superklaus said: This speaks for itsself. FFG do SOME good games. Others are just crap. Buying everything from them just because its labeled FFG sounds for me like fanboiism. But everybody to his own. The problem with the Warhammer franchise is that it offers some really good ideas. So its not only black or white. You can like a setting (or many elements of it) and at the same time you can criticize the company which publish it because they treat their fanbase like idiots. (I admit sometimes not even without reason) There are only a few hobby companies which earn my respect. One of those is pinnacle. Those guys are like us and produce games for us. (and make a decent living out of it too) I don't buy all games from FFG. I regularly buy games from FFG because their quality is generally great... Arkham Horror, Descent, War of the Ring, Tide of Iron, Twilight Imperium, Battlestar Galactica... any of these games has given me more hours per € spent than most other entertainment I have (the only exception I can think of is my LesPaul guitar)... As for the rest of your post, I don't agree... I don't feel treated like an idiot by FFG just because they are publishing WFRP3... I think you don't still realise that if FFG (or GW for that matter) were not publishing WFRP3 nobody would publish more stuff for Warhamme roleplaying universe and we would be stuck again like in the 90s, before WFRP2 was published... So, you don't like strange looking cards or dice and that's why you feel mistreated... You know, this brings to me a "dejà vu"... in 1988 I found, in my local bookshop, a forgotten copy of the red box from D&D being sold at a discount. I had just finished reading Lord of the Rings so I was attracted by the box and spent two months of the money my parents gave me for cinema and toys in the box... when my grandpa show the box and its contents (the red D&D box came with a full set of dice) and I told him what it had cost me he was outraged: "Damned greedy people! Cheating a poor kid of his money for a bunch of silly dice!"... that's more or less what he said... isn't it the same as what you are saying about WFRP3 here?

PzVIE said: superklaus said: I would them NOT have produce proprietary material like special dice and special cards without those the game is not playable. At this point you may say "thank you" to all those f****** pirates out there who think that copying a book is as legal and ok as copying music or movies. That's the consequence! Exactly... That's why I consider myself a sort of patron for RPG and boardgaming companies... I work tough, I get my money and I spend as much as I can in promoting the companies that give me the entertainment I want... That's why I will always buy FFG products, because they are great quality and fun to play... until they start doing crap, at which time I'll stop buying from them... For the same reason I bought all WFRP2 stuff, I almost always buy Blizzard products (except WoW, which I hate), Valve products (long live Left 4 Dead and Half Life!) and many other products from companies which products I like... That way I am promoting the companies that produce the stuff I like: a simple mechanism. Bottom line is, if you don't like a product then don't buy it (thus telling clearly to the company that it should not go that way) and attack the company saying the product in question sucks... but attacking a company by saying they want to earn too much money sounds ludicrous to me... Ask anybody in the world if they are paid according to their effort and I'm quite sure most people will tell you they are not paid enough...

superklaus said: I think the points you brought have been true. But they are also true with other companies in our hobby like WotC. Remember they draw back all pdfs from previous editions from one day to another. It think that there are only few companies in our hobby who are worth to be respected. (eg. triple ace games or pinnacle) Forget the rest. These companies dont respect us as customer (only our wallets) and thus have absolutely no right be be respected themselves. This nasty corporate behaviour has already has begun with the TSR money grabbers in the 90ties after the Gary Gygax has left the company. To me it's funny that, every time a company publishes a new edition of an RPG when the previous is still played, we always get this kind of arguments... Comparing TSR, GW or FFG with a corporation as if it was the same thing as Microsoft, Shell or a big bank or similar big companies is quite unfair because: a. You can survive without their products... b. Their products are not expensive... RPGs and boardgames are probably the cheapest entertainment out there...except lying on a meadow doing nothing... c. They bring a revival to an RPG. Looked at what happened with WFRP... The game was dead, dead, dead... A lot of people were asking for more stuff, yet no company took the risk to publish new material, and we the fans suffered in silence... until WFRP2 came... people were not happy just because the game was superb in quality, they were happy because we got more WFRP stuff... d. I like getting paid when I work... I I'm risking my money in a venture, then I also don't want to lose money... So, in my opinion, when reading these kind of arguments, I get the impression of a 5-year old that is angry because other people are not working their a**es off to provide him with cheap entertainment... FFG or GW are not going to pay spies to prevent you from adding any sort of material to a Warhammer campaign... If you feel you can do better than them, then do the effort and write your own stuff for your campaigns, dude... it'll be free but you'll see the time and effort it takes (and I have experience creating stuff for my old D&D campaigns)... What would you have GW and FFG do? It is obvious they are risking their money in this venture, so if they decided to go for WFRP3 it is clear to them that publishing more material for WFRP2 was not in their economic interest... So, if they had not gone with WFRP3, then they would have published exactly nothing... then, instead of just having several guys annoyed and crying wolf, all of us would suffer, because we would get no new material... I tell you something... I bet my collection of WFRP2 books (I have them all) that the day we get a 2nd edition of Dark Heresy or Rogue Trader we will get the same comments you are doing now, unless this happens in 30 years, when nobody else cares about the game or everybody is so anxious of getting new material that they don't bother...

