Review of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay

[Rasyr]

Sorry, are you seriously trying to argue that the concept of a unified die rolling mechanic as a design objective for a game was first seen in D&D 3rd Ed?

Erm... GURPS? D6 Star Wars? The various White Wolf systems? Just off the top of my head...

Don't forget about Rolemaster.....

Unified mechanic, yup.
Skills & talents, yup..

Personally, I think that the review is simply nothing more than pure propaganda to try and take away some of WHFRP's thunder and momentum, in order to turn people towards d20/D&D.

Such a big deal is made about Chris Pramas having worked at WotC, that the review tries to imply that WHFRP has to be derivative because of this. If this were the case, then that would mean that D&D3.0 just HAS to be derivative of Rolemaster because Monte Cook worked at ICE at one time.

Here is a link to the RPG.Net thread on this topic for those who are interested...
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=211410

 

[Buttercup]

If you do say so yourself.....

Well, but looking at the game in a big picture sense, he was correct. Besides, the review *was* positive, so why all the fuss?

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

If you didn't already know the game how would you see it? It's a fair question, I'm not persuaded that as the game now stands it's the fantasy CoC everyone thinks it is. First edition was that, I'm not persuaded second is.

Well, the insanity mechanics are pretty much the same, apart from the more evocative names for the mental disorders.

Combat is possibly even more lethal, thanks to the higher damage dice. Now even naked dwarfs (and yes, that's spelled the right way) have to watch out...

Magic items have become much rarer - from something most adventurers will pick up several of during the course of their careers to something that is incredibly rare.

Finally, magic now actually is sanity-blasting if used too often. Spellcasters who use their magic too frequently often end up insane. Or mutated.

Whether WFRP 1E was the fantasy CoC is one question, but if it was, then WFRP is it even more so.

 

[Rasyr]

Well, but looking at the game in a big picture sense, he was correct. Besides, the review *was* positive, so why all the fuss?

Sorry, but the review was only "superficially" positive. It was filled with a lot of degrading innuendo and allusion that would leave most readers with a bad taste in their mouth when it came to WHFRP. It tries to imply that D&D 3.x is the source for most of the changes, and tries to imply (indirectly) that you should be getting D&D cause it is a better game.

I think somebody earlier used the phrase "damning with faint praise". That about sums it up.

 

[Buttercup]

Sorry, but the review was only "superficially" positive. It was filled with a lot of degrading innuendo and allusion that would leave most readers with a bad taste in their mouth when it came to WHFRP. It tries to imply that D&D 3.x is the source for most of the changes, and tries to imply (indirectly) that you should be getting D&D cause it is a better game.

I think somebody earlier used the phrase "damning with faint praise". That about sums it up.

I guess we didn't read the same review. I can tell you that before I read it, I had not even considered buying the book, but now I intend to give it a close look, and may even pick it up.

All of the criticism of the review has left me perplexed. From where I'm sitting it looks like a bunch of people have teh hat for Ryan Dancy and have decided that anything he says about their fave game must be bad because he was the one saying it. :shrug:

 

[Ian Sturrock]

I don't have anything against Dancey personally. I wouldn't trust him (see the parallel rpg.net thread, in which his computer hacking to attempt to take control of a trade organisation is mentioned), but I have in the past found his analysis of the industry to be insightful, and as a writer who has made a fair living out of the d20 industry I would be foolish to complain about said industry's prominence.

Those two reviews were just silly, though.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Well, but looking at the game in a big picture sense, he was correct. Besides, the review *was* positive, so why all the fuss?

Well, I can't speak for the others, but my beef was the claim that WFRP was a "clever derivative of Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition" when it was rather obvious that it isn't.

 

[Unseenlibrarian]

IIRC, this was a feature of the first edition of the Warhammer RPG and one that I thought inspired the idea of Feats in D&D3E. Yes/no?

This is definitely a yes: The only thing 2e did that's different from 1E in that department, as far as I can see with the two books in front of me, was seperate the binary abilities from the ones you rolled.

 

[Rasyr]

All of the criticism of the review has left me perplexed. From where I'm sitting it looks like a bunch of people have teh hat for Ryan Dancy and have decided that anything he says about their fave game must be bad because he was the one saying it. :shrug:

First, please let me point out that I have never owned nor played any WHFRP games. From Dancey's review, I would not ever purchase either. He makes it sound (intentionally) as a derivative of D&D3.x and seeing as how I have that, why would I need to purchase it.

Secondly, I have noticed over the past few years that most anything that Dancey does publicly is meant to further D&D/d20 and the OGL. This includes conversations where D&D is not the focus (the rules-lite thread?). This is just another instance of that, IMO.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

I guess we didn't read the same review. I can tell you that before I read it, I had not even considered buying the book, but now I intend to give it a close look, and may even pick it up.

Do pick it up. I like D&D as much as the next guy, but WFRP makes for a terrific change of pace. This is a world where, no matter how powerful your PCs get, they still remain mortal. Though they might become highly competent at what they do, they are still vulnerable, and charging into whole armies of orcs (at least, without your own army at your side) is tantamount to suicide. The PCs should never get too cocky here.

The quip about D&D and Call of Cthulhu really does capture the feeling rather well.