Did FF's 3rd edition of the Warhammer Fantasy Role-Playing Game flop?
It seems that nobody here or at the Big Purple ever mentions it (in contrast to 2e, which regularly generated threads).
I never purchased WFRP 3e, as it didn't sound like my cup of tea. But I'm curious as to whether FF's grand experiment worked. For the record: I have no stake in this one way or the other. I'd be happy to learn that my impression is wrong.
Of course, I expect that most answers will be speculative in nature, but that's fine. I'm procrastinating. :)
I think it's too soon to say; it may not have had a huge splash with hardcore RPers like around here, enworld and so forth - but that may have been exactly what they were going for, moving it away from hardcore gamers and towards people who'd spend more on their fiddly boardgames (Descent, for example).
The bellwether will be support. If all you see is the core game plus a couple of supplements, plus a couple of announced supplements that never get released (or are farmed off as "internet exclusives" (read PDF only)) then yeah I think it will probably go down as a failure.
But again, too soon to tell.
In my area it went over like a lead balloon.
All the gung-ho Warhammer Fantasy players that have played for years mostly hated it or were mildly ticked off at the packaging style of it.
- Ed C.
I think if FFG had made it for Games Workshop, and GW had put in nice miniatures, and limited it to 15000 copies or so, it'd have gone down as a gargantuan success :)
Oh, it has been published already? I didn't know that.
There is only 1 player in our group who bought it. For us there is still loads of 1st and 2nd edition material to play through.
And when we turn our attention to 3rd edition, I'm sure 4th and 5th will have been released.
We are sticking to Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader for now.
It's too bloody expensive to buy into the new edition. They went for profit rather than turnover.
We play it at the FLGS every couple of weeks. The DM decided to try it and so far it's been a decent game. I would never want to run it and I'm irritated that it invalidates my entire dice collection (and who the hell ship an RPG that only supports a GM and three players? Seriously! The standard is GM+4!) but other than that I have fun playing.
Sucess or not, I bet that D&D 5e ends up looking a lot like it.
Quote from: mhensley;394016Sucess or not, I bet that D&D 5e ends up looking a lot like it.
I've been wondering that as well.
I will be playing in a game at Gen Con, I think. We'll see how it goes.
Quote from: mhensley;394016Sucess or not, I bet that D&D 5e ends up looking a lot like it.
I doubt it. People complained a lot that 3x was "broken" so in 4e they tried to "fix" it. Outside of the issues of mechanical unification and rules heaviness, they have little in common. So since 4e wasn't more 3x than 3x, I doubt 5e will be more 4e than 4e.
That said: Too damn expensive for not D&D.
ICV had it as #3 for Q1 2010. Some more info and a comparison list here (http://blackdiamondgames.blogspot.com/2010/06/list-making.html).
If I'm honest I cannot see how 3e has been succesful given the price. But then I have no way of knowing what FFG are using to judge success. It's so expensive a product that I can't imagine it being succesful enough, but I really don't know. It was, perhaps still is, an interesting experiment.
Am I alone in thinking the price wasn't that crazy? Especially when you could get it on Amazon for about $40 off of retail?
Given how expensive GW's Warhammer stuff has been over the years, I don't think price is really an issue for many. And as Tommy pointed out, you can get it heavily discounted if you look around.
Supplements are still coming out (Winds of Magic was the latest..) and another adventure/campaign box (Edge of Night) and Cults supplement (Signs of Faith) is in the wings. They're still sponsoring in-store events (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=1463) as well.
Is it a success? No idea, but that depends on your requirements. Is it still in-print and supported? Yes. I would also venture to say that No, it didn't flop; at least not yet.
Quote from: Ghost Whistler;394034If I'm honest I cannot see how 3e has been succesful given the price. But then I have no way of knowing what FFG are using to judge success. It's so expensive a product that I can't imagine it being succesful enough, but I really don't know. It was, perhaps still is, an interesting experiment.
People who buy FFG products are used to high prices though.
I have no problems with the game system at all. Perhaps an issue of character advancement. All their supplements are in boxsets. Sooner or later you have to carry around thousands of cards. For boardgamist, it might be normal for them, but to a traditional roleplayer, it might be too much.
