Personally, I am a HUGE fan of what FFG has designed with this 3rd edition of WHFRP. I owned the 1st ed books but never had a group to play it with. I loved the idea of careers instead of classes and the darker, grittier system of gameplay. Over my 3 decades of gaming I have come to distinctly dislike class/level systems and have been hoping for a good quality alternative for fantasy gaming.
As information emerged as to the design concepts of this new system, I became quite excited. It has proven to be most everything I have wanted out of a RPG system. My gaming group plays everything from D&D to World of Darkness and as a group, story always trumps rules in our methodology. We have found that WHFRP's new system allows characters the freedom to be "people" with far more complex motivations and abilities that promote describing what the PC is attempting to accomplish rather than looking up rules to see if they have the capacity to attempt something. Every PC can attempt most any idea a player will come up with and we get much delight in seeing the scholar try to beat away ankle-biting goblins with a heavy book to nearly as much affect as the skilled swordsman character.
The dice pool system is tremendously flexible and only takes new RPG players a session or so to become skilled with and experienced players a few rounds. We like using the cards which keeps using books pretty much gone from our game sessions and the fiddly-bits have been openly embraced by my group.
FFG has proven to provide some very good writing for the published adventures so far and I get piddle-my-pants eager to get my hands on each new WHFRP product they put out. Despite the expense, I am looking forward to having the hardcover rule books so that players can browse through available careers and skills and talents without having to pass around stacks of cards and mess with my organizational system of storing them. These books will also make it easier for new players to get an overview of all their options in one easy guide.
As to the setting, I was barely familiar with Warhammer (despite owning the 1st ed rule book) but I have come to appreciate the setting as I learn about it through the 3rd edition books. I have even gone so far as to buy some of the novels to get a better grasp on the world (and I would recommend The Blackhearts Omnibus). This system is so exciting and flexible for me that I am even seriously tempted to run adventures of some of my favorite D&D settings (Dragonlance and Pathfider Adventure Paths) using this system since neither my group nor I are overly tied to the Warhammer setting.
I would strongly recommend this system to any group who enjoys storytelling of hack and slash and for those who find it thrilling to play character types other than fantasy archetypes of "burly warrior", "powerful spellcaster" and "crafty rogue" (any of which are, of course, options available with this system as well).
