Herr Arnulfe
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Posts posted by Herr Arnulfe
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commoner said:
And creating two products so vastly different between the two will create an endless market war...
It might create an Internet Fanboy War, but that's about it.
Here are the factors that contributed to v2 tapering off down the stretch run:
1. Major flaws in system implementation (low skill values, extended boring combat, poor usage of Degrees of Success/Failure): Some of us playtesters recognized these problems right away, but ultimately they weren't addressed, and v2's system problems ended up being a justification for FFG to scrap the whole concept.
2. Quantity over Quality: especially in the first year or two, the books were churned out with poor proofing and playtesting. By the end of the product cycle BI/GR found a better balance (witness the ridiculous ebay prices for NDM, ToS etc.) but by that time the product line had already been tainted by duds.
3. Lack of setting innovation: the Lead Developer was reluctant to use the post-SoC setting, but he was forced to by GW, and it shows. Additionally, the setting's "update" consisted primarily of porting WFB stats over to WFRP without much thought given to additional roleplay requirements.
4. Piracy: the v2 books were thin and of mediocre production quality compared to the 40K books. This, combined with factors #1-3, meant that people were likely to download illegal pdfs before buying hard copies. This evidently hasn't been a problem with the big, gorgeous 40K books.
I can't provide you with any hard data - I'm just going based on the local gamers that I've spoken to over the past year (many of whom I've never played WFRP with myself). If the next iteration of the WFRP percentile system was developed from the outset by people who love & play WFRP and "get" the setting (Andy Law, Steve Darlington et al), and was given the same attention as the 40K games, I assure you it would be a vibrant and successful product line.
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commoner said:
As a side note, creating a second edition version of the exact same game is absolutely a horrible idea. UncleArkie is right. It would cannibalize sales from the exact same product and weaken the dollars spent on both, making both inferior systems.
If someone doesn't want to play v3, then denying them an alternative won't make them more likely to. Sure you'll get a few more people trying out v3 with these books, but I guarantee that an improved percentile system for WFRP would sell more than these hardcover books will.
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UncleArkie said:
This I approve of muchly, but again, maybe an expansion for 3rd ed that has more social actions and good explanations as how to run a social based game.
What I'm hearing is: "I don't want componentless WFRP to be supported at all".
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UncleArkie said:
But then your just playing rogue trader with a DH character, the setting is again changed. What I have sorta been trying to say is that the mechanics of the rules don't matter in this, its the setting and feel that sells a game.
The setting is the same, and in both games you're working for the Imperium. In one you work for an Inquisitor, and in the other you work under a Rogue Trader Charter.
Two separate WFRP games that were like "Fantasy Cthulhu" vs. "Narrative D&D4e with mud" would be just as unlikely to cannibalize from each other's customer bases, especially since their core systems would be totally different.
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UncleArkie said:
In DH you where tired, frightened, alone, working for an unseen puppetmaster who would just as well throw you away as look at you all while expected to overcome odds that were stacked against you from the very get go. In RT your the master of giant space ship, the lord and master of thousands of lives and a mover and shaker, even more so than the individual space marine.
Yeah, but if you give your DH characters 5,000 XP they can fit right into a RT crew. Similarly, the WFRP v3 setting is essentially a more heroic version of v2 from character creation, with a more unified party concept. They could call Silver Edition something else (Warhammer Grognard Roleplay?), put more emphasis on non-combat gameplay, and away you go.
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Grashnak said:
Think of it like this. In medieval Europe, no one was ever actually eaten by demons or witches. People's day to day worries were famine, disease and getting killed in some petty squabble thought up by the local Baron who wanted to tax a road.
People in the pre-SoC Old World do get eaten by daemons and witches though. It just occurs as isolated incidents, rather than en masse.
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UncleArkie said:
Dark Heresy is very different visually and play style wise from RT or again DW, they use different settings and cater to vastly different audiences being investigative horror, high adventures on the seas and legendary hero games respectively, while players may cross over its the same as that some of us may play WW games as well or that I have a few Kingdom Death minies that I use for private WFB games cus they look better than the GW ones. But again all I can say is that you should read up on it, its interesting stuff.
I playtested DH, and have played a campaign of RT; they're not as different as you suggest. I'd argue there's a much bigger difference between WFRP v2 and v3 than there is between DH and RT.
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UncleArkie said:
Nope, product confusion leads to less revenue as the potential buyer will seek out another product that generate less confusion, among other things. But don't take my word for it, do a little research on marketing and you will find that schemes like what your suggesting has been attempted by several companies in the past (not just in gaming) and they all failed. One of the worst things you can do as a product or service provider is to compete with yourself.
By that logic the 40K RPGs are competing with themselves triple-fold, yet they seem to be doing fine.
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Fabs said:
But with twice the costs? Don't forget that the previous edition had already 'run-it's-course', so to speak, and wasn't not getting a good ROI. That's the time to hand it over to the fans
Losing money wasn't an issue; remember GW handed over Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader and Deathwatch as well. BI wasn't actually in the red at the end of their run, they simply weren't profiting enough from RPG sales to justify diverting BL manpower resources from the novels. There's no telling what an improved, cleaned-up corebook would've done to boost sales of WFRP v2.
