Asmor
First Post
So last night I got to play a Warhammer 4e demo at a new game store called Toys n Things in Danvers, MA. The demo was run by the shop's owner, a guy named Evan.
Things started off a bit rocky-- this isn't a game you can just quickly peruse the rules and start playing. I imagine that it would run vastly more smoothly if you're playing with someone who's already familiar with the system, but of course since it's not even available for purchase yet that's a luxury we did not have.
[sblock=System]WFRP3e (just WFRP from here on out) uses a system reminiscent of Descent, a dungeon crawl board game also put out by FFG. Indeed, from a glance, you'd be forgiven for thinking WFRP is a board game and not an RPG. I'll speak more about that later, however.
The game uses color-coded polyhedral dice of standard sizes, but with non-standard faces showing symbols, combinations of symbols, or blanks.
Let me give you a quick example of how you determine your dicepool. Let's say I'm using my Might Blow action.
1. Check the roll type. Mighty Blow is Weapon Skill (strength) vs. Enemy defense.
2. Since Weapon Skill is based on strength, I check my strength score. I maxed my strength out to 5, so I take 5 blue characteristic dice (characteristic being the term for your character's 6 attributes).
3. Next, I look at my stance. I'm playing my character recklessly, and am currently 2 deep into the reckless side, so I trade 2 blue characteristic dice for 2 red reckless stance dice.
4. Since I've got one point of training in Weapon Skill, I take 1 yellow expertise die (not sure if that's the actual name).
5. Since I've got a specialization with great weapons and I'm using one, I take 1 white fortune die.
6. I look at any talents or special abilities I might have. For example, my character had a charge talent, which added 1 white fortune die during the turn I first engage an enemy, and also as a dwarf I had a racial grudge ability which gives me 1 white fortune die against greenskins (orcs and goblinoids) or enemies who have damaged me.
6. Finally, the GM tells me to take 1 purple challenge die-- the default amount for most tasks. I'm not sure if this is correct, but keep in mind we were learning as we go and it took a lot of time just to figure out this much.
So ignoring special abilities, I've got: 3 blue, 2 red, 1 yellow, 1 white, and 1 purple die. I roll them all and as long as I get 1 new success (pretty likely), I succeed.[/sblock]
[sblock=Dice]
Please keep in mind that this is all from memory, and in particular quantities of things may be off. Descriptions of what all the faces mean are below.
Blue characteristic dice: 8-sided dice with several blanks, a couple successes, and one boon.
Red reckless stance dice: 10-sided dice with few blanks (maybe just 1?), a couple failures, several successes, and some combination success/boons. These dice have the potential for great success, but AFAIK they're the only 'good' dice which have failures.
Green conservative stance dice: Much like the reckless dice, but instead of failures these have delays. Thus, when you're in a conservative stance, you'll do well but it might slow you down.
Yellow expertise dice: 6-sided, 2 boons, 1 success, 1 righteous success, 1 sigmar's comet, 1 blank.
White fortune dice: 6-sided, 3 blank, 2 success, 1 boon.
Black misfortune dice: 6-sided, has blanks, banes, and failures, not sure of quantities of each but I'd suspect a mirror of the white dice.
Purple challenge dice: 8-sided, has failures and banes, including faces with double failures and banes. Also has a chaos star. Not sure if it had any blanks, but probably had at least 1.[/sblock]
[sblock=Dice faces]These are what all those terms above mean.
Successes and failures: Successes (hammers) and failures (crossed swords) cancel each other out on a one-for-one basis. As long as you have 1 net success, your action succeeded. Extra successes are frequently beneficial. I don't think extra failures make you 'fail worse.'
Righteous Success: A righteous success (hammer with a +) counts as a success AND you roll another die of the same type (which AFAIK is only the yellow die, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are some on the stance dice which I've forgotten).
Boons and banes: Boons (eagle symbols) and banes (skulls) cancel each other out on a one-for-one basis. These don't have any effect on their own, but can trigger abilities on cards. For example, one of your attacks might do extra damage or ignore armor if you roll some number of boons, but it might fatigue you or take longer to recharge if yu roll some number of banes.
Sigmar's Comet: Like boons, does nothing on its own, but certain actions will have really big effects with sigmar's comet. Think of them as semi-analagous to critical hits.
Chaos Star: The bad version of Sigmar's Comet. These are like critical failures. Worth noting that I don't think Sigmar's Comet and Chaos Star cancel each other out, but it's entirely possible they do and I just missed it.
Delay: Never actually read what this does, since I wasn't using the conservative stance at all; but I suspect it probably adds delay counters to your actions, essentially making you wait an additional turn before you could use them again.[/sblock]
[sblock=Actions]You get a number of basic action cards (things like block, parry, melee and ranged attack, etc) which represent the normal things most characters can do. In addition, depending on how many creation points you reserved, you get some number of extra actions. These are the special abilities that make your character stand out-- spells, interesting attacks, etc.
