Timewaster's Guide Archive
Games => Role-Playing Games => Topic started by: The Jade Knight on April 08, 2005, 09:39:36 PM
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Out of curiosity, is anyone planning on doing a review of WFRP 2nd Edition (recently released by Black Industries)?
As a fan of the 1st edition (minus the magic system, which has been completely reworked in the 2nd), I'll probably get it sooner or later. I'd like to see what the Time Wasters have to say about it, though.
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All the folks talking about it over at RPG.net say it's an excellent update. I'm a fan of the first edition, but I just don't see myself ever running it so I doubt I'll pick it up.
Apparently, very well done.
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Yeah, I've not seen it yet (apart from the previews), but it looks like it's fixed all the old flaws, looks way cooler, and is just generally awesome.
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I always liked the career system and it sounds like they've made that even better.
Plus, now being a spellcaster is dangerous! Like possibly being sucked into the chaos realms after casting a spell dangerous.
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And Spellcasting now is all college based (cool stuff), Divine magic has its own spells (yay again!), ingredients are optional (more yay!) and it's got winds of magic stuff!
And Wizards don't suck anymore! (though, actually, I never thought they were that useless. Academics are inherently useful.
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I used to play first edition in High School. I'd love to try out the new one.
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Yeah, I broke down and got it. Another pre-Boards gift (last set ever tomorrow!).
It's beautiful. I'm hooked. Again.
I'll field any questions if anyone has any.
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I've got the mainbook, plundered vaults (the adventure compo), the GM screen and the Bestiary. Also, the Blood on the Reik book by GW, a empire background book basically.
Only read the first two so far but they are excellent. The corebook is beautiful, with simple but good rules and a magic system that truly feels warhammerish. I plan to start reviewing them When I Can Be BotheredTM.
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I've allwayse wondered how much WFRP incoreperated the minature game or if had nothing to do with those rules.
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It's similar enough that conversion is a simple matter of moving some stats around. The book is in both yards and squares (inches) for miniature use, but the actual combat rules are totally different from tabletop.
It also only mentions miniatures once (when it explains the presense of the squares measurements) and there is nary a model in sight, so it's not got the blatent cross-promotion of D&D 3.5.
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Until this new version, The Old World of WFB and The Old World of WFRP had grown completely apart. WFB had evolved the setting to where it wasn't quite so dark.
This book brings things back in line with WFB in ways I like and don't like. I like old Bretonnia, when it wasn't all noble and chivalrous. I miss that. I also detect a shift in focus from the enemy within to the enemy without. Of course, both of these changes are easy to ignore.
I think I'm going to give Plundered Vaults a skip, but I like what I see with the Bestiary. That's on the purchase list. I also have Shadows Over Boggenhofen and Death on the Reik from the old system (and the famous Enemy Within campaign). So I'm all set to go.
Plus, random character generation which is much improved over 1st edition. No more naked dwarf syndrome! No more overpowered elves! A magic system that not only works, but is AWESOME.
Yeah, now I want to play/run.
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I'm set to run it after one of the currently running games in my group ends. I ran the first part of the Through the Drakenwalds adventure in the corebook, and in 2 turns of combat (the mutants getting 1 turn) the players did a total of 5 wounds to the mutants, recieved 6 wounds back and the mage miscast and nearly got an insanity point. All this and the mutants still need their second turn. Mr Halfing rogue with WS 18 may soon be a ketchup smear.
/me chortles
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Tell me how the adventure plays out. Just skimming it, it looks better than the adventure in the back of WFRP 1st ed.
I see you registered over at the BI forums, Entropy. I couldn't let you have your name in lights as the "Most Recent Member" so I had to join too.
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Curse you! CURSE YOU AND YOUR FOUL PLOYS!
I read the adventure in detail earlier, and it's pretty interesting. The main problems is that some parties will totally ignore a lot of the stuff - many will take efforts to avoid or ignore the subplots. Which would be sad. In that situation, goblins are recommended :P
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Oh and the 1st edition adventure was hilarious - all these gangs in some Secret Underground Fort. But it had a beast of nurgle, which makes up for it.
