Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: First Impressions

The new 3rd edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay has proven to be controversial. Every new edition of an RPG is controversial to some extent, but the introduction of 3rd edition WHFRP has some extra issues. Before I go further I should state that I'm still reading the rules. This is very much a "first impression" and I may later post a "second impression" if further examination of the rules changes any of my opinions.

First, there's nothing wrong with 2nd edition. That's not just my impression, we're talking about an award winning system that was first published in 2005. Second, there were still books that could be published for the system. Particularly more books focusing on non-humans. Sales may have dropped, but from a fan perspective there are still a lot of things that could be done with the line. Third, in corporate speak, Fantasy Flight leveraged their expertise in board games to bring a new level of production value to the 3rd edition that scared people into thinking that they were making it into some sort of board game hybrid. Fourth, not a few people unhappy with the 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons came over to WHFRP and they see 3rd edition WHFRP as being a move in the same direction that 4th edition D&D took.

Some of these concerns are valid, particularly the first one, but others are less so. The end result though is that while the core mechanics of the rules have changed, the core concepts and feel of the game seems to remain unchanged. Here's a list of some things that 3rd edition still has from previous editions: career based character progression, insanity rules, dangerous magic, you can start your career as a commoner, skill and talent based characters, hand weapons (sword, axe, mace, club, hammer, etc.) are functionally identical, and the overall background is the same.

Some of the things that have changed: no more d100, the core mechanic uses a dice pool with special dice; stats and skills have been simplified, although many of the old skills are still present as specializations of a broader category, such as pick locks under skulduggery; the game uses cards, but in practice this is simply taking what could have been put in the rulebook and instead putting it on a card that's easier to reference during the game; new systems for dealing with fatigue and stress; new system for having your character take aggressive and defensive stances; and combat is less tactical.

That last change is worth discussing more, if only because one of the complaints of 4th edition D&D is that it's too tactical, and because people have been afraid that Fantasy Flight was turning WHFRP into a board game. Gone is the battle grid. All that matters now is relative distance between characters and whether or not they are engaged. I love this. While I enjoy tactical board and miniatures games, and can enjoy tactical combat in RPGs, I prefer a more narrative style, and it looks like 3rd edition WHFRP encourages this kind of play.

That isn't to say there aren't issues. I'm still reading through the books, but I have found a couple areas of concern. The first is the lack of an index. With rules spread over four booklets, and the organization in each booklet somewhat spotty, the rules badly need a comprehensive index. It's really inexcusable for a set of core rules for a major RPG to be released without one. As already mentioned, the lack of an index is compounded by some poor organization of the rules. In the table of contents the topic of "Stances" is only listed once, but the actual rules for it are spread out over at least three areas, with no repetition of rules between those areas. This makes it difficult to find the rule you're looking for even when simply sitting down and browsing the rules. Finding rules in play will be nearly impossible.

Another issue is the narrowness of scope of the core rules in terms of characters. The race options limit you to a fairly limited area of the campaign world to start with. This will prove particularly problematical for anyone looking to convert an existing 2nd edition campaign to 3rd edition. Also, some of those races aren't very well fleshed out in terms of career options. There are no advanced careers for either type of elf, and only one for dwarfs. There are some elf advanced careers rumored to be coming in the first expansion, but it's unfortunate they weren't included in the core rules.

Still, I'm really looking forward to getting this on the table and giving it a try.

RPG Afternoon

Board game night at Castle House Games is still going well. Attendance goes up and down, but we've got a core group of three players (including me), and another half dozen or so that come and go depending on their schedules and the games being played.

Miniatures are going less well, but only for me. Castle House is going strong with Warhammer 40K, and will soon hold their second tournament, but I have yet to regain my motivation for the game. It's been about two months now since I went in on a Sunday to play, and the only thing I'm interested in painting are my Field of Glory miniatures.

I've decided to try replacing my miniature gaming with roleplaying for a while. I've got some interest from the people in the board game night group in starting up an RPG afternoon on Sundays. This would give me a chance to run a series of one-shot adventures in different systems that I've been wanting to try out.

It's not that there isn't roleplaying already going on at the FLGS, quite the contrary, but it's largely of the "we're going to play for 8 or 10 hours starting at around 2pm" variety, which is something that simply doesn't fit into my schedule anymore.

I'm looking more at a 4 to 6 hour time slot where we wouldn't necessarily need to meet every week, and that simply doesn't exist right now, so that's why I'm going to try "RPG afternoon."

