eihort
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Posts posted by eihort
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This was one of the most frustrating things during my demo. Why not just put extra columns in? If I had a dollar for every time I went "what's in the parens after strength?". I'm sure I'll get the hang of it after a couple games, but just putting extra columns in would have been much nicer.
@ Gobbo: During my demo I just stuck the monster's wound cards under that monster's standee. It worked really, really well.
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Nezzir,
I have decided to join your gaming group. Please send me directions to that awesome gaming room and the time of the next game. Hopefully the weekly commute from Austin, Texas won't be too long.
Seriously, though, those pictures really made me miss my old gaming group. They all moved away years ago. Thanks for posting and hopefully we'll hear/see more of your adventures in 3E.
Thanks,
Cody
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I especially agree with the "no drinks on the table". : )
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Ever since this game was announced, I fervently believed that it was not a board game. I might have been wrong, though, because one of my players actually WON the game.
I ran the demo at Rogues Gallery Games in Round Rock, Texas. I'd like to thank FFG for picking Rogues Gallery, and the guys there for letting me run the demo. We had three players.. the roadwarden, the envoy, and the troll slayer. We had a few stumbling points (more on that later) but overall I think everybody had a good time. I know I enjoyed the game tremendously, even though I did feel rather unprepared and had to do a lot of page flipping.
The troll slayer was heavily injured (I think he was at 8 cards and a couple of crits) when he decided to use the "Perform a Stunt" card to attempt a wild bum rush tackle move on the big nasty, who was the only bud guy left alive. He rolled miserably, though, and the little dwarf harmlessly bounced off the beastman. The next round he put in a massive troll-feller strike that almost brought the creature down. The roadwarden moved in and finished off the beastman.... but then I noticed his special deathblow ability. Of course, the creature targeted the troll slayer with it's last ditch attack... and killed him dead. His dept repaid and his oath fulfilled, the little troll slayer left the Old World to join his ancestors in the great beer hall in the sky. In my opinion, he won the game.
Here are my impressions on the game from my first run:
Liked:
- Dice Mechanic. It was just plain fun... selecting the dice, rolling the dice, interpreting the dice. Once we got the symbols down it was fast and fun.
- Wound Cards and Crits. I love how wounds are handled, especially crits. Over the course of our short combat, we had the envoy get a nasty bruise and our dwarf get a bum leg.
- Action Cards. I like how the action cards add variety to the turns... it's not just "I swing".
- Abstract Movement. It worked well for us. I was actually kind of surprised how well it worked.
- Stance Dice. I love this mechanic, even though the players didn't use it much. I think there's a lot of depth to discover here.
- Pretty rulebooks. They look awesome. If there's a warhammer painting you like, it's probably in there somewhere.
- Perform a Stunt card. It's a great way to remind the players to be creative. It spurred a lot of laughs in our session.
- Fortune Pool. It was fun, as a GM, to toss a token into the fortune pool every time somebody did some thing great. It was nice to reward the whole team.
- "Choose a Character" initiative. I liked how the group could discuss who they wanted to act when their turn came up. What's gonna work? Teamwork!
- No pencil. I ran the entire session without once touching a pencil. That's awesome!Disliked:
- NO INDEX IN THE RULEBOOK! WTF?!? Seriously?!?! FFG, you MUST release a pdf index. Not cool. Not cool at all. Even CitOW had an index!
- Calculations. I had quite a bit of trouble getting the damage calculations down. I think they should have been spelled out clearer, maybe even put on the character sheet as a fill in the blanks calculation
- Confusion on "Target Defense". Is defense only gained from armor? I could have easily figured this out, probably, if there HAD BEEN AN INDEX!
- Confusion on Difficulty of attacks. Is the number of purple dice in an attack always one (listed as the "default" in the rules) or is it based on the two stats on the card
- No monster cards/sheets. Having the monster stats only in the book was annoying. If I'd been using two different types of monsters the flipping back and forth would have driven me mad. Why no loose leaf monster sheets or something?
- Stress/Fatigue. This system seemed fiddly and I'm still not sure if we played it completely right.Overall it was a positive experience, at least for me. I can't wait to get my own set and start getting a group together. Once again, thanks to FFG, RG, and my three players.
Later,
Cody -
We've heard some hints of a "Project Thunderbolt" which is apparently a boxed campaign set coming soon.
I've briefly considered converting Lure of the Liche Lord, but I think it might be too much trouble to beef up the characters enough for them to survive...
