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Message: <blockquote data-quote="RyanD" data-source="post: 2492374" data-attributes="member: 3312">I wrote in my original review:"It will not be a good game for people who want an ad hoc quickie one-shot adventure with a "bring your own PC" approach."If you believe that the "ad hoc quickie one-shot adventure" will feature brand new PCs, I'll accept your premise.  If you're telling me that you could sit down with a group of strangers and cook up a workable party of advanced PCs that an ad hoc GM could challenge in a fun and effective way faster than I could do that task with a group of strangers for D&D, I'll disagree.My direct experience is that ad hoc games are the least likely to be run with absolute new PCs, other than when people "just want to try the game".  When experienced players gather, they'll have binders of PCs ready to play, or will be able to map out a character quickly based on prior experience.For D&D, I could tell the group "I'll play a 10th level elven fighter with a bow specialization".  That's going to define a whole lot of stuff in this context to my fellow gamers and help them frame the choices they'll make to give the party a cohesive feel and a playable foundation of skills and abilities.  What's the comparative statement you could make about an advanced WFRP character?This may be true, and I won't argue as I've played very little WFRP.  But I will argue that such a conclusion is not to be drawn from the book as written.  Clearly, the PCs are expected to succeed in "Through the Drakwald" - little space is given to guiding GMs towards a CoC "everyone goes nuts at the end" resolution.I wrote:"A system for creating magic items, and more magic items (there are only 2 magic items presented in the core book, and neither of them are very interesting mechanically)"I've been misunderstood.  I meant a mechanical system for creating magic items, to be used by the GM - not necessarily an in-game system for characters to use to make their own magic items.  WFRP tells me that heroes are "lucky" to have one magic item, and that "mighty heroes" may have as many as three.  That tells me, as a reviewer, that magic, while uncommon, is not unheard of, and the PCs will get and use magic items on some kind of reasonable timeframe (as we expect them to aspire to be "lucky" if not "mighty" before all is said and done.)I'm also basing this conclusion on the cover art (guy with flaming, obviously magical sword) - which should be representative of the game to be played, and my knowledge of Warhammer Fantasy Battles, which features lots of magic items.However, based on the half-page info in the core book, I don't know when PCs are supposed to come into possession of magic items, how this is supposed to happen, how powerful those items should be, how to handle "upgrading" from lower power to higher power, how to resolve stacking vs. overlapping bonuses, paper doll issues, sale price, or how to equip higher level foes to match the power level of the PCs, etc.  (Frankly, I suspect this is all in another sourcebook that I have not reviewed, so this may simply be a complaint that the core book doesn't explicitly say "All the magic items are in the Magic Book, go buy it now".  I understand however that WFRP has a traditionally bad track record of delivering "the Magic Book" (although I think the Green Ronin version is already in print.))"The Warhammer World is a rich one, a place of chaos and war, of intrique and politics, or desperation and heroism, of gods and daemons." -- WFRP, page 9The extensive fiction throughout the book clearly implies that the PCs are to act in a heroic mode, and that there are many heroes in the Warhammer World (outnumbered, perhaps, underpowered, in some cases, but numerous enough to be the common mythology of the place, and the model on which the reader is expected to base conclusions about the setting.)I like that description.  Had it been the overt positioning for the work in question, I think that would have created a wonderfuly unique take on the "medeival fantasy roleplaying game".I think that part of the disconnect may be that people are reading a lot of stuff into the book that isn't there, based on their previous experiences with Warhammer Fantasy, the novels, the miniatures game, and the older RP stuff.  I'm not disagreeing with anyone who says that's where the setting is going, or that's how the game is to be played - I'm simply saying that you can't base those conclusions on the WFRP book itself.</blockquote>

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