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Wait a second here, I thought Green Ronin was going WFRP? Or was that something else?
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It's developed and designed by Green Ronin, and published by Black Industries which is a RPG sub-company of Black Library which is a book and novel sub-company of Games Workshop, which is a evil and corruption sub-company of Devil Inc.
:)
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Oh Hey - Mr P, take a look in the 'warhammer world guide' section of this website, at the map of norsica. Amazingly beautiful :)
http://www.warhammerforever.com/background.asp#60
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That's really cool.
Too bad I'll most likely never have use for it since, if I ever run, it'll be nearly strictly based in the Empire. At least most likely.
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Our review copies of this just showed up, and I've already read the main book--excellent stuff. I'm glad to see the career system is not only intact but improved. Tell me again why I can only play in one RPG campaign at a time? Oh yeah--life.
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I finally picked up the Bestiary (absolutely gorgeous!) and got my old Enemy Within campaign modules from home.
Color me ready to play!
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The Bestiary ranks as the best monster type book in the history of the world. It was a interesting and fun read that, when I got near the end, had a few stats! Purely bonus to my mind.
Of course, a lot of the stuff I already knew from my days as GW fanboy #245236 but still. The Giant section was a particularly good one.
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It at least ties with The Monsternomicon as the best monster book ever. And it does that easily.
And b/t that and stuff I've seen at the game store, part of me wants to start an Ogre Kingdoms army. I've got enough willpower to stop myself from doing it...but I still want to.
Oh, and Entropy, check out Table Top Games for a conversion project you might be interested in.
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For some interesting insights on ogre kingdoms, google up 'golden throne webcomic'. Very funny, alternatively bashing and praising GW.
If we are talking about armies, name a warhammer army, apart from ogre kingdoms, chaos (already own, got tired of) and Dark Elves (already own)... chances are I desire such an army. On my list on 'millionare scenario' things to buy is every army, 3000pts, painted by professionals. :)
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The GW army that I have long craved, and crave still, is a Space Marine army composed entirely of scouts. Someday when I'm rich...
Oh, just got through with a preliminary skim of the Bestiary, and I love it. And I love the Character Pack--an incredible character creation summary and a literal pad of chracter sheets. Not too happy about the way the sheet handles skills (there's nowhere for Common Knowledge and Speak Language, which every character has at least two of), but on the whole I'm quite pleased.
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I skipped the character pack, though I may pick it up since it's the only place to get a good character sheet since all the fan-made ones I've seen are horrible. I do have the GM pack though. The adventure included is decent and they've reprinted the sample buildings from the appendix of first edition. The screen itself is good except for one 'critical' omission of the table used to determine the severity of crits.
You could have an Epic army of scouts if you wish...granted it would be composed of counters, but I'm working on converting the Epic system to hex and counter. I'm sure you've already read the topic in TTG.
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Actually, I recommend against the character pad. Trust me - you make a starting character, you will fill up almost all the room in Talents, Trappings, and Skills. Try making a character, and giving him 20 advances (should be enough to get halfway through his second career) - then count up how many lines you need for his information. Characters will need far far more room than the sheet provides. I recommend the character sheethere (http://www.warhammerforever.com/character-creation.asp?warhammer_edition=WFRP%202nd%20Edition#76) instead. I do, however, find the character pads booklet, with it's section on names, to be useful. When you are putting in 20 npc's names can be a hassle...
With plundered vaults, and the GM screen, i've got a whole bunch of pre-made adventures, so I should be able to slot them into the campaign i've got planned :)
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Yeah, we got Plundered Vaults, which looks cool, and the first book of an enormous campaign called, I think, Ashes over Middenheim, or something like that.
Good tip on the character sheet.
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WHAT?!?!?!?
You got Ashes of Middenheim???
That's not even out yet.
Fell, is there an extra review copy? How many jumping jacks would I have to do to get that book from you?
