's Vault duplicates everything in the Core Set (with better cross referencing) but it ends up costing more.

Personally, I went with option 4, although I haven't felt the need to buy the Player's or GM Vault yet. The Core Set is really the key, though, and I would agree with Gitz and GF about the priority of the rest. The Player's Guide, along with the forums here, was really helpful to clarify some rules confusion. The Guide is also a great way to let the players peruse their career and action options without shuffling through your cards with their grubby little fingers.

I also agree with Gitzman. And, as azhmodai also said: if you've got any questions about the wording in the rules that come with the core box set, you can ask here. I would recommend dowloading and printing one or two of the very good rules summaries that people have put together, and reading the books in conjunction with the summaries, referring from one to the other as necessary.

I think the players' and GMs' guides are more 'luxury' items if you're wanting to get everything to get into the game.

I would personally rate the Signs of Faith expansion higher than Winds of Magic, but that's because I find priests more interesting than wizards, and the background on religions, temples etc more useful to understanding the everyday life of the Empire than all of the information about the colleges of magic.

I also think disease rules are probably more important than the corruption rules.

But both of these preferences are very personal.

1) Core Set = box, all items you need, and A LOT of DICES. No creatures cards, but a nice bestiary inside with all you need (again).

2) Winds of Change + Sign Of Faith = All the cards about magic and blessings, some nice fluff, diseases and mutations, nurgle and tzeentch's special bestiary, plus a really top notch Tzentch adventure and a quite good Nurgle one.

3) Then after, you may expand your bestiary and get creatures cards with Creature Vault and Guide.

After rereading the question I would add that everyone here probably uses all the cards, tokens, etc. So your getting a somewhat biased response.

FFG put out the Player's and Game Master's Guides so it would be possible to play without these components and if you wanted to try that you could just get those two guides (and lots of Warhammer Dice).

I don't think it would work very well, but I readily acknowledge my bias. I think the cards, etc are great part of the experience. But you might feel differently. I'm not sure we have heard from anyone who has tried playing the "Lite" version yet, so who knows it might work for some.

GullyFoyle said:

That's true, but he/she did say that they wanted to use the components (or at least asked what the options were if one wanted to use components).

As the 'light' version needs dice, it's probably not really saving you anything (much) to buy the Player's Guide, GM's guide and 4 dice packs over buying the core box and getting everything. Then you can discard whichever components you don't want (and introduce them at a later date if you change your mind).

My own player's guide should be arriving in the next few days, so in the interests of openness I should say that I haven't read it yet, but from what I've seen on these forums, it seems like the 'light' version is basically just a myth. Or nothing more than the advice that you don't need to use any components that you don't want to.

Whether you record information with chits or with marks on a piece of paper though, the game is the same. The 'light' version of the game doesn't play any differently to the core version.

Thanks everyone, that was quite helpful. FWIW, I personally also believe that the cards, puzzle pieces, etc. are a great part of the experience. Yes, I can record all that information on a piece of paper or in an Excel spreadsheet (and it would probably end up being easier to keep track of), but snapping puzzle pieces together is half the fun.

Speaking of which, is there some online tool that incorporates all the tokens, items and game mechanics from WFRP3 ? I tried out Gitzman's MapTools plugin , but I couldn't figure out how to keep track of stances or use action cards (or whether there even were action cards). But the again, I've never used MapTools before (GameTable has always been enough for me), so it's possible I'm just being a n00b.

Thank you for the advice! I was just scratching my head trying to figure out what to get!

Im my opinion the only way to play is with the compoments.

Get the core box you will not regret it, its a fantastic game and great quality

My vote goes to the core box as well.

But I'm going to head into the wind and say I would only recommend the Creature Guide/Vault if you are looking at writting your own adventures, the same as the Gamemasters Kit (which i think has got some excellent guidance to good game-mastery - and after 25+ years of running games, it takes quite a bit to impress me on that front)

I would go from Core Box, run the introductory adventure to check you want to run with the system, and then go for:

• Winds of Magic (especially if you have a player wizard)
• Signs of Faith (especially if you have a player priest)
• Dice Pack (if you find you are running short)
• Adventurers Kit (just more options for your players)

Personally, I wish one of my players would buy the Players Guide as a reference book, but I'm not going to buy it myself.

I just played using the Creature Vault for the first time last night and I'd like to add that it really makes the game smoother to GM. I had all of the monster cards/action cards laid out right in front of me--it was so much better than page-flipping. It really sped up combat, which allowed me to focus on describing vivid scenes. This was definitely the most fun I've had playing WFRP to date, and I'm sure the Creature Vault will soon become indispensable.

Fabs said:

I agree with this advice – with one change: buy the Adventurer’s Kit before you start your first game, to give your players more nice career options (but don’t offer them the Ironbreaker and Swordmaster careers as starting careers). Especially if you have more than three players.

Regarding the Creature Guide & Vault: I also would only get this before Winds of Magic and Signs of Faith if you will not run FFG’s published adventures.

azhmodai said:

Just in case people thought I might have been knocking the Creature Vault before, I do like having the creature & action cards instead of the NPC's etc being in the back of the adventure module. It does help and I hope that FFG follows this technique for future adventure releases. But if you are running published adventures only, then the Creature Vault adds very little (these cards to duplicate the appendices in the backs of modules) for a cost of £30-£40.

Just got the creature vault and have browsed through all the cards and looked through the book. It's an absolutely essential product for the GM. Get the creature guide and the creature vault.

Gallows said:

Feh! I sounding like a broken record now. What is essential about the Creature Guide/Vault? If someone is coming to these forums and wants to know what is the entry level for a warhammer campaign, what are these going to give them that just buying the Core Set + The Gathering Storm is lacking, unless they specifically will not be playing published adventures?

Do not think for one moment that I am knocking them, but the utility that a new player group will get out of them is much less than other products they can buy.

In much the same way, I remember with 2e, people claiming that Tome of Corruption, Winds of Magic, Tome of Salvation were essential products that warhammer couldn't be played without

Fabs said:

Creature cards, creature party sheets and creature action cards. It makes GMing much easier and faster to prepare sessions. You could say that no supplement is essential if you understand it like not being able to play without it. I'd say that the creature guide and vault are (as a GM more important than any of the other expansions).

Fabs said:

Not that this can't be fixed other ways, but the extra spell provided for a certain magic user in The Gathering Storm, makes a huge difference in how that encounter plays out.

Some offical adventures have some strong modifications in the Creatures Vault.

I have the core set and out of the stuff published so far I want to pick up:

1. Creature Guide and Vault - This looks like a great GM resource.

2. The Adventurers Toolkit - I'm big into giving my player options, and some of the careers in here are just awesome.

3. Winds of Magic / Signs of Faith - The one thing that irked me about the core set was only having 3 faith choices and 3 college choices. Plus Tzeentch and Nurgle are up on the top of my list of awesome Chaos gods.

Everything else is lower on my priority list as I dislike duplicating information and prefer to create my own adventures.

Since money is a factor for me I'm probably going to pick up 1 & 2, as this will give me some great GM stuff and some stuff for my players, and dice! I'll just have to fight with my players about limited faith and college choices.