Just wondered if there is anybody out there who has come new to the game by playing without the tokens, cards, etc.

I would definitely be interested in hearing what you thought ...

I plan on running a Warhammer " Lite " game vey soon.

I will be using the three guide books and four sets of dice. No bits or cards at all.

After the game session, I will post and let you know how it went.

Our group plays Pathfinder and D & D 4E, so this will be our first go at Warhammer.

( I have played both previous editions of Warhammer, but no one else has. )

I hope it goes well . . .

Great, I'm very curious ... I still keep up to date with Pathfinder, but I no longer have much use for D&D 4ed. It will be interesting to hear how you think they compare.

I will be submitting a players guide review to rpg.net tonight (most likely). So there will be that assuming they publish it, but it will not focus only on playing lite.

Since the game was released, we had 50% of our players playing with paper only and 50% playing with cards and counters (ok, not 50/50 because we have 5 players and one guy keeps the cards around..like in 4e D&D).

"Rules-lite" is a REALLY bad name for it, because the rules haven't been changed - just the tracking and reference material method.

It should be called "NoChits/NoCards Method."

jh

Emirikol said:

You could argue that if you put all the things you need to play for both methods into a bag and find the weight, then one will be lighter than the other

Emirikol said:

That depends on what the OP means. I was planning on running a rules-lite game for new players myself. But it had nothing to do with the new books and their card/token-less playstyle. But simply removing parts of the rules. Boiling it down to just the dice and perhaps the cards. The basic dice mechanics of this game is great for people who are new to RPGs, but the game comes with a lot of additional mechanics that easily makes it seem a bit overwhelming. So I was planning to ease them into it by just introducing the dice and a few cards in the first session and then maybe adding the rest once the players got comfertable with the basic dice mechanics.

Sorry for the lack of clarity, I was wondering about playing without the components (no chits, cards, tokens, etc.).

It is "Lite" in the sense that there are fewer moving parts

A bit of a bump ... anybody going cardless yet?

I don't have the new Player or GM Guides, so not playing official 'lite', but since it sounds like it only consists of not using components I think we have been playing a 'lite' version for some time now. We haven't gone entirely cardless, but we only use Action cards (and basic actions are compiled on to one card) along with character sheets for general use and then Wound cards only for critical wounds (we use dice to track wounds, fatigue, stress, power and favour), and Condition and Miscast cards as applicable. Also we do not use tokens for the most part. This has worked fairly well.

The only problem encountered was with a new player to role-playing in general who found it overwhelming writing everything in on the character sheet. I think for him it would have been better to use the cards, though he did find even the limited number of cards we did use a little confusing as well. The rest of my group are long-time gamers used to character sheets and had no problems whatsoever. They preferred having all the info on their character sheets as per more traditional gaming.

We use the condition cards mostly as markers and reminders, which they work well for and miscast and wound cards just work well to draw instead of rolling. Otherwise I think it's really action cards that are the most difficult to get away from, I haven't found a good solution for them yet and considering they're really the only ones left, it's not like we need to get rid of them. I would really find it unwieldy not to use action cards. Otherwise though, you really could do away with most cards without much difficulty.

I'm guessing that few groups will succeed entirely without components, but reducing significantly how much you have on the table will likely appeal to most groups that don't have unlimited table space.

Waxfire,

Are you using Party Sheets? How are you tracking talents there?

jh

Emirikol said:

Yes, that is one card we do use that I forgot to mention, but we decided to forgo using party talents, it was just another thing to keep track of and no one really found it added that much. They like the party ability and that works well enough when anyone remembers to use it. We also use poker chips to track fortune points instead of tokens and track them with those on the party sheet. Sorry, forgot about that.

Waxfire

I made "Fortune Point" cards to hand out with the rules printed on them. My house rule allows a blue instead of a white die for FP.

jh

I'm quite curious about this "Chit-less" version as well, being a Roleplayer and GM for many years now I'm used to the more traditional way of playing. That being said, I still like the slight board gamey feel of WHFRP 3e and find that newer and more diverse players enjoy the Chit based method. Once I get my hands on the Guides I'll host a few games sans Chits so as to gauge the smoothness and immersiveness of this particular style. I still hold out hope that my players will prefer the Chit method because that is one of WHFRP's biggest selling points to me, however if my players prefer to play in a more tradtional way then I'll have to modify my game sessions to accommodate their preference.