Pedro Lunaris said: man, all this talk is sure making me very interested in running some merchant mini-campaing... Herr Arnulfe, tell us about yours! I can't spoil too much because it's being published as a v2 fan supplement next year, but I can tell you it goes from 0 to 2,500 XP and takes place in the southern Empire (3-4 cities) 2 years after the Storm of Chaos. The PCs start off as south Talabecland villagers with greater aspirations, and are quickly caught up in religious strife, underworld dealings and lots of Chaos plots, against a backdrop of looming civil war. There's a special Barge Wars rules appendix, trade caspules for each settlement visited, and special PC options (e.g. customized career tables, layman prayer mechanics, and a new Roster System for party management).

shinma: your proposed approach would work if the Merchant has a specific client in mind when he acquires his goods. In my experience though, Merchant PCs usually acquire their goods first and then shop around for offers during their travels. Once they're wealthy enough to run a merchant company and employ sales agents, then they might have the luxury of dealing only in large orders with pre-arranged clients while sipping brandy in their drawing rooms and embarking on foolish adventures with their rich friends.

ErrantThought said: @Herr Arnulfe Well the printed resources are just the beginning, the position the characters are in when they land in the "deep river" is fairly perilous to begin with (trying not to give anything away). However if a GM wanted to add more immediate consequences for multiple failed athletics tests it could be quite interesting and would open up new possibilities to explore. The rivers of the empire can be just as dangerous as dry land so any new ideas to illustrate the point are welcome. OK, if the card is adventure-specific then that reduces its general usefulness. For a normal Deep River card I would have added Fatigue results on Banes and Drowning results on Chaos Stars, or something like that.

Poe said: Found it! It's a small snippet on the actual 'Deep River' location card. Basically you get swept downstream if you fail an athletics test. Sounds like fun! That's all? No chance of drowning or gaining Fatigue?

Mal Reynolds said: Or what if a Merchant Guild that is turning rogue and start with illegal activites, wouldn`t that in affect be a Thief`s guild in disguise? I think it would be very rare for an entire Merchants Guild to "go rogue". Most Warhammer merchants are already white collar thieves anyway.

Emirikol said: I couldn't agree with you more that piling more **** on a gamesystem does not improve it. Instead it turns it into the D&D4e Rube Goldberg machine. Thankfully, most components of the WFRP3 system are completely optional: party sheets, nemesis organizations, stances, fatigue, stress, etc. All are parts that can be removed or used at will. One thing I've learned over the last decade of gaming is to customize rules crunch from one adventure to the next, or even from session to session, depending on the needs of the adventure. e.g. If Alchemy is only used once per adventure on average, then single-roll resolution is perfectly adequate, but if there's a guy for whom Alchemy is his "thing", then it might be worth using more nuanced rules for iterations, ingredient properties etc. If the alchemist PC dies, you can revert to single-roll Alchemy tests but maybe add rules for something else instead.

macd21 said: Or... not. A unified skill system doesn't mean that non-combat systems recieve less attention, it's just good game design. IMO v2 provided far more support for non-combat characters than v1, with actual realistic options for a non-combat character beyond the first career. A character could focus on social, investigative or knowledge based advancement, becoming specialised in something other than combat, something that wasn't really possible in v1. However it still limited non-combat activities to basic success-fail rolls, something that v3 tries to address to give non-combat characters more to do. I see each successive edition recognising the importance of both combat and non-combat actions. v2 worked with what v1 had and tried to improve both areas. v3 threw the old rules out the window, but continued to recognise the importance of both to the game. Combat has to be fast, vicious and gritty, but non-combat characters have to be able to contribute as well. You can have a unified skill system that also gives attention to non-combat skills, beyond a one-line blurb stating the obvious. The two concepts aren't mutually exclusive. There are also many other indicators of a game's intended focus. For example, the previous two line managers for WFRP (James Wallis and Rob Schwalb) have gone on record saying that trading isn't an important part of WFRP. Meanwhile the original v1 gazetteers included Trade Constants for each settlement. v2 and v3 have included a progressively higher percentage of combat-oriented careers. Published v1 adventures were also lighter on combat encounters overall than v2/v3 adventures.

The main problem with v1's rules (objectively speaking) is that they were very badly organized. The rest is a matter of opinion. Second edition solved the organization problem by removing most of the rules altogether, except for combat (which received a set of D20-like actions) and spellcasting (which got a WFB-like treatment). v1's Skills were divided into Skills and Talents which mostly confer D20-like numeric modifiers, instead of unique effects as per v1. In v3, the combat rules have become even more detailed, and non-combat rules pushed further into the realm of handwavium. So I guess the answer is that WFRP v1 tried to be a more sandboxy game than AD&D, with lots of stuff to do besides combat. When GW finally decided to resurrect the line, they wanted a more combat-focused game that adhered more closely to iconic WFB imagery.

Llanwyre said: Oh, yeah! I own that and have played it and rather like it. (Well, I used to like it. After you play it a few times, it gets boring.) But you're not really trying very hard to tell that story yourself; that's more like a Choose Your Own Adventure writ large. We had to take a break after a dozen or so games, not because the stories got repetitive but because two players were having a bit too much fun narrating Alladdin/Sinbad slashfic.

