How would this game play if you ditched careers, action cards, stances, etc. and just used skills? A couple ideas I have are

1) each turn let the players decide how aggressive/conservative they want to be by replacing their characteristic dice for the reds/greens, and

2) using a general list of things to spend the boons and banes on like EotE does.

Would playing the game in this manner cause any issues? What things haven't I though of?

I haven't look at the magic stuff yet so it is possible that that ould be a major hurdle for me (or not).

Thoughts?

In the Player's Guide there are rules for playing the game without the components, but I do think it includes recording what would normally be on action cards on a character sheet. But you could look in there for inspiration.

We've played it every which way. What you describe could easily be done this way:

• No careers, no races (meaning no race would have any special abilities). This would be a min-maxer's wet dream.
• WOUND THRESHOLD: 8 + Toughness
• Remove stance completely. There's no reason to use it except in a Warhammer game, as this mechanic is based on the NOVELS of Gotrek and Felix. It serves no other purpose.
• NO TALENTS (just use skills and skill specialization)
• Skills: All PCs could choose any 5 skills each 10 ranks could switch to a new 5 (or stay the same), or whatever, there's no reason why you'd even have to have that rule. All skills, including advanced, would cost the same to advance.
• ACTIONS: No action cards whatsoever. You either succeed or fail. 2 eagles/banes mean you get a fortune point (or the GM gets a fortune point)
• all this above = boring IMHO but is the basis of the system and could be used for any genre.

Magic would be a real pain in the buttocks to change and without careers, it's probably best just to leave it out. If you were to use it, just allow "spellcasters" to choose any spell from wizard or priest list at any time.

jh

Thanks.

What do you think about letting players choose to be more aggressive/conservative by replacing blues for reds/greens? Any issues with that? The reds/greens seems like a cool idea to me.

Sure, stance could be used, but delay doesn't make any sense and the emo tears wouldn't serve any point either, because you would have already dropped stress and fatigue anyways as part of a "basic game."

If you did, let them get 2 each side or 3 & 1 and advancements could be spent up to 2 per rank.

jh

why not just play a D20 related game if you want to do away with everything that makes the warhammer system?

you can easily play the warhammer setting with a different system...

also: doin away with all components also means doing away with the fun stuff: insanities, mutations, diseases and such! boooooring

I am not that interested in the Warhammer setting. I am very interested in the dice mechanic. I am playing Edge of he Empire right now. I would love to play a fantasy game with the narrative dice but would like to do it simpler than WHFP 3e does it. So right now my choices are to simplify WH or mod EotE to a fantasy setting. I may eventually try both and see what I like better.

As far as the simpler game being boring, it won't be simpler than BX D&D and I enjoy that.

I appreciate all the feedback on the simpler version of the game.

It's doable.

A couple years back I ran a short campaign I called Everhammer. It was a blend of Warhammer's dice with most of the other mechanics of Everway. I was running for a group of old school gamers who just couldn't enjoy a game without some attack rolls, and Everway is normally diceless. The fusion worked pretty well, great for pickup games.

You can read about it in my old blog posts: http://www.transitivegaming.blogspot.com/search/label/EverHammer

It's pretty similar to what you're talking about, being mostly Warhammer's core dice system without all the crazy bells and whistles. It added some Everway bells and whistles, but they were mainly narrative instead of mechanical so it stayed light and simple.

I avoided Stance entirely because I didn't want to deal with recharge. Simplified the way dice pools were calculated. Used "freestyle" results for boons/banes/comets/eagles. Replaced Warhammer's 6 Characteristics with Everways 4 Elemental Attributes. Off the top of my head, I think I kept Fatigue and Stress to keep manoeuvres under control, but they weren't as omnipresent as they are in Warhammer. It was all very free-flowing and liberating compared to Warhammer. Things were light and off the cuff, and I could improv whatever I wanted without fear that a boon effect or "perform a stunt" would upset delicate balance or undercut the value of some action card.

I made my own wound cards, and used a reduced damage scale with simpler math but more meaningful crits. Probably 40 cards total since every wound was a crit and it only took 3 or 4 to drop a PC. Actually had two decks, one was physical wounds, the other was shame/insanity/social damage type stuff. Didn't take much work.

I also used location cards. Everway has a whole bunch of picture cards with no mechanics on them, I just made up location effects to go with those pictures.