I've sold WHFRP + all major expansions and planning to start Pathfinder D&D campaign instead. Why? 4 years with WHFRP have been fun but the fun-factor with the custom dice and cards has changed into burden of carrying a big box of stuff which needs to be accessible at all times when either planning or playing. Also, the player tendency started to be about using each players' special action cards in every encounter - the cards on the table defined you as a character too much. Yes, it's a playstyle issue but still, I wanted to go back to the roots of pen and paper RPG. Also, easy accessability of PDF these days cannot be overlooked. So for main part, this a medium and accessability reason.

Partly why I'm not keen to play WHFRP anymore is due to rule issues which are difficult to house rule as the cards are too much build around the core system as it is. There's no way changing fatigue / stress system for example as cards rely on it working as it is.

My house rule set has been very successful with my group and I leave it to you, playtested and all:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12641813/WHFRP%20House%20Rules.pdf

In my house rules, I've touched player combat turn, monster ACE, critical wounds, new idea of corruption, death and healing etc

Played deadlands (savage world rules) sunday over fantasy grounds. I must admit it crossed my mind that if only I could run through TEW (we're starting it soon) with the kind of ease and fast paced mechanics that SW offers. We've had combats in WFRP that lasted 6 hours - the same combat would have been over in an hour tops using SW rules. And every single round would be tense as some little goblin could get a massive hit with exploding dice and make a PC go from not wounded to incapacitated in a single hit. The SW rules are really the essense of a gritty warhammer world.

I've been trying out Colonial Gothic and have been testing out some masterbook b/c I like the variable successes, but have yet to find a system that's perfect (and wager never will).

jh

I believe there is a Warhammer hack for Dungeon World which may be a good fit.

This is like the "who-is-who-at WFRP forums" giving advices of how to play something completely different.

You may like to try Savage Worlds and this adaptation .

Gallows, on 21 Oct 2013 - 11:16 PM, said:We've had combats in WFRP that lasted 6 hours

Something I tried out in an experimental one-off: Drop the action cards (You'll have to do something about the advancement system if you intend more than a one-off though) and most of the combat rules.

In combat, just handle it like any other opposed test. Same as you would normally do for just about every other obstacle the party would meet in the world.
If you want more than one roll to determine a fight, simply use a progress tracker.

So, you're walking down an alley and you are accosted by a thug trying to rob you? Opposed Weapon Skill check.

You're facing off against the chaos champion behind the whole scheme and that your campaign has built up to? One or several progress trackers.

It works great for a narrative game, exactly because WFRP uses narrative dice, and it de-emphesizes combat. Which lets you emphesize the social and exploratory aspects.

Edit: A healthy medium for this, is to treat unimportant and "easy" fights as opposed tests, while you pull out all the combat rules only for the big important fights. This way you won't have to rewrite the rules by having removed combat action cards.

@ralzar neat idea.

I can't stand slow combats. Ours run fast because:

• I'll skip your turn if you aren't fast..same as what I do with any game system. This aint fantasy battles. You go now or you get skipped. I've pissed people off at conventions because they're evidently used to 6 hour planning sessions..good riddance!
• Experience
• Know your character, know the rules...
• We don't use defense recharge or talent socketing or party sheets
• Go on YOUR initiative, not this big flippin' planning session every round
• Overlap of turns. Two people got a 1 on their initiative? We don't sit there and stare at the other person while he's gathering his dice pool. You go at the same time (or I'll skip you..see above).
• Most of my monsters use basic actions (melee strike anyone?) and I make some stuff up
• Plenty of dice for everyone
• Group size. My xenophobic players won't grow past 4 members and a GM.

Now, if you've tortured yourselves by listening to our recorded sessions on youtube, you may or may not agree about how I run things..or how drunk we get

I can't stand slow combats.

Our group started out as D&D 4th edition group for the first year of our sessions. If I see someone pull out a battlemap at an rpg session again I might be liable to stab someone

WFRP skirts the edge of what I consider tolerable rules for rpg combat. It's mostly up to the GM though. He can usually control how much fighting the party gets involved in and can control, to some degree, how long it lasts. After all, every fight doesn't have to last until everyone on one side is incapacitated. In most fights, some people get injured and the loosing side tries to disengage instead of throwing their lives away.

