So here is the thing. I loved the game when I first got it. LOVE IT! I thought they had such a great idea with the cards and the dice. It was fresh and different.

I've run a campaign now for over 6 months. And I'm very much less excited about the game.

I think that the problems I've encountered are:

• Building Encounters (monsters) is much too time consuming. There is something to be said about a Monster Manual where you grab and go. I get the idea behind giving monsters their own cards...but it's just too much. I've no way to even sort these cards very well. As a GM, it's a nightmare.
• Dice - This game does not need Reckless or Conservative dice. The Cards can actually handle those things well enough. There is no reason to add the red and green dice and depth of stance. It's just a complication that has very little gain.
• Stuff - There is just too much stuff in this game. Seriously, it's hard to keep everything neat and tidy. Finding the right action cards for myself or players is a hassle. There are too many tokens. There are too many types of cards that barely get used (Mutation, Insanity, etc).
• Vague Passage of time - Normally I love scenes, but Warhammer combines these with their Recharge system and that allows some odd things to happen. How many times can a player cast a spell outside of combat?
• Fatigue and Stress - These are fantastic ideas, but a player can get rid of them so casually as to make them have little impact on the game. It's very easy for a player to manage both of these things. They can remove it after a fight, they can remove it during a fight and they remove it after they sleep.

Anyway, I just wanted to say that I love the idea of this game more than how the game plays out.

Sorry to hear that, have run 60 sessions so far myself and still find it shiny. Use better tokens to track fatigue and stress, often make my own location cards with larger print for players to see, trying an alternative to party card, but otherwise pretty much running game as written.

I keep the monster cards sorted into the groups, beastmen, undead, general chaos, khorne daemons, gaze etch etc with their actions and placeholders for thos other categories use. I find prepping pretty easy as it happens. But we all have our own tastes, lots of folks love the new One Ring RPG and while I see the love and effort invested int it, I find it's mechanics left me cold, ironically wishing this system had bee used as the underlying rule set.

• Building Encounters (monsters) is much too time consuming. There is something to be said about a Monster Manual where you grab and go. I get the idea behind giving monsters their own cards...but it's just too much. I've no way to even sort these cards very well. As a GM, it's a nightmare.

No, there really is no numerical way to calculate encounters. I too find this to be a pain, but not a game breaker. It is something that should be better developed.

• Dice - This game does not need Reckless or Conservative dice. The Cards can actually handle those things well enough. There is no reason to add the red and green dice and depth of stance. It's just a complication that has very little gain.

You could play without them. Skip stance and the red/green dice alltogether. Some people have eliminated white and black dice from the game.

I think this system would survive just fine without the extra dice types (there's probably "one too many" as has been stated in a review in the past by WFRP's hated rival "a D&D writer."

• Stuff - There is just too much stuff in this game. Seriously, it's hard to keep everything neat and tidy. Finding the right action cards for myself or players is a hassle. There are too many tokens. There are too many types of cards that barely get used (Mutation, Insanity, etc).

I dont sort it. I only use what I want.

• Vague Passage of time - Normally I love scenes, but Warhammer combines these with their Recharge system and that allows some odd things to happen. How many times can a player cast a spell outside of combat?

Yes, this is underdeveloped and vague to a fault (IMO), but really doesn't matter in my game because my sessions are episodic. I don't worry how many days it takes for a character to recover from his wounds (for example).

• Fatigue and Stress - These are fantastic ideas, but a player can get rid of them so casually as to make them have little impact on the game. It's very easy for a player to manage both of these things. They can remove it after a fight, they can remove it during a fight and they remove it after they sleep.

We'll see what 3.5E holds

jh

Sarim Rune said:

• not true for me, i have the creature cards and actions grouped together in greenskins, treekin, khorne, nurgle, slaneesh, tzeentch etc etc. that makes creating an encounter as easy as a 1 minute task
• you're right, the stance dice are not really necessary but i like those especially if we have someone new in the group. it's perfect to explain the different types of approaches on a action and that there is another result if you run in there or of you examine a situation frist
• As above, i got all the action cards sorted in 3 (i know, it's too much) boxes. one for spells, one for blessings and the rest for "other", which are divided in numerous sections for easy reference. there are alot of tokens, right, but it doesn't matter which token you use for what, so just throw em all toghether and grab a handful when needed.
  For Mutations and insanities: these are one of the view cards that make the game as fun as it is. giving them out all the time would not have the same effect on players as just giving them out as special "rewards" ;-) I usually keep those cards away from the table and just bring em into play when needed, so the table isnt overloaded
• outside of combat my players start at equlibrium and have to channel after casting a spell, but the actions all recharge immediately
• Our group doe not get rid of these as easy as yours it seems, in combat and thorugh insanities and conditions my group gathers lots and lots of fatigue and stress and often even pass out from them, i find that exciting

we've been playing for over a year now and have just lately discussed wether we want to go back to a d&d like game or stick with warhammer and it was a 0 to 7 vote for warhammer, as the mechanics make it so easy to just pick up ad play...

i dont know what it is lately with threads about how little people like the game....i still love it

I think it's the lack of online support from FFG. I LOVE this game. My players and I (D&D and Star Wars veterans) find this system to be our most favorite. There is A LOT of stuff man. No doubt. But I think the beauty of it is, use what you want! Use what works for you. We use everything. I spend the day before sorting out what I think I'll need....and I always still have more than I needed.

But, there could be a lot more online support, more articles and online supplements, examples, etc. POD is nice, but it's everything else is moving at a snail's pace. Which seems to be uniform for all FFG's RPGs.