ragnar63 said: I do not know if anybody remembers the final gunfight in Clint Eastwoods superb film 'Unforgiven'. I read around the subject and found like Eastwood that the best 'gunslingers' were not always nearly the fastest, but the coolest under fire (or in action). Inexperienced gunmen would either freeze or would squeeze off shots too quickly, and with lousy aim, while experienced ones would try to minimise the target and make sure that each shot mattered. Hence also the use of a lot of shotguns, which you don't generally see in Westerns. To be trully ' accurate' initiative would have to be calculated from agility, willpower, intelligence and past experience. Even then the past experience needed might be less useful in some situations than others. Also just because a dwarf is short, and an elf tall does not mean that latter will be faster in combat ( except in ground scale movement). I think that Jays solution is, although not perfect, a very workable and innovative way of dealing with this, and also may keep players more intereted in what is going on outside their turn, and may also encourage better party (and player ) interaction. Great post. I also liked a lot Unforgiven and agree with what is said in the film and by you about initiative. In my WFRP3 campaigns I plan on using a mix of Agility, Intelligence and Willpower as the basic stat for Initiative. I also plan to do a similar thing for other skills. For Initiative, I would add Agility, Intelligence and Willpower together, divide by 3, then round to closest integer and use this value instead of the Agility value as basic Initiative stat. The mechanics of WFRP3 make it very easy to apply this sort of houserule.

SamVimes said: In RTL, as soon as the conquest total hits 600, then after whatever dungeon the heroes are currently in, they get to teleport to the Avatar's keep to take him down. If the heroes are pretty good on items and skills in gold level of the campaign, they may not want the overlord to buy any new upgrades/finish a plot line and instead want to force the OL into the final confrontation. Without the rule that they would get ejected after 2 deck cycles in the same dungeon level, they could sit indefinitely in town as the OL cycles his deck over and over again, until the campaign hits 600 XP. As it is now, the heroes can do the same thing by just killing each other repeatedly. This RtL rule I find a bit silly... I was considering houseruling it so that, once theCT total hits 600, the heroes will still need to travel to the Overlord's Keep, but no CTs are gained during this travel... basically, it means the OL will have a bit more time to spend his XPs and to raze Tamalir, and the Heroes can try to get a bit more treasure/better equipment or train.

NezziR said: I personally like the new system - I won't change it. I like giving the players their choice of who goes first. One of the things I always tell my players is, 'If it works for you, it works for me'. In this case it would mean, if they get to choose who goes first, to maximize their potential, I do too. That will make my monster encounters more challenging and allow me to design encounters with complementary monsters (just like the player skills complement each other). I also like the new initiative system, so I'm still not sure whether I'll use it or the houserule I propose... I'll discuss it with my players to see what they want... My initial intention when proposing the houserule was to give an option for those who wanted mechanics to create more chaotic battles or who did not like allowing the characters to discuss tactics during combat.

Mikael Hasselstein said: For me, the real money-making angle that I hope FFG gets in on is not new and different rulebooks (for GMs and/or players), but more and more background books (which can also be used for 2e - though I can understand if they want to plug in just enough 3e-specific stuff to make it attractive for grognards like me to want to get 3e). Being the Warhammer GM of my friends, I WANT to be FFG's cash cow: make interesting books and I will buy. Put out kitschy nonsense and I will not. My players are a lost cause for FFG; they only play because I induce them to. I induce them to do so, because I really enjoy the Warhammer World, which I experience largely through the WFRP books that I have purchased. Most of the books that I have have never been used in conjunction with a game that I have played. Yet, I have spent much enjoyable time just reading the books and imagining how I would use that material some day in a game. For me, what made D&D the business leader, even if its mechanics are mediocre, is the incredible number of good campaigns/adventures that have been published for all its editions... I hope FFG will put some effort into publishing good adventures and campaigns for WFRP3... My gut feeling is that Plundered Vaults had a lot to do with WFRP2 success.