Not sure if they maintained the gritty shtick that the rpg is famous for.
My initial thought is - if you have to ask...
Quote from: Saphim;394042People who buy FFG products are used to high prices though.
The boardgamers are (although the monolith that is Horus Heresy will test that to the limit!). Although there's only a few that are comparable in price. The average FFG boardgame is still around the £40 mark. I'm not convinced that translates to WFRP players and potential players.
Quote from: Ghost Whistler;394056The boardgamers are (although the monolith that is Horus Heresy will test that to the limit!). Although there's only a few that are comparable in price. The average FFG boardgame is still around the £40 mark. I'm not convinced that translates to WFRP players and potential players.
Anima had a high pricepoint as well... I am just saying, FFG is used to getting away with these prices.
I have seen 3e played at the LA Con with five players and there were two games at PolyCon that seemed to go for 8 hours. I spoke with a few of the players and the reactions were lukewarm. They thought it was interesting, but not amazing.
I talked to one of the PolyCon GMs and he loves the game. There is a learning curve that seems to throw off first timers and he claims his home crew are really loving it after they got into the system after the initial oddness. He claims the dice symbolism is great for roleplay.
I also spoke with a boardgamer who loves dungeon-crawl stuff like HeroQuest, and Descent who oddly doesn't play RPGs. He's an Arkham junkie who roleplays his character too. He ran an AH game in costume at GenCon. He is absolutely stoked by 3e, but he only wants pre-packaged adventures with figs and hopefully terrain bits. For him, it needs to be more boardgamey.
Quote from: thedungeondelver;393981I think if FFG had made it for Games Workshop, and GW had put in nice miniatures, and limited it to 15000 copies or so, it'd have gone down as a gargantuan success :)
I agree.
Quote from: Tommy Brownell;394035Am I alone in thinking the price wasn't that crazy? Especially when you could get it on Amazon for about $40 off of retail?
RPGers are the homeless fuckers of the hobby world.
They keep rolling out supplements for it, it's almost out of stock as soon as it comes in at any of the local gaming stores I go to. So no I wouldn't say it's flopped. It just didn't catch on in all areas.
As for the price it's a sticker shock compared to other RPGs, but in terms of what you get in the box it's not out of line with other games of a similar size. Specially if you buy it discounted from Amazon or other retailers. The overall quality from FFG is beyond reproach in most cases and in the case of WFRP 3e it's excellent. The Gathering Storm campaign is fantastic. It's of a caliber not scene since 1st edition campaigns. It blows the water out of any of the campaign books put out for 2e.
Personally I'll turn my fanboy rave on and say that no other RPG has kept me as interested as 3e. I'd have no qualms at all about selling every other game I own and only playing this one. Not only that but the system can be made extremely malleable in almost every aspect of play.
Regarding price for gaming materials, I've dropped $150 for Dwarven Forge boxed sets (limited edition stuff), and I spent $150 on my Space Hulk 3e set so I can't really decry the cost too much.
My chief issue is that one, it is being pitched as an RPG, yet it seems to me to be locked in to GM + 3 players, period. RPGs are supposed to have more flexibility than that. Can you run the game with just the box with as many people and as many classes/races as you want?
Two, the fiddly bits ("special" dice, "stance" counters, etc. etc.) run darn close to being a linear boardgame like game. Of course, as I said before, I use lots of Dwarven Forge and miniatures from time to time so perhaps decrying fiddly bits and boardgames is a bit disingenuous of me, but then my games don't require those things, and WHFRP 3e seems to. If that's not the case, I'll rescind that statement...
Quote from: thedungeondelver;394072Regarding price for gaming materials, I've dropped $150 for Dwarven Forge boxed sets (limited edition stuff), and I spent $150 on my Space Hulk 3e set so I can't really decry the cost too much.
My chief issue is that one, it is being pitched as an RPG, yet it seems to me to be locked in to GM + 3 players, period. RPGs are supposed to have more flexibility than that. Can you run the game with just the box with as many people and as many classes/races as you want?
