So these 'stances' in WFRP 3e work like conditions in D&D, in the sense that they affect all rolls?
With the caveat that we don't yet know the full rules, here's my take on how they work:
- Each character has a stance meter, with a neutral slot on the middle and cautious and reckless slots on the left and right.
- The number of cautious and reckless stance slots that you have is based on advances you buy from your career - i.e.: some careers are inherently more cautious (think catburgler) or more reckless (think trollslayer), but it's up to the player which (if any) pieces they purchase for their character.
- For any given encounter a character determines where on the meter they are (i.e.: 2 slots to the left is a cautious rating of 2, 1 slot to the right is a reckless rating of 1, etc). Note that the rules for determining where you are on the meter, and when and how it can change haven't been shown yet as far as I know
- When you make a roll during an encounter, you must replace characteristic dice with stance dice. I.e.: if I was 2 slots into the cautious stance, and I was making a strength test (with a strength characteristic of 3), I would roll 2 cautious dice and 1 characteristic dice for the check.
- The stance dice are different from the characteristic dice. While basic characteristic dice have moderate success and blank sides, the other dice have different symbols. Cautious dice have a lot of moderate success symbols and few blank side, but have symbols that indicate a delay may have occurred in your action (due to being overly cautious). Reckless dice have spectacular successes as well as failure symbols - so things are likely to go exceedingly well or very badly.
I don't know about you, but I haven't seen a system anything like it before. It's very generic in that it applies across all sorts of rolls (social, knowledge, combat, etc) and yet it's much more in depth than simple circumstance bonuses/penalties. I love that the roll actually tells a story about how your character succeeded rather than just a simple success/failure indication.
Am I confusing them now with the "party alignment" which affected everyone?
That is something different. The party sheet provides a static benefit to all members of the party (at least all nearby members). It also includes a tension meter and as that increases the party also suffers drawbacks. It's probably something other games have done but again it's not something I've personally encountered before.
I don't know about you, but I'm easily distracted by all sorts of props on the table
Fair enough, that's perfectly understandable. Me? I don't tend to get distracted, especially if the components are something which helps with immersion in the game. A good example are 4e power cards, especially at lower levels. Having everything spread out in front of me and not needing to stop the game to flip through a book to lookup a power really helps the immersion for me. Components like that (which the WFRP 3e cards seem similar to) and the custom dice, which I'm sure will become easy and intuitive to read after a game or two, I think are a good thing.
As for the revolution... you're right, the trick is in how it all blends together; somehow I feel very suspicious of WFRP 3E managing to do that in a way that still feels more like a RPG than a boardgame.
As was I initially. As FFG have released more information about how the boardgame-like components are actually used though, my concerns have been allayed to the point where I can see this being
more of a RPG than the ones I currently play! I'm cautiously excited and looking forward to giving it a test run - the only way to tell for sure is to play it after all.