NezziR said: If you wanted to do a straight up initiative roll, you could just put markers that represent the character instead of a generic marker on the track. I don't fully understand what you mean. The houserule is not about making a straight up initiative roll... It's about avoiding players from discussing tactics during combat and knowing too much of what is going on, so that the combat is a better simulation of the chaotic nature of battle. The advantage with the system proposed for WFRP3 against a fixed initiative system is that it gives already some sense of dynamism. With a marker that represents the character in the track, the character knows when he will act, thus getting some knowledge of what is going to happen in the round... What I want to simulate is the fact that your character has to take a decision more or less simultaneous with the other characters and monsters involved in the fight, so they really should not know what other people have in their minds in order to make their decision... The above houserule is not too complex and I think it would make combats quicker because you would avoid endless tactic discussions (one of the reasons I don't enjoy D&D much)... it would also allow situations where two characters shoot/hit almost simultaneously the same monster, even though the first blow would have finished it, or one character gets in front of another... What could be maybe changed is that ties are broken by rerolling initiative, not by taking into account what each character already rolled, so that characters have even less information during the round... As for the monsters, I'm thinking I would, as a GM, prepare some kind of random way of deciding which monster will act first and plan their actions before knowing who'll go first, so that I also don't have more information available than a real monster would have.

Loswaith said: Personaly I'd likely use the mechanic to alieviate some of the stop-start action in the game by limiting the characters based on the kind of action they do, those that need to move to attack would be acting later than those just needing to attack as an example. I think any mechanic that allows the players to communicate among themselves to decide what each player will do is not going to be a very realistic simulation of a real combat, no matter how many artificial limitations you place on them. Also, a game with too many extra rules would only make combats slower and more tedious (that's my feeling now with D&D3 and D&D4). So, if you want to have a realistic system, you should try to implement something where players cannot talk much among themselves during combat. That's what I tried to achieve in my Descent games, where players can only say one short sentence during other people's turns (and they have about 1-2 minutes to discuss their strategies at the beginning of each turn)... That's the reason behind the houserule I proposed for the initiative (above and in its own thread). Any system that allows players to discuss their moves in combat is not going to be realistic, no matter how you set it up. Don't get me wrong, I'm still OK with these systems because they reduce complexity of the game, but it's also true that sometimes combats become too "gamey" and like a "tactics boardgame" because of that, so I can understand the criticism expressed by Peacekeeper and DeathfromAbove among others (although I don't see why they don't apply the same critics to other RPGs that suffer from the same lack of chaos in combat)... As for not letting players discuss among themselves tactics during combat, I've found that the players in my group that complain about this sort of systems do so because, at the beginning, they feel a bit stressed for being solely responsible for their actions... Most of us need reassurance from others so not to feel that we screwed it... but the counterargument I have to that is that you should view it as part of the RPG experience... in real life people make a lot of tactics mistakes (I'm a great fan of football/soccer and I see that happening constantly) and the good thing with an RPG is that you don't have to really pay for them after that... I must say that, as our Descent games have advanced, people have enjoyed more and more the system and myself I've started also moving my monsters in a "not-optimal" way, sometimes even purposefully, so that the whole experience feels both a bit more relaxed (nobody fears making mistakes any more) and more realistic, while at the same time playing faster.

Peacekeeper_b said: Cogoll and commoner, my last question was not a bash of the rules as presented, or houserules, yes I house rule the hell out of things. My question, which I think goes along well in this thread which is about a rule in the game that several have announced intentions to already houserule out. My question still stands, is not houserulling a rule before you have used it, really read it or seen it in action the same as saying it doesnt work? Or it doesnt work for me? Believe it or not, in this question I am trying to find where the support for the system truly lies. But you win. That x% of people announce they'll houserule a rule also means that (100-x)% of people will use it as intended... You know, don't think the official rule does not have appeal only because some people say they'll houserule it... usually the people that don't like something are the ones you hear the most because they are the ones voicing their complaints and proposing changes, but that does not mean they are the majority... politics and journalism is a good real life example of this... You always have people demonstrating against something, but that does not make them right or a majority... And I know what I'm talking about here as I have made already at least 3 proposals to houserule stuff but have hardly talked about the things I like from the system apart from saying that I like them. I'll say it again, considering the proposals as a whole, I'm confident this game will rock!