The actions I chose were Might Blow, Troll-Feller Strike, and Judgment of Vengeance.
Most actions have some pre-requisities. Block requires a shield, for example, and melee strike requires a melee weapon and for you to be engaged with an enemy. I never got to use my Judgment attack because the reckless side (see below) required you to be suffering an insanity, and despite my convincing arguments, the GM did not consider the presence of an elf in a party to be 'an insanity.'
All actions are double sided-- there's a red side and a green side, corresponding to reckless and conservative stances. I don't have any examples of the differences in effect on two sides of the same card, but my Judgment's conservative side required me to be suffering a critical wound instead of an insanity.
The actions will have a number of lines with costs on them. For example, an attack might say:
1 success: +1 damage
3 successes: +3 damage
1 boon: +1 damage and ignore the target's armor soak value
3 boons: +3 damage
1 bane: Suffer 1 fatigue
That's entirely made up, by the way, as I don't remember any of the cards well enough to reproduce them that well.[/sblock]
Ok, so now that that's out of the way, here are my impressions.
I really enjoyed the game. In the interest of full disclosure, this didn't come as much of a surprise to me; I was excited about this to begin with, I just couldn't pass up the Dr. Strangelove reference in the subject.
I haven't been following the game much, but I've seen a few people complaining about the board-game-ization and that's about what I'd expect. And to them I say: get over it.
Yeah, the game uses a bunch bits that look like they belong to a card game. Yes, there are cards and tokens and chits. And you know what? That's freaking awesome.
As games, RPGs haven't actually advanced all that much in the past 30 or so years since they've been invented. Systemically-- absolutely. But when it comes down to it, they're all basically just a bunch of stuff on a piece of paper, and that's not terribly compelling.
Lots of people already bring board gaming elements into RPGs. In 4th edition, for example, most people I've gamed with happily use power cards and they use tokens to keep track of their healing surges, as opposed to keeping track of them on the character sheet.
"But Asmor," you cry, "how does this help the roleplaying?" It doesn't. And there's no such thing as a mechanic that does help with roleplaying. Roleplaying is, ultimately, free form, and protesting the design of an RPG because "the mechanics detract from roleplaying" makes about as much sense as protesting the architecture of the White House because you don't like whichever politician happens to be living there at the time.
So all this is to say that I really enjoyed the game. The system had a pretty nasty learning curve, but I think that's in large part due to the fact that no one knew how to play. It offers something new and innovative, and you really owe it to yourself to give the game a try at least once.
Things started off a bit rocky-- this isn't a game you can just quickly peruse the rules and start playing. I imagine that it would run vastly more smoothly if you're playing with someone who's already familiar with the system, but of course since it's not even available for purchase yet that's a luxury we did not have.
[sblock=System]WFRP3e (just WFRP from here on out) uses a system reminiscent of Descent, a dungeon crawl board game also put out by FFG. Indeed, from a glance, you'd be forgiven for thinking WFRP is a board game and not an RPG. I'll speak more about that later, however.
The game uses color-coded polyhedral dice of standard sizes, but with non-standard faces showing symbols, combinations of symbols, or blanks.
Let me give you a quick example of how you determine your dicepool. Let's say I'm using my Might Blow action.
1. Check the roll type. Mighty Blow is Weapon Skill (strength) vs. Enemy defense.
2. Since Weapon Skill is based on strength, I check my strength score. I maxed my strength out to 5, so I take 5 blue characteristic dice (characteristic being the term for your character's 6 attributes).
3. Next, I look at my stance. I'm playing my character recklessly, and am currently 2 deep into the reckless side, so I trade 2 blue characteristic dice for 2 red reckless stance dice.
4. Since I've got one point of training in Weapon Skill, I take 1 yellow expertise die (not sure if that's the actual name).
5. Since I've got a specialization with great weapons and I'm using one, I take 1 white fortune die.
6. I look at any talents or special abilities I might have. For example, my character had a charge talent, which added 1 white fortune die during the turn I first engage an enemy, and also as a dwarf I had a racial grudge ability which gives me 1 white fortune die against greenskins (orcs and goblinoids) or enemies who have damaged me.
6. Finally, the GM tells me to take 1 purple challenge die-- the default amount for most tasks. I'm not sure if this is correct, but keep in mind we were learning as we go and it took a lot of time just to figure out this much.
So ignoring special abilities, I've got: 3 blue, 2 red, 1 yellow, 1 white, and 1 purple die. I roll them all and as long as I get 1 new success (pretty likely), I succeed.[/sblock]
[sblock=Dice]
Please keep in mind that this is all from memory, and in particular quantities of things may be off. Descriptions of what all the faces mean are below.
Blue characteristic dice: 8-sided dice with several blanks, a couple successes, and one boon.
