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

[Ariosto]

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.

Those are bound together, I'm afraid. In irruption of Yahtzee would be a bit jarring if one had expected Diplomacy.

The Warhammer FRP apparatus previously involved mainly the GM setting a % chance of an outcome, resolved by rolling a couple of decimal dice. That's about as straightforward and intrinsically uninteresting as a hammer or saw, and for just the same reason.

 

[Asmor]

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.

I don't think it's anywhere near that complicated. At its core, all you need to do is make sure you get more successes than failures.

 

[darjr]

First, I'm going from memory from a single read through.

Somebody else said it best. We play RPGS that have different mechanics all the time. The adventure read like a traditional kind of adventure with very different mechanics. Many of the things in it were dependent (for good or ill) on those mechanics but in the end I think something very much like it has been run in every fantasy RPG I can think of.

There are NPC's with their own motivations and stats, there were monsters with theirs, there were non combat issues that the players had to deal with and there were lingering consequences depending on how they went about things. The things that happen were very deadly as well. The monsters were PC killers. There were points when the DM would have to make judgment calls and consider how the game was going up to that point. There were things that needed detailed descriptions and explanations by the DM, because otherwise the PC's wouldn't have enough information to even carry on, just like an RPG. There was even discussion about what to do when the PC's jumped the rails, not if.

To even get close to a board game I think you have to blur the line at the start of the argument and use board games that have many rpg elements or options, like custom characters and campaign rules.

Is it a boardgame like Settlers? NIMHO.

 

[darjr]

...straightforward and intrinsically uninteresting as a hammer...

Say that to a cooper, or a upholsterer, or even a carpenter.

I agree that it's taken for granted, but the modern day hammer in its many, many forms is an amazing piece of technology that is changing and evolving to this day.

I think, in some ways, it is so with dice mechanics and the understanding of probabilities. Is the new mechanic more complex, yes, is it worse than the olde one, I'm not sure, it depends, I haven't made up my mind yet.

 

[pogre]

I think I'm selling this game to my groups as the new Warhammer Quest campaign. I think the expectations for WFRP are just different than this game delivers. It seems like a great game, I think for me I just had to let go of it being a pure RPG and embrace it as an Advanced Heroquest or Road to Legend type game.

 

[Korgoth]

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 might be a bandwagon worth jumping on. I think I'll do a rewrite of Pathfinder / D&D 3.75 that gets rid of dice altogether and uses a full game of croquet as a resolution mechanic. The game comes in a POD (r) storage system and includes over 2,000 styrofoam packing peanuts as well as a full croquet set*. Also a selection of beanie babies (tm) to use as character models. It will be the first role playing game to cost one million dollars but it will be worth every penny. If you complain about the price, you're just a hater. This game is revolutionary**.

* - Yes, one. Don't be greedy.

** - No, I'm not turning D&D into a lawn game. Quit repeating that meme.

 

[Ariosto]

But, Korgoth, the lawn game is really a return to roots -- to the noble tradition of H.G. Wells (another designer who dismissed dice) in the yard playing his Floor Games and Little Wars, with a straw boater to keep the sun out of his eyes. Be proud of your straw boater (or beanie, as you may prefer)! Be proud enough to deny it up and down when the haters claim it's like a lawn game. That's tantamount to saying it's just a sporting amusement.

Of course it's not. You'll still have the fundamental necessity of a "role-playing" game, which as everyone knows is paperwork.

The accessories and resolution techniques are just aids to the experience. After all, what says "deep, dark, dangerous dungeons and bloody mayhem" like balls and wickets and a well-tended green?

Well, brightly colored piles of plastic and glossy CGI naturally. But WotC and FFG have been there and done that, and you're trying to deliver the one thing most important in a pseudo-medieval game of vaguely Tolkien-ish fairy folk murdering each other in holes in the ground: innovation!

 

[delericho]

Thanks for posting your impressions. It's now pretty clear that not only will I will not like this game, but I would actively hate it.

"But Asmor," you cry, "how does this help the roleplaying?" It doesn't. And there's no such thing as a mechanic that does help with roleplaying. Roleplaying is, ultimately, free form, and protesting the design of an RPG because "the mechanics detract from roleplaying" makes about as much sense as protesting the architecture of the White House because you don't like whichever politician happens to be living there at the time.

This is simply not true. Rules-light and rules-heavy RPGs give rise to very different game experiences, and the differences are not purely mechanical. The one does a poor job of emulating the other.

It offers something new and innovative, and you really owe it to yourself to give the game a try at least once.

Not at an RRP of £80, I don't!

 

[malkav666]

Looks..different.

I don't think I will buy it. If one of my players wanted to fork over the high cost of entry and run it , I guess I would play. But I have no intention of paying this price for a boardgame (yes I kn ow some folks are crying about the meme of that statement, but they can get over it).

It does not look like a bad boardgame, just not one I will invest my money into. I already have some WHFP books, to use if I want to tell a story in that world.

love,

malkav

 

[BryonD]

I think I'm selling this game to my groups as the new Warhammer Quest campaign. I think the expectations for WFRP are just different than this game delivers. It seems like a great game, I think for me I just had to let go of it being a pure RPG and embrace it as an Advanced Heroquest or Road to Legend type game.

I'm seeing it the same way.

They went so far with it that it becomes a decent board game with RPG elements. It isn't going to get my RPG itch, but it doesn't really seem to worry about it.