So, here I am again with a new proposal. Actually, I love the new initiative system proposed by FFG for WFRP3, but I read some criticism about the players being given too much power to coordinate themselves (although I think the same happens with fixed init games) and I thought the following could be a very simple and good addition for those who want to simulate a bit better the chaos in a combat... Incidentally, I must say this houserule is only possible because of the system proposed for WFRP3, which really is, to me, much more inspiring than your old "fix init system"... So here is my houserule: - Each player should have a numerical die that allows him to choose his order in combat, i.e. if you have a group of 4 players, then each player should have a d4. Roll for initiative, as in the official WFRP3 rules. At the beginning of each turn, each player, without talking with the other players, has to choose with her die the order in which she wants to act. (two variants/extras here) If two players choose the same position with their dice, then the player that rolled more successes in the initiative will act first (in case of tie, roll initiative until the tie is broken). Variant 1 for step 2: give the players 30 seconds to decide. If they have not decided by then, they must roll the die (and maybe receive 1 stress). Variant 2 for step 2: the players must also choose their free action for this turn... paying actions can be decided as normal. Still, while a player acts, other players can only shout 1 warning, i.e. 1 sentence... (I use this in Descent and it works quite well and adds to the tension). Again, if the player does not choose his action in 30 seconds, he should pick one randomly, and possibly gain 1 stress. As you see, this would better simulate the chaos in battle and reduce the time spent in tactics talking during a combat. Also, it avoids players working as a "perfectly oiled machine". Still, I would use this houserule only with experienced players and, at the same time, the GM has to be fair and play their monsters considering their intelligence/ willpower /fellowship attributes so that they also are a bit uncoordinated. Do you like this houserule? Any ideas to improve it?

Peacekeeper_b said: I hear a lot of people aready making house rules for character generation, initiative, combat and other mechanics. I dont think "you can always houserule" or "I plan to houserule" is a compelling argument for the new system. I know most games wind up being houseruled and most groups have their own rules to move the game the way they want, but going into a new system with a pre-set list of planned houserules seems like a money sink to me. If you already see what is broken, why buy it? If you see what you like already, house rule it into your current game? I guess Im just asking, what is the number of house rules for a system before that system is just a waste? I have always houseruled all RPGs with which I've played. It's a matter of taste, but I hardly believe everyone loves every rule about a game and I am one that prefers to spend some energy in adapting the rules to my taste than becoming annoyed by some mechanic I don't like. Also, I consider most rules in RPGs as options, the publisher cannot force me to play exactly as he intended, but at the same time I don't have the means or energy to create a full set of rules for my games, and I also love the art and many good proposals that come from a publisher. Come on, mate, I cannot believe you have never played an RPG without houseruling parts of it...

Peacekeeper_b said: What is typically going to happen is the PCs will be expected to react as a well oiled prepared team. The initiative will be rolled, the fastest PC will get 3 or 4 successes, allowing the combat monster troll slayers to strike first (at elf speed) and the last slot pf initiative will be left for a healing spell at the end of the round. Repeat until all monsters are dead. I see a bit your point here, though the same happens in other RPGs as dvang and commoner have mentioned, with people delaying to wait for someone else to send their fireballs, etc. But there are ways to houserule this so that your team cannot react as a well oiled team, and it works better with the system proposed for WFRP3... My suggestion would be the following: Roll for initiative as usual. Give each of your players cards or tokens or a different coloured die (if there are 4 players, you would need to be able to select a number between 1 and 4). At the start of a turn, the players, without talking to each other, have to choose the position in which they want to act. If several players choose the same position, then the one that got most successes in the initiative order gets to act first... here you could even add 1 stress to the group to show that they are not coordinated enough. Now, this system would indeed simulate quite well the chaotic feeling of battle... You could even have the players choose the free action they'll make at the same time they choose the position in which they want to act. The above would work only with experienced players, and the GM should then be fair and make their monsters act in an uncoordinated fashion, unless they are a very well trained force... actually, I think I'll start a new topic to present this as a houserule for adding more complexity to the combat.

Descent has already been out for a long time so I considered that there may be people who are missing some bits and would be interested in buying replacement parts. Myself, while starting my first Road to Legend campaign, I noticed that I was missing the Crushing Block card from the Altar of Despair expansion. At the moment I am solving this by using the copy from the game of my gaming club (I liked the game so much that I bought it anyway for my collection) but I wanted to ask if FFG has any possibility for buying replacement cards, apart from buying the whole expansion. The most important cards are the Overlord and Treasure cards, as the other cards don't have to be picked randomly. I would not mind buying a full set of Overlord and or Treasure cards if selling individual cards makes no economic sense for FFG.