Red reckless stance dice: 10-sided dice with few blanks (maybe just 1?), a couple failures, several successes, and some combination success/boons. These dice have the potential for great success, but AFAIK they're the only 'good' dice which have failures.
Green conservative stance dice: Much like the reckless dice, but instead of failures these have delays. Thus, when you're in a conservative stance, you'll do well but it might slow you down.
Yellow expertise dice: 6-sided, 2 boons, 1 success, 1 righteous success, 1 sigmar's comet, 1 blank.
White fortune dice: 6-sided, 3 blank, 2 success, 1 boon.
Black misfortune dice: 6-sided, has blanks, banes, and failures, not sure of quantities of each but I'd suspect a mirror of the white dice.
Purple challenge dice: 8-sided, has failures and banes, including faces with double failures and banes. Also has a chaos star. Not sure if it had any blanks, but probably had at least 1.[/sblock]
[sblock=Dice faces]These are what all those terms above mean.
Successes and failures: Successes (hammers) and failures (crossed swords) cancel each other out on a one-for-one basis. As long as you have 1 net success, your action succeeded. Extra successes are frequently beneficial. I don't think extra failures make you 'fail worse.'
Righteous Success: A righteous success (hammer with a +) counts as a success AND you roll another die of the same type (which AFAIK is only the yellow die, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are some on the stance dice which I've forgotten).
Boons and banes: Boons (eagle symbols) and banes (skulls) cancel each other out on a one-for-one basis. These don't have any effect on their own, but can trigger abilities on cards. For example, one of your attacks might do extra damage or ignore armor if you roll some number of boons, but it might fatigue you or take longer to recharge if yu roll some number of banes.
Sigmar's Comet: Like boons, does nothing on its own, but certain actions will have really big effects with sigmar's comet. Think of them as semi-analagous to critical hits.
Chaos Star: The bad version of Sigmar's Comet. These are like critical failures. Worth noting that I don't think Sigmar's Comet and Chaos Star cancel each other out, but it's entirely possible they do and I just missed it.
Delay: Never actually read what this does, since I wasn't using the conservative stance at all; but I suspect it probably adds delay counters to your actions, essentially making you wait an additional turn before you could use them again.[/sblock]
[sblock=Actions]You get a number of basic action cards (things like block, parry, melee and ranged attack, etc) which represent the normal things most characters can do. In addition, depending on how many creation points you reserved, you get some number of extra actions. These are the special abilities that make your character stand out-- spells, interesting attacks, etc.
The actions I chose were Might Blow, Troll-Feller Strike, and Judgment of Vengeance.
Most actions have some pre-requisities. Block requires a shield, for example, and melee strike requires a melee weapon and for you to be engaged with an enemy. I never got to use my Judgment attack because the reckless side (see below) required you to be suffering an insanity, and despite my convincing arguments, the GM did not consider the presence of an elf in a party to be 'an insanity.'
All actions are double sided-- there's a red side and a green side, corresponding to reckless and conservative stances. I don't have any examples of the differences in effect on two sides of the same card, but my Judgment's conservative side required me to be suffering a critical wound instead of an insanity.
The actions will have a number of lines with costs on them. For example, an attack might say:
1 success: +1 damage
3 successes: +3 damage
1 boon: +1 damage and ignore the target's armor soak value
3 boons: +3 damage
1 bane: Suffer 1 fatigue
That's entirely made up, by the way, as I don't remember any of the cards well enough to reproduce them that well.[/sblock]
Ok, so now that that's out of the way, here are my impressions.
I really enjoyed the game. In the interest of full disclosure, this didn't come as much of a surprise to me; I was excited about this to begin with, I just couldn't pass up the Dr. Strangelove reference in the subject.
I haven't been following the game much, but I've seen a few people complaining about the board-game-ization and that's about what I'd expect. And to them I say: get over it.
Yeah, the game uses a bunch bits that look like they belong to a card game. Yes, there are cards and tokens and chits. And you know what? That's freaking awesome.
As games, RPGs haven't actually advanced all that much in the past 30 or so years since they've been invented. Systemically-- absolutely. But when it comes down to it, they're all basically just a bunch of stuff on a piece of paper, and that's not terribly compelling.
Lots of people already bring board gaming elements into RPGs. In 4th edition, for example, most people I've gamed with happily use power cards and they use tokens to keep track of their healing surges, as opposed to keeping track of them on the character sheet.
"But Asmor," you cry, "how does this help the roleplaying?" It doesn't. And there's no such thing as a mechanic that does help with roleplaying. Roleplaying is, ultimately, free form, and protesting the design of an RPG because "the mechanics detract from roleplaying" makes about as much sense as protesting the architecture of the White House because you don't like whichever politician happens to be living there at the time.
So all this is to say that I really enjoyed the game. The system had a pretty nasty learning curve, but I think that's in large part due to the fact that no one knew how to play. It offers something new and innovative, and you really owe it to yourself to give the game a try at least once.
