Check it out! Lots of interesting stuff. http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_content/wfrp/3_media/wfrp_web.mov
I am particulary interested to see the Party Sheets in play. Appears to be a fascinating dynamic. I remember the party specific feats in 3e and thought that idea had merit. Sounds like WFRP has gone even farther.
However, with all the "game playing" (aka, fiddling with mechanics), I do wonder how much roleplay and story will occur. Of course, maybe "fiddling with mechanics" has become far more interesting to players.
Overall, it doesn't get me more or less likely to buy. My sticking point is the 4 player assumption. It makes running the game at cons problematic.
Interesting trailer. Very good compression of the series of longer videos they did earlier this year. I wish they had used actual components instead of digital representations, though.
As for the game itself, I'm pretty resolved to purchase this for my group at one point. Perhaps even before Christmas, if some of the online pre-order prices I've seen in Germany (53 Euros) will be kept. Otherwise I'll wait for in depth play reports and then decide if the game is worth paying a steeper price.
Our group is already in the process of picking up bits and pieces of other games - be they wargames or boardgames - and integrate them into our main RPG game. We already blend Warmaster sessions into our war-themed D&D campaign (ignoring 95% of the D&D characters' abitilies when transitioning them over as Warmaster commander "stand ins"), so a new game that by itself tries to blend genres doesn't offend us. Plus, since we're such an idiosyncratic bunch to begin with, we aren't interested in picking up a game box that supplants our extant RPG game. If we were a group of WHRPG 2E'ers being told that we should adopt this box wholesale in place of what we've already got going, I'd be as averse to the product as some others on the internet. But as it is, I'm picking it up for the occasional diversion. It looks highly promising in that regard, if rather pricey at that.
Looking at the trailer, I'm stunned how similar some components seem to operate to certain bits in Arkham Horror. Two examples.
(1) The party team sheet with its Pressure Meter looks like an Elder One sheet (http://images.boardgamegeek.com/images/pic225718_md.jpg) with its escalating effects on the players if the meter progresses. "The speed of the investigators is reduced by 1" (quoting the Elder One sheet just linked) seems a close analogue of Warhammer 3rd's party sheet telling you that "all characters suffer 1 fatigue" when the tension meter hits a certain number. And that's mighty cool. If the party sheet nearly enough represents "a character in its own right" (quoting the trailer), then it seems Warhammer 3rd basically allows you to bring Cthulhu to the team. Not the easiest guy to be around with, but certainly well worth the ride.
(2) The stance meter and how to re-customize it by fiddling around with it to indicate changes in your character's mechanics: this strikes me as very close to shifting your core abilities during the game on your Arkham Horror character sheet (http://images.boardgamegeek.com/images/pic296989_md.jpg). I'm a bit uncertain whether integrating this mechanic with a stash of "action cards" turns out nicely in play.
So my overriding (if perhaps ultimately unfounded) impression I've taken away from the trailer is this. FFG's closest offering so far to a great RPG is Arkham Horror. Importance of team play under escalating tension, superadded to components with rich theme: if they've built on that foundation, I expect a rock solid delivery.
Since my group is already in the habit of roleplaying any of the FFG boardgames that allow this (like AH and Runebound), I don't have even a shred of doubt that the richness of gamey components won't distract us from doing so in Warhammer 3rd. What I am curious about is how groups of gamers previously unaccustomed to roleplaying will fare upon picking it up. I reckon they will try to build on their previous FFG experiences as much as we do. Does that mean impending doom for our beloved "hobby"? 99% online discussions answer with a resounding Yes!
So far in the uk The only place ive found that even lists this game as due for release this month(or at all) is iguk.co.uk and there charging £67.39 which is abit kore than 100 dollars in current exchange rates so atm im not sure im gonna buy it yet, hopefully amazon.co.uk will list this boxset eventually but tbh im surprised they havent already(they had rogue trader and dark heresey on there sites months befoe anyone else.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Warhammer-Fantasy-Roleplay-Flight-Team/dp/1589946960/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1257853187&sr=8-1
QuoteRRP: £80.01
Our Price: £68.01 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK
Very funny, that RRP.
Arkham Horror is a stupid game, we solved it playing the first time. Can´t lose when you cracked the riddle of that "game".
I´d rather play Fighting Fantasy alone than another of those FFG stinker boardgames, they make me angry in theri stupidity. Only Eagle Games comes close in the disappointment factor.
EDIT: Twilight Imperium, THE HORROR!