Llanwyre said: NOTHING kills my impulse to tell a story like pages and pages of charts.) If you want to cure your chart-phobia, you should try Tales of the Arabian Nights: The Legendary Storytelling Boardgame.

Bindlespin said: i am new to reading forums period, i played wfrp 1ed and i have a ton of wfrp2nd books (my pals were way too into HERO to even give it a chance at the time) laying about, but going online and sorting troll from sincere hobbyist is tricky. Thanks for explaining.

monkeylite said: Let's not bring RPGnet moderation into this! I would've been happy to leave inter-forum shenanigans out of it altogether!

Bindlespin said: acrimony? it is following me everywhere I go on the internet? does it have a knife? just relax, pal. roll some percentage dice, subtract twenty and take a deep breath. I noticed you were warned for personal attacks after just your 3rd post over at RPGnet.

Watcher said: Well, I regret the sarcasm. The point remains however; it serves a particular community, and that is not a bad thing at all. However, as a new person coming in, it wouldn't serve me as well. I don't resent that, but I do see it as realistic. Fair enough. If you stick with WFRP you'll probably warm up to StS eventually.

Watcher said: Since StS isn't designed with me in mind, I'll spare everyone the drama by steering clear until I'm thoroughly "dedicated and passionate". Or I'll fade away. StS wasn't designed as such, it's just evolved that way because of WFRP's history as a largely fan-driven game. The arguments around WFRP v2 six years ago were just as heated, if not moreso (and now 60%+ of StS posters are playing it).

Watcher said: If you like 3rd edition, or want to feel good about being interested in it, or want to feel good about buying it - you might want to avoid it unless you're particularly resiliant. StS isn't a "feelgood" site; it's for critical discussion of all things Warhammer. That said, its posters are among the most passionate and dedicated fans of WFRP. Fly-by-night fanboys sometimes visit StS for grognard-baiting cred, but they fade away eventually.

Watcher said: If that is the case, that this is some fallout from another board, then I withdraw my remark. I'm fairly new to Warhammer and this is the only site I frequent related to it. It's not really fallout. Jericho is a veteran WFRP forumite who participated in the aforementioned discussion without the acrimony that seems to follow this newcomer bindlespin around the internet. Jericho has been around long enough to decide for himself whether additional examples would be worthwhile - nobody told him what to think.

Bindlespin said: the context is that on another forum there has been an ongoing and highly antagonistic thread (i am no saint, lost my cool on another thread here about two weeks ago, not proud but it happens) about one poster's (jude hornborg's? really? who cares?) obsessive preference with adding and subtracting in increments of ten from a d100 roll for task resolution. it is borderline nutty. maybe i am projecting, don't know not a psychologist. (displacing anger onto an unrelated target?) Hello, Kaptain O.

I always enjoyed rolling up PC quirks using the Apocrypha 2: Chart of Darkness tables. Seems just as useful as a Monster Manual 8 or another book full of Feats and Prestige Classes anyway. Anyone can use their imagination to make up character details from scratch. It takes a real roleplayer to let the dice decide the details, and then bring those details to life.

Sinister said: I've got nothing against pathfinder, but I I do like the 4E gamist approach mainly because I'm in it for adventure not simulation. Luckly now everyone has choice which is far better than being forced to play something you never cared for because it happened to be what everyone else was playing. Isn't that a false dichotomy? Couldn't one have either Gamist adventure or Simulationist adventure, or even mix the two styles and still have it be an adventure?

Beastmen speak Beast Tongue, a dialect of Dark Tongue combined with the local human language and spoken with animal grunts and growls. WFRP v1 allowed PCs to make an Int test to understand unfamiliar languages. WFRP v2 RoS discussed the Prime Language theory, which states that all languages evolved from a single original language (perhaps Old One or Daemonic). This explains why language barriers are less problematic in Warhammer than IRL. There's an article on WH languages in Liber Fanatica 4.

willmanx said: In my social encounters, the game switches in the Encounter Mode. My progress tracker's lenght is often based on the NPC's FEL to represent his patience, his will to debate. At the end of this, you won't make him change his point. Inside the progress tracker, I run it loosy like in your example, to keep the conversation natural. So I don't structure it as a Burning Wheel Social Encounter. The "influence point" won by PCs or NPCs help to get who is more "charismatic", who takes on the other during the discussion. So, using FEL as a measure of NPC patience, do you require the PCs to define the objective beforehand, or does the Progress Tracker apply to any of the PC's potential shifting objectives during the encounter? e.g. if the the PC starts off trying to get a 100 gc loan from the merchant, would the FEL track still apply when the thrust of the conversation turns toward blackmail and information-gathering instead? I tend to reflect difficulty levels with modifiers instead of repeated tests, or in-game conditions which might or might not require die-rolls. For example, rather than requiring the PC to score FEL x successes to secure a loan, I might make it a Hard test. Failure by a small margin means the PC doesn't obtain the loan, but the door is still open, so he can try a different approach during the same extended social conflict. Alternately, I may decide that PCs who can demonstrate their assets for collateral purposes can obtain the loan automatically without a dieroll.