Two, the fiddly bits ("special" dice, "stance" counters, etc. etc.) run darn close to being a linear boardgame like game. Of course, as I said before, I use lots of Dwarven Forge and miniatures from time to time so perhaps decrying fiddly bits and boardgames is a bit disingenuous of me, but then my games don't require those things, and WHFRP 3e seems to. If that's not the case, I'll rescind that statement...
You guys know I want to classify RPGs, and I have no friggin' clue what to call WFRP3. It's a Hybrid. The basic mechanics are in the books, everything is else is on the cards. Does it require the cards? Technically no, you could transfer all the info to a character sheet. Does it require all the counters? Technically no, you could just keep track of "power cooldowns" by ticks on the character sheet. It seems almost like a "boardless boardgame" at times, yet it doesn't have much tactical crunch, the range system is very abstract, and the adventures don't even have more then large-scale skeleton maps of the areas. It's narrative-based to the point of actually defining time by basis of narrative metagame: Act, Scene etc, yet doesn't have any "Narrative mechanics" to speak of.
The focus is definitely on narration of the story rather then in-character setting verisimilitude.
I'll be goddamned though if the dissociated counter-based tactics of the Wardancer and Swordmaster don't
feel like what fighting as one of those classes would actually be like.
The game is not fixed to GM + 3 players. The core game comes with enough components so that if you have a GM +3 players they can all have their own copies of things. However there's no rule that prevents you from supporting more players, but some cards would need to be shared. Which is rather easily done. Just place the card between two players so each can read it simple. For everything else there is more then enough bits to go around.
As far as the bits are concerned the action cards are needed. But all the other tracker stuff is easily transferable to a simple piece of paper. Like This one (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8479064/WFRP3_Tracker.pdf).
If your game is running like a linear boardgame then you really don't know what your doing. The game flows like any other RPG it's just the tools that you use to do it are different. Based on conversations from the official forums for a lot of new players the lack of hard tables and codified rules has been a shock, specially for players growing up on D&D. They have been warped and twisted and broken down into thinking that if a chart doesn't give me a rule for trying X then I can't do X. It's a sad state really.
In WFRP the rules are a simple foundation now charts or other bullshit to wade through. You want to try something the GM says ok Agility + Stealth. You grab some dice for your agility, you are being cautious and careful so you use some better dice because of that, you are really good at stealth and get a bonus die from that. You come up with a cool idea so the GM gives you a fortune dice for the idea, but what your attempting it still really challenging so you have to roll a couple challenge dice.
You roll the dice and..... You succeeded, but you were being to cautious which caused some delay event that the GM comes up with. You were lucky though so some other fortuitous event happened as well.
Or you know the old way of doing it. Sneak past the guard pass/fail. If fail fight!
Quote from: CRKrueger;394075You guys know I want to classify RPGs, and I have no friggin' clue what to call WFRP3. It's a Hybrid. The basic mechanics are in the books, everything is else is on the cards. Does it require the cards? Technically no, you could transfer all the info to a character sheet. Does it require all the counters? Technically no, you could just keep track of "power cooldowns" by ticks on the character sheet. It seems almost like a "boardless boardgame" at times, yet it doesn't have much tactical crunch, the range system is very abstract, and the adventures don't even have more then large-scale skeleton maps of the areas. It's narrative-based to the point of actually defining time by basis of narrative metagame: Act, Scene etc, yet doesn't have any "Narrative mechanics" to speak of.
The focus is definitely on narration of the story rather then in-character setting verisimilitude.
Can't argue with that. Though I would disagree on the lack of tactical crunch. It's definitely not tactical in the sense of draw a battle map break out the minis and slow the game down to a crawl. But the initiative system, the various card effects and the flexible range system does actually allow for some interesting tactics. The big chance I've noticed in this realm is that the tactics seem to be more collaborative then individually planed. We find there is a greater sense of win as a team or die as a team.
This particular
Quote from: CRKruegerI'll be goddamned though if the dissociated counter-based tactics of the Wardancer and Swordmaster don't feel like what fighting as one of those classes would actually be like.
I completely agree with.
WFRP 3 isn't too expensive. It's just too expensive for you.
