When I wrote about the end of the
FFG/GW relationship, I mentioned that I wanted to write something about
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3rd Edition (WFRP3). A post-mortem if you
will.
Since FFG seems to have sold off the rest of their stock during the
current Christmas-sale, now seems to be good time to actually do that write-up.
I’m not going to do a thorough
A-Z-review. Other people have already done that better than I could, and it
would probably end up as an unreadable mess anyway. Instead I’m going to write
about some of the great ideas behind WFRP3; why they were great, how FFG
managed to mess it up anyway, and what they could have done to make it better.
I’m going to assume a level of
knowledge about the system, but otherwise you should check out some of the
original posts about the game from FFG, where they go through the basic rules. Link.
Please understand that I harbor no
ill will towards FFG in general or WFRP3 in particular. I’d gladly buy a WFRP 4th
Edition from FFG and I think that they were brave to try something so radical. I
just think that WFRP3 it too unpolished to really be as good as it could have
been.
I should also mention that I’m
approaching this purely from a GM-perspective. When I eventually switched to 2nd
Edition, my players were very unhappy (they were having a lot of fun), but I
felt that I was having to work way too
hard as a GM under WFRP3. YMMV.
Several of my gripes can be answered
with “just make up your own rules”. I know,
and I did, but eventually you start
to wonder if it wouldn’t be easier to just make up an entirely new system and
be done with. FFG seemed to agree, and eventually made the much more polished
Star Wars RPG, which fixes most (but not all) of my complaints. I’m not sure it
would be a good fit for the Warhammer setting (it’s possibly a bit too simple),
but it shows FFG’s dedication to learn and improve, and I’m sure a WFRP 4th
Ed from them would have been even better. Sigh.
Onwards to the ideas:
1: Taking the rules out of books and putting them in front of the
players
Why it was a great idea:
When it was released, WFRP3 caught a
lot of flak for being “a board game dressed up as an RPG”. This is simply
untrue, and I’m willing to bet that anyone who says so hasn’t actually tried it.
It does look an awful lot like a
board game though, with all the cards and tokens and whatnot.
It also allowed them to make special
abilities a little more complex, as you didn’t have to remember everything. You
could just look at the card in front of you!
How they messed it up/it was messed up as a concept:
In a few ways:
1: Only giving you a single copy of
each card (baring a few exceptions). What do you do if two of your players want
“reckless cleave”? I guess you could photo-copy the card or have them share or
whatever, but then you aren’t really benefitting from having the rules on a
card, are you now? Might as well write it in a book then…
2: Say, do you like to play
somewhere other than your dining-room table? Well, forget about that. You need
space to play this. A lot of it. And forget about playing outdoors; A light
breeze is just going to ruin your day.
Are you the GM? I hope you own the
world’s largest GM-screen, ‘cause you are going to need even more space if you
want to fit in your notes, monster cards, upgrade cards, action cards, health
tokens, stamina tokens, progress trackers, and so on and so forth...
 |
|
A reconstruction of the view from
behind the GM-screen during an encounter. If you are thinking “holy cr*p, that
looks busy”, you’d be absolutely right. And I’ve even left out the heap of
dice, decks of cards and rulebooks you’d usually place on the front, so the
players can reach them.
|
What they should have done:
Severely limit the amount of extra
stuff needed and/or make it optional – you know, like they did with the Star
Wars RPG.
Also, did we really need seven bajillion
different actions? No, no we didn’t. In fact, it probably makes the game worse
(see my point about combat below). Instead they should have made a manageable
amount of different cards, but included enough copies of each.
2: Creating a fast, easy-to-use, semi-abstract range system
Why it was a great idea:
This is the thing that originally
drew me to WFRP3. I never liked the way previous editions (or most other RPG
systems for that matter) handled ranges, and WFRP3 has a system that’s just
brilliant in its elegance with none of that grid-and-miniatures-based nonsense
2nd Ed relied on. I know, I know; technically you didn’t need the grid – you could use graph
paper #burn.
WFRP3 still needs
miniatures/standees, but it’s much faster and less reliant on exact
positioning.
Bonus great idea:
Creating these beautiful cards you
can use to mark locations. Seriously, I could just sit and look at these for
hours on end…
 |
| A small sample from my collection. |
How they messed it up:
By failing to account for anything
more complex than a three-way engagement (and even that isn’t very easy to do).
The system works great for “bandits
burst out of the trees on each side of the road” types of situations, but
eventually you are going to run into a “several groups of goblins are shooting
at you from the first floor windows of the tower you are assaulting, while you
are surrounded by angry wolves and the villain you are chasing is running away
in another direction”-situation, and the system is just going to break. Bring
out the graph paper. Even a simple bar-brawl quickly degenerates into an
amorphous blob.
