I've been a RPG'er for the last 20 years, starting with a red box of basic Dungeons and Dragons, graduating to the THAC0 drenched minutae of AD&D second edition, taking a brief lull to feel cool in college and then diving back into a series of particularly epic campaigns of 3e and 3.5e. When Fourth Edition arrived, I suppressed a small scowl and moved to Pathfinder.
But aside from a few forays into D20 Modern, it's only ever been D&D for me. It's hard to find time as a married guy in his thirties to actually play games (blah blah blah). I love systems and mechanics, so I've spent more money than I'd care to relate on core rulebooks for games I know full well I will never play. A smattering of storyteller system games, a few horror games from Cthulhu to 40k, sampling of indies like Diaspora and Dogs in the Vineyard, and early last year, I picked up the Player's Guide to Warhammer Fantasy, third edition.
It's hard to say what hooked me so quickly but something about the system and the world, which were both new to me, hooked me quick, and soon I had a Player's Vault, and then eventually quite a few more vaults and guides. I've only ever been a player, and while I've kicked around a couple of ideas for campaigns, I never got it off the ground. It took me six months to get WFRP ready to go, in between slowly digesting the rules and prepping for the birth of my first child.
I gathered a group of five people. Two were experienced geeks; one had been the DM on my first D&D 3e campaign, the other a frequent player. Then I recruited three more people who had never, ever played a RPG: My wife, who had always wanted to play, one of her friends, a dyed in the wool geek who had somehow avoided this avenue of geekdom, and her hip housemate, who I asked as a lark, and was surprised at his rapid assent.
I scheduled some time to set up the components and bits and bobs before hand, and what had looked like a daunting task to begin with was actually quite simple. A few creature cards, a few buckets of tokens, and a few cardboxes with everyone's characters inside, and I was mostly ready to go. I told them it would be rough: We were all new to the system, and only half of us were familiar with RPGs to begin with. The phrase: "Talents are sort of like Feats" and other analogies would only be helpful to two of my players.
Once we started, everything rolled like clockwork. A brief refresher on the Dice Pool and the basic structure of an Action care was all it took. Most of the players learned to build their own pools and read the results by the end of our two hour session, and those that were running a little slower still understood how to translate the results to their cards.
We only completed the first encounter, the Beastmen attack, but A Day Late and a Shilling Short still feels pretty railroad-y, and lacking in traditional RP elements. Both of my experienced players mentioned this, but the three newbies said they were sort of dreading the inevitable "in character" party meeting scenes, so I created a little web of relationships as to why they were all in the Tavern waiting for caravan, and put them right on the road. This seemed a good compromise, and once the sparks flew, they all launched in.
At first sign of the beastmen, one of our newbies, a wood elf waywatcher, let loose with Sniper Shot and rolled a stunning dice pool, three successes, two boons, and a critical success. I had increased the number of ungor henchmen, but she killed two of them in one shot, and grievously wounded the third. She would continue to make deadly use of Threading the Needle, and was the greatest damage dealer.
Our Roadwarden, another newbie, picked up the blunderbuss and let loose, spraying down the remaining ungor, before launching in with Nimble Strike, doing most of the damage to the Gor. He seemed to pretty compelled by protecting his fellow wounded Roadwarden.
The Initiate of Sigmar, one of my old RPG'ing buddies had a little trouble with his lower strength, and lack of Weapon Skill, and couldn't land a hammer blow at first, but once he managed a successful Parry-Riposte combo that brained the last ungor, he enjoyed himself just fine.
My wife, the Elven bounty hunter, was more sleep deprived than me due to our infant daughter, but kept her eyes open long enough to take a couple of well placed pistol shots, and later told me that she enjoyed it even more than she thought she would. She had no interest in being personally successful, she just loved hearing a narrative spontaneously develop.
And our Gold Order wizard, my other skilled player, bless him, launched right into casting, allowing me to ratchet up the tension as the Sigmarite looked on in confusion, and then... rolled a miscast.
The miscast deck declared that all liquids in a 20 foot radius froze solid and everyone took a tick of fatigue. I described everyone's water skins turning to a brick of ice, and later realized I'd missed on opportunity to add a misfortune dice to anyone who didn't spend a maneuver to drop their water skins.
When the reinforcements showed up, a well placed Arrowstorm broke the ungor's resolve and sent them running in the rain, and the priest and the roadwarden beat the wargor down while my wife waded in before delivering a the killing blow with a close range pistol shot.
And then our time ran out.
By session two, having got a little time under their belt, I think the RP'ing and party dymamics will come easier. When our little infant poop machine is a little more at home, we plan to start the second act, with breaks for occasional feedings.
I knew that storytelling was built into the mechanics, with multiple success and failure conditions for every possible action, but one play-through showed me that it was even more integral to the system than I had first thought. Every dice pool became an easy to read and easy to embellish memorable moment, the critical wound deck made it easy to describe the damage visited on the wargor, and the miscast deck, oh the miscast deck... Location cards and standups made the abstract nature I was worried about as indistinct and fuzzy come alive as a clean and fluid visual representation, which for a primarily board-game based group was absolutely necessary.
I'm already planning to run this right into Eye for an Eye (which looks incredible from an adventure standpoint, for a guy weaned on literal dungeon crawls), and then onto Winds of Magic and Signs of Faith, then Witches Song, and then maybe some of the great adventures from Liber Fanatica before getting the chops to run some homebrewed scenarios.... There's plenty of great stuff down the road, and everyone, including me had a blast. I think I'll be running WFRP for a while to come.
For all the rules I missed (and there were probably some), the system made it easy to leap on over it, and just as I'd hoped the game was spent playing not looking up tables or constantly referring to the rulebook. I don't remember the last D20 game I played where no one had to look up the rules for grappling... But WFRP flowed beautifully. It told a story, had easy visceral and visual tools, and every action ended up being uniquely memorable, not because it was a great session, but because the dice pool and cards supported narrative. I'm converted.