Wow they finally added the game after like 3 weeks of finding nothing but the old wfrp stuff, price is abit wonky though even with a discount(it actually works out cheaper to import from amazon.com than buy from amazon.co.uk)
Quote from: Windjammer;342916FFG's closest offering so far to a great RPG is Arkham Horror. Importance of team play under escalating tension, superadded to components with rich theme: if they've built on that foundation, I expect a rock solid delivery.
I fully agree that the Arkham / Descent lineage is strong in their new design. Makes sense as those two are massive sellers for FFG.
Quote from: Settembrini;342932I´d rather play Fighting Fantasy alone than another of those FFG stinker boardgames
It's certainly a lot cheaper.
Man, is that cheesy!!! It sounds like the trailer for Warriors of Grün (from an episode of King of Queens).
Y'know...I just...guys, FFG guys, come on. This isn't a role-playing game. Hell the designer comes out at the beginning of the video and says as much - not an RPG but something you can play and have memorable moments with (in a nutshell).
That's all well and good, I'm sure this is a good board game and all but don't paint the telephone yellow and tell me what a delicious banana it is.
I'm semi-out from under NDA. Just got the e-mail. I can't discuss design philosophy or anything that didn't make it into the final release (I play-tested the alpha as it was being built, so I don't know what the differences are with the finished product).
That aside, I will say that I played it, and did not like it. I didn't find it particularly corrosive to roleplaying, but I did find framed things so that I thought mainly in terms of rules rather than the imaginative world.
The probability distribution was poor. We charted it out over many rolls and found that we would succeed about 84% of the time just using the regular dice and our starting stats without any other modifiers. The incentives to using the various dice pools were also contrary to what I thought they should be. The dice-type that represented near-certain success but low degree of success in fact produced both outcomes, the dice-type that was supposed to have less certainty but the possibility of a greater degree of success in fact failed to produce this outcome. This was the biggest problem in the completed portions of the system I was privy to.
That said, it looks like they did take some, if not all, of our recommendations forwards into the finished product (I can't be more specific than that, unfortunately). And there are/were some extremely clever and enjoyable parts of the game - sorting out dice pools visually was an excellent idea, as were the tracks. I had a positive experience with the freelancer working for FFG, and the company man he e-mailed our comments to seemed open to the criticism and comments we returned. I have a fairly positive impression of FFG after this experience, even though I don't like the version of this particular RPG I playtested.
Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;343044I'm semi-out from under NDA. Just got the e-mail. I can't discuss design philosophy or anything that didn't make it into the final release (I play-tested the alpha as it was being built, so I don't know what the differences are with the finished product).
That aside, I will say that I played it, and did not like it. I didn't find it particularly corrosive to roleplaying, but I did find framed things so that I thought mainly in terms of rules rather than the imaginative world.
The probability distribution was poor. We charted it out over many rolls and found that we would succeed about 84% of the time just using the regular dice and our starting stats without any other modifiers. The incentives to using the various dice pools were also contrary to what I thought they should be. The dice-type that represented near-certain success but low degree of success in fact produced both outcomes, the dice-type that was supposed to have less certainty but the possibility of a greater degree of success in fact failed to produce this outcome. This was the biggest problem in the completed portions of the system I was privy to.
That said, it looks like they did take some, if not all, of our recommendations forwards into the finished product (I can't be more specific than that, unfortunately). And there are/were some extremely clever and enjoyable parts of the game - sorting out dice pools visually was an excellent idea, as were the tracks. I had a positive experience with the freelancer working for FFG, and the company man he e-mailed our comments to seemed open to the criticism and comments we returned. I have a fairly positive impression of FFG after this experience, even though I don't like the version of this particular RPG I playtested.
Intresting. I was playing about with the dice roller program and quickly noticing you hardly ever seem to fail, at some point I will probably work out a spreadsheet of the exact odds.
Only 5 advanced careers and spell cards for 3 Gods and 3 magic colleges only!!!
I'm willing to allow the possibility that advanced careers don't work the same way as in v2, so 5 for the first release might be justified (until i hear otherwise), but all this song and dance about CARDS! and half the stuff isn't in the box?
Poor. Very poor.
- As this post quoted Pseudo's post in its entirety (broken into chunks) which he saw reason to delete (see below), I have removed my post too (saved it on harddisk + will bring it back later). -
Quote from: One Horse Town;343055Only 5 advanced careers and spell cards for 3 Gods and 3 magic colleges only!!!