DeathFromAbove said: Cogollo, I'm sorry to cause you headaches, but english isn't my native language and, sometimes (quite often sorry), I'm not able to explain myself or, sometimes, I'm only pointing out a feel. I must also note the tendency of dismissing other's thoughts, that aren't clear, as whining and "trolling". To me this is another form of whining itself. That said I'll try to explain a little better my criptic point of view explained above. What I've read in the develper's diary is a post as long as my arm with only one (1) infomation about system mechanics: Initiative roll. Now, I've played many games, some with static initiative, some with dynamic initiative. Personally I haven't any issues with both of them. They are different ways of accomplishing the some thing. Both with their own merits and demerits. My personal point of view is that battle experience, more that quickness, is the difining factor on who act first. I've seen very fast people beeing litterally frozen when confronted with a chaotic situation (in real combat). So I prefer a static initiative (with a little dynamic factor) based on same skill that veteran warriors will have highers than athlethes. But this is not the issue here. I'm fine with the rules as presented. Returning on the Develper's Diary, what I've read is how to use counter and sticks, flipping cards, etc. The overall impression is that insted on focusing on the combat, the drama, the actions and dynamic of battle, I must arrange and re-arranged counter, cards, etc. This diary is all about gadgets (I'll can call it smoke), but the meat is about three/four lines of tried and true mechanics: roll for initiative. To explaing that the system is focused on his own mechanics means, litterally, that you loose focus of what you are doing, just to "keep track" of something that, IMHO, will dilute the drama and excitement of the overall combat scene. Another factor that will "take a step away", IMHO, is the possibility of taking an action after a party "consultation", right in the middle of a fight. This approach can't help the sensation for being there. I know that when in battle you must decide for yourself or you are lost. Even in thight formation is very difficult to follow orders (this is why romans were so highly trained troops). Added "infos" like changing stance and "receiving stress" is very interesting but are a little obscure to elaborate on. DFA P.S. What dice I must roll for an Init chek? OK, interesting points you make, and I agree that my message was a bit rougher than I originally intended, so my apologies if it sounded rude. About the initiative, I can understand most of your arguments and the arguments of the people that dislike the system... but I still think the main reason you dislike the proposed system is because most RPG gamers have become too used with a fixed initiative system and consider it natural, while, in my opinion, it is only some artificial way of putting order into a simulation of a chaotic situation. For me, the new system is worth the try and it does not matter if you use a progress tracker, a piece of paper or a magnetic mat (I use the one from Paizo) to track the initiatives, it will always remain an RPG. Finally, I think you are getting too focused in the extra elements like cards and counters... In my WFRP2 campaign, my players were a bit confused about what they could do in combat (they were used to playing D&D, Call of Cthulhu, Runequest, GURPS and many other games and so many different mechanics were becoming confusing) so they asked me to create little cards with explanations of all possible actions they could, mechanically, take... so yes, I have used cards in my WFRP2 campaign and the players found using them extremely convenient, as they had now extra time to focus on the role of the situation and the drama of the combats... I know that's my experience and maybe cannot be applied to everyone, but at least there's one RPG group in the world that has played RPGs using cards and they liked it.

