Fantasy Flight Games’ new edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay is a formidable-looking thing. Between this look at the game’s contents and this description of the pre-release demo scenario, I’m getting a little wary:
Be among the first to experience this revolutionary new storytelling system with the introductory adventure, “A Day Late, A Shilling Short,” designed to walk new players through everything they will need to know to play.
From what I’ve seen of the game’s design, and what little I know about its design goals, I believe this new edition will be fun to play but… will it be fun to learn? A walk “through everything you will need to know” doesn’t sound like, you know, a great adventure experience. It sounds like an orientation. It makes me wonder, just how much will I need to know to play?
More and more, I think part of the brilliance within D&D 4 is that it is very nearly as much fun to learn as it is to play. (Provided, I think, you have someone on hand who already knows how.) With a few uses of a few powers, you’re into the game and eager to experiment. That new character classes and monsters are fun to try out — instead of being onerous — is an example of this. Players, in my experience, are motivated to say “Let’s see what happens when I use this power” instead of saying “How do I use this power?”
For Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3, I’m wondering how much fun it will be to arrange and prepare all those components for play. I’m wondering if putting the machine together at the table will be as much fun as tooling around in it. Components can be great fun, though, so my curiosity remains high. (If nothing else, the game should be difficult to pirate.) I’m pretty confident that it’ll be fun to play. I’m wondering if it’ll be fun to learn.
Self-Disclosure: I’ve never played a WFRP game before, but I’m quite excited by this. I prompted my FLGS (The Compleat Strategist in Falls Church VA) to be one of the places where the release event will be happening, and I will be joining it. So I’ll let you know when I know more.
I highly suspect that the learning adventure is intended to give the rpg-literate die-hard warhammer fans who are skeptical about the new direction the design has taken a chance to see how it runs and be won over into proselytizing word-of-mouthers. Everything that I’ve read and seen about the game suggests that, in typical FFG fashion, much of the information needed to play is presented in easy-to-read player-facing spots, like the action cards or stance meter.
Although, I’ve seen lots of people try to “learn by doing” with an RPG. What is a test combat but a detailed interactive example of play? I remember that GURPS 3rd edition actually came with a teensy choose-your-own-fighting-fantasy-esque solo adventure to see how this whole “rpg” thing was supposed to work. Maybe an even better example is Touch of Evil, one of my favorite board games (well, I’ll argue it’s an RPG as well, but that’s another cat for another day). TOE highly (and rightly) recommends that new players always try the slightly easier but much less complicated “basic game” before moving on to the endlessly entertaining “advanced game.” Maybe we can look forward to a day of not minding if you play the game in order to play the game.
Here’s hoping, Nick, that I’ll be able to get out and play the game here in town, too. For sure, though, come back and let us know what you think of it. I can’t wait to hear some actual play reports on this one.
Have you heard about fluency play?
I think if learning the game were fun, they wouldn’t call it “learning to play” they’d call it “playing.”
The best games are the ones where you make the fewest choices as possible before you play, and the choices you make during play are given context by your actions. So learning is doled out as you play.
Learning a new RPG is fun for Engineer players for whom discovering the system itself is fun, but for Player players for whom playing the game is fun, I think it’s a barrier to entry. Something you have to do before you can play. The designer’s job should be to minimize that. 4E does as good a job of that as I’ve seen, though the Character Builder helps a lot. With the CB you realize that a Human Fighter is picking 1 At Will he *doesn’t* know which is a lot easier than which 3 he does.
It doesn’t look like learning it will be that involved, so I’m not worried for myself about whether it’ll be fun.
I’m more eager to see if FFG can successfully change the packaging and user interface of a roleplaying game, and, by extension, the Warhammer world.
The level of the gaming industry that consists of everything below Wizards has been stuck on more or less one package and interface since the nineties. Core book, character sheet, PDF quickstart. Stream of small supplements to sustain customers’ belief that your core product is “supported.”
Be neat to see something different work.
Right on, Russell. This is more than just packaging the elements of an RPG into a box as a change up of product — this is changing what the product actually is. While some folks have already been quite vocal in hobby echo chambers about their misgivings for the form, it remains to be seen how gamers in general will accept an alteration of the product itself.
I for one am game, as I still have my WHFRP 2nd Edition books should I get nostalgic. Bring on the new.
The question, to me, is whether this new game can nab new players by actually looking like a game (or a board game, if we need to be specific) to the casual player. Just the fact that it’s boxed and complete (by some measure) makes it accessible in a way that the supplement-driven model doesn’t. People expect to learn a board game when they sit down to play — it’s less intimidating than being initiated into a new hobby altogether.
Green Ronin’s Dragon Age RPG seems to be aiming for similar accessibility and completeness. Could this finally be a seismic shift (or better yet, expansion) in the way we package RPGs? I don’t need everything to come in a box like this, but I’m happy to meet good-looking newcomers.
I’ll have to go into the subject of UI’s for RPGs at a later date — I’ve had a draft of that post in the hopper for months, I think.
>I’ll have to go into the subject of UI’s for RPGs at a later date — I’ve had a draft of that post in the hopper for months, I think.
Yes please!
Jason, I wasn’t familiar with the term, but I’m certainly familiar with the practice. From the post you linked:
“For instance, you might first do an intro scene for each character, with no conflict, getting comfortable with description and dialogue. Then do simple conflict scenes, with a simple card draw or die roll. Then run conflicts adding bonuses for traits. And so on.”
This is very nearly what I did when I ran my one-shot of Chronica Feudalis, and it’s what I try to do when I demo games. Overall, it’s great. Sometimes, people get frustrated that they didn’t get to use this or that vital trait in the previous scene, when we weren’t using all the rules. So it goes.
Great post, though, thanks for sharing it with us!
Video games have made learning fun ever since someone figured out that reading a manual is crappy. In the GTA series, if you get on a bike, hey, the controls for a bike pop up. Now you’re in a car. Hey, look, the controls for the car. Let’s do a shooting mission. Okay, now let’s do a sneaking mission. And so on. If RPGs are just now learning what video games have known for years, it might be the first time that they came up with something new and completely goddamn obvious first.
I didn’t really find Dragon Age “fun” to learn so much as “refreshing” because it is slick as hell and fast to learn… I’m not certain WFRP 3 will ever qualify as a game easily learned, or rather, it’s basics look quick to learn, but I think real skill in results interpretation will be necessary for GMs – and there may be a wicked time sink there. We shall see.
I worry that I may have been part of the problem for years: one of my dirty secrets has been sometimes enjoying “the game where I read the book” more than “the game where I play a game”. Artesia is probably the best and most recent example, but that was pretty much all of my experience with D&D and World of Darkness in my burning youth. Why make games simple to learn by doing when you’re marketing to kids who _enjoy_ reading the rules again and again?