doc_cthulhu said:

I think that's a pretty solid observation.

WFRPG 3.0 is really kind of a like a luxury class Mercedes. It’s an amazing vehicle, anyone who owns one loves it but so few can afford it that ultimately it doesn’t sell as well as say your everyday ford truck. More so people will “talk trash” on it out of spite simply because it’s out of their reach.
Most of the negative reviews of WFRPG 3.0 I have ever read came from people who really didn’t appear to actually own a copy or where reviewing it based a single play and made the connection that the core set simply isn’t enough to get the full experience but were unable or unwilling to spend more money.

Hence it wouldn’t surprise me if WFRPG 3.0 wasn’t selling particularly well, in fact I honest never really expected it to. Right now I’m just glad that there is sufficient material already released that if you own it, you have a very complete game system.

I think in a better economy this game would probably have done a lot better (assuming it’s not doing well). Most gamers are willing to spend money on their hobby if they like it enough, so I don’t think the price tag would be as big of a factor in better times. The competition however out there is pretty stiff right now and even large companies with enormous resources are having trouble selling RPG books (Wizards of the Coast comes to mind). It really is the age of “smaller” more compact systems, I mean with Pathfinder you need at the most 2-3 books and you have an extremely efficient and complete system and it still costs you less than the core WFRPG 3.0 set.

I also think that part of the reason that WFRPG 3.0 gets less than what it deserves is that it really is a pretty big departure from many traditions and sacred cows of role-playing games. There is already this sort of “return to the old times” atmosphere in role-playing right now and most “re-imagining’s or re-inventions” in the past few years have go down rather badly. 4th edition D&D was very poorly received, arguably one of the most community splitting editions to ever come with the D&D label. The re-invention of White Wolfs world of darkness was very poorly received, so much so that when they decided to collaborate with CCP to make an MMO based on the World Of Darkness they did so on their old world, not their new world as you would expect. A real sign of the popularity of their old world vs. their new world. You also have to pay notice to Pathfinder who has chipped in and become an industry leader using a 10+ year old system and its worth noting to that even in the PC RPG genre of games people are spending a lot of time going “back in time” to capture classics, just some examples are things like the remake of Baulder’s Gate, popular kick starters like the remake of wasteland and Bards Tale.

Further evidence can be seen in how the upcoming series of re-makes are being done. For example 5th edition D&D has placed considerable focus on trying to make their next edition closer to 3rd edition than 4th edition with considerable focus on even 2nd edition, more so than 4th edition players. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

WFRPG 3.0 is an amazing game already, if they released nothing else ever again, that would not change my opinion of it.

I agree it's a great game that bridges many "indie game" concepts and "teachings" with old school play.

I've written a yet-to-be-published review essentially saying "great game only failed by some poor components" - I find location cards too small and sepia artwork washed out for use on table top and a few things like that which are easily fixed at table whereas the core rule set just "sings along" wonderfully.

If if not a drop more comes out for publication, I intend to keep running a campaign in it and hope to see fan base keep supporting it. I admit myself to being remiss on this front, I know I should be getting dropbox account and putting up simple things like homebrew trackers and cards for encounters.

valvorik said:

One of the things to note is that when a publisher abandons a game it is far from dead. Look at games like Alternity for example, easily one of the best things ever produced by TSR in my opinion, even better than their original D&D material. Today not only has the community produced 10,000% more material for it than the publisher ever dreamed off, but most of it is of even better quality than what TSR could produce. This is true about a lot of games that kind of came and went in the eyes of the publisher but the community came in and breathed new life to it. Pathfinder is another example of a game system, abandoned, than picked up by the community and in the case of Pathfinder it became a commercial success that actually rivals the new version of the game that it was abandoned for.

Communities, not publishers make the game in my opinion and I think WFRPG 3.0 is going to have a very long and very success run publisher or not. It already has more material available than most game systems that are released and what is there is frankly awsome. Everything I have ever bought from this lines gets 5 out of 5 stars from me.