Publicly-owned corporations are always looking to trim fat and improve their margins for the shareholders, even if some people find the love handles "add character".
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UncleArkie said:
The two systems would canibalize players off each other, from a sales/marketing POV thats a really bad idea, you don't want whats in that jargon called product confusion.
Regardless of whether the two player bases cannibalized off each other, it would still generate more total revenue than your business plan, which is essentially "let [the componentless crowd] eat cake".
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Mal Reynolds said:
What if?...
But you could mentioned it after the adventure was played out, or if it was too late to have any impact anyway. I do that sometimes, tell them what could happen if they had done that instead of this. Especially if they ask like, "what would the lord have done if we had convinced him of...?" I would have told them the truth, or if unable or there was no difference...lie. conjur a small intriquing story just to emphasise that social skills or abilities are THAT important, even though that some scenario writers thinks otherwise.
Agreed, I've found it very helpful to discuss "What If?" scenarios with the players once the campaign has progressed beyond spoiler-zone. Usually it's the players who initiate this discussion, so I try to make sure I've written the various contingencies into my GM notes. However, the best incentive for players to feel narratively empowered is to demonstrate by example. After they've seen a few cases of social skills affecting the story, players begin to appreciate their value.
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Pre-Storm of Chaos: "If ye don't wipe yer bum, you'll get daemons in yer bowels".
Storm of Chaos: "There's daemons coming down from the north, hurry up in the loo Gundred!"
Post-Storm of Chaos: "Daemons came from the north; now I think they're in me bowels".
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Social failures are more likely to have story-related consequences than mechanical ones (e.g. Wounds, Stress) which is probably why many players don't feel they're as important. If the GM hasn't set up his scenario with much latitude for players to manipulate the story, then it doesn't matter if the Trollslayer fails to impress the Duchess because she wasn't really going to help the party anyway.
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Captain Fluffy said:
I know the game originally stemmed from a war game but in my experience I have found very little cross over between players of warhammer fantasy battle and warhammer fantasy roleplay.
In my experience, people who play both WFRP and WFB get their combat fix from the battle game, and prefer to explore other aspects of the Old World in the RPG. What might be happening is that v3 is attracting players who seek the "Warhammer (WFB) experience" without the requirements of collecting and painting an army.
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Angelic Despot said:
Just because people are playing 'combat' characters doesn't mean they are playing combat-heavy games.
It's a fairly reasonable assumption to make that you're (individually and collectively) going to have to do a bit of everything during a game / campaign, and while you can roleplay / talk / think your way through many situations - whatever character you're playing - you can't generally roleplay your way through a fight and hope to survive (and kill/incapacitate) as well as a combat character can. If as a player you want to be involved, there's a strong temptation to play someone who can contribute something to most situations. Especially if those situations take up more than a couple of minutes of real time when they occur.
True, theoretically you could just as easily make a Battle Burgher as a Talky Trollslayer, since WS, BS and Fel skills are all Basic. But if the GM just roleplays social conflict without using any mechanics, then there's no point buying social skills anyway. Meanwhile, it seems like the Education niche is dominated by acolytes and initiates, who can fulfill the core function of a scribe/student-type PC (i.e. basic literacy and knowledge) and also cast spells. Guile and Skulduggery are Basic so the Rogue niche can be handled by any PC with a good Agi score. So perhaps it's the system, rather than the focus of the adventures, that's failing to provide incentive for people to play non-combat careers.
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shinma said:
I think combat can be fun, and it can be epic, but part of the reason its stressed in most systems is because chatting up a bartender seldom leads to character death and the consequent loss of party member, new characters, and trauma to story and party. The things that can kill you get a lot more love to keep them clear and 'fair' if you will.Chatting up bartenders is oftentimes not worth rolling for. However, chatting up the local nobles at a masquerade ball, or bluffing your way past prison guards can have serious consequences and major story implications. It's a well-documented fact that most gamers struggle to come up with things to do in their games besides combat. WFRP players have a reputation for being more creative with non-combat encounters than D&D players, but that's largely because the published adventures have provided a wide mix of challenges. Some of the most famous ones are very combat-light (Shadows Over Bogenhafen, Power Behind the Throne) and give the GM all kinds of support for intrigue-based roleplaying. So Emirikol's question remains quite relevant IMO. Given the strong bias towards combat PCs among forum members, should FFG be focusing more on adventures like Gathering Storm, or should they be making more adventures like Edge of Night?
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commoner said:
If the GM does not sandbox play, then in the end, these characters will typically start as a scribe, swept up into some action, then spend the rest of his writing career hunting dragons, chaos demons, and what not. So it begs the question, what is the point of being a scribe?Scribes can decipher cryptic handouts, draft letters of introduction to important NPCs, and gain employment with any number of guilds or institutions that might have plot connections. In my WFRP games they've always been considered useful characters, but perhaps their career ability in v3 is too weak.
