I won't be buying these, but it sounds like a good idea. While some of the counters help expedite things (and the art is great, especially on the career cards), WFRP3 as a whole is just nightmarishly fiddly. I'm desperate for time as it is; I don't need to pad my sessions with another hour of set-up/clean-up.

Quote from: CRKrueger;3975154.) The adventure structure is strongly narrative.  We're talking literal Acts and Scenes here with "Rally Phases" signifying either time-based or dramatic breaks in the action.

The suggested adventure "structure" is basically systematized railroading. On top of the high rate of character success (even for rank 1 rat catchers), that was my biggest non-fiddly problem with the game.

Quote from: One Horse Town;397528Which is why it stands partly on earlier editions. This is fine if A) As an existing player you have the earlier material or B) you don't mind paying for shiny bits and system when the stuff that is useful has already been published.

or C) You are a new player and don't care about playing in the preformed world of past editions and cannon.

2nd edition core books didn't really have all that much detail in it, it was built on 1st edition and while 1st edition had a little bit more flushed out setting in the core book it's not like they did lots of splat books on the world.  You just had campaign books that detailed the areas they were in.

3rd edition isn't much different in these regards.  It has an overview of the world and when they put out a campaign setting they pour more detail into it, still leaving enough flexibility should you want to flush it out.

Warhammer as a world has always been controlled by GW and information, real detailed information that is, has always been scattered all over the place between the RPG, the Fantasy Battle, novels, magazines and the web as a big repository.

The disconnect I think is that most Warhammer fans have been compiling data for so long that it's source is almost secondary.  New players don't have that kind of background their version of the world will be much different the standing fans.

Quote from: EmboldenedNavigator;397558The suggested adventure "structure" is basically systematized railroading.

Actually they give fairly flexible ways on how to not railroad stories.   Comments and suggestions throughout effectively say "Plan something ahead, but be prepared to change is when your players do something entirely different"

Something like:
Act 1 "Meat the Client"
Act 2 "Find the source of the problem"
Act 3 "Fix the problem"
Now if at Act 1 the players kill the client you'll probably want to do a rally step (basically a momentary pause where everyone players, GM and characters) take a breath during a 'holy shit!' moment and then at that point the GM's going to need to come up with a new Act 2.

But the whole Act structure is just their way of breaking up a story into manageable chunks that are easier to think about.    The concept is a little more formalized but it's nothing really new that most GM's aren't doing already.  

Of course nothing will break if you just run the game like you normally would and ignore their Act structure for one you are more familiar with.

Quote from: EmboldenedNavigatorOn top of the high rate of character success (even for rank 1 rat catchers), that was my biggest non-fiddly problem with the game.

I've been playing Warhammer for a long time and while I'd have never admitted it in the past as I always had a work around.  The high rate of failure in past editions has always sucked and often needed to be worked around and taken into consideration.

By contrast in WFRP 3 Characters often can succeed, perish the thought.

Quote from: kryyst;397566By contrast in WFRP 3 Characters often can succeed, perish the thought.

My problem is that they have taken it to the other extreme. While WFRP1&2 may have tilted too far to the "gritty" side, WFRP3 takes "heroic" to an extreme. While I love the concept of detailed successes & boons, their frequency basically makes everything a matter of degrees of success with failure being an aberration. And when the intro adventure assumes a couple of fledgling Scribes can take on a beastmen ambush without too much trouble, it loses the horror element that makes WFRP unique.