WFRP 3rd Edition Seminar

Posted by MortiS-the-Lost on Mar 30, 2010; 6:57pm
URL: http://the-lost-and-the-damned.71.s1.nabble.com/WFRP-3rd-Edition-Seminar-tp4826481.html

Well we've all been curious about exactly how much FFG have ruined WFRP with the so called 3rd edition and here's the answer: a five part seminar in which lead RPG ruiner .... I mean 'developer' Jay Little explains the mechanics of the new game.

Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKjdIX9J98s

Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZJxlSRQLpk&feature=related

Part 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiO72ocH9lM&feature=related

Part 4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gu8LP4ZivNg&feature=related

Part 5
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFsW5jKcECE&feature=related

Warning: if you're anything like me, you may find your self yelling at the screen after a few minutes.

The new game is not WFRP!

Yes it is a Role-play game (sort of) and yes dose make use of the Warhammer background but that's where the similarity's end. Mechanically everything is different, to the point where it would be nearly impossible to convert your campaign over from 2nd.
I will rant and go into more detail as I go, so please bear with me. The main point need to make here is that it doesn't even matter if this game is any good (which is debatable) this game is not a natural evolution of the WFRP rules, it's a whole new game with a whole new set of mechanics. The fact it proudly carries the title 3rd edition dose not make it a successor to 2nd edition.

Ok lets make on thing clear, this (despite what FFG say) is a board game. the box contains more card than 3rd edition SpaceHulk!

[pause for idiots to disagree with me]

Yes it is! It's all about moving counters along little tracks, it's about deck after deck of cards which tell you what to do. This is not role-playing!

“oh but Mortis, don't you see ... the counter and cards are aids to help with role-playing”

No they are not, they aren't aids to role-playing, they control the role-playing. Let me explain ...
In real role-playing game if something happens to my character that might make them angry, it's up to me to decide 'yes that would him angry' and then act accordingly. Like wise if my character is in a friendly situation it's up to me to act it out. This is what role-playing is about, thinking and acting like your character. It's not about moving a counter along a little track to see how aggressive my character is feeling about the situation or consulting a dice pool to see how they react. It should be up to the Players and GM to do the role-playing not the game mechanics. With all this consulting cards, tokens and markers to see what happening this game is more akin to fortune-telling than to role-playing.

Another thing that infuriates me about the Seminar is the guy constantly saying “earlier editions didn't do this”, “earlier editions didn't do that” and “earlier editions didn't explain this”. Quite apart from the fact there are no 'earlier editions' of this system because it is a whole new game, WFRP and WFRP 2 did cover all the things he claimed they didn't. This leads me to believe that either  Jay Little hasn't played WFRP (or any other RPG) or that he just entirely missed the point of the whole Role-Play thing.

People of FFG, by all means make a new RPG game and if you like use revolutionary rules and mechanics the like of which we have never seen before. But don't try to pretend it is the spiritual successor to an existing system with a well established community of players by giving it the same name. If your going to make a radically different new game, give it it's own name, don't tag it to the WFRP name.
I don't have a problem with the game using the Warhammer background (it's one of the best settings in the f fantasy genre after all) but please give the game it's own name and identity instead of having it masquerade as a new version of WFRP. Yes fans of WFRP may buy the game, some of them might even like it, but I think we can safely say that all will agree that it is not WFRP.

Another stupid move on the part of FFG when looking at this as a Warhammer game is the lack of support for miniature-based combat. One of the great things about the Warhammer setting is that it is supported by vast ranged of miniatures and FFG don't even have to make an effort to produce the miniatures because they already exist.
Hmm actually come to think of it maybe this deliberate on FFG's part. Lets face FFG want to make   an RPG that could compete with D&D. So they use the also very popular Warhammer setting and tell their art department to make all the cards and tokens and every page of the rulebooks look like a screen shot from an X-Box 360 game (compare the style of the game to the loading screens and menus from games like Oblivion, Fable II, Sacred and Dragon Age and you'll see what I mean). Then comes a critical meeting in the marketing design process: “Shall we have a rage of collectable miniatures to go with the game? WotC are selling a lot of them for D&D 4th” says someone.
“No we can't” says someone else “GW won't allow pre-painted miniatures ... something to do with their 'Hobby-Games' philosophy”
“so we aren't going to make any money from that then?”
“sadly no”
“hmm ok, let make the combat rules deliberately vague and abstract so people won't need or be able to use miniatures!”    

Which brings me nicely to another thing I don't like about the new game. The 'you need to buy more' aspect. So much stuff is left out of the boxed game and will have be bough in separate expansions. The basic game is what, around £60-£80 already. Your character needs the Rat-Catcher Carrier? you'll need to the 'Adventurer's Toolkit' which is another £20. Some one wants to play a Halfling? You'll need to buy another expansion pack. Got lots of people round the table? you'll to buy more of the Special Dice too and more counters and cards probably... and so on and so forth.
Suddenly the £19.99 (or whatever it was) I spent on the Rulebook for 2nd edition WFRP which contained all these rules and the extra £12-£15 I spent on the Old World Bestiary to make sure I had stats for all the monsters I wanted doesn't seem so bad. (and this only seemed bad because my Hogshead WFRP rulebook I bought way back in 2000 cost slightly less and contained a full Bestiary)

So the new game isn't real WFRP (or even a real RPG) and it's huge spending trap too. Anything else? Let me see ...

Those dice! Apart from the spending trap aspect of you having to get them from FFG and you can't just use the normal poly-dice you have from other games, they can't be easy to read in game... “hmm what dose 3 hammers and a skull mean again?”, “I have a comet and a crossed swords, is that good or bad?”, “how many eagles do I need to avoid being hit by the Minotaur?” thing like this must be heard all the time while playing and it's going to really ruin the flow of the game having to look up what the symbols mean all the time.
People have compared the Special Dice to the HeroQuest Combat Dice, but the similarity is only superficial, in HeroQuest Skulls = Damage and Shields = Blocking said Damage (I'm talking original HQ here members of my gaming group, I'm not going to explain our house rules here) it's pretty easy to pick up, I found most players will know how to read HQ combat dice pretty much strait away.
What the New Game's special dice remind me of more than anything is TSR's 'Dragon Dice' game (a game which is mostly spent looking up what the little symbols mean).


^ Dragon Dice, “What did I just roll?”