More and more actual plays keep popping up and for the most part they are positive based on the actual play experience.  The consensus seems to be rules move quick, player down time is lessened, combat is fun and rolls become more meaningful and social interactions are actually purposeful now because you have action cards that can enforce ummm actions.

Friend of mine just ran the demo session and he had no agenda walking into it (beyond getting a discount on the box set if he agreed to run it)

QuoteSo I ran it tonight.

It was a two-hour demo with people who had never played before so I short-cutted a fair bit.

I really like how, in combat, your success is measured and mitigated by the purple challenge dice. I find players, in general, meta-game too much when they figure out the number they need to hit. While stats definitely factor in to how many challenge dice you're rolling, you never know with certainty what the result will be so every swing matters.

Combat is still very lethal. When you get hit, it hurts.

The character sheet is very simplified but the trade-off is that many values that, in a traditional RPG, that would be tracked on a character sheet get tracked with components. The positive of this is that, as the GM, I can just glance across the table and know certain things about a character like their stance or number of wounds. The disadvantage is that they take up a lot of space and, because they're small, can get easily brushed aside.

In any kind of ongoing game I would probably make up some kind of sheet that sat in the middle of the table that showed things like stance, stress, fatigue, and wounds so that it was easier to see at a glance. Also, I'd use a brick of Chessex dice for most of the things that the box set advises to use counters for.

It was a fun system to run. In conflicts the person whose turn it is really is in the driver's seat. I sometimes find RPGs get bogged down with actions that interrupt other actions and there wasn't a lot of that in WFRP3 and, when it was, it was usually in the form of adding misfortune dice to the proposed action. I like that because I think it's better, when playing an RPG, to say "I'm going to make that harder for you to do" as opposed to "no, you're not doing that."

I also like that there are action cards for stuff besides combat. One of the NPCs in the demo (Klaus the merchant) only had social abilities. The only "learning curve" moment I had (and that I think you'd[Kryyst] tend to have) in a game where both players and NPCs have "social combat" abilities is to compel a player to have his character adhere to the outcome. For example, tonight Klaus the merchant used his Fellow-ship based ability to convince the Dwarf Troll Slayer that it was in his best interest to load boxes on to a carriage. I rolled Klaus' social skill agains the Dwarf's will-power and beat him handily. Luckily, the guy playing the Dwarf was a mature enough roleplayer that he "got it" and rp'd his Dwarf happily loading boxes. A younger player at the table was all, "why are you listening to him? Just punch him in the face!"

The system is a different paradigm than anything else I've played so it sometimes went a little slow but I can see, with some experience, it going really quickly when people just know what dice to throw in their pools. I also think they did a good job of creating a new system that supported the perilous and gritty feel of the Warhammer world.

I'm unsurprised as more and more folks chime in that they've bought it and liked it.

It's not a casual product at that price, and most early adopters are already familiar with it through FFG's admittedly solid representation of the product via their promotional videos.

I'm not wishing doom and gloom on FFG or the line, but I will be surprised if it's as sticky as the last edition.

Quote from: jdurall;346665I'm not wishing doom and gloom on FFG or the line, but I will be surprised if it's as sticky as the last edition.

I would be as well. I think it's an interesting idea, playing to their strengths as a producer of board games, but a) new, flashy ideas tend to tank and b) gamers are traditionalists, by and large.

My copy is supposed to be shipping today. Let's see what happens.

Seanchai

Quote from: jdurall;346665I'm unsurprised as more and more folks chime in that they've bought it and liked it.

I got my copy (I pre-ordered when it was cheaper). It seems ok, but nothing special tbh.

I don't think it is any less an RPG than other games, I don't think the components are particularly of detriment, (or particularly of help for that matter). The main issue is that the rule book layout is appalling, but that is pretty much par for the RPG course anyway.

There are some nice ideas, but nothing so-far that makes me want to leap up and down and want to use the system to run a game. That said, I haven't actually managed to play it yet due to the people I normally test games with refusing to participate.

Well, saw it in the flesh today. Was ctually on sale: a huge box easily 5'' deep. One heck of a physical presence. One heck of a price tag: was £80, as per the RRP i mentioned earlier. I cannot predict at all whether or not this will sell. In fact I don't know what to make of it at all, but it's not for me.
Anyone who's interested: it was on sale at Excelsior Games in Bristol UIK which, as a new shop, has a fairly decent selection of product for a small(ish) comic/game shop.

Amazon says I don't get mine for a while yet. (And they totally canceled my Alchemicals order.)

Seanchai