I was watching the new video preview for Warhammer Fantasy 3, and was in general... dismayed.
A mixture of board game and rpg, with a heavy focus on linking role-play and game mechanics. It has all the hallmarks of an expensive attempt to put into practice some of the worse rpg design theory to appear online.
Which brings up the idea that many of the new game designers (Mearls and 4E being the first significant one) may have been too involved with the Internet and it's unrestrained (and unrealistic) idealism and too detached from how people actually play rpgs.
Or it may be something more boring. People love to break new ground in general just to do it, heedless of the downsides. Combining board games & RPG might look like a good idea to such people.
Whatever the case, the last thing I need is an rpg with a bunch of cards and cardboard that will wear out in play. As much as the game company would like the constant income, I have better uses for my money.
Not that warhammer was ever a setting or game that interested me in the first place. But I bet a lot of old fans of the game are going to be disappointed at this change in direction.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
4 comments:
The new WFRP certainly does include a lot of stuff (in both positive and negative senses). Our FLGS is getting in a demo copy so we will get a chance to see how it plays. I admit I am curious even though I do not think it is the system for me.
In some ways it's an interesting change of direction.
Where 4E tried to bring MMORPGs to the table top, WH 3rd seems to be trying to do the same with the board and card games.
Deadlands proved the attraction of cards and odd-ball die rolling.
But when I step back and look at the expense (the components wearing out that will need to be replaced adds on top of this), the concept loses much of its appeal to me.
Add in 'role-playing' mechanics, and all appeal disappears.
Plus it's Warhammer. Beh.
I really liked the original WFRP (I played it a less tongue-in-cheek and a bit more hopeful than may have been intended) and purchased some of the 2nd edition material but I don't see much I'm interested in here. My preference has always been for mechanics that are unobtrusive during play as possible, not mechanics that need to be overtly manipulated.
I've pretty much ignored this as I've never played WFRP, I just knew there was some debate going on. Just watched the video and I'm appalled. I'm no fan of D&D4E, but I always thought the comparisons to a video game were overstated. It just seemed to me that 4E was trying to replicate some of the "flare" of CRPGs.
But this, this is as close as I've ever seen to a tabletop game being structured just like a computer program. As the camera pans over lovely cards and interlocking puzzle pieces, I swear I can see the IF-THEN superimposed on top of it. I've always been annoyed by the use of the term "RPG" paired with anything run on the computer, and this appears to have just as little in common with actual tabletop role-playing.
It seems where we're coming to the point in which the only reason actual players exist is to be the randomizer in the game. 'Role-playing' mechanics, indeed. If this takes off (and the only thing probably holding that back is the price), I can't imagine anyone from a new generation of gamers having any idea of what to do with any pre-2010 game set down in front of them.
Don't get me wrong. I love box sets. I love pretty and useful components. I don't even doubt that a group of players could get their hundred dollars worth of fun out of one or two nights of playing this game. I just don't see how it has anything to do with any type of role-playing as I've done it for 30+ years.
Aside: I love these canned deliveries on the part of Little and the others about how this implementation really recaptures the "old game". Really? This is the only way one could possibly get back to the roots of the first edition and its setting? Even WOTC didn't have the balls to imply that 4E was designed to get back to D&Ds old school roots, afaik.
Post a Comment