Candidates for inclusion in RPG afternoon include: 3:16, 3rd edition Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Dogs in the Vineyard, Spirit of the Century, Chronica Feudalis, and maybe Thousand Suns and some strictly one shot games like The Mountain Witch. If things go well with those, then I may try Mouse Guard or another Burning Wheel based game. By then I may have the RPG itch out of my system, or I may be looking to start a campaign of something. I might even be ready to get back into some miniatures gaming.

This is all still in the planning stages, and will probably have to wait until after Christmas to get started, but it's at least looking like a strong possibility.

They're Here!

The rest of the miniatures for my army came today (well, yesterday, but yesterday only ended a few minutes ago as I post this), so I thought I'd post a "before" picture of the whole army. Of course, the boxes are empty now as I've been working on the legionnaires for a while. Everything is from Wargames Factory except the blister which contains some metal tribunes from Foundry Miniatures. I'm going to use those on my command stands.

The change in packaging is interesting. You can now see the sprues through the clear plastic, which is designed to hang from a retail display hook. The bags open at the bottom with a simple resealable fold (resealable glue, not a ziplock). The cardboard insert has very basic assembly instructions on the back, but no diagrams. Better than the original release, but not by a lot. Overall, I think I still prefer the original cardboard box, but the bag is probably more practical both for manufacturing and retail display.

I'm looking forward to assembling these guys, but I'll probably try to finish my legionnaires first, so this may be the last time you see them for a while.

Roman Update

I have still been working on my Romans, slowly. This has been despite being distracted by other stuff, mainly computer games, including Dragon Age: Origins, which was quite good.

Since I finished up Dragon Age, I've been on a bit of a roll with my miniatures, and now have about a third of the legionnaires finished, aside from completing the basing. I've even gone so far as to order the rest of the miniatures I need to complete the army, as I've become fairly confident in my ability to finish up this project.

At the top of this post you can see all the miniatures that I've completed to date. There's another four on my painting table, and another battle group of 16 is in the final stages of assembly. Assembly is a bit tricky with these guys due to the ranking up issues I've discussed in the past, so instead of trying to assemble them all at once, I've been doing them in stages to help me focus on getting them where they can rank up properly. So far it seems to be working fairly well.

Below you can see my first 'command' stand that includes a cornicen (musician), signifer (standard bearer) and optio (NCO responsible for keeping the other legionnaires from retreating without orders). The stand has no game effect in Field of Glory, it's just for looks. When placed in the back of a battle group, and a stand with a centurion is placed in the front, it completes the mini-cohort look.

The Cohort

Above is one of three pictures I took of my first two Roman bases. You can see the other two if you click through to Flickr.

My goal here is to achieve a quality similar to that of pre-painted miniatures, and I think I've achieved it. There are a lot of things I could do to improve the miniatures. Doing the leather details on the armor, some hi-lighting on the faces, applying transfers to the shields, and detailing the open parts of the sandals would add a lot to the appearance of the models, but at the expense of a lot of extra time. With 80+ Romans alone to paint for this army, plus 60+ other models (many of which are cavalry), I really need to keep things simple if I ever hope to finish.

These are based using .8mm plywood bases from Litko Aerosystems. So far so good, although I'll withhold my final judgment until after I apply the basing materials. Getting them ranked up is the most difficult part of the entire project. The depth of the bases is the problem. You have to model the miniatures with their bodies at just the right angle to get them to rank up properly without hanging over the front or rear of the base.

Next up is to finish modeling and painting the remaining two stands in this first battlegroup. I've got six of the eight models primed and on my painting table now, including the signifer and the cornicen (standard bearer and musician). I just need to finish modeling the optio (second in command of a cohort) and one more legionnaire to round out the century.

I've sat down and figured out what this army is going to consist of if I finish it:
20 stands of Legionnaires
6 stands of slingers
6 stands of archers
8 stands of heavy cavalry
8 stands of light cavalry
3 command stands (probably 2 infantry and 1 cavalry)

That's a total of 645 points and around 155 models, give or take one or two depending on how I do the command stands. To do it I need a box of Numidians, 2 boxes of Celt Cavalry, and 2 boxes of German Cavalry, all from Wargames Factory; plus a set of Roman Tribunes from Foundry Miniatures. The total should be around $120. I suspect that if I get to play this army, the changes I'm most likely to make will be to cut some of the auxiliaries in order to add more Legionnaires, but as over half the models in the list are already Legionnaires, I'd rather start with this.

This list is based partly on ideas from online, but mostly just what I want to paint. The idea behind the list is that it represents a single cohort of five centurys (there'd normally be six if I'm reading my TO&E's for the period correctly), supported by auxiliaries. At this scale each model represents approximately 6 men. Alternatively, the army could represent an understrength legion of five cohorts (normally 10 to a legion), in which case each model would represent approximately 35 men.