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Emirikol said:
Should FFG be focusing more attention to the actual careers being used?
8 Waywatchers and not a single Scholar, Seer, Scribe or Servant. The answer to your question probably depends on whether the average v3 player prefers iconic WH combat-focused careers, or whether non-combat PCs don't currently offer enough interesting options in the v3 rules. I believe focus groups could answer that question.
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mcv said:
In early days, everything is still open and free, ideas float around, and there's room for really awesome new ideas to be introduced. I still remember when Nurglings were introduced, for example. In TEW, Morrslieb is creepy and new, and the twin-tailed comet is a mysterious omen. Nowadays, Morrslieb is cliche and the twin-tailed comet is stamped all over the place. Everybody seems to know what it all means. The awesome new cool mysterious ideas have become codified, regular and mundane.The problem is that Warhammer's icons have been frozen in creative stasis by GW and they're not allowed to evolve. Nurglings are only little poop gremlins that you chop down with a sword. Morrslieb is a Chaos moon that portends evil, period. Twin-tailed comets are righteous signs of Sigmar. However, if Nurglings were also able to possess small children, or if Morrslieb could sometimes be considered a good omen, or if twin-tailed comets held an entirely different meaning for Elves, the setting would become more versatile for roleplaying. It's up to the fan community to inject vitality and diversity into the Warhammer roleplay setting because GW's primary concern is to promote a strong brand identity for the wargame.
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UncleArkie said:
To that I actually hope that they scrap DH/RT/DW in a few years and convert them to this system, with no hardback support.I was also thinking they should scrap the v3 books but for a different reason. Rather than trying to pull the "componentless" crowd into a game clearly designed around components, v3 should remain v3 and they should hire a separate team to publish WFRP Silver Edition, which would essentially be the cleanup of v2 that BI would've done eventually. Then everyone would be happy and FFG would have an even larger customer base.
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Pedro Lunaris said:
There are some cards on the Core Box that could apply to a haggling situation, or help in a haggling situation, but are not based on Haggle. I'm thinking about Honeyed Words, I Thought We Were Friends, Winning Smile, Formal Diplomacy, Scrutinise and Staring Contest. But really none of them are about haggling itself (they can support the Haggle test).
I'm also interested in how this Haggle Action Cards could be. :]
Haggling is just the final step before closing a deal. If you don't have any structure to the actual trading process (i.e. assessing markets, finding buyers or sellers) then there's nothing to prevent Merchants from just staying in town making repeated Haggle tests to earn imaginary money.
You might be able to simulate the "merchant experience" by having separate Trading cards for different sizes of settlements. For each Trading Action, the settlement's card would require a recharge period measured in days rather than rounds. Merchants could have specialized Trading Actions like Guild Manipulator, Bargain Hunter or Visionary Prospector which affect Trade card recharge rates or the availability of buyers/sellers. New Haggle actions would probably be more along the lines of Bait-and-Switch, Lowball and Upsell.
Of course, this is all theoretical. I'm sure most GMs would love to have a simple trade mechanic that also keeps their Merchant players happy, but without breaking the game's economy. It's one of the holy grails of game design.
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monkeylite said:
Action cards are effectively their own charts.
If you could present stuff on a basic trade Action card, and then some enhanced trade Action cards for specialists it would be squarely a v3 system.
I agree, v3 players roll on charts dozens of times every session but everyone knows that charts in a book are for grognards.
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shinma said:
I think you guys are spending alot of time working on minutae that may or may not be relevant to the merchant experience.
If a player wants to run through extensive charts randomly rolling up availability and price adjustments for goods, you may have a GM that doesn't care for that, or may not be able to generate them on the fly, but this does sort of bypass the point of the game as I see it.
Yes, rolling on charts is not the v3 style, but on the other hand v3 combat does place a lot of focus on recharge tokens, Stress, Fatigue, action cards etc., so there is a precendent for introducing some rules structure to trading as well. The tools would obviously be different from those used in the v1 (calculator and multipliers) or v2 (tables and matrices) trading rules.
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Sounds very promising! I like the approach of using Progress Trackers to measure long-term disposition rather than "social hit points", since the latter approach just tends to result in PCs saying the same thing over and over again, worded slightly differently each time.
What would you like to see /fixed/ in the Hardbacks?
in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay
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UncleArkie said:
I am not against componetless play, quite the contrary, I am however against ressurecting E2 in some kind of silverback version it would create an odd limbo life for the game- I am how ever all for the new hardbacks if it allows players with a weaker wallet to get in to the game or my players to get all the player related rules in one book so they don't have to rifel through 100's of cards to find the talent or action that they want.
You stated earlier in the thread that you were opposed to the hardcover books, but that you'd try to make the best of them since they were inevitable. As for hypothetical percentile WFRP, perhaps by "cannibalize" you meant that some current v3 players might decide they prefer the new percentile mechanics and switch back? In that case, I don't see how this is any different from DH players switching over to Deathwatch - the money still goes to the same company.