A jump to be remembered ... WHFRP 3rd Edition

Ok ... the UPS fairy did arrive last week with lots of goodies ... but what I want to focus on right now is Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3rd Edition

It looks to have the makings of an awesome game .. so far (again had the thing for a week and have voraciously read through it but have yet to play a session). Ok I'm going to complain a little (it wouldn't be my blog if I didn't eh!) ... while I found the game online around 65 bucks the MFRP is 99 bucks. For that kind of money ... while the books yes ARE full color ... they are of a cheap board game instruction/video game manual quality. They are not bound for the wear and tear of long term RPG use. The cards are great, the dice are great ... BUT ... its ALOT of stuff that people are going to have to pick up and fumble around with. I'm an old, old school RPG player and yes I remember the old red box D&D days. I will say those books used a heavy stock page and had a soft cover book cover ... this stuff is the quality of a brochure/game manual/board game rulebook ... they WILL NOT withstand constant use. The cards will have the same problem and therefore I will probably use card sleeves with mine.

The next basic observation I have is the way the rules work. The core mechanic is super easy, declare what you want to do, calculate the dice pool ... roll. The complexity lies in calculating the dice pool ... which is pretty simple. But having the rules for the game and the rules for the classes broken up between books and cards is sort of difficult. The way this is set up is ... realistically ... one person will buy in on the system and people will just show up and play. Like a board game. Now I have played in RPG campaigns like that, but even in those ... the players generally showed up with their own dice, a players handbook and their character sheet. WHFRP 3E is going to be ... one person owns the board game ... people show up ... play. Is that a show stopper? I don't think so ... but its a somewhat different model if your a hardcore RPG player.  So again ... if your a hardcore board gamer who dabbles with RPGs ... this will probably rock ... if your a hardcore RPG player who is used to dice and players handbook with a chr sheet ... get ready for a entirely different style of game. 

I bought the game, I'm a super hardcore GW fanboy who buys and plays all of their games ... yet I am reserving cautious optimism. I think that due to the barrier of entry vs. most other RPGs (lets face it most people torrent the PDFs these days and the GM is the only person with real books) coupled with a slightly more complex way of playing an RPG physically in some ways ... could turn some people off. I will say in some ways this system is a paradigm shifting game that could be harkening the future of RPGs. Its easy to see how FFG will make money on this, torrenting the rules will do you no good ... you'd have to torrent the rules  and the cards ... then print them out ... etc. by the time you do that you just might as well buy the game. BINGO! That is the ONLY reason this game has been designed this way ... screw FFGs fluffy designer note BS ... this entire game system is DESIGNED as an anti-theft device. Its like a whole game designed like the old video games were with a single code page in the box that was on hard to photo copy paper (anyone out there remember those days). FFG will make as much money or more on this game than they do on their board games ... and that is ALOT more than your typical RPG is netting these days. 

I think it will either catch on and become somewhat popular in the same circles that partake in FFG board games and GW based mini games, RPGs, etc. OR it won't sell very well and just sort of limp along until the license expires between GW and FFG and then just die. Again I'm reserving cautious optomisim and I'm going to be running a test/demo game of it next Monday evening down in Las Vegas for a group of friends as I return from attending Strategicon (Orccon) down in Los Angeles and I'll grab some pics and do a little actual play review of the game.

Incidentally I'm going to try to grab some pictures and do a recap of what I'll be doing at the con. I'm registered for all RPGs as usual and I'll be playing everything from classic West End Games D6 Star Wars to 4E D&D to Savage Worlds to FATE based games etc. with some of the best GMs on the west coast!