In my group of friends, there are some who bought it just for kicks. On the evening we tried the game out, we had to interrupt the game because cards and dice had gotten mixed up on account of four people bringing their own copy of the game.
Quote from: kryyst;394078But the initiative system, the various card effects and the flexible range system does actually allow for some interesting tactics. The big chance I've noticed in this realm is that the tactics seem to be more collaborative then individually planed. We find there is a greater sense of win as a team or die as a team.
Very true, your point is taken. It is a different form of tactics, one that is team-based. The initiative system is very interesting. There may also be some tactical depth buried in the cards that I haven't discovered yet.
The one thing that drives me to drink is the lack of actual spatially derived ranges rather then narratively defined ones. The ranges work if the party is on one side and the bad guys another or the party is in the middle and the bad guys all around. But once you get party members mixing it up (like people moving away from the center to engage missile-users, then you don't just need a definition of how far each outlier is from the center, but also how far each is from each other. At that point I begin using a pin vise right above my left eye to relieve the migraine.
How do you deal with ranges in a spread out, messy combat?
My impression from the rpg.net threads is that it's a good game.
Good, not great, not incredible, certainly not terrible, but good.
Trouble is, while I accept there's no natural price point for a game (it's just what the market will bear) it is pricier than its peers and for that good may not be enough. For that price point I suspect you need great.
I also think while you can clearly play with more than 1+3, describing it as 1+3 was an error.
So, I'm guessing it's doing ok but not amazing. But then, given the price point that may also be good enough.
Quote from: CRKrueger;394081Very true, your point is taken. It is a different form of tactics, one that is team-based. The initiative system is very interesting. There may also be some tactical depth buried in the cards that I haven't discovered yet.
The one thing that drives me to drink is the lack of actual spatially derived ranges rather then narratively defined ones. The ranges work if the party is on one side and the bad guys another or the party is in the middle and the bad guys all around. But once you get party members mixing it up (like people moving away from the center to engage missile-users, then you don't just need a definition of how far each outlier is from the center, but also how far each is from each other. At that point I begin using a pin vise right above my left eye to relieve the migraine.
How do you deal with ranges in a spread out, messy combat?
Yeah that can get a little more annoying if you let it. The first general rule is to not worry about it until it matters. But if you try and envision the battlefield like a wheel, you have a central hub, the outer rim and your spokes in between that set the overall range for the engagement.
For example Figure out the range from the hub to the rim and perhaps other fixed points of reference if you need. So we'll say that range is long range all the way around. Shooting across the battle field is probably not possible in this case as it'd be [outer]
center [outer] which is probably more then extreme.
With that in mind we only worry about relevant ranges between combatants when needed. Combats that aren't in the center or the outer will typically be at medium range to either side or long range to combatants in the middle area on the opposite side of the middle (much easier to draw then say). For then to you may need to space out the distance between combatants along the outer rim, which again is probably medium or close to each other. But would depend on how many groups are in the encounter.
But if you have 4 players your opponents are probably going to be 2-3 groups of henchmen (4 in each group) and 1-2 elites (for lack of a better term). That's a fairly good guideline despite all the possible variables for party makeup etc...
Now if you want a tougher fight after your players have fought through that encounter give them a rally phase and send in another wave. Better yet setup a tracker with maybe 10 turns on it. If the players defeat the monsters before turn 10 then no reinforcements come. If the monsters are still around by turn 10 then they've managed to bring in reinforcements. Or setup another event at turn 5 and at that event the players will see one monster break off of the pack. If they stop that monster before he reaches turn 10 they stop the reinforcements, if not... Either way it's another way of creating some variability into the fight on the part of the GM. You could hide the track or show it both have their advantages.
From my GM perspective I like the increased variability the mechanics have to offer and try to embrace it when I can. The dice results present new situations that I can expand upon beyond a binary pass fail and I like to use trackers when fitting to create situations that I don't know if an outcome will happen or not. In some ways it allows me to get in on the surprise along with the players. It's fun not always knowing all the answers ahead of time.
Quote from: kryyst;394076As far as the bits are concerned the action cards are needed. But all the other tracker stuff is easily transferable to a simple piece of paper. Like This one (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8479064/WFRP3_Tracker.pdf).
