Quote from: Warthur;779485To be fair, killing off a beloved system and replacing it with a completely new and incompatible one is enough of a poke in the eye that I don't blame anyone for saying "Well, fuck you too FFG" and not getting on the 3E train.

Beloved by whom?  I've yet to meet a single WHFRP 1e or 2e player that doesn't readily admit that the mechanics were wonky and whifftastic.  The problem wasn't changing the system, it was changing it to something with so many fiddly bits and new dice.

Quote from: RabidWookie;779535Beloved by whom?  I've yet to meet a single WHFRP 1e or 2e player that doesn't readily admit that the mechanics were wonky and whifftastic.  The problem wasn't changing the system, it was changing it to something with so many fiddly bits and new dice.

2e was only whifftastic if the players were trying to be "Big Damn Heroes" all the time and trying to solo fight everything... Once you start supporting each other you get the gang bonuses and you are no longer whiffing... 2e system wasn't flawed (it might not have been perfect either), it was trying to play it like Dungeons & Dragons (WoTC era) that was...

Quote from: RabidWookie;779535Beloved by whom?  I've yet to meet a single WHFRP 1e or 2e player that doesn't readily admit that the mechanics were wonky and whifftastic.  The problem wasn't changing the system, it was changing it to something with so many fiddly bits and new dice.

Well, for one thing, the folks at Warpstone magazine (perhaps the best WFRP fanzine) point blank refused to support 3E and kept putting out 2E-compatible material instead.

Quote from: Warthur;779485To be fair, killing off a beloved system and replacing it with a completely new and incompatible one is enough of a poke in the eye that I don't blame anyone for saying "Well, fuck you too FFG" and not getting on the 3E train.

"Killed" the system? You mean FFG came into peoples' homes and put the old books to the torch? There wasn't anything left to publish for 2E. Fans can play 2E until they're senile and drooling septuagenarians.

No, it was the usual fanboy butthurt of "someone put out something that didn't suit by preferences and it hurt my feelings real bad!" I'd bet most of the WFRP grognards who pissed and moaned about 3E online don't even play WFRP anymore. It's their memories and preferences and nerd identities that were wounded. There would have been far less wailing and gnashing of teeth if WFRP was still mothballed and nobody had put anything out for it since Black Industries shut down 2E. The reaction to 3E was garden variety nerdfury.

Quote from: RabidWookie;779535Beloved by whom?  I've yet to meet a single WHFRP 1e or 2e player that doesn't readily admit that the mechanics were wonky and whifftastic.  The problem wasn't changing the system, it was changing it to something with so many fiddly bits and new dice.

WFRP players do not necessarily consider those to be bad things.

The WFRP1e rulebook is a bunch of random stuff, all held together by John Blanche and british cynicism. I have never once opened that book and actually found something I have been looking for, but it's always fun to open it and find some new mad rule or concept.

(The time I played WFRP 3e, one player went through three characters. He wasn't playing stupid, just the regular combination of bad luck his side, good luck theirs.)

Quote from: Haffrung;779564There wasn't anything left to publish for 2E.

A claim rather undercut by the fact that Green Ronin wanted to continue with the license.

Quote from: Haffrung;779564"Killed" the system? You mean FFG came into peoples' homes and put the old books to the torch? There wasn't anything left to publish for 2E. Fans can play 2E until they're senile and drooling septuagenarians.

Speaking of people who have lost their marbles, anyone who has been around RPG discussions for as long as you have should be fully aware that "killing the system" is more or less always used as shorthand for "killing active company support for the system" in these conversations and the joke about FFG coming around your house to burn your books was tired-out and ancient when WEG used it in 1980s Paranoia supplements and is even more decrepit today.

As far as there being not much left to publish for 2E, a) as jadrax pointed out Green Ronin didn't agree with you and b) they didn't really produce much that was actually *new* for 3E, they just covered old material and put it in terms of the new system.

Quote from: jadrax;779571A claim rather undercut by the fact that Green Ronin wanted to continue with the license.

Haffrung's just pulling his usual "'cos grognards!" routine with the usual claims that 'most' people follow this or that view/behaviour. ie, claptrap.

Quote from: Warthur;779573Speaking of people who have lost their marbles, anyone who has been around RPG discussions for as long as you have should be fully aware that "killing the system" is more or less always used as shorthand for "killing active company support for the system" in these conversations and the joke about FFG coming around your house to burn your books was tired-out and ancient when WEG used it in 1980s Paranoia supplements and is even more decrepit today

And anyone who has been around RPG discussions for as long as you have knows most gamers don't need any more books for a game once they have 10-15 of them*, and it's not the prospect of no new material that enrages nerds, but the emotional sensitivity of a company 'firing' them as fans by releasing material that doesn't suit their preferences.