Peacekeeper_b said: My complaint, when put rationally and politely and respectfully, is quite system. I have yet to see anything in these rules that does anything the game has promised. I havent seen any mechanic that speeds up play, eases role playing or motivates party cohesion. In fact, to me, it does the opposite. It bogs down play with code breaking and reading, disrupts party cohesion by punishing the team for not agreeing quickly and forces you into a role instead of enabling role playing. Well, I think it's a bit early to really say how the system will play. At least I'm curious to see all these innovations to an RPG in play and feel they'll refresh the RPG industry and attract more gamers. 1. About your statement that the game "...disrupts party cohesion by punishing the team for not agreeing quickly..." that's for the GM to decide. In my campaigns (and those of my friends), we regularly force characters to act quickly, otherwise they'll lose part of their turn or the GM will take a decision for them as if they got in a panick... Let's face it, if combat decisions are too slow, the game stalls and becomes boring... still, that's my group's style and WFRP3 gives me nice mechanics to represent all of this, you don't have to use it if you don't want but they are there. 2. You also state that the game "...forces you into a role instead of enabling role playing"... I think this is an undeserved statement that could be used against any RPG ever written... why does WFRP3 force you into a role?... The same could be said of any RPG... Example: WFRP2, your starting career is Rat Catcher... does that mean you "are forced into the role of a Rat Catcher"?... Seriously, I don't understand what you are trying to convey or achieve with this statement... I love WFRP2 (I also own Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader will soon arrive). They are great games. Now, what I don't see so clear is whether there was much more to explore with the old WFRP2 rules... I maybe would have liked a book about Greenskins, but that's about it... Also, there were some problems in WFRP2: 1. The "machine gun" caster... which WFRP3 seems to address in an elegant and imaginative way. 2. Item prices in WFRP2 were ridiculous... I hope they will solve this in WFFRP3. 3. The critical wounds system was very weak and only affected you when you were already dead... WFRP3 seems to address this. 4. Nuances in action resolutions lacking (this can be said of almost any RPG)... New dice system opens a huge number of possibilities, where you can still fail the action but obtain some advantage out of it, or have success but suffer some problem. 5. I could go on and on telling you about all the house rules I had to implement for my WFRP2 campaign but don't want to bore you people to death. To finish my post, I'm happy FFG is creating a new edition of WFRP: 1. I feel it will revive the game and bring in new gamers. 2. I'm sure I won't like many things in the official versions. I have even made already house rules proposals for skills and random char generation, but that's a natural thing with RPGs, everyone adapts them to their style. 3. I love the extras. I have always enjoyed handing out maps, objects, figurines and whatnot to my players. I think it helps people get in the mood for gaming. I also don't consider them necessarily a sign of an RPG turning into a boardgame. 4. I am pretty certain that this game will rock and that the naysayers will be proved wrong.

Peacekeeper_b said: After seeing the initiative system, I have my doubts Ill ever come around. That's curious, you know, because the new initiative system, together with the dice pool and the way they intend to treat distances in combat are the points that appeal me the most from the new mechanics. My feeling is that we have become used to fixed initiative systems (I've played RPGs for around 20 years now and most of them had fixed initiative systems) and that's the main reason why some of you consider it heretical... but, with my experience using a similar system in Descent, I'm pretty sure it will work... There are a lot of reasons that support such an initiative system over a fixed initiative one; I won't repeat them here because they have been discussed in their own thread.

phobiandarkmoon said: OK, fine. Then I'll try and put forth something you can argue against. The dice are a good example. The extra side results have very specific reasons why they fail or success with a side effect. In 2nd Edition, failing a test with a description is up to the GM. With 3rd edition, the results are right in front of you and there's no interpretation. You can certainly argue that as a good thing, but when DeathFromAbove said that 3rd edition is too focussed on it's own mechanics, I think he meant stuff like that. Sometimes in trying to promote roleplaying in group with mechanics you can end up stifling it. All he's doing is arguing his own feel of what has been read so far. The fact that he hasn't been able to articulate exactly why is NOT grounds to label this whining and ignore it. Much better, I don't agree with what you say, but at least you argue it and don't go trolling around the whole time. I have no trouble with someone expressing their opinion without reasoning from time to time... I do have trouble with someone cluttering every single post with the same whining statement... seriously, it is a waste of time and space and, I fear, a lack of respect for the people giving arguments for and against the new system. Now, to answer your argument, why is 3rd edtion more focused in its mechanics than 2nd edition? Every RPG out there has its own mechanics, some of them promote munchkinism, others promote intrigue adventures, others promote horror adventures, etc.; still, all RPGs have mechanics and they are still RPGs, so your argument is very flawed... As for the dice side results, as you correctly say the action cards come with results to apply those side effects to the game mechanics (i.e., add stress, fatigue,etc.)... but I don't share your conclusion because again the logic you put into it is flawed... that there is a mechanic result does not mean that the result is specific, as shown in the example that Jay Little gave about escaling a cliff, the dice are there to inspire the players and GMs ideas to explain why the character lost a wound, a stress or a fatigue point, but the possible explanations are tens if not hundreds, as the examples given by many people showed... To prove to you how flawed your line of argumentation is, one could say, following your line of argumentation, that WFRP2 is too focused in its mechanics because when you roll an attack it already gives as a result the area of the enemy body you have hit, or because when you get doubles in a Magic roll you "are forced" to roll in Tzenteech's Curse table... (and I love WFRP2, one of the best RPGs ever designed, imo).