Ludlov Thadwin of Sevenpiecks said: I've never been that interested in extended character progression, anyway. I prefer a moderate amount progression and then on to a new story, a new character, perhaps a whole new game for a while and then coming back to this one. But that's just me, of course:) I tend to agree that characters don't necessarily become more interesting or textured with extended play, although certain stories can only be played out over many sessions (e.g. LotR-like Heroic Journeys).

willmanx said: I hope you see my point. I use to play recently with differents parties mixing experienced and beginner players. Stats, rolls and rules are the way things can be balanced and accepted by all at the table. I completely understand your points, and it's for these same reasons that I don't believe removing mechanics from Social Conflict altogether is a good idea. My reasons for why a Simulationist approach to running extended social conflicts should not use a Progress Tracker / Social Hit Points are twofold. Such abstractions remove the nuance and in-character decision-making (i.e. roleplay) from each minor exchange, and they require pre-defined overall objectives. In reality, the objectives of an extended social conflict shift constantly and shouldn't be pre-defined. Example: you enter a social conflict with the objective of convincing the Merchant to loan you 100 GC. To achieve this, you Bluff and tell him you're actually a noble. You roll terribly. The merchant disbelieves your claim of nobility and accuses you of being a fraud. Suddenly your objective might have changed. Perhaps you're no longer trying to get the 100 GC. Instead you blackmail the Merchant, saying you'll expose his smuggling ring if he reports you as a fraud. You roll well on Intimidate, and he backs down. The Merchant then asks what you know about his smuggling ring, and you tell him that his criminal activities are well-known among local rogues. You pass your Gossip test. The Merchant now believes that you're an accomplished thief, and hints that he knows about a scandal in the Thieves' Guild. Now your objective might change again. Perhaps you're investigating a Chaos cult with ties to the Thieves' Guild, and decide to press the Merchant for more information. You fail your Inquire test. The merchant buttons up, but you're certain he knows more. You consider blackmailing him again, but decide it's not worth the risk of losing him as a contact. You leave the merchant's office without the 100 GC, but you've obtained some plot information instead, and a potential criminal contact. The above exchange still uses die-rolls, but it doesn't use a Progress Tracker or Body of Argument. It allows for a more fluid rules implementation that follows alongside roleplay, rather than leading it. Granted, running extended Social Conflicts without Social Hit Points / Progress Tracker / Body of Argument can be challenging. It relies on the GM having good social intuition (something not all gamers possess). The GM must be able to identify moments of conflict within the ongoing dialogue, call for tests when applicable, and modify the thrust of the conversation accordingly. If the GM has poor social intuition or abuses his powers of fiat, the players might actually find that a Progress Tracker at least offers some transparency. I suppose one could say that die-rolls are crutches for less socially adept players, and Progress Trackers are crutches for less socially adept GMs. The difference is that occasional die-rolls don't impinge on roleplay, whereas Progress Trackers (Bodies of Argument) usually do.

willmanx said: Oh sorry ! You misunderstood me : that was totally rhetorical. I was speaking to myself after disgressing about some questions concerning roleplaying.I also believe your reply was totally topical to the discussion and found it very interesting. That's why I quoted it. No worries! willmanx said: As I see it, Warhammer push players and GM to create social challenges in Encounter Mode instead of playing these in Story Mode like in a lot of others rpgs. So I try to simulate some "Social encounter mini-game" rules like suggested in the Tome of Adventure to make it looks like a "combat encounter". The thing about mini-games in RPGs is that they must either be: 1. fun (Gamist approach) or 2. accurate reflections of the activity (Simulationist approach) If an RPG mini-game can't achieve either of these goals, then there's no point in having it, IMO. The concept of using a Progress Tracker (or Body of Argument in BW terms) to keep track of the debate divorces the process from roleplay. Most people who've played BW will attest to the fact that roleplay grinds to a halt as soon as the Duel of Wits scripting sheets come out. This is because, unlike in real dialogue, there's no tangible outcome from each statement or rebuttal. They simply translate into "points" on the Progress Tracker (or Body of Argument). Now, as I understand it you're hoping to make the Social mini-game fun (#1) and not necessarily accurate (#2). This is where Burning Wheel went wrong, IMO - Duel of Wits wanted to be Gamist but the mini-game isn't particularly fun. In Duel of Wits, about half of the Actions are virtually useless unless the opponent has scripted a very specific Action themselves. There's very little tactical play in Duel of Wits, because few combinations are better than just scripting "Point, Point, Point". So I guess what I'm saying is that the first thing people should do when houseruling Social conflict is decide whether the primary objective is Gamist or Simulationist. If the objective is Gamism, then go hogwild with the Progress Tracker, but make sure it's actually a well-balanced and entertaining mini-game that makes full use of Action Cards, Stress etc. If the objective is Simulationism, then ditch the Progress Tracker because it won't facilitate an organic discussion in which the participants react point-by-point and actually listen to what the other person is saying.