Savage Worlds is pretty cool. Not a fan of Dungeon World at all, really. I've actually found a lot of fun with Fate Core, but you really need to be tuned in to that style of play to make the system sing. In a way it's much like the narrative dice, just without the perpetual interpretation every roll. Fast, light crunch, fun....you can plug it into any setting. Don't get me wrong, my groups will be playing Star Wars and WFRP for a long time to come, but when we get an itch it's generally been to sling Fate for a bit or even Shadowrun. Pathfinder and D&D are both well and good I suppose. Guess it just depends on what mood your table is in and what you're willing to prep as a GM. From a player perspective Pathfinder is great but I'd rather pull my eyes out with shrimp forks than prep/GM the thing.

Anybody try out Nemenera or Strange yet? It says "story-based engine"..I guess nowhere does it say "social and investigative game system...

There appear to only be 3 character archetypes... none of them seems very 'social'.

Gallows, on 21 Oct 2013 - 11:16 PM, said:We've had combats in WFRP that lasted 6 hours

Something I tried out in an experimental one-off: Drop the action cards (You'll have to do soemthing about the advancement system if you intend more than a one-off though) and most of the combat rules.

We've had combats in WFRP that lasted 6 hours

In combat, just handle it like any other opposed test. Same as you would normally do for just about every other obstacle the party would meet in the world.

If you want more than one roll to determine a fight, simply use a progress tracker.

So, you're walking down an alley and you are accosted by a thug trying to rob you? Opposed Weapon Skill check.

You're facing off against the chaos champion behind the whole scheme and that your campaign has built up to? One or several progress trackers.

It works great for a narrative game, exactly because WFRP uses narrative dice, and it de-emphesizes combat. Which lets you emphesize the social and exploratory aspects.

Edit: A healthy medium for this, is to treat unimportant and "easy" fights as opposed tests, while you pull out all the combat rules only for the big important fights. This way you won't have to rewrite the rules by having removed combat action cards.

I like combat, but long drawn out combat bores the hell out of me. I think savage worlds is at perhaps 7-8 times faster than WFRP in combat. In SW combat IS fast paced and it feels tense. In wfrp it feels like war of attrition and the main victim is your patience.

I think my players want to play wfrp, but for me the system just gets in the way during combat.

I have thought of just using SW and convert as we go.

Or use EotE that is also quick and convert as we go.

I've considered just upping everyone's damage to speed up combat. Has anyone tried that and have feedback?

It's not so much that you can take a lot of hits. Our troll slayer was almost beat to a pulp in two hits in the 6 hour combat, whereas in a similar SW combat we have lots of misses.

A player turn in SW takes 10 seconds perhaps and in WFRP it takes a minute if you're quick about it.

It's logical.

SW:

• Roll a skill die + a wild die. Dice can explode.
• You pick the best result.
• Damage is rolled and added up. Dice can explode.
• If damage equals toughness the opponent is shaken, each raise (+4) equals a wound.
• Done

WFRP:

• Pick the action you want to use
• Use talents
• Find your characteristic dice
• Change dice according to stance
• add expertise dice
• add fortune dice
• use fortune points
• add challenge die
• add misfortune for defence
• add dice for opponents defence and A/C/E
• Roll dice
• Interpret the result, negating dice and finding the final count of hammers, boons, banes, comets, chaos stars, exertion and delay.
• calculate damage based on base damage and results on cards, plus any talents and other effects, as interactivity with other cards effects etc.
• Apply damage beyond toughness and soak, apply critical wounds
• Add recharge tokens
• I'm sure I've missed something, but ... done.

WFRP have a lot more factors to take into account and yet with it's simple system, SW is incredibly tense because of exploding dice.

There just is no way ever that a notmal guy can make a huge hit on another normal guy in WFRP. Everything is just so predictable really.

I want to give wfrp a chance, but drawn out combat that doesn't really feel tense because the time it takes makes it feel dull will detract from the game.

It's not the dice themselves, although there is dice bloating in WFRP. But EotE is very elegant in comparison.

Yep, there are tons more things to take into account. That's probably why it works well with WFRP's tradition of lower wound thresholds, but bigger and more diverse effects. Its just how it is.

Games like D&D can go sky high b/c it only takes a second to translate a d20 + d8 damage. It's hit or miss.

Yep, there are tons more things to take into account. That's probably why it works well with WFRP's tradition of lower wound thresholds, but bigger and more diverse effects. Its just how it is.

Games like D&D can go sky high b/c it only takes a second to translate a d20 + d8 damage. It's hit or miss.

Yeah true and I hate D&D with the slow reduction of HP. That's what I like about SW too, Everyone has three wounds and then they become incapacitated.