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You'll have to tell me what ashes is like. I was tempted by it but the fact that it's a 3 parter with the final part out next year makes it unsuitable :(
Oh, and Mr P - I take it you've seen there is a guy updating TEW to fit in with storm of chaos?
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Sending you Ashes of Middenheim might work pretty well, Mr. P: I'll only have time to test Plundered Vaults, so dividing up the workload would help us get everything reviewed in good time. How about this: I'll do the main book, the character pack, and Plundered Vaults, and you do the GM Pack, the Bestiary, and Ashes of Middenheim; just paypal me the shipping cost and I'll pop it in the mail. Sound like a deal?
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That sir, sounds like an excellent idea.
Just send me your paypal link and the shipping cost.
@Entropy: Someone is updating TEW? Ooooh, where?
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Check the BI forums for it, it's on there somewhere. I saw a few mentions of such a thing.
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The review has landed: http://www.timewastersguide.com/view.php?id=1064
I played this back in high school and loved it; the new edition brings back all that Warhammery goodness and mixes it with cool new elements, a much-needed design balance, and some overall great writing. I highyl recommend it.
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You really need to learn to close your HTML tags Fell, this time it was both the link and italics tags.
Anyway, Both Entropy and Fell teaming up for a review is nothing sacred?
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Aw man. You lost my bacon introduction! :(
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Yeah, sorry. I kept most of your stuff, but I couldn't make the bacon thing work.
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Holy cow, Spriggan: if you thought the html was bad, just imagine how bad the review would have looked if you knew how to spell. That's what I get for writing and editing when it's too late and I have a headache that pulses with unearthly life.
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You know, for having been around RP gamer for most of my life and hanging around the people that come to this board, I never knew WFRP existed or what it was until I read this review a couple minutes ago. I guess the miniatures obscured it from me.
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Well, it's never been a huge game, just a well-loved one by its core group of fans. I'm hoping that the new edition will catch on a bit more, but we'll see.
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Holy cow, Spriggan: if you thought the html was bad, just imagine how bad the review would have looked if you knew how to spell. That's what I get for writing and editing when it's too late and I have a headache that pulses with unearthly life.
Holy cow Fell it's not my job to spell correctly!
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I know that, I'm just saying that the article was much worse than you thought. You only pointed out a small portion of its many mistakes.
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It was more of a friendly reminder, since I usealy fix the end tags (for discuss this in our forums) in 4 out of 5 articles you post.
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So, my copy of 2nd edition came in the mail yesterday, along with the Bestiary and Plundered Vaults.
I've been going through the rules whenever I have a chance, and I'd like to say that the game is vastly improved in some big ways (particularly magic, and balancing, and a few other things, like actions), and it's worse in a few little ways (I don't like way they treat some of the weapons, I think the way skills are handled now is more D&Dish I don't like it).
Overall I'm glad I got it, but I'm disappointed that anything got worse since 1st edition. I mean, there was no point for them to to make the skill system stupider, except that now it's more streamlined for moronic players.
I also think there are parts where the D10 really feels "forced" - where other rolls would make more sense, but they kept a D10 just to make everything D10.
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How is the skills system worse? They added the +10/+20 skill mastery thing, for starters.
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Now, every action essentially has a "default" skill (à la D&D), and if you don't have that skill, you're at 50% for the action (which is very low). It used to be that everything was truly attribute based, and skills merely provided bonuses/made it so you didn't have to test. I do like the +10/+20 thing, but I don't like the way they've made the skills so much more critical, especially considering how low most PC attributes generally are.
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Need some adventures for the new WFRP? Well, Plundered Vaults has you covered.
Here's a review: http://www.timewastersguide.com/view.php?id=1096
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I already bought that. Glad to see the review is up.
=þ
If it had been up earlier, I probably would have bought AoM instead, but oh well.
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Black Industries has linked to a few of our reviews.
http://www.blackindustries.com/default.asp?range=wfrp&template=reviews