I'm toying with the idea of starting a new "by the book" campaign with WFRP3 running only published scenarios. But every time I look the line of magazines (I hesitate to call these flimsy things books) I get desparate. I really do not need the fluff with me every time we play but if I want the rules I have little option.

So I thought of photocopying or scanning the most essential rules. It has been almost two years since I ran WFRP so I'm a bit rusty. So I'd like to ask from you who have been running WFRP since the Lure of Power (my last supplement, bought after we stopped gaming WFRP) what are the most important rulebooks (excluding Guides and the books from the core box) that you need (almost) everytime you play?

I'd also be interested about your opinions about which of the scenarios ran most easily (without requiring additional material like EoN) or were/are "the best" of this line.

I have collected different rules sumaries which are great.

As for the scenarios, the Witch Song is definitevely the best of this edition. Gathering the Storm campaing, although very liniar is a fun one with a lot of oportunities for characters to be imaginative.

Cheers,

Yepes

Thanks for the swift reply!

Having read both Witch's Song and The Gathering Storm I think they both could work well though they both have major issues on what is relevant and what is not. Maybe blending them together might work? Like going to the village of Witch's Song and searching for the map pieces there? Now that I think of it maybe the map could point to a Nexus that the witch is using (that could even be located in the underground tunnel of WS) rather than some random wizard that is the most obvious bad guy ever.

Any thoughts on the necessity of Enemy Within or the Hero's Call?

edit: Thanks for the reference sheets!

Regarding the rules,

Omens has severe/premanent wounds and horses.

Lure has social rules and a boatload of social cards.

Winds has mutation/corruption and how to magic item

Signs has Disease, priest items and a calendar.

I'm not partial to scenario linearity as i've always just advanced the story as I see fit as a GM. If the suddenly find themselves 400 miles away, so be it

jh

If I were to travel with this game, I'd either stick to the core or 1x players guide and PDF the rest on iPad. If you have the guides, the amount of rules pages from lure, omens etc are quite slim. You could photocopy the relevant pages…

Daedalum said:

I came to the same conclusion. It is quite ridiculous that the rules are spread out so much. Witch's Song gives to important addition to magic and it is only one page! The guides would have been a great addition but they were released too early. If guides were to be released now I think that more people would use them.

And there would be no need to fill up the GM book with schools of magic…

People clamoured so hard for WFRP3 to go back to being an old-style set with 3 rulebooks, so they went with what they had at the time. Now that there have been releases since Signs of Faith, of course there will be some rules spread.

I thought the same thing as you and I coul donly come up with 5-7 pages of additional material if I copied it directly out of Lure, Omens, Witch's song.

We also need a component's list for those and Hero's call (and the PODs).

jh

**** shame we aren't getting any.

But on the bright side (and totally of topic) I have a new scenario in the works that will be playtested (twice, with different rule systems).

Awesome! if you need any feedback about the scenario, let me know (and I promise to be nice

This is probably a good time to talk about what we NEED updated (and we fans are going to have to do it because nobody at FFG has the motivation to get it done):

1. Living index since the last update
2. Component lists for which products?
3. Errata update from last update (I've got one regarding jousting in omens of war..it says "simultaneous opposed checks" which can't happen

I'll probably get started on the Living Index in the meanwhile at least getting the proper nouns down. The component list is partially started for Lure of Power (in my house rules, I have all the social actions listed..and there are a LOT!)

The component list will probably come out best at RPGGeek as the layout is more friendly towards not getting stuff lost in the stacks here.

jh

I tried to organize the "box of bits" where I keep all the cards. As we haven't played after I bought Omens of War and Lure for Power it is a complete mess. I actually wanted to burn all the cards. I still like the idea of cards as they help the players out but managing this whole mess is an enormous amount of work.

Maybe I should just drink for a while then go through all cards and reduce their number.

/add endless litany of curse words here.

Best to just buy some collector card album sheets. Sort them this way:

Remove all the basic cards and drop them in a zyplock

Melee

ranged

Support

Talent by Type (2 per pocket)

Spells/Blessings:

Sort by order. It's OK to double-up action cards.

Monsters: Separate binder:

* sort by type and sort the melee/ranged/support monster-only cards

Career Sheets: 4x5 inch pockets 4/sheet album pages

Put the career abilities in regular collecter album sheets (2 per pocket)

Items, locations, party sheets and everything else can simply go into individual zyplock plastic bags as you don't need them sorted.

One "frequent use box" for wounds, diseases, conditions, insanities, mutations should be next to you as a Gm while you're gaming.

DO NOT TRY TO SORT THEM BY THE BOXED SET THEY CAME FROM.

Best,

jh

I'll quess I have to force labor my players to do the sorting for me. Luckily they are all MtG players so they should have sheets ready.

Emirikol said:

I actually find that sleeving all the cards makes things more difficult, as everytime I add new cards, I have to shift every single card down one slot. Also, those large plastic sheets take up way more space than a simple alphabatized deck. So of late I've been organizing all my action/talent/career cards into decks. I've got a deck for the various action types (melee attacks, ranged actions, support, spells, blessings, basic), talents (tactic, reputation, focus), etc.

I havent' bothered to alphabetize since Omens of war came out. I just categorize according to melee, ranged, support, etc.

Lucky for us, there won't be any new cards that aren't specific to a spellcaster career so not to worry about new work

jh

We put all our action cards into nine-pocket-pages, organized by the skill used for the action. For the most part, you want actions you're good at, and those yellow dice sure are dependable. Seemed like a natural way to divide it.

It made searching for a viable action for a given character really easy. Having just 3 categories (Ranged / Melee / Support) meant there was still a ton to look through and really took time to find anything. Having a tabbed page for each skill makes it much quicker and easier at the table.

A few of the actions had more than 1 skill, or different skills on each side. When this happened, I put them in whichever skill had the fewer actions. The last pocket on the last page of each skill has a little piece of paper listing actions filed under other skills that might be worth cross-referencing, as well listings of talents that boost specific skills, etc.

The biggest section was, unsurprisingly, Weapon Skill. So I subdivided it further. Any attacks that gave a bonus fortune die if you had some other skill trained went in that skill's section instead. Then I made a page for the handful of actions that use Weapon Skill plus something other than Strength (usually Agility). As the final sort, I made seperate pages for actions that require specific weapon types. Here's the great weapon actions, there's the weapon in each hand actions, and that page is the weapon plus shield actions. Bla bla bla.

Within the various pages, I don't worry at all about alphabetizing. The categories are small enough I don't really need it.

For spells and blessings I did the same, breaking it out by Faith or Order, then by Rank. In fact, I put the Rank 2+ actions, all the Epic stuff, and anything overpowered in their own binder until after character creation. That way I didn't have to worry about the players accidentally using it before I felt the campaign was ready for it.

The whole process took a lot of work, but it really made character creation a breeze. It's also greatly simplified Advancement and just generally looking things up. I'm almost always willing to trade GM effort between sessions for ease and elegance during the game. Plus, my wife gets this weird thrill out of organizing things, so I totally didn't have to go at this alone.

I'm just glad I scanned my action and talent cards before sticking them in there. Now I can take those printouts and stick them in my players guide and i"M not stuck wondering about which were in Lure of Power, Omens of War and whatnot.

jh