But I want to make WFRP work. What frustrates me (cards, options, synergies etc.) is also what makes the system great. I think I'll follow your example and simply force players to be quick or pass. I want a big combat to be two hours max and a small skirmish 30 minutes tops. SW also has the awesome GM management feature of most NPCs being either shaken (standup on it's side), up and ready or removed. No tracking of wounds. Not that it's a bit issue though, because in our big fight against 30+ goblins and a troll I spent less time doing my turns than my four players :-D

I let severe injuries add wounds equal to their severity. On top of that I am pondering setting a static critical threshold of 4 for everyone.

Good ideas there. Some of the variable critical thresholds, variable fatigue thresholds are the things that probably arent necessary, but allow for variations between characters.

The OP's comments on not being able to house rule out fatigue and stress is one of the things that probably needs some further thought. It's possible (just like I got rid of defense card recharges), but there has to be an easy translation that doesn't require a full reworking of the system. FFG must have liked most of it though, or they wouldn't have gone the way they did with SW:EotE. Personally, I'd have kept the interesting individual action cards and dumped "strain" and talents, but then you're just going back to D&D 4e (and talk about hard to house rule

jh

What if you remove fatigue/stress completely?

Then you give everyone an action pool.

Each action you use spend points equal to it's recharge. Stress/fatigue takes away points. It recharges somehow.

Another thing I want to redesign is fear. Gettin 3 stress for failing a fear check against a demon is - dull. I want critical fear failures. I want it to be easier to get insanities and for characters to be scared senseless.

Idea:

When you fail a fear/terror check

• you suffer stress/fatigue as normal
• Any chaos stars on a failed fear check forces you to draw an insanity as normal.
• You suffer one fatigue/stress each round you're near the thing you're affraid off
• You must use assess the situation with a difficulty of the fear/terror check to compose yourself after a failed fear check.

Some nice ideas about fear

Dear friends, I ve playied WFP3 (as master) for 2 years and after a pause I m starting TEW2. I think a combat takes the right time if the players are quick enough.

The master needs just to remove initiative track and enemy A/C/E

I've done the following to speed up combat.

• Redone A/C/E - not really speeding up combat, but it's just easier.
• Bought a 90 second timer. The active player turns it over and then give it to the next person in line. When time is up they have to be done. The next player then becomes active and hands the timer to the next person in line etc. That way we have a set time limit and the next person in line has the visual indication that he is.
• Reactions have to be played really quick or the player will not get the chance to do so.
• Each player has a cup with his basic dice pool in at all times, so he can easily add a few dice and make the check.
• This way a 10 round combat with four players will take an hour. That's ok.

The timer is a great idea. Although I've never /really/ been a **** to players, if I tell them, ok start prepping your action while the trollslayer evaluates his dice, that helps tremendously I learned that being in Track & Field. When they say, "Eddie, you and Alex are a're up; Michael, you're next; Sammy, you're in the hole," that gets people to put dice together.

There's no reason why a person waiting for their turn shouldn't have enough time to put their dice pool together. Perhaps it helps if the GM has a CONSTANT defense listing for the bad guys too. If the players are always asking, "how many black dice" perhaps that needs to be solved from the GM's end as well.

Again, we got rid of defense recharge and I only use a static listing for both PCs and monsters. That solved a LOT of asking, "how many black dice..uh, and one purple or two purple?"

jh

I don't want to be harsh, but honestly I didn't enjoy that combat. Sunday we played Deadlands (Savage Worlds) and we had good fight with 11 NPCs, then a smaller fight with 6 enemies and finally a fight with one main boss monster.

Great fights and they took just about an hour total... perhaps less - didn't check, but it felt super fast.

And when as a GM I get the thought, when preparing, that I need to skip a great idea I have because it may end in combat - it feels wrong.

I don't want to be harsh, but honestly I didn't enjoy that combat. Sunday we played Deadlands (Savage Worlds) and we had good fight with 11 NPCs, then a smaller fight with 6 enemies and finally a fight with one main boss monster.

Great fights and they took just about an hour total... perhaps less - didn't check, but it felt super fast.

And when as a GM I get the thought, when preparing, that I need to skip a great idea I have because it may end in combat - it feels wrong.

Its definately a balance - To be honest I dont know what to do exactly ... WFRP feels cumbersome especially when you have lots of cards infront of you and when it gets late and you get tired ..., but at the same time I do also enjoy the fidly bits where you can tailor your character and have different attack (descriptions) - I do like the easy of pace with SW but it does also feel bit "light" and almost too random in some ways ...

Personally as a GM I feel myself drawn more towards a more free-form system and just winging it ...but I guess its all one tradeoff vs another...