Yes, and one of those gods is not Ulric, which puts somewhat of a kibosh on 'The Enemy Within' campaign as well as 'Paths of the Damned'...
Quote from: jadrax;343057Yes, and one of those gods is not Ulric, which puts somewhat of a kibosh on 'The Enemy Within' campaign as well as 'Paths of the Damned'...
Yikes. I'd like to know if all the Gods & colleges are mentioned in the softcover books included.
I'll also bring out my copyrighted, "from a hook to a slice," comment on the success odds that pseudo mentioned (if they are correct - it's not my strongest point, frankly).
Quote from: One Horse Town;343058Yikes. I'd like to know if all the Gods & colleges are mentioned in the softcover books included.
I'll also bring out my copyrighted, "from a hook to a slice," comment on the success odds that pseudo mentioned (if they are correct - it's not my strongest point, frankly).
http://www.gmtools.excelocms.com/ (http://www.gmtools.excelocms.com/) should give you a feel at least for how likely you are to succeed.
Gurni Thorgrimson, the example starting Dockhand:
Strength 5, Toughness 4, Agility 3, Intelligence 2, Willpower 3, Fellowship 2
Athletics 1, Coordination 1, Intimidate 1, Resilience 1, Guile 1
Conservative 2/Reckless 2
Quote from: Windjammer;343056Yes, and elsewhere you said you wouldn't "make the switch". But would you want to play this if someone else brought it to the table (for the occasional one-shot)? Or would you rather play something else that's thematically proximate but simply better suited for that sort of situation?
I am planning to treat it like a beer and pretzels board game. I might play it if someone else has bought it and brings it around, but I can't say that I'd buy it, or even be particularly eager to play it. I don't like where it sits on the spectrum between board game and RPG.
QuoteI'd guess that what you describe here is corrosive to roleplaying for lots of people.
Bear in mind that I was an alpha playtester - literally part of the first group to play it outside of FFG. We had a very incomplete ruleset, and most of our time was spent figuring out how the various rules work and submitting opinion on them. But yes, I do see why people would be concerned if the final product is like that.
QuoteOk, this is downright disconcerting, especially if it isn't rectified in the final version. Solid rulesets of this magnitude are not FFG's forte, but in this case the dice pool system seems beyond my abilities to house-rule them into functionality. - For what it's worth, I'm not certain the probabilities aren't skewered in favour of the PCs by design. Sett mentioned above that Arkham Horror is a "stupid game" too easy to "crack". Well, the game is supposed to reward people playing it with significantly less ability than Sett & company (yes, there are AH expansions which amp up the difficulty, but that's not the point here.) I wouldn't be surprised if Warhammer 3rd is supposed to give newcomers an easy time, perhaps even some cheap victories, to avoid them dropping the game due to frustration.
I'm prevented by NDA on speculating about FFG's intentions, even when I have a pretty good idea what they are/were. Whether they changed the dice or not is probably going to be the make-or-break criterion for whether I'm willing to play the game.
QuoteAnd that gets us to my final question/concern. What I've just said, in response to your quoted 84% chance of success, seems to me starkly at odds with what precious little I knew of Warhammer FRPG hitherto. I thought it's "grim and perilous" and your characters will always fight steep odds against them. So how would you rate this game in relation to people like myself who haven't really experienced the Warhammer universe in a RPG context before? Do you think the game helps a GM to capture that universe, its traditional themes and so on?* Or do you think there is a massive re-envisioning of what roleplaying in the Old World ought to feel like, and that newcomers face a serious choice between having their characters continually "knee-deep in shit" (http://jrients.blogspot.com/2009/05/makes-me-want-to-try-wfrp.html) and glorious Superheroes for the Win!?
In a nutshell: is choosing between 2e and 3e as much a matter of theme as it is of mechanics?
*I note that the trailer linked in the OP claims this, but I'd like to hear it from someone who's played it.
I think so. 3e felt like an action adventure board game, somewhat similar to Warhammer Quest from what I know of that game, but with the ability to roleplay overlaid on top of it. The emphasis in our game was on very heroic feats that I'd probably shy away from or do differently in WFRP 2e. For example, the first test of the combat system was against 12 skeletons / zombies, which is a lot of undead in WFRP 2e to fight at once, but we managed to survive without much damage in WFRP 3e. I think we'll start to see this whole "squabbling in the mud" meme fade away as it becomes less relevant to 3e.
I screwed up, the NDA expires Friday. So I've deleted my posts and I'll be keeping mum until then. Sorry for the tease, folks.