Also: Remember those beautiful
location cards? Well, they made them so small that you couldn’t really see the
art unless you picked them up. Kinda ruins the whole point.
What they should have done:
First of all they should have made
the location cards much larger. Show that art!
Secondly, the system needs some options
to take the more involved situations into account. The funny thing is that it
actually works fairly well if you do
use a grid. It takes away some of the elegance, but it’s still much faster than
2nd Ed.
3: Making combat fun.
Why it was a great idea:
Time to be honest. Combat in
previous editions isn’t really all that fun. Shut up – no it isn’t. Critical
hits are fun, but they only happen after half an hour of people standing around
failing to do anything impressive at all.
WFRP has always been played in spite of the combat – not because of
it. I think that’s partially why is tends to be drawn towards horror and
mystery. Sure, you can have exciting combat encounters, but that’s usually
because the GM has devised a way to make it so, and not because of anything
inherent in the rules.
WFRP3 does have exciting combat.
Players have more decisions to make each round, it’s not nearly as slow, and
it’s just good fun to slap a card onto the table and shout “Reckless Cleave”
you !¤”#$€2&!!!
And then throw a bucket of dice.
How they messed it up:
Three ways:
1: By making it less balanced than a
two-legged elephant trying to stand up in a canoe.
An example: When I started GM’ing
WFRP3, one of my players was a former MtG player of some ability. He made a
troll slayer and immediately picked a combination of stats and actions that
allowed him to do around 20 points of damage each round. That’s dragon-levels
of damage from a starting WFRP character. The player wasn’t even trying to be
an ass; he just picked some actions that seemed good together.
I don’t care if he’s a troll slayer
– that’s just ridiculous, and it made designing combats very frustrating, as
anything that could stand up to the slayer would be much too dangerous for the
rest of the party.
What’s worse is, it sorta ruined the
fun for the bright mage in the party, who had to work much harder and take more
risks to do, maybe, half as much damage.
That’s just one example; there are a
many broken combinations to be found.
The strange thing is that FFG, as a
company, has a lot of experience designing card games, but it seems like they
didn’t make any of their card game designers test the combat here. I’m sure
someone like Lukas Litzsinger would have been able to remove the worst problems
if he’d given it a look.
2: By taking inspiration from MMOs –
specifically actions that recharge over time. MMOs are generally horrible games. They may occasionally have good
world building and fun social interactions, but take that away and you end up
with slow and simplistic action-RPGs, so why on earth would you incorporate
mechanics from them?
Sitting around waiting for your
actions to recharge is one of the least fun things you can do, and it’s not
even a very good balancing mechanic.
3: The magic system, while
interesting in theory, is horribly overcomplicated and almost a mini-game by
itself.
What they should have done:
1: Create fewer different actions,
but make d*mn sure they are balanced. Also, maybe include more ways to pacify
an opponent without killing him/her/it.
2: Why not balance actions by making
the more powerful ones cause fatigue and/or stress? That way, people might even
use the “Assess the Situation” action (which lowers fatigue) once in a while.
3: Reduce the amount of book-keeping
needed. I’m personally a fan of the 2nd Ed rules, but whatever.
4: Taking social interactions into account
Why it was a great idea:
I realize that this is an area of
near-religious disagreement, but I’m of the opinion that it’s odd that many
RPGs devote entire chapters to combat but wave social encounters off with a “do
some role-playing and roll for fellowship”.
This is even mostly true of WFRP,
where it’s a long-standing convention that you need someone who’s good at
social stuff, in addition to the normal fighter/mage/rogue/healer quartet.
WFRP3, on the other hand, actually
gives GM a framework for designing social encounters and a bunch of actions to
go along with it.
How they messed it up:
By not making it explicit enough. I
can make up a complicated multi-evening encounter on my own initiative, but
sometimes my players just run into some random guard who they want to persuade
to look the other way for five minutes. In cases like that, it would be really
nice to have some firm guidelines, so I can use my brain cells for something other
than figuring out how long the progress tracker should be (roleplaying said
guard for example).
Also, if combat is unbalanced,
social encounters are a horrible, horrible mess (if you follow the rules to the
letter). Almost any social action is less effective than taking a simple skill
check, which in turn is worse than “Steely Gaze”. All a party really needs to
do is to have a strong (and therefore intimidating) character stare every
social encounter into submission.
What they should have done:
I personally rewrote the rules to give
some structure to social “combat” and make social actions more effective but
only able to "influence" once per encounter. They should have done that.
I’ll post it, if anyone wants me to,
but I feel like this post is already getting way too long.
