Well written post Commoner,

I'm still confused about why people dislike the cards. The cards give you rules just like in any other RPG. A talent is a talent. An Action card is like any other Feat. I keep looking through rpg's at the store and keep scratching my head. Ok so in DnD I can get double strike as a Feat, Awesome! So I can get it as an Action card in Warhammer. What's the difference? Star Wars Saga has a force power called Whirlwind attack. Hmm, That sounds like an action card.

I myself love the cards, because I hated writing done short hand notes of the rules. I hated remembering or trusting my players knew the rules interuptiation. I started out with Star Wars Saga. Do you know what I was doing? Creating cards when someone advanced and bought it. I have a small deck of cards started. I was getting tired of making them. But you had to make them. And then I ran across this game. Boom! I was sold. And on top of that I love the simple math/numbers system. It's great.

So I guess the thing is that I would pay extra so I can get professional looking cards which I than do not have to waste my time making myself.

I guess the argument really comes down to price point. Some people don't want to spend more for cards, while others will. I could think of other areas that FFG could cut to save costs.

* We get fulll-color books

*Card board NPC stands, are great, but are pointless unless you give us more. I mean it can be pretty obvious which NPC's are important in these adventures. (Gathering Storm for example)

* Less card board. there is plenty in the core box to save us from that expense in the future. How many recharge tokens do you really need?

I mean if they did it wisely they could have given us some basic weapon cards, gear, etc. More NPC stands. More handouts and few nice maps. Give us black and white books

Even if they want to revise it by dumping the cards, thats fine. As long as they still have the option to buy the cards in the form of a POD, Vault or something.

master yoda said:

Although I know nothing about the Star Wars game, I largely agree with Commoner's critique of WFRP 3.

In a sense you're right: what's the difference between a double strike card, and a double strike rule written in a book? Nothing. But I don't want a double strike rule at all. If my players want to double strike, I'll let them, perhaps imposing some modifiers. Why do they need a defined card / talent to do this? Why do they need to buy 'flirt', or 'winning smile'? What's wrong with rolling fellowship and roleplaying/describing what you're doing? Buying very specific manoevres seems very old fashioned to me.

Although I have nothing against the use of components in principle, a lot of the cards add clutter and complexity that I just don't need.

I guess I always considered these as aids or addittions. As in you can flirt, but if you spend an advancement for the Flirt action card you could flirt better. Which in a way is telling us that over the years you have been able to fine tune the way you flirt for those special occaions when you need a little more ump.

I come from a board gaming back ground so I have a different view on things. But when you say you don't want those rules, than where are the boundries? who cares about a system? what system? why roll dice? Why not just seat around and tell a story? In truth that's what we do but the rules guide us and tell us how well or bad our character does with the actions(not cards) that we choose during that journey/story, otherwise we would be unstoppable characters that can do anything and everything.

master yoda said:

Ah! but there is a difference. The game mechanics of the action cards sucks in my opinion. The traking tokens, not only they add more things to the table but additionally this is a board or PC game mechanics lazily brought into a rpg. There is indeed an attempt to justify the traking tokens in the core book, but it fails when you look at it with the lens of a rpg. I won't argue that these mechanics achieve one thing at least, keep some game balance, but it does it in a way that for me is poor. They should have found a better way to do it, which would have additionally cleaned the table of traking tokens and easen both GM and players job.

They could have used fatigue and stress, or add more risky chaos star effects on those cards whith high recharge time.

Similarly, the mechanism for active defenses is equally bad. A player character cannot parry each round…or dodge or block…

I understand that many people not caring a all about simulation can be ok with this system, but I think one has to remember that one of the goals of a an rpg system is to simulate its world. Two rpgs with different worlds like super heroes and far west, can have very different mechanics (or more precisely components of its mechanics) but both of them will try to simulate their worlds from books, comics, movies etc.

At the end of the day, every one of use care about simulation, that is why there are so many house rules about shooting into a melee, or for wearing amours, and that is also why a GM would not allow an enemy to shot his bow across a wall, because it is not real enough.

Well, for me the mechanics of the action cards are not realistic enough, and moreover they fill the table with extra tokens, dice, stones or whatever.

Cheers,

Yepes

Yepesnopes said:

This is straight up false. There are plenty of wonderful games that have completely abandoned simulation.

Many people may prefer that playstyle, but it is not the end-all be-all of gaming.

Doc, the Weasel said:

It is not false. I am pretty sure you would not allow your players in wfrp 3 to jump over a chasm which is 100 m wide, neither will you allow them to stay for 30 minutes underwater. Why not? to simulate "reality" or more precise to simulate "heroes (or adventurers) in a fantasy setting". This of course may change in other settings, where for example the players play with alien races or with super heroes, but then again, there will be other concerns regarding simulation of the setting.

Nertheless, I will rephrase it a bit. At the end of the day, every one of us care about simulation up to some degree.

Cheers,

Yepes