I might just break down and run that first book of the EW again...
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I kind of wish that there was a more climactic ending. Basically, two fights scenes, an argument, and then... we're done. I think it might have been better if the social encounter had been placed in the middle of the two fights...
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I suspect you got a faulty copy. I detected a strong "new board game" smell when I opened my box (similar to the wonderful smell when I opened Chaos in the Old World for the first time) and all the books have a pleasing "new book" smell, almost as good as the one my Rogue Trader copy used to exude.
BTW, I made a character for the first time last night and was very impressed. It was super-fast (especially when compared to Rogue Trader!) but still had some very interesting decisions with the talent and action cards.
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Good advice all. I'm hoping one more person will show up and I'll just break them into two sessions. I could do that with 5, I guess, but a session with two players just doesn't seem like it would be as much fun.
I was also thinking of making the fifth character a priest, but I'm not sure if I'll have a chance to read through all the rules from the priest book tonight. I might just try to make him a solider and try to pick talents, etc that aren't duplicates...
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I honestly can't remember how fear and horror work... although I do know there's a test and I think there's a "fear" condition. As far as insanity, there's another deliciously evil deck for that... and I do remember a rule that if you have enough insanity cards on your character you have to turn them over to the GM... Call of Cthulhu style. I was very pleased to see that some careers start with an "insanity" socket on their career sheets. I love this game.
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I was not dogging Day Late in any way. It does exactly what it sets out to do. I just don't want people putting too much into it. It not nearly as long or as detailed as the Oldenhaller contract. I mean, it can't be... its designed to be run with very little prep in a two/three hour time frame at a store demo.
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Hey,
So I got an email from the FLGS and they said they have five players signed up for my demo adventure. Hmmm... not enough to split into two sessions, but still one more than recommended. How should I handle it?
The adventure comes with four characters, right? Should I just roll up an extra character tonight and have them share the basic action cards?
Thanks,
Cody
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Having read through this adventure twice I can tell you that it is certainly more of a "demo" adventure than an "introductory" adventure. It was obviously designed as a two/three hour showcase of the basic rules, not as a the kickoff to a campaign. I'm not saying that it's bad or anything, in fact I'm glad it's so simple because I wouldn't have had time to prep for anything bigger... but the intro adventure in the core set looks to have a lot more meat on it.
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I can't see how mechanical questions could be considered spoilers.... I don't have the books in front of me, and I've slept since I read through the rulebook, so take this with a grain of salt...
1) How does fatigue/stress work?
If I remember correctly, you place fatigue on the physical attribute side and stress on the mental side. If you have more f/s counters than one of your attributes, that attribute is "fatigued". When using that attribute you have to add a number of misfortune dice to your pool... one for each f/s counter over your attribute value. If you get a certain number of stress counters (I think it was twice your willpower, but I could be wrong) you feint... get a certain number of fatigue counters (twice toughness maybe?) you are knocked out.
2) How do contests between character's actually work?
I think this has been explained well by other posters... basically you look at the little chart (which should take about 2 minutes to memorize) and add a number of challenge dice to your pool.
3) Is Arcane Magic similar to the Divine Magic? How does it work, in terms of pool?
I only skimmed the magic book, but it looks pretty straightforward. You use the "channel power" action card to build up power tokens. When you get enough power tokens to cast your spell you play the spell's action card, making a spellcasting roll. If you get a chaos star in your roll, draw from the deliciously evil miscast deck.
My initial impressions of the whole set are overwhelmingly positive... I cannot wait to try it out! I am a little worried because 5 people have signed up for my session... maybe I'll roll up a couple of characters tonight just in case...
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Well, he takes a while and makes it to the top, but that Chaos symbol plus a bane means that he dislodges a large boulder that falls on one of his friends still at the bottom of the cliff. I think it's time for an article on how damage works. : )
I love being the GM.
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I just wanted to thank you for the work you've done on this analysis. Very interesting reading! I can't wait to see how advanced careers will work... although I'm even more interested in what the monsters, traps, and NPC's will look like...
Ambient fantasy music
in WFRP Gamemasters
Posted
@morskittar: Thanks for that link! I especially like Eulogy for Hope.
I highly recommend the Dragon Age: Origins soundtrack (and the game, for that matter). There's also a pretty good soundtrack for Dungeons & Dragons Online that they released online, but I'm not sure if it's still up. It has some nice tavern type songs...