#1 Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Third Edition
Posted: Sun Nov 22, 2009 2:52 pm
On Friday I played a demonstration game of WFRP at a local game store and frigid asked me to share my thoughts on it. This was a four hour session with pregenerated characters and no real time for me to browse rulebooks and it was the first time playing it for everyone.
First and most importantly, it was fun and it had the WFRP "medieval fantasy with warts and semi competent surgeons" feel. The character's start more competently than in previous editions of WFRP, moving away from the D&D first level shmuck standard. We weren't gods by any stretch but the Elven Wayfinder was deadly with a bow, the Trollslayer was dangerous, and the Mercenary swung a mean blade. I was pretty sneaky, good at stealing stuff, and a decent knife chucker. I also knew how to slip a dagger inbetween a guy's ribs, preferably when he was distracted.
The game has more fiddly bits that standard for an RPG. Wounds, critical hits, and spell miscasts are handled with decks of cards with you receiving wound cards face down everytime you take damage and critical hits being face up, displaying whatever debilitating nastiness you have received. Combat is fast and brutal.
Each character receives several cards which summarize standard attack/skill check actions and specialty cards for any unusual abilities like Mighty Blow or spell slinging. Its really more of a rule summary for abilities than anything else.
The core of the engine is a die pool system. There's a bunch of different dice and they're marked with symbols not numbers. You start by rolling ability dice, which are d10s, and can substitute aggressive or conservative dice depending on your character's stance. If you're trained in the skill, you can add powerful skill d6s. Black misfortune d6s and white fortune d6s help or hinder the die pool. Lastly you have the scary powerful purple d8 challenge die.
Resolution is simple once you get the hang of it. While there are technically 8 symbols, only four show up regularly. Hammers are successes and they are canceled out by crossed sword failures. Eagles are boons, beneficial effects and are canceled by banes, skulls.
Two annoyances. One, damage seems to be rather static. While extra successes, banes, and boons did push the damage around a little, it seemed mostly like a combination of strength (or agility) plus weapon damage rating minus toughness plus armour. Now we didn't actually do that much fighting and no PC actually got hit (good offense plus good dodge/parry rolling) so its hard to tell. The special attacks are certainly nasty.
The other is that some abilities have a recharge mechanic and I don't tend to like them. I'm too much of a simulationist and those mechanics are too "gamey". This is mitigated by being able to buy off some of the recharge with with stress or fatigue points. I can totally buy that pushing yourself hard over a short period of time can be draining.
So, overall, my first impression is good.
First and most importantly, it was fun and it had the WFRP "medieval fantasy with warts and semi competent surgeons" feel. The character's start more competently than in previous editions of WFRP, moving away from the D&D first level shmuck standard. We weren't gods by any stretch but the Elven Wayfinder was deadly with a bow, the Trollslayer was dangerous, and the Mercenary swung a mean blade. I was pretty sneaky, good at stealing stuff, and a decent knife chucker. I also knew how to slip a dagger inbetween a guy's ribs, preferably when he was distracted.
The game has more fiddly bits that standard for an RPG. Wounds, critical hits, and spell miscasts are handled with decks of cards with you receiving wound cards face down everytime you take damage and critical hits being face up, displaying whatever debilitating nastiness you have received. Combat is fast and brutal.
Each character receives several cards which summarize standard attack/skill check actions and specialty cards for any unusual abilities like Mighty Blow or spell slinging. Its really more of a rule summary for abilities than anything else.
The core of the engine is a die pool system. There's a bunch of different dice and they're marked with symbols not numbers. You start by rolling ability dice, which are d10s, and can substitute aggressive or conservative dice depending on your character's stance. If you're trained in the skill, you can add powerful skill d6s. Black misfortune d6s and white fortune d6s help or hinder the die pool. Lastly you have the scary powerful purple d8 challenge die.
Resolution is simple once you get the hang of it. While there are technically 8 symbols, only four show up regularly. Hammers are successes and they are canceled out by crossed sword failures. Eagles are boons, beneficial effects and are canceled by banes, skulls.
Two annoyances. One, damage seems to be rather static. While extra successes, banes, and boons did push the damage around a little, it seemed mostly like a combination of strength (or agility) plus weapon damage rating minus toughness plus armour. Now we didn't actually do that much fighting and no PC actually got hit (good offense plus good dodge/parry rolling) so its hard to tell. The special attacks are certainly nasty.
The other is that some abilities have a recharge mechanic and I don't tend to like them. I'm too much of a simulationist and those mechanics are too "gamey". This is mitigated by being able to buy off some of the recharge with with stress or fatigue points. I can totally buy that pushing yourself hard over a short period of time can be draining.
So, overall, my first impression is good.