DeathFromAbove said: I do medieval combats myself and I like combat games that gives that feeling of reality. I must say that this v3 is a step away from what I call a "real battle". Please, I know that no RPG will ever exists that can be a simulation (The riddle of steel tried hard, with good results), and I don't want a simulation, but what I search for is "the right feel". From what I'm reading this v3 is little focused on his own mechanics, leaving the feel of the battlefield... a step away. All above is personal opinion. -1 I'm sorry, mate, but not much argumentation or reasoning in your post... As usual, you just say that you don't like the game but not why... This is the last time I'll answer a post from you until you include some reasoning for your likes or dislikes, but I had to tell you at least once that reading your whining is mostly, in my opinion, a waste of precious time.

Sunatet said: Normal fight is total chaos of simultaineous actions, the real reaction time difference is miliseconds (I know something about this, I trained a few martial arts styles in my life, and have my share of real fights behind me), what we have in game is pure abstraction to prevent this chaos to take place at the game table. So if an elf in on one side of the room, and 2 goblins are standing right next to wizard, I say, that wizard acts first, because wahatever elf can do, he will not get to the goblins before wizard reacts (miliseconds in reaction time difference), even if he can reach the goblins using all of his actions in a gameplay terms. This is a good example of why I like the initiative system proposed by FFG for WFRP3... Actually, your whole post is a good example but I did not quote it completely so to avoid unnecessary repetition. In a fixed initiative system, in the example above, the Elf would "magically" pull his bow, shoot and kill a Goblin 30 meters apart while the Goblin and Dwarf that are hacking at each other don't do anything... but in real physics, the distant action of the Elf would take more time to complete than the action of the Goblin or Dwarf affecting each other (unless they both are stoned or sharing a pint) so for those who say the proposal seems artificial, I reply that fixed initiative is at least as artificial... The main reason why some of you find this system more artificial than a fixed initiative system is because you have become used to the fixed initiative that has been used in most RPGs up to now... but custom does not necessarily make right.

mac40k said: I think some people are making too big a deal over the initiative thing. In most games, a round is somewhere around 6 - 10 seconds of real time. So in a swirling combat, pretty much everyone is acting near simultaneously anyway. Since for game purposes players need to act sequentially rather than all at once, we need some way to determine the order their actions will be resolved. In a traditional Initiative system, the better stat/higher roll gives that character's player the edge to act before others. But wait, most games usually give the player the option of holding, so they don't always act in the same order every turn anyway. This approach forces to group to think about what order is best for the group as a whole and I like that. Should the best fighter get off his attack first or should the Priest, who is casting a defensive spell, go first this round? After a group has been together for awhile they've developed code words, hand signals, or just gotten to the point where they just know what each other are thinking and work together better as a result. This system gives us the ability to model that. I'm guessing that a lot of times the group will decide on an order and just stick with it round after round unless somebody comes up with a good reason to change it up, so I don't anticipate it being a protracted discussion every round. +1 Nice comment, and I'm also of a very similar opinion.

Redcrow said: cogollo said: ... of course your reflexes have a lot to say how quickly you react to something, but in a real situation your intuition (Willpower) and how quick you analyse your situation (Intelligence) should also play a role... Also, things in the field of battle can influence a lot your reaction, and good leaders can position and direct other people to better react to threats... I would agree with this. Unfortunately WFRP 3e only takes Agility into consideration which is the crux of my problem with it. WFRP has just never had the kind of granularity that you describe. My thought behind only having the PC with the highest Agility roll was really aimed at those who like the more abstract nature of initiative described in the Designer Diary and to cut down on needless excess die rolls which to me seem a bit superfluous in light of this new mechanic. If you are willing to accept that level of abstraction, why not just go the extra step and leave it at a single die roll for each side. Some days ago I opened a post about houseruling skill basic characteristic. WFRP3 makes it very easy to finally have a system where more than one characteristic is important for your action. I'm pretty sure FFG would not publish it in their rule book as it would involve a bit of extra math and they want to make the game available for everyone, but for us that like a bit more complexity and nuances in our games it should be simple and easy to make the calculations. The proposal I made is that every skill could have as basic characteristic more than one. Examples I gave were: Weapon Skill: add Strength, Agility and Intelligence together, divide by 3, round to closest integer. Ballistic Skill: add Agility, Intelligence and Willpower together, divide by 3, round to closest integer. Intimidation: Strenght, Willpower and Fellowship. Intuition: Intelligence and Willpower (this time, divide by 2). Ride: Strength, Agility and Willpower. Initiative: Agility, Intelligence and Willpower. The system would be very easy, as you only calculate the numbers when you create your character or when your characteristics change. You could just write the number beside the skill, instead of simply writing the main characteristic. So, I'll use this houserule to calculate the Initiative base stat, and follow FFG system, as my experience with Descent tells me that it will work nicely with my group of players.