I think it's the lack of online support from FFG. I LOVE this game. My players and I (D&D and Star Wars veterans) find this system to be our most favorite. There is A LOT of stuff man. No doubt. But I think the beauty of it is, use what you want! Use what works for you. We use everything. I spend the day before sorting out what I think I'll need....and I always still have more than I needed.

But, there could be a lot more online support, more articles and online supplements, examples, etc. POD is nice, but it's everything else is moving at a snail's pace. Which seems to be uniform for all FFG's RPGs.

I think it's the lack of online support from FFG. I LOVE this game. My players and I (D&D and Star Wars veterans) find this system to be our most favorite. There is A LOT of stuff man. No doubt. But I think the beauty of it is, use what you want! Use what works for you. We use everything. I spend the day before sorting out what I think I'll need....and I always still have more than I needed.

But, there could be a lot more online support, more articles and online supplements, examples, etc. POD is nice, but it's everything else is moving at a snail's pace. Which seems to be uniform for all FFG's RPGs.

whoa...triple post...my bad

true that, i would really be happy about a FREE downloadable content page wich should include maps and background storys.

i think maps are essential to the game so the players can get infested in the world. and WFRP has a distinct lag of those...

Sarim Rune said:

I simply put all creatures cards, actions and standups for each creature type into different boxes. If I want goblins, I pick up the greenskin box and I've got all the cards good to go. On very simple encounters I just use basic actions for my creatures and use the creature cards, to look up things like damage, soak etc. It took a bit of organizing but now it flows very well in game.

Sarim Rune said:

My players actually love them, the reckless and conservative dice have a potential to change the outcome of a roll drastically.

Sarim Rune said:

Initially I felt the same way, I had all these resources that I didn't use. But over time I've included more and more through focusing on different aspects and now it works really well with all the different cards. It's no different than any other RPG actually, initially you do not use all the rules, rules for deseases for example see very little use in the other RPG's I've played, same goes for insanities (except in Call of Cthulhu). I find that it's easier to "decide" to include rules in WFRP than in other games since I can just look at the back of the cards and think "how can I expose my players to this?"

I also organized all player actions into binders with Ultra pro sleeves, and it's easy to flip through when looking for actions for the players.

Sarim Rune said:

I agree, usually I let my players recharge everything after a scene, often there's no reason not to.

Sarim Rune said:

My players have stress and/or fatigue most of the time. I hand out stress and fatigue quite freely as the players have many options for controlling them. But well, the last two sessions I've had PC's passing out from fatigue and I believe that in almost every session someone is at least fatigued or stressed. I guess it's partially a question of GM style, but I seldom let my players rest for long, and often a full nights sleep isn't enough to remove all their stress/fatigue tokens.

Try handing out more stress/fatigue when traveling, when rolling chaos stars, remember the bane results etc.
A lot of creature actions also deal out fatigue/stress and the reckless dice are also a great source for it.

Obviously, I think WFRP is shiny. But I had similar conserns as you have. Through practice I've started to use more and more of the stuff. When I realized that I couldn't bring all the shiny bits and cards into the game at once and started working them in gradually, one mechanic at a time, it became much better.

Sarim Rune said:

I have only played the game, so I can't make a comment on GMing it, but:

Stuff: In the game I play in we have small folders for every PC where they store their own actions cards, character sheet, sound cards etc. Makes it easy to set up the next week. Tokens... ok, maybe fair cop on those, but I actually find we often run out of some of them so have added extra ones in.

Dice: I personally feel that something would be lost with the reckless and conservative dice going. It just adds an extra thing for players to play with (and of course, there are differences between them). Not saying they couldn't have done something else, just I don't feel it actually adds that much complication. Also, if you get rid of them you are less likely to see fatigue and stress, as the reckless dice is a big source of them.

Vague Passage of time: Ok, yes. Particularly outside of combat it is a bit vague how many things work. And there are some oddities that result from the abstract measure of time. For example, guns can fire as often as bows... it's just more tiring to do so. I find it quite hard to work out what a Combat turn represents. However, I don't find it too much of a problem in combat. It is only outside combat that things get tricky (how often do things recharge? In combat it seems things recharge every turn... so a few seconds maybe? As long as a minute? Outside combat... sometimes it seems it take hours).

Fatigue and Stress: Ok, I tend to play it quite conservatively, and I have many, many ways to get rid of both (and my character can take a billion fatigue before he falls over, and my character tends to be more balanced than others so is fatigued less often than anyone else), but several of the other players have had more of a problem than me. Well, not really a problem, they have been more willing to use it. Fatigue and stress is really more of a resource to be spent than a general nuisance. If a player plays it closer to the line then they will get more out of it, but they will have more risk of falling foul of its problems (The player who does in my group has feinted in several sessions, and the other players have often been at least fatigued or stressed).

re Vague Time, I see this more as Flexible Time and I like it.

On key things dear to a Player's heart, it's clear "GM says 4 days pass, okay I got 4 tries at getting over that critical wound". But on things key to balancing encounters generally and matching them to developments in narrative (token recharge, stance adjustment, favour/power status) the GM is free to say "these are tense moments, a few seconds a round" or "this reflects your investigation and encounters in the city for the next week, a day a round".

This follows the cinematic/narrative logic of imagining encounters. For a combat encounter (Act) that lasts a few seconds, the chance to keep using that sweet combat action/spell is limited by recharge; similarly for an investigation Act that fills same screen time the same is true of the sweet social action/spell even through the narrative time is longer.

BTW, when I do the "day a round" approach I do not give Stress/Fatigue recovery for each night. Again, imagine the scenes on screen/stage - days of tense interviews and meetings in smokey bars, back alleys, the fatigue or stress builds up to the Encounter!. I would give an end of Act recovery before moving to the Encounter Act after the investigation Act.