5: Using components to make book-keeping easier
Why it was a great idea:
Tracking fatigue/stress with
counters is easy and pleasantly tactile. Wound/disease/mutation/insanity cards
are cool, and I really like how they did the front/back mechanic (a system FFG
still uses). Progress trackers are, at least, not an awful idea.
How they messed it up:
By using it in places where it
doesn’t make sense. Long-term effects are one example.
Why is that, you ask? Well, let’s say that
you are tracking the overall progress of a nefarious organization using an
organization sheet and a counter. What happens when you are done playing for
the day and need to pack up? That’s right; you have to write it down on a piece
of paper (unless you are one of the ten people in the world who can simply let
your games stay on the table when you aren’t using them). And then you might as
well have written it down in the first place and saved the table-space in the
meantime.
What they should have done:
Recognize what physical components
are good for and what they aren’t.
6: Simplifying NPCs
Why it was a great idea:
I was continually amazed by how easy
it was to convert older scenarios to WFRP3 on the fly, and a lot of that has to
do with the simplified NPCs and FFG putting their stats on cards. Did the party
just encounter a goblin? Pull out a “goblin” card. Is it a really tough goblin?
Just put the “goblin” card on top of a “hero” upgrade sheet. Easy.
How they messed it up/it was messed up as a concept:
By (over)simplifying player characters
as well. It’s mostly a problem of granularity. A character with a toughness of
two is basically a dead-man-walking while a character with a toughness of five
is extremely difficult to kill. That just leaves toughness 3 and 4 for the vast
majority of more-or-less normal characters. Same goes for for the other stats. Two is (mostly) useless - five is overpowered.
Oh, and it seems like every NPC is
fighting unarmed, if you compare their damage to the PCs’. Not a big problem,
but you should keep it in mind.
What they should have done:
I’m not sure it’s fixable without
reworking the whole system in a major way, but characters with Toughness and/or
willpower two really should be made more viable somehow. You also really
shouldn’t allow players to take any characteristic of five at creation
(excepting ogres).
Now we are on the subject, maybe
don’t use a point-buy system for character creation. WFRP has always been about
embracing the hand you were dealt by fate and this just runs counter to that
whole idea.
7: Disregarding the worst excesses of GW continuity and creating some good scenarios
Why it was a great idea:
Duh! Of cause it is.
Ok. I’ll get a little more specific:
Unlike 2nd Ed., WFRP3 is
set before the Storm of Chaos event, which basically allows you to ignore the
whole thing and run whatever adventures you want to. That’s nice. It also
doesn’t mention of any of the really stupid later developments from the wargame
(like demigryph-riders). That’s nice as well.
The “three tiers of economy” idea is
really interesting and provides a great way to regulate the PCs’ relative
wealth. Well done.
On the scenario side, WFRP3 includes
the usual variations on cultists-in-a-Reikland-town/city, though it often mixes
things up quite a bit. But in addition to that, we get some really interesting
examples of under-utilized themes and places. Of particular note are the
excellent The Witch’s Song and Crimson Rain (from the Omens of War supplement).
The new version of The Enemy Within
is also a really, really solid campaign.
All in all, I’d say that WFRP3
generally has better scenarios than 2nd Ed and the two mentioned
above almost rival the best from 1st Ed.
How they messed it up:
This is nitpicking, but it seems to
me like they simply converted the 2nd Ed. prices to the new
coinage-system. This is problematic because the 2nd Ed. prices were
supposed to represent a post-crisis economy and as a consequence certain things
are horribly overpriced, which doesn’t make any sense in the WFRP3 timeline.
Also, while I get the idea behind
the simplified equipment list, it’s another thing that increases GM-workload in
a game that’s already fairly intensive to run.
What they should have done:
They didn’t make any really big
mistakes in this area, so no big changes are needed. Review the prices and
provide a detailed equipment-list and you’re set.
Conclusion
I could think of several other
things I love/hate about WFRP3, but this seems to cover the most important
parts. As I said, I think it’s an interesting but fatally flawed system, though
I should mention that it works better with low level PCs.
Normally I wouldn’t recommend that
people buy it – mostly because of the seer amount of supplements you’d need to
buy to get the same flexibility you got from the 2nd Ed. Core rulebook*.
However, if you can get a pdf of some of the scenarios, you could at least use them as inspiration for another system.
Croaker
* Which supplements would I need, you ask?
To be honest, I think you need all
of them (except the pure adventure-modules), including the hardback rulebooks,
which include some very useful rewordings on some of the rules. The “vaults”
are also quite nice to have – especially the Monster Vault.
You could maybe get by without Lure
of Power and the dwarf supplement (if you don’t like dwarfs). Also, don’t buy
the GM’s screen – it’s crap.