Callidon said: Dislike: Point Buy Character Gen. One of my players will always min max the crud out of his characters...always. He's just that guy. The random char-gen of the previous editions have allowed him some freedom from the obsessive need to have all his numbers in all the right spots all the time. Of course we can just house rule some random jazz into it, but this still goes in the wonky pile. I also dislike point buy character gen, so some days ago I opened a post with some house rules for random character gen... Towards the middle of the long post, Bertolac proposed a very good idea that I now prefer to the one I originally proposed. I summarize it here: Instead of randomly determining your stats, you randomly determine where to apply each advance. Bertolac suggested that your character starts with the initial characteristic values (depending on race and career). You then let each player roll 3 times a 1d6 (1=Strength, 2=Toughness, 3=Agility, 4=Intelligence, 5=Willpower, 6=Fellowship) and that's where the first 3 advances would have to be made, paying the corresponding cost. With the remaining creation points (usually 10-15) the player can decide how to spend them. An alternative I thought to the above method is that you let the players decide to roll 1d6 so that the advance will be in the basic characteristics or 1d4 to have an advance in the "extra table" (wealth, skills, talents and actions). The player goes on doing this until he has 5 or less creation points, then he is allowed to use those last points as he wants.

Redcrow said: I would argue that the party waiting for a slower character to act adds more to the tension than allowing that character to act whenever they wish regardless of their Agility. Imagine the party waiting for the Wizard to cast an Area Effect spell on their enemies, but the Wizard is slow and can't act until the end of the round. In 3e its no longer a problem because now the party Elf can magically make the Wizard fast enough to get that spell off much earlier. Oddly though, the usually fast moving Elf is mysteriously slowed by his magical ability to speed up others. No, the only tension I see this adding to the game is between players arguing and that to me is a bad thing. One of the main reasons I like the change to the initiative as we know it is that I never liked initiative being based almost exclusively in Agility... of course your reflexes have a lot to say how quickly you react to something, but in a real situation your intuition (Willpower) and how quick you analyse your situation (Intelligence) should also play a role... Also, things in the field of battle can influence a lot your reaction, and good leaders can position and direct other people to better react to threats... so I think, from in-game point of view, that the system has some sense in it (at least as much as having a completely fixed initiative order, as if all creatures were some kind of perfectly working engine...). Now, I also doubt there would be a lot of arguing in the group; don't confuse arguing with deciding among the players... If any of you has played Descent, you'll know that, in a turn, players will decide in which order each Hero (remember, Heroes in Descent; characters in WFRP...) will act and I have, to date, never seen players arguing strongly (and believe me I've played Descent a lot)...sometimes it takes them a bit more time to react than normal and in Descent what I do is gain some Threat if they take too much time to decide... similar to adding stress here. So, what I see is that they have improved and generalized the simple system used in Descent (which works very well) so that they can apply it to a roleplaying system... I'll use the proposed initiative system for sure (the only change I might do is considering Initiative a skill based in Agility, Intelligence and Willpower instead of only Agility).

mac40k said: The action counter that has to be flipped over twice per turn I'm a little less enthusiastic about. I realize that with the ability to change the order of action every round, you need a way to keep track of who has acted this round and who hasn't, but the GM could just as easily write everyone's name on scrap paper and place a tick mark next to it after they've acted. Now he has to watch to make sure the player remembers to flip his action token over. I'm not saying some players would cheat and not turn it over or worse, turn it back over when the GM isn't looking, but someone might forget to turn it over. The player already has to track position on their stance meter, recharge tokens on abilities, counters on effects, etc. All of these things, while useful, may take the player out of character by emphasizing game mode. Hopefully, in time the manipulating the bits becomes second nature and doesn't break the emersion, but initially, it looks like there's going to be a lot of emphasis on bit fiddling going on. Descent comes with the same kind of action counter and I must say my group does not use them much, even playing with 4 Heroes (in Descent they are called heroes, not in WFRP) and 8-10 monsters, because it's very easy to remember who acted already... Still it is good to have the tokens, or any of the ideas you indicate, if people find they tend to forget who acted already.