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Message: <blockquote data-quote="RyanD" data-source="post: 2492355" data-attributes="member: 3312">There are a lot of choices that can be made on page one that have an almost inevitable effect on what gets produced in the next 256 pages.  Bad designers tack on systems that don't integrate, or that break other parts of the system due to ignorance or stubborness.  Good designers constantly work to reinforce the initial decision set they made as they work down each path the design takes them as they flesh out the game.  Chris Pramas is a good designer, and I believe we can reverse-engineer a lot of his thought practice by looking at the end result of his labors.I perceive that Chris' first decision was "replicate the fun game experience I had in college" (which is why that experience shows up in his designer notes, and is a choice I wholeheartedly support:  I wish more designers moved "fun" into the initial parameters of design.)  I think his second decision was "figure out what parts of the various incarnations of WFRP are unique, are representative of the Warhammer Fantasy brand, add value, and are fun, and keep them.  I think his third decision was "apply the lessons learned by Wizards of the Coast on how to design a successful RPG, taking into account player & GM task load, play patterns, and stable, consistent mechanics.My opinion is that the result of these decisions was a game that encapsulates a lot of D&D, (mechanically, if not in direct presentation), but also includes very non-D&D systems as big ticket features.  The fact that it encapsulates so many D&D features is not necessarily a statement of D&D's fitness itself, as it is a recognition that D&D 3E was shaped by the same kinds of logical, organized design processes that appear to have shaped WFRP.  I have read and played various prior versions of WFRP.  What I remember clearly from those experiences was that the prior games were very chaotic - many different systems, little consistency, several places where mechanics overlapped, or contradicted themselves, or were supposed to be delivered in future products that never got released.  I'm certain that bits and pieces (sometimes large bits and pieces) of those earlier editions are resident in this version of WFRP.  But I do not believe that those versions were the foundation on which the game was rebuilt from scratch.  Their presence is important - heritage, familiarity, and suitability to task are all praiseworthly reasons for their inclusion.  But to ignore the extensive, deep, and systemic similarities with D&D is, in my opinion, to ignore the truth of what the game actually represents.Take for example the GW produced Inquisitor RPG.  Designed in the UK, by people with no connection to WotC, its research, its market testing, or the feedback it experienced from D&D, it is a very, very different beast than WFRP, despite sharing much of the same "genetic code" in the form of the "Warhammer" ethos and the Games Workshop belief in what makes Warhammer (Fantasy and 40K) successful.  In Inquisitor, we have a wholly separate branch of the "Warhammer Roleplay" tree and it looks very little like D&D.  If we created a systems map featuring "old" WFRP games, Inquisitor, "new" WFRP products and D&D 3e, the "new" WFRP product is going to show an extremely close affinity to D&D 3e compared to the other potential data points.Here's another test to consider.  If I took the time to mark up my "new" WFRP book to convert all values to constants, set the DCs at 20, and changed the die roll from percentile to a d20, I could play WFRP with my D&D group with little more than an explanation of the ability scores, how to buy advances of the character templates when they get XP awards, how critical hits work and how to determine what spells they can cast.  That briefing is maybe a half hour long at most.  Can you imagine how much of a re-write I'd have to make to previous versons of WFRP to reach the same level of direct compatibility?  Or how long and involved the "conversion" conversation would have to be if I did not do the conversion to the text directly?We had a test back in the height of the first CCG boom, circa 1995-1996.  The test was this:  If I could teach your game to a 3rd party familiar with Magic using Magic terminology, and that person could play your game with a reasonably high degree of mechanical correctness based on that instruction, you had a Magic clone, regardless of how hard you had tried to hide behind a different nomenclature, different graphic design, and different branding.  I'd say a similar test could be applied to RPGs:  If I can explain your game to someone familiar with D&D using D&D terminology, and they can play the game with a reasonably high degree of mechanical accuracy, your game is a very close cousin to D&D.  I submit to you that I can perform that test with "new" WFRP, and not with any previous version.</blockquote>

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