Quote from: RPGPundit;340763Had WFRP 2e been marketed more effectively by GW, it would have been a serious competitor to D&D. Unfortunately, ideological concepts within GW prevented that.

RPGPundit

1E could have, too... same issue: no strong marketing. GW mishandled the line. It was on the downhill in the UK just as it was being seriously discovered in the US... and that's precisely when GW decided to pull the plug on Flame Publications.

For a company so noted for being an adventure-games/wargames company, they sure are hyperconservative on the business side... the moment something starts to go down below "righteous fury" levels, they cut it.

Quote from: J Arcane;340608Because Dark Heresy actually makes them money, and lots of it, while WFRP consists largely of a handful of grognards clinging to copies of books they never even published.
 
People are acting like WFRP was some great cash cow that they've suddenly cut loose. That is not the case. FFG didn't even print hardly any books for it, and the sales weren't nearly as good as DH has been by any metric I've seen.
 
And if you think DH is "overly complex", you have such a warped fucking view of the system I don't see how you can justify even having an opinion on the subject. It's not exactly D&D 4e, or even 3e.

More or less, I agree with this. Though WFRP was a really good game and quite popular, they may think they will make more money with DH. WFRP is mainly a grognard thing, I'm afraid.
 
OTOH, the game looks gorgeous and I approve of it. It reminds me of some great RPG boxed sets, but better done. So, I'll take a look at it.

The Spiel boardgame convention at Essen ended last Sunday, and Warhammer 3rd was available for demos. One of the guys who participated in the demo already reports his experiences. I'm going to translate, fast and loose.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The Game

I think the system is well done. Despite all the cards and board game assets it's still a genuine RPG.
The complexity of the dice system comes close to Dark Eye [NB Germany's most common RPG system] in that you've always got to sort through a handful of dice to see how many and which of them are appropriate for the next roll. But this complexity trades off in terms of the quantitative and qualitative result it delivers, with its capacity to give the GM's inspiration something good to work with.

In our demo game we had a co-player who'd only played board games so far. (She vaguely knew of Dark Eye, but that's that.) She felt quite enthusiastic about the system.

There's no battle map, as the figures only stand in astract relations to each other. Range is covered by a couple of counters. Pretty elegantly, too.
On the downside, you need lots of place for your cards on the table, since everytime you've used up one of your special card you have to visibly place a "cool down" token on that card.

On the whole the game seems quite good in drawing in boardgamers while remaining a RPG at heart. Unfortunately the price tag is quite a deterrent, even if the material you get seems to make this a fair deal.
The rulebook, by the way, looks just like any FFG boardgame instruction booklet.

The Included Sample Adventure (beware spoilers!)

Not to say much, but this is astoundingly stupid at a core junction. (Spoiler!!) The whole adventure kicks off with the PCs (among them a Roadwarden) waiting for a super important parcel at a Road Inn. Since it's over due, the group sets off to search for the postal coach. They find the coach just as it's being raided, so that the player characters can intervene and safe the ass of a traveling merchant on the coach. - Right. But then the merchant, who carries the parcel the PCs wanted all along, doesn't want to part with the parcel unless you bribe him for a ridiculous amount of money. So I go, WTF!?! I safe the bastard's life and then he wants to be bribed for handing over our own property? Huh?

No someone could go, "Where's the problem? Just kill the beligerant bastard, and chalk it up to just one further casualty in the raid." Well, that won't work as the Roadwarden included among the PCs is deliberately pitched as a decent, law-abiding Roadwarden. So our group's Roadwarden threatened the merchant to take him into custody. The GM then had the merchant refuse to recognize the Roadwarden's authority. At this point, the whole thing just fell apart and the GM realized that the whole situation, as scripted in the module, was a non-starter. So he modified it. (Btw our GM had received the whole boxed set and the included adventure the day before the convention.)

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;340354I won't be making the switch.

Well I for one am counting the days until your NDA ends. Honest, if people at the Spiel are allowed to share their experiences, why aren't the other playtesters?

Quote from: Windjammer;340811The rulebook, by the way, looks just like any FFG boardgame instruction booklet.

That's worrisome, although i presume for the demo that it was just the nuts and bolts needed to run the demo...i hope.

Quote from: Patrick Y.;340715In an industry as small as this one, it's not hard to find "popular" products that are still so insignificant in terms of profits gained there's not much to be lost in radically altering them in hopes of snagging larger returns.

Yep. Especially for a company like FGG, which is accustomed to moving game units in the tens of thousands. Numbers that seem like a success to a company where the principals have day jobs - essentially vanity presses - are not going to be acceptable to a company with major operating costs, full-time professional staff, and ambitions greater than getting their name on an RPG book.

Quote from: Hubert Farnsworth;340756But for Vanilla Fantasy Warhammer I just can't see tens of thousands of us shelling out $100 or what will probably be over £100 for it under present economic conditions.

Chaos in the Old World seems to be selling very well. I know it's not as costly as WFRP 3E, but it gives some idea of the market for such a product.

Edit: Also, see 100k copies of Space Hulk sold out at $100 a pop. If people think there isn't a market out there for $100 games with a popular license and lots of nice bits, they don't know the boardgame market.

Quote from: Haffrung;340819Yep. Especially for a company like FGG, which is accustomed to moving game units in the tens of thousands. Numbers that seem like a success to a company where the principals have day jobs - essentially vanity presses - are not going to be acceptable to a company with major operating costs, full-time professional staff, and ambitions greater than getting their name on an RPG book.

That's a really common bias and I agree with your conclusions. Most 'successful' RPGs are not really profitable.

I say again: someone really needs to "Pathfinderize" WFRP 2e.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;340829I say again: someone really needs to "Pathfinderize" WFRP 2e.

I don't see how that could work with a game that is more about the setting than the system.

Quote from: Haffrung;340834I don't see how that could work with a game that is more about the setting than the system.

Yeah, it's not a comparable situation - even ignoring the absence of an OGL.

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;340796Many people would disagree with you. And what should we do then? Kill off every game that lasts longer than three years? That shit gets real old real fast.

Besides AD&D, how many other rpgs do not follow this model of being killed off or going out of print after 3 or 4 years?  (Being "killed off" includes releasing a "3.5" or *.5 edition).

Only other one I can think of offhand, would be Rifts.

Quote from: One Horse Town;340815That's worrisome, although i presume for the demo that it was just the nuts and bolts needed to run the demo...i hope.

The guy explicitly reports in his last sentence that his GM got the full box for the demo game. And I got a newsletter from Infinity Games UK today that they have the Adventurer's Toolkit for sale as of Oct 30. Apparently the stuff is printed and ready to be sold.

Quote from: Windjammer;340852The guy explicitly reports in his last sentence that his GM got the full box for the demo game. And I got a newsletter from Infinity Games UK today that they have the Adventurer's Toolkit for sale as of Oct 30. Apparently the stuff is printed and ready to be sold.

Are these toolkit box sets the functional equivalent of "splatbooks"?

The product in question contains material for an additional (fourth) player, and some new careers. So as far as FFG offerings go, yes, it's a splat.