So to switch gears a bit (apart from the actually posting), rather than jawing about the Star Wars RPG I'll be giving my thoughts on the newest edition of the Warhammer Fantasy Role Play, published by Cubicle 7. I won't be going into exacting details on the mechanics, just sort of an overview.
For a bit of background, I got my proper introduction to WFRP with the second edition created by Green Ronin. I had a good deal of fun with the small handful of characters I got to play, in particular a Bretonnian Knight Errant and a Human Protagonist (i.e. professional bully).
The world of WFRP is is much darker than your typical fantasy RPG setting, with magic being (ostensibly) a very rare and unusual thing, with the general tech level being around early Renaissance with some steampunk elements, mostly revolving around gunpowder weapons. Also, the PC are not going to be grand heroes saving the world; in fact the best summary I've heard for WFRP is "the world's finest crappy peasant simulator" since most PCs are going to start off being on the lower end of the social strata and will be lucky to have a decent weapon or a leather vest. You can read more about the game's history and elements of of the setting here.
So now the preamble's out of the way, on to what my thoughts are with the latest edition of "the world's finest crappy peasant simulator." Overall, I like the tweaks made between 2e and 4e (sorry, but just couldn't get into the Fantasy Flight Games edition as it felt far too gimmicky and too much like a board game than a proper RPG). I've only played two sessions thus far, having rolled up a Human Protagonist (what can I say, I love the entire concept of the career) for the group.
One notable change right off the bat is that it's officially part of the rules that you can either roll randomly to determine things like your race and your starting career or you can pick what you want. However, if you opt to go with the random roll method, your awarded with a bit of bonus XP for each part of the process that you go with the rolled result; it's not a huge amount, but it's a nice little bonus to allow a little extra tweaking to your PC in the early going.
An issue that plagued the first and second editions was the "whiff factor" given that for most trained skills a PC would typically need to roll under a 35 on percentile dice, meaning that unless your had circumstantial bonuses you were more likely to flub the roll, which got especially tedious with combat as you could go several rounds of two opponents swinging and missing at each other. What 4e has done is changed skills so that they now have ranks (or Advances as this game calls them) that give you a bonus to your value, meaning that as a PC gains more XP they can get better at the skills in their career; starting PCs still won't be amazing but at least there's a definite improvement track.
Talents have gotten a significant overall, as many of them are now ranked and provide a small bonus to successful tests
Another tweak is to combat itself, where melee fighting is now an opposed check, with the attack hitting if the aggressor gets the better degree of success. Also changed is the introduction of Advantage, with each point you have giving you a bonus to your combat checks. Defending against attacks have been expanded, so that a creative player has a bevy of options available to them to protect against people trying to cave their face in, which is nice.
Combat overall feels a bit more dangerous, as every successful attack will inflict at least 1 point of damage no matter how good your armor rating it, so the much maligned "naked dwarf syndrome" of 1e has been averted, though it will still take a while to chip away at the health of foes with a high Wounds total. Also, if you roll doubles on a successful attack (or even a successful defense) you inflict a critical hit, which can lead to some really nasty injuries that will linger for quite some time if nobody in the group is a trained healer. So much like 2e, getting into a fight can have some nasty consequences beyond losing health points even if you win, which will definitely come to a shock to those players used to a "kick in the door" style of play.
Spellcasting has gotten quite a revamp, now requiring a skill check, with the more advanced spells needing a better degree of success. It's definitely a bit more complicated than 1e or 2e, but if you do really well on the skill check with the lower power spells, you can get a greater degree of effect.
Now I've only played a couple of sessions so far, with the GM running us through a converted 2e adventure (don't know which one), but it's been pretty fun thus far, starting off with a bar brawl to ease us into how combat worked without too drastic of consequences, leading then into a investigative segment where we had to exonerate an innocent farmer that a local (and not very trustworthy) bounty hunter looking for a quick payday by claiming the farmer was a local bandit that'd been causing problems, and leading to a rather intense social encounter between the us and the bounty hunter as each side made their case to the local road warden. Next portion had us on the road after liberating the farmer and the disreputable bounty hunter winding up with a heck of a black eye (literally and figuratively), and then getting roped into rescuing a little girl who'd been snatched up by bandits and was apparently the illegitimate daughter of a local noble baron, only to find the bandits had been ambushed by a band of goblins that had taken the little girl as a prisoner. Our attempts at being sneaky and distract/scare off the goblins didn't really work out so well, leading to our Halfling Rat Catcher catching a nasty head wound from the lead goblin, though we managed to flee away with a couple of horses and the rightly terrified little girl, which itself lead to an amusing situation with the Witch having to deal with calming down the little girl at least enough that she wasn't screaming as we made our speedy escape from the pursuing goblins. Of course, now we have to bring the girl to her father, which I'm sure that given this is WFRP is going to go swimmingly.
Overall, I've been enjoying playing this system. It's definitely a bit more on the gritty side, and I will admit it's kind of fun to play a PC that's not the typical noble and upstanding individual, and instead embracing that fact that my character in this group is a boisterous rapscallion with a penchant for punching folks in very uncomfortable places.
