If you own the game, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

1) These days, I mostly play at convention with strangers.  How much of a learning curve is needed before players feel comfortable with the mechanics?  AKA, am I going to need to spend 30 / 60 / 90 minutes teaching rules before we actually play?  


2) In regards to components, how fiddly are they?  Are players going to get mesmerized by their character sheet bits and mentally leave the game?  Does the level of cleanup going to result in lost tiny bits on a regular basis?


3) What is the tone of 3e?  Do the D&D 3e/4e comparisons hold any water?  How far above the Average Joe does an adventurer now stand?


4) Do we still have a gory critical hits chart?  How does the blood splattery goodness work in 3e?  Does the game feel more PG than previous editions?


5) Overall, what do you LOVE about the game?   What about this edition makes you excited about running it?

1) I would not have thought it would be a huge problem, as long as you understand them 100%. The rules books are pretty badly laid out, so you would have to do all the explaining.

2) I lost a bit within 5 min of opening the bloody thing.I would ditch the fatigue/stress tokens, they are just too bloody small. Apart from that, yes, its fiddly. You are building little jigsaws every session.

3) Hard to say. I have seen starting Dockhands that can go toe to toe with Chaos Warriors. But on the other hand, they are still a Dockhand. Because the NPC Average Joe (Townsfolk) and the adventurers operate under different Rule Sets, they are kinda tricky to compare. Basically the Townfolk get no skills at all, but do get floating Aggression and Cunning Dice.

4) No. Pretty much crits top out at losing teeth and rupturing your sides.

5) Right now, to be absolutely frank, nothing. I cannot think of anything I would use this rule-set for over something else. But I am still looking.

I just ran a demo of the game at the local meetup last weekend.

1) I had 4 players who had never played any version of Warhammer before.  I had pre-gen characters with all of their fiddly bits in boxes, and just handed the boxes out.  I explained the bits as people laid out their character areas, then explained the basic die pool system.  I'd say 30 minutes of setup and explanation.

2) There are a lot of fiddly bits.  In fact, the players were initially kind of overwhelmed by the sheer volume of bits, but pretty quickly got the hand of them.  It's mostly tracking stuff, so if you want you can juts use pencil and paper, although I like the tokens.

3) The tone of the setting is unchanged (still dark and gritty).  Starting characters are more competent than 1E or 2E ones, but not ubermensch.  I'd say they are above the average Joe, but not towering above him.

4) I love the wound/crit system (cards), but the gory crits are not here.  There are lots of interesting critical effects, but you're going to have to add the more visceral descriptions yourself.

5) Personally, I love the die pool system and using fortune and misfortune dice instead of numeric modifiers.  I also like the abstract non-grid based combat (don't get me wrong, I love me some 4E tactical combat, but WFRP is more story based and a nice change).  Very easy to wing things, and felt very liberating.

I'm going to be running it for my group starting in January.

John

1) The GM had run the demo even and was familiar with the rules.  We spent about 30-45 minutes making characters and going over the rules.  If you pre-gen the characters I suspect you could cover the rules in about 15-20 minutes and then expect another few rounds of the first combat to go a little more slowly.  The big advantage to this system is that everything is very visual and all the rules/exceptions are in front of the players.  Right from the start they can do cool stuff without needing to wonder what all those obscure skills/talents/abilites that would normally be written down mean.

2) Skip the stress/fatigue tokens and just give each person two dice to track their stress/fatigue.  Less fiddly bits and less to worry about.  That just leaves their stance meter which you can build ahead of time and give them.  It's not super fiddly and easy to use.   Alternatively you could skip the stance mechanics and not worry about it.

3)Mechanical tone is still Warhammer.  But in play that largely depends on the GM.  Characters are more capable in general because the dice pool mechanic is more forgiving.  Where that is more impact-full is in non-combat situations.  The whole 30% wiff problem that past WFRP games have suffered from is largely gone.  Action cards help to make the game more interesting and a little more heroic in feel.  But still the setting is very dark and mean.  Also the group dynamic this time around is more supportive with the group card so characters can lend each other abilities and the group initiative system.  

4) Combat it's still brutal and punishing.  Characters tend to be a little more hardy.  But keep in mind if you get hit you always take at least 1 wound so the odds of coming out unscathed is virtually null.  In our game we were beaten up pretty badly and there are no more fate points to save your life.  Crits are less singularly deadly.  But their cumulative effects can be very crippling and still fatal.  It's still possible to die in one hit, though less likely for a character to die in 1 hit then an NPC.

5) What I love about the game is that all the fun rules are available to the players.  No hunting through books to find out what each of their abilities mean and behave.  It's very empowering as a player to know what you can do at a glance and not constantly wondering what rule your missing or options you have available.  You don't have to be the rules zen master which is very cool.  I like that the difficulty scale feels better.   You feel more capable so it's more encouraging to try something.  Yet there is still a lot of risk built into the setting so that it doesn't feel like you are super heroes running around.  Goblins still are deadly, beastmen can still dispatch you etc...
I also love the fact that while individually you have new options the group dynamic is strengthened. You have the group template as well as a group initiative scheme and plenty of actions that can help out your team mates.   There is a strong group dynamic to the mechanics which I dug.