Party dynamics mini game

[Nifft]

That sounds very cool.

Now, do you change Group cards each session? Or does that single draw dictate the "type" of the party throughout the campaign? It would seem to be a bit much if it was the whole campaign - after all, playing "leg breaking ruffians" might be fun for a while, but, what if I don't want to be that all the time?

I'm not terribly familiar with the WHFRP, so, maybe these are really stupid questions.

Not on a per-session basis, but I do know that each PC can eventually switch to a different career, so I'd assume you can swap your party's "type" with similar granularity.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Longtooth Studios]

This is outside the scope of the thread topic, but, I have been looking into this and have found very little information.

Does the system encourage the use of minis? I have heard talk of counters and cards, but nothing about rules of engagement.

As far as party dynamics goes. Its a concept that really seems to have merit.

 

[jasonbostwick]

I picked up WFRP3 at Christmas but was only able DM one session so far. I really enjoyed the session and hope to play more this summer, possibly replacing 4E as the go-to game for my group.

The party sheet, in my limited experience, is a very cool concept but it was hard to figure out a use for it at the table.

Certainly the shared talent was very nice and worked a lot like teamwork/guild feats do in 3.5/4e. I think the players had some sort of power that gave them a bonus to stealth checks, and it helped them act as a team to sneak up on some goblins through the underbrush.

I didn't really increase the party stress too much because the party worked extremely well together the entire session. I tossed one or two on when their was a bit of a disagreement about whether or not to steal a sword from a skeletal guard in a tomb, but otherwise didn't touch it.

The sheet is interesting in that it eliminates a great deal of the normal intraparty tension by unifying the groups goals in adventuring. The stereotypical conflict (in D&D at least) comes from the archetypical Lawful Good paladin trying to convince the party rogue to help defend a temple instead of looking for treasure. If everyone in the party is a Servant of Justice, this tension is gone.

As Nift said though, this isn't all that bad - in my case it definitely encouraged the party to 'say yes' a lot more than usual. It eliminated the problem of players being contrary just to make things interesting, and any disputes came up over legitimate discussions of the best way to accomplish something, rather than a back and forth over whether or not something was worth doing.

It also leads pretty well to group character creation, and more importantly creation of the party as a whole rather than as a group of unrelated characters. The Party Sheet pretty much eliminates the 'four adventurers meet in a tavern' cliche, and give the players a good reason why they've already banded together.


Hussar - I don't think it really spells out how to assign the sheet in the book, but I let my players pick the sheet that they felt was most appropriate for them after they'd generated their PCs. In the future I might even have the players decide on a sheet first, and then generate characters in line with that.

[Standard, by-the-books character generation is essentially random - rolling dice to see if you can be a race other than human, and the player draws three cards and picks one to choose their career. Ability and power generation is a point buy.]

The 'card' is more of a 6"x8" sheet and it doesn't seem to be suggested that they are drawn randomly. The rulebooks don't really spell out the option of changing sheets midway through a campaign (one of a number of things they're fairly unclear about), but the option is certainly there and wouldn't really impact anything else.



Longtooth - Regarding minis, the combat system is fairly abstract and definitely not mini-centric. It doesn't use squares or absolute distances, just range bands (engaged/close range/long range) to gauge relative positioning.

The game ships with standup counters to track this (punchboard cutouts of all of the PC careers and monsters in the beastiary). After one encounter of fiddling with the standups (of which there is only one per creature type, so I wasn't able to accurately represent the 3 goblins the party was fighting) I put them aside and just used my D&D minis.

Even without the fiddliness of the grid, there is still a lot of room for tactics in combat. The Stance system and Fatigue and Stress turn it more into a game of gauging risk and resource management, but there was a lot to keep us interested.

 

[Hussar]

Thanks for the quick answers guys. Definitely something to look into.

 

[WizarDru]

It was really interesting. Just like D&D 4e, WHFRP 3e has made the party the smallest unit of battle. However, while D&D kept most of the implications of this implicit, WHFRP 3e makes them explicit. It's a similar mechanical effect overall, in that it's your party's composition which determines (in part) your personal options & effectiveness, but it's a very different feel.

Very interesting stuff, this. Thanks! I'll have to delve deeper. I like the concept, to be sure. How did you feel the system was overall (based on your admittedly limited exposure)?

 

[Nifft]

Very interesting stuff, this. Thanks! I'll have to delve deeper. I like the concept, to be sure. How did you feel the system was overall (based on your admittedly limited exposure)?

I liked it. Actually, all of us liked it, so my exposure will not remain quite so limited, and I'll report back as we play more.

Their "power cards" are well designed, and enable a degree of dice pool sophistication which would be unusable in other games I've played. The "stance" system is also interesting, and something which only those power cards could allow.

If you try this game out, my advice is:
- Max out your Cards. Spend the full 3 points on each type. Have a spare one to stick on the group's card, it's totally worth it.
- Skill value depends on group size. If your group is big, you can get away with fewer points spent on skill. If your group is small, you'll want to spent the full 3 points here.
- Weapon Skill is awesome. It just is. This statement is a fact rather than an opinion.
- Therefore, Dwarves are awesome. I'm totally not biased or anything.