* Especially when they're grogs who sneer at published adventures and complain at lazy GMs who don't make up their own content. And then these same grogs melt down when a company stops 'supporting' a favourite game - or worse yet a new company starts supporting a favourite game in a way they don't like.

Quote from: Warthur;779573As far as there being not much left to publish for 2E, a) as jadrax pointed out Green Ronin didn't agree with you and b) they didn't really produce much that was actually *new* for 3E, they just covered old material and put it in terms of the new system.

Which suggest there isn't much else to publish for the WFRP game. What did Green Ronin want to release - a bunch of books on Tilea and Estalia? The last adventure published - A Thousand Thrones - didn't exactly burn up the charts. I'd be shocked it if sold 2,000 copies.

Quote from: One Horse Town;779577Haffrung's just pulling his usual "'cos grognards!" routine with the usual claims that 'most' people follow this or that view/behaviour. ie, claptrap.

Edit: Depends on what you mean by grognard. If you mean someone who has been playing for a long time (I started with Holmes Basic in '79), and who generally prefers old-school approaches to RPGs (look at any thread on lethality or sandbox versus railroad), then I'm a grognard. If you mean someone who reflexively pisses and moans about anything new or innovative, then no, I'm not. I don't have my identity invested in games or game publishers. I don't take anything anyone does on the RPG industry or hobby personally, and I accept that it's okay that my preferences and the output of RPGs publishers often don't align. It's the creeps who talk about being "slapped in the face," "shit on," and companies "killing games" who need to get out and get some fresh air once in a while.

Between Warhammer 3e and D&D 4e it seems like a lot of rpg industry folks looked at the unexpected success of Euro boardgames in the 00's and managed to draw a very wrong conclusion. "If we just boardgamify our rpg's, we can't lose!"

Oops.

On the "new vs older gamers" question, I recently discovered a very good (clean, well lit, well stocked, non-scary staff) FLGS and have started visiting once every few weeks. It's really changed my impression of the hobby's demographics after spending a lot of time reading online forums. Yes, there are indeed younger folks getting into gaming. The median age range of the people I see browsing the rpg section or playing at one of the tables seems to be about 18-25.

Quote from: Haffrung;779584Edit: Depends on what you mean by grognard. If you mean someone who has been playing for a long time (I started with Holmes Basic in '79), and who generally prefers old-school approaches to RPGs (look at any thread on lethality or sandbox versus railroad), then I'm a grognard. If you mean someone who reflexively pisses and moans about anything new or innovative, then no, I'm not. I don't have my identity invested in games or game publishers. I don't take anything anyone does on the RPG industry or hobby personally, and I accept that it's okay that my preferences and the output of RPGs publishers often don't align. It's the creeps who talk about being "slapped in the face," "shit on," and companies "killing games" who need to get out and get some fresh air once in a while.

It's entirely possible to innovate without trying to pass off your fresh, new, innovative system as being any sort of successor to two utterly different systems that happened to have the same title you applied to your bold new experiment.

Quote from: Haffrung;779584I'd be shocked it if sold 2,000 copies.

If it didn't its because it was hard to get hold of due to FFG deciding to hardly print any when they took over. People have it listed at over £50 on amazon.


The list of books that could have been made is long:

This is a game that did not get splat books for its core races for starters.
Then there are the obvious other army book tie ins. Dark Elves, Lustria, Ogres, Orcs. One of the huge tragedies of WFRP is so much of the world is essentially untouched. You only have source books covering half of the equivalent of Europe.

On a semi-related note, who is making money off of the Warhammer novels? I see a healthy amount of shelf space devoted to Warhammer novels and story collections in every big box book store I go into, and have for years. They don't generally stock things that don't sell, so those books must be reasonably popular.

Quote from: Dimitrios;779600On a semi-related note, who is making money off of the Warhammer novels? I see a healthy amount of shelf space devoted to Warhammer novels and story collections in every big box book store I go into, and have for years. They don't generally stock things that don't sell, so those books must be reasonably popular.

Gw's publishing division have been cranking those out for decades. The ones I've read have been decent enough reads, if not exactly the highest of art. Try the Ciaphas Cain ones.

Quote from: Dimitrios;779600On a semi-related note, who is making money off of the Warhammer novels?

Black Library, which is a pretty healthy division of Games Workshop.