Those are awesome! thanks for linking. ;)
In return, in case you haven't seen it, this is the greatest thing EVER: http://www.headlesshollow.com/downloads/games/WFRP3_v1.pdf Kinda blows the FFG GM Screen outta the water. :D
Quote from: kregmosier;394144Those are awesome! thanks for linking. ;)
In return, in case you haven't seen it, this is the greatest thing EVER: http://www.headlesshollow.com/downloads/games/WFRP3_v1.pdf Kinda blows the FFG GM Screen outta the water. :D
Yep I'm aware of it and the previous versions, are even better because they contained inventory lists, and a sheet containing a copy of the basic action cards on it. Unfortunately and I can't blame them, FFG made him remove some of the directly copied content. The older versions are all you really need for a player.
Quote from: kryyst;394190Yep I'm aware of it and the previous versions, are even better because they contained inventory lists, and a sheet containing a copy of the basic action cards on it. Unfortunately and I can't blame them, FFG made him remove some of the directly copied content. The older versions are all you really need for a player.
Nice...sounds great though. sad when the fan-made stuff (that's
oftentimes better than the official!) gets yanked, but i also understand where FFG is coming from. these are still all kinds of awesome, and i think really helped me feel less confused about the mechanics at times. FFG should release such great supporting material...jerks. ;)
I know it'll feel better in Actual Play, or am hoping so.
Quote from: Koltar;393979In my area it went over like a lead balloon.
All the gung-ho Warhammer Fantasy players that have played for years mostly hated it or were mildly ticked off at the packaging style of it.
- Ed C.
Interestingly, researchers have actually made a balloon out of lead and it flew quite nicely. :)
I certainly hope it didn't flop. I'm getting into it. I think it's cool.
I don't think it flopped. FFG seems to be intent on supporting it with lots of news up upcoming products. Compare that to Runewars (a FFG boardgame I really like) which hasn't seen any news of expansions since it's release.
As for other points:
I don't think the 3 players thing is a real limitation. One, I believe average game groups are 1 GM and 3 players or less. I think the 1GM+4Player group is uncommon, and the 6+ player group is extremely rare.
Two, the 3 player limit is illusory. You can treat the deck of cards just like a Player's Handbook and have players write everything down on their character sheet just like any other RPG. Think of the box set not just as the purchase of a PHB, but as the purchase of a PHB, a full set of power cards, monster tokens, and two sets of dice.
It's a very conventional RPG. Once you get past the presentation (which is excellent and unique) the game is very much a standard RPG. The whole "it's a boardgame" rant I see commonly in relation to the game is nothing more than a sign of willful ignorance.
And about the price. I didn't find the price outrageous. It was easily within my impulse buy range, and I'm far from rich.
It flopped with me, they should have stuck with the 2e model, besides the last few books released were getting really good and was wanting more. I warned them before hand that hybrid RPs just don't work and now they're trying to retcon it so people who have 2e will come back, I say Piss-off FFG you are banned!
I have never seen anyone play it or talk about it, and almost never any product in store.
Which obviously doesn't mean anything given my area's less than networking group of gamers and all, but its clearly not taking the market by storm.
Quote from: Captain Rufus;397347I have never seen anyone play it or talk about it, and almost never any product in store.
Which obviously doesn't mean anything given my area's less than networking group of gamers and all, but its clearly not taking the market by storm.
Yup you're right it doesn't mean anything. FFG says it's selling well and they have a planned release schedule into 2011 so it's popular enough for them.
Quote from: Tetsubo;394281Interestingly, researchers have actually made a balloon out of lead and it flew quite nicely. :)
Okay, so its an old cliche/metaphor I used.
Lets just say the local folks who like
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying were pretty ticked off with the new version.
- Ed C.
Winds of Magic is in the shop, but its still an expensive proposition. Including the base set you're looking at around a ton (that's Londonese for £100) for the relatively compleat WFRP experience (from what I can gather).
I don't want FFG to fail; I rather like them even though their handling of the 40k property is a bit haphazard for my liking. But I find it hard to believe this project has proven successful.
Wow, a hundred quid is definitely more than I paid for any single other RPG product.