- - -

The "abstract" combat movement & engagement system is pretty good. IMHO it may need a bit of fine-tuning, though I need to read it more before I can tell you exactly what I mean by that.

Armor & defenses suffer from "full disclosure defense" syndrome. Since defenses modify a die pool, attacking a foe once effectively tells you everything about his AC. When it's the PCs, who cares, their information is public anyway, but for critters it's a bit annoying. I prefer that info not come out until 3-4 rounds of combat have passed.

The group initiative system is cool. Basically, you're allowed to freely swap initiatives with anyone on your team -- no delaying, just plain swapping. So if the PCs roll 1,3,5, and the monsters roll 2,4, then on 5 you know one of the PCs gets to go, then one of the monsters (either one), and so on. It facilitates some of the behaviors I saw us using Delay actions & other complications to do in D&D. (Normally I'd be wary of a subsystem which is so easily the subject of player conflict, but the Party Stress Meter helps in this regard.)

- - -

The power "cooldown" mechanic sounds like WoW's power-use balancing thingy, but I've never played WoW so that's just hearsay on my part. It's certainly somewhat like D&D 3.5e's ToB:Bo9S maneuver system, in that you get special thingies which you can use several times during a fight, but you can't just use the same thing every round.

It's interesting how similar WFRP 3e is to D&D 4e. Both use a discrete, highly quantified power system. Both use a very simplified skill system.

WotC could never get away with outright selling of power card booster packs, but GW is doing pretty much exactly that: you will need to buy a player "booster" kit for extra basic action cards & dice. According to my pusher friend who bought the game, the base kit only has enough stuff for 2 players.

The custom dice take some practice to get used to, but then they're mostly fine. Some of the symbols are hard to read when doubled up on the d10s. It would have been nice if the "unusual" symbols were painted in a different color from the common symbols, but whatever. If it annoys us often enough we'll do some painting.

There's a card which seems like it's trying to substitute for stunts & "page 42"-esque improvisation, but it's entirely lame: all mechanical effects are "ask your GM".

Uh... the GM's screen is made of very high quality material.

- - -

That's all I gotfor ya right now.

Cheers, -- N

 

[jasonbostwick]

WotC could never get away with outright selling of power card booster packs, but GW is doing pretty much exactly that: you will need to buy a player "booster" kit for extra basic action cards & dice. According to my pusher friend who bought the game, the base kit only has enough stuff for 2 players.

Nitpick! The base kit has enough stuff for 3 players, not 2. It wouldn't be too hard to boost the players beyond that, they'd just need to double up on some of the basic action cards (the equivalent if basic melee attacks in 4E). The 'player booster' kit (the Adventurer's Toolkit) offers more than just extra components, it expands the game a bit by adding new careers and powers not found in the core set.

The one thing that I found a bit limiting was the number of dice. The number of dice that the game ships with aren't really enough for 3 people to play without constantly passing dice across the table. FFG sells spare dice, but I picked up two extra packs and we still spent a bit of time gathering dice for our pools.

 

[Stormonu]

Nitpick! The base kit has enough stuff for 3 players, not 2. It wouldn't be too hard to boost the players beyond that, they'd just need to double up on some of the basic action cards (the equivalent if basic melee attacks in 4E). The 'player booster' kit (the Adventurer's Toolkit) offers more than just extra components, it expands the game a bit by adding new careers and powers not found in the core set.

The one thing that I found a bit limiting was the number of dice. The number of dice that the game ships with aren't really enough for 3 people to play without constantly passing dice across the table. FFG sells spare dice, but I picked up two extra packs and we still spent a bit of time gathering dice for our pools.

Nitpick: Adventurer's Toolkit expands the number of players by +1, containing the basic cards, an extra stand. It also includes extra careers and extra character sheets.

WFRPG 3E definitely gives me the feel that it designed to promote you buying the extra dice and "booster packs" of cards. Smart marketing on their part, and though I have not yet run/played my first game, I'm very excited about it. It has a feel of a polished D&D 4E system.

 

[jasonbostwick]

Here's hoping a beastiary comes out sometime soon for WFRP3 - I loooove monsters, and the two dozen or so in the DM book are a bit limiting.

 

[Nifft]

Nitpick! The base kit has enough stuff for 3 players, not 2. It wouldn't be too hard to boost the players beyond that, they'd just need to double up on some of the basic action cards (the equivalent if basic melee attacks in 4E). The 'player booster' kit (the Adventurer's Toolkit) offers more than just extra components, it expands the game a bit by adding new careers and powers not found in the core set.

Exactly, it's a "booster pack" which allows +1 player, and is effectively selling you new collectible card powers. WotC would not be able to do something so collectible card like with D&D.

The one thing that I found a bit limiting was the number of dice. The number of dice that the game ships with aren't really enough for 3 people to play without constantly passing dice across the table. FFG sells spare dice, but I picked up two extra packs and we still spent a bit of time gathering dice for our pools.

We left all the dice in one pool. There just weren't enough to go around if we didn't return them. Luckily none of us have "interesting" dice habits...

Cheers, -- N