Warhammer 3e Demo Experiences -OR- How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bits

[Derren]

More importantly, what support for out of combat abilities does that system give?

 

[JoeNotCharles]

Sounds like as a DM it would be really hard to balance. It doesn't take long in most games to figure out exactly what chance of success a player has for a given target number or number of successes (obviously it's easiest in percentile systems like CoC or WFRP1 and 2), but for this it sounds like a lot of work just to figure out how many dice a player rolls, let alone how much each colour is "worth".

 

[Agamon]

Unfortunately, it still doesn't sound like a game I'd like. It seems to take everything I didn't like about the die mechanics of Shadowrun 1e through 3e (having multiple different metrics to check to figure out if you succeeded or not) and "turns that up to 11", to borrow a phrase. In Shadowrun, it was a dance between the number of successes, the size of those successes, and in opposition to the number of successes your opponent got. If I have to roll more than about 6 dice to figure out if I succeeded and by how much, it's too offputting to me as an RPG.

If it's for the sole purpose of playing the game (as in Descent), that's fine to me, but in an RPG, it takes me out of the RPG and focuses me on the dice too much -- almost like using the game Liar's Dice as a resolution mechanic to an RPG, it's too distracting to me.

This. Sounds cool, but the 4e fights are draggy enough without fishing for different colored dice depending on different situations. Ugh.

 

[SteveC]

The dice and cards mechanics sounds incredibly interesting, but at the same time I feel like I would totally forget to pick out this many dice and this many dice, and I'd probably lose some of them along the way...happens to all my board games. Thanks for the write-up. I wouldn't have anyone to play it with and it's too expensive for me, but I really like the sound of it.

For what it's worth, figuring your dice becomes pretty easy. You have a stance, and what we did was pick up a dice of the appropriate type for each step you've moved. My dwarf was aggressive +3 all the time, so I held onto three red dice. Your total basic pool is equal to your ability, so I had two other dice. If I used a skill I was trained in, that was a yellow dice. I knew that typical difficulty was one purple die, so I just kept one of those around me. The GM had additional dice he could throw in representing luck and effort so he threw those over at me when he wanted to.

When my turn came up, I knew how many dice to pick up, and the GM threw any extras he wanted my way...and I rolled. It was very fast after about the third time I did it.

--Steve

 

[Ariosto]

in an RPG, it takes me out of the RPG and focuses me on the dice too much

which goes directly against the method -- one of "forgetting" the rules as much as possible -- the designers of the original advocated. ("All the players have to do to play the game is to make decisions about what their characters are going to do and how they are going to do it. This is easy. The players simply pretend to be their characters and use their imaginations to guide their actions as if they really were in the world described to them by the GM.")

The game was not really "about" combats, so much as intrigue and mystery and horror; the portfolio basically was that of Call of Cthulhu rather than D&D (which wasn't really a "combat game" either yet).

 

[Deadline247]

and what about minis, movement and tactical positioning in combat?

WFRP3's combat does include character icons, but combat is not tactical in the way D&D is. There are basically three ranges (close, medium, and long) and that's it. We did "flank" a creature once in order to get an extra fortune die from the GM, but we didn't bother moving the characters around...we just said we were doing it.

It was actually quite fun in it's simplicity...and I'm a fan of tactical combat.

 

[Donovan Morningfire]

I had been hoping to give the game a try yesterday (my FLGS was running a demo as well, but I got stuck at work instead).

From reading the OP's post about how the game looks to play out, I'll definitely be giving this a pass. I'm not big on board games these days, and WRFP3 sounds more and more like a glorified board game.

 

[Deadline247]

Good Lord...the "it's a boardgame" meme is so beyone ridiculous. Seriously.

 

[darjr]

I read the intro adventure so I can run it around here (pm me if your in my area and are interested) and I didn't get a boardgame feel out of it.

I must admit to not being much of a board gamer.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

I read the intro adventure so I can run it around here (pm me if your in my area and are interested) and I didn't get a boardgame feel out of it.

I must admit to not being much of a board gamer.

Can you expand upon this?

I think a lot of people are fearing the transition from pen and paper RPGs to "simplistic" or overly linear stories and rulesets. What was once a direct conduit into the imagination becomes something more about the pieces and the dice, rather than the characters and the story/action.

In effect, how differently does 3e play compared to its ancestors? I'm not talking about the dice and pieces used to aid but the actual "role-playing game" part of the deal.

Is the most "board-gamey" element of this 3e purely just the box it is delivered in?

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise