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

[Ashtagon]

Finally got a chance to sit down and read the Tome of Adventures (analagous to DMG)... and I think this one page should be sufficient to make any roleplayer salivate for WHFRP 3e.

http://asmor.com/images/post/09-12-25/whfrp3edicepoolinterpretation.jpg

btw, the pic is rather large, so if your browser resizes it to fit screen it may be illegible. Just zoom it in to actual size.

That actually really really puts me off the whole game concept. I don't like the idea of having to do advanced study to figure out my dice rolls. Throwing dice oughtn't be that complicated, seeing as it is a fundamental aspect of just about everything in the game (I'd assume it is fundamental, anyway).

 

[Asmor]

That actually really really puts me off the whole game concept. I don't like the idea of having to do advanced study to figure out my dice rolls. Throwing dice oughtn't be that complicated, seeing as it is a fundamental aspect of just about everything in the game (I'd assume it is fundamental, anyway).

You don't have to. It's simple enough to just blindly figure out the result of the roll (more hammers than crossed swords? You succeeded. More birdies than skulls, or vice versa? You've got boons or banes). But the option's there.

In practice, I doubt you'd do this terribly often. I can see doing it for the first couple rolls of a brand new game, then pulling it out every once in a while for particularly spectacular results, the killing blow on the BBEG, etc.

But I just absolutely love the idea of every roll having a story built into it. It feels so marvelously holistic.

 

[kaomera]

(Apologies if I get any of the terminology wrong, I don't actually own the game, and while I have two friends who are really enthused about running it we haven't gotten together for a session yet.)

You don't have to. It's simple enough to just blindly figure out the result of the roll (more hammers than crossed swords? You succeeded. More birdies than skulls, or vice versa? You've got boons or banes). But the option's there.

But just the basics involves picking out the right set of dice from 6 different kinds, and then interpreting the results from 8 different symbols? (I think those numbers are correct?) It's not as bad as I had initially feared - being able to pair off most of the results so that you only have to deal with successes or failures and banes or boons certainly helps, but that's still pretty involved for a single die roll. In combat I know that handles both hit / miss and damage, but I can do the same thing in 4e by making an impromptu "die pool" out of my d20 and whatever I need for damage dice. I think the real question is going to be how much "action" a single die roll encompasses.

It seems to me that each die roll is meant to be more interesting / meaningful; if that's the case can we expect to be making fewer rolls overall? I'm also wondering about the odds: how likely is it for a typical roll to succeed? That's probably a lot more important in combat, where a miss means a longer fight and more rolling.

(One thing that kind of bothers me, if I've got this right, is that "reckless" dice apparently have several negative options not on normal / conservative dice, but still have the same total number of successes - they're just bunched up. Wouldn't that tend to make the reckless stance strictly worse than any other?)

But I just absolutely love the idea of every roll having a story built into it. It feels so marvelously holistic.

I'd be interested to know if there is (or can be) any story built in to the process of gathering / rolling the dice. My worry is that the extra complication on that end of the process is going to end up overshadowing any extra cool story bits.

One last thing - how does managing all of the cards work out in actual play? I'm thinking that the abstract positioning / range system will free up a bunch of table real-estate compared to 4e (and I think actually playing at / around a real table is going to be vital for WHFRP3; no lounging around the living room in comfy chairs / couches...), and the limit to how many active "talents" (?) a character has at once should help... I've just noticed that in 4e it's real easy to get a bunch of cards / chips with various ongoing effects / statuses and it becomes something of a nightmare to keep them all arranged / organized / on the table and actually apply them to appropriate rolls. I'm especially worried about conditions and critical wounds, since that's the kind of thing that's liable to end up getting missed, and going back and retroactively applying them is gonna kinda suck...

 

[Angellis_ater]

My biggest question is - how does the abstract ranging system work, can you give a few examples of "flow". Does the game handle stuff like flanking/combat or is that not even present in the game?

One part of me desperately wants to try to use WHRP3's abstract system for 4E too...

 

[Asmor]

The range system is honestly not that hot. More complicated than it needs to be, methinks.

Ran my first game of it last night, and sort of glossed over the distances with the exception of engagements. I was surprised how much trouble my players had with the concept of an engagement.

I think in the future, I'll probably create simple tactical maps using large zones, where anyone in the same zone is close range, adjacent zones are medium range, and farther away is long range. Takes a maneuver to move between adjacent zones, and any zone can have any number of engagements and un-engaged units.

 

[Angellis_ater]

Using zones was how I first imagined it would work when it was described to me, but then I realized it was something entirely different - tokens representing intra-personal distance or something like that, right?

 

[Asmor]

The way range works as written, characters in close range of each other are all in the same 'area' and can engage in melee with each other but are not necessarily so engaged. In D&D terms, they'd all be within a single move (i.e. five or six squares) of each other.

Medium range is a little bit farther, and this is when things start to get a little nebulous. It costs one maneuver to move from medium to close range or vice versa. You represent that two people are at medium range from one another by putting one token on the table between them.

Long range is significantly farther than that, across a large battlefield for example. You mark long range with two tokens, and it costs two maneuvers to go from long to medium range.

In theory, I think it works perfectly well, but then again I've got a good mind for abstractions. In practice, I think it's needlessly cumbersome and some people have a lot of difficulty reconciling the fact that the differences in range are sort of exponential rather than linear (i.e. that long range isn't merely 'double' medium range).

 

[DMfromdimensionX]

Finally got a chance to sit down and read the Tome of Adventures (analagous to DMG)... and I think this one page should be sufficient to make any roleplayer salivate for WHFRP 3e.

http://asmor.com/images/post/09-12-25/whfrp3edicepoolinterpretation.jpg

btw, the pic is rather large, so if your browser resizes it to fit screen it may be illegible. Just zoom it in to actual size.

That page and picture completely turns me off. I cant stand the idea of tons of different dice with tons of different rules about what you roll and why. Seems like a giant swingy pain in the butt to me.

 

[Jhaelen]

That page and picture completely turns me off. I cant stand the idea of tons of different dice with tons of different rules about what you roll and why. Seems like a giant swingy pain in the butt to me.

Yet all of those 'tons of dice and rules' fit on a single picture. Interesting trick

 

[Trolls]

One quick question for anyone that has the game:

How integrated is the setting into the system?
Could I use the game for another fantasy setting, like FR or Eberron?