Gothmog
First Post
I'll preface this by saying that I'm a HUGE fan of WHFRP2. During the latter half of the dark years 3.x was king (2005-2008 or so), my groups got our fantasy fix from WHFRP2. We had a ton of fun with the system, so when they announced WHFRP3, I was skeptical.
I bought a boxed set last week, and read it through, then ran a session this last weekend. All I can say is WOW! This is an amazing system, highly innovative, and very true to the Warhammer Old World. It does things a little differently than WHFRP2, but its still a grim world of perilous adventure. In the old WHFRP2, you really only had to worry about two negative consequences for a character, injury/crits/death and insanity. In WHFRP3, fatigue, stress, strain, crits, and insanity are all possible, and it takes a pretty careful balancing act to keep a character alive. PCs (and most NPCs) won't be killed by one blow, but the system is very deadly. In the game I ran Saturday night, one PC out of four died in a beastman ambush, and other had suffered 3 critical hits that put him out of action for around a week. The stance track is also a great innovation and adds a whole new dimension to character actions and roleplaying. While I was a little worried the dice would be troublesome, after about an hour of play everyone understood it and really liked the whole success/failure, boon/bane system. The cards and their variable effects based on the numbers of successes, boons, and banes are a lot of fun too, and since the system is a little more open to interpretation, I let my players describe the effects of boons/banes, which really immersed them in the game.
The only thing I miss from WHFRP2 is the vast number of careers and some of the religions/colleges of magic. However, this looks to be remedied over time, and its painfully easy to translate old careers and spells into the new system. Anyone who says this is just a boardgame clearly hasn't read the rules or played WHFRP3 yet. It doesn't try to be WHFRP2- it is its own beast, but in spite of that it still captures the feel of the old WHFRP games. Overall, its a great system that is tons of fun, and deserves to be judged on its own merits, rather than preconceived notions of "what WHFRP is supposed to be". (Gee, that sounds familiar for some reason).
I bought a boxed set last week, and read it through, then ran a session this last weekend. All I can say is WOW! This is an amazing system, highly innovative, and very true to the Warhammer Old World. It does things a little differently than WHFRP2, but its still a grim world of perilous adventure. In the old WHFRP2, you really only had to worry about two negative consequences for a character, injury/crits/death and insanity. In WHFRP3, fatigue, stress, strain, crits, and insanity are all possible, and it takes a pretty careful balancing act to keep a character alive. PCs (and most NPCs) won't be killed by one blow, but the system is very deadly. In the game I ran Saturday night, one PC out of four died in a beastman ambush, and other had suffered 3 critical hits that put him out of action for around a week. The stance track is also a great innovation and adds a whole new dimension to character actions and roleplaying. While I was a little worried the dice would be troublesome, after about an hour of play everyone understood it and really liked the whole success/failure, boon/bane system. The cards and their variable effects based on the numbers of successes, boons, and banes are a lot of fun too, and since the system is a little more open to interpretation, I let my players describe the effects of boons/banes, which really immersed them in the game.
The only thing I miss from WHFRP2 is the vast number of careers and some of the religions/colleges of magic. However, this looks to be remedied over time, and its painfully easy to translate old careers and spells into the new system. Anyone who says this is just a boardgame clearly hasn't read the rules or played WHFRP3 yet. It doesn't try to be WHFRP2- it is its own beast, but in spite of that it still captures the feel of the old WHFRP games. Overall, its a great system that is tons of fun, and deserves to be judged on its own merits, rather than preconceived notions of "what WHFRP is supposed to be". (Gee, that sounds familiar for some reason).
