I’ve been playing Warhammer Fantasy Battle (See my WFB Pics) lately and had a vague idea of adding in some roleplay aspects to the games (to flesh out the time between battles). The only roleplaying I’ve done recently has been some few D&D 3.5 games which have left me sort of flat and thinking back to some of the epic Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (WFR) games I’ve had in the past I wondered if maybe I should just go back to that. The WFB games would certainly dovetail better into the WFR milieu. The WFR I’ve played in the past was 2nd edition. Aspects of that system I loved included the career system and the use of percentile chance dice. The writing was great and the fantasy world was well fleshed out. That’s what led me to look into the new WFR 3rd edition recently rewritten and released by Fantasy Flight Games (FFG).

I became quickly disillusioned. It appears that FFG has concentrated more on making the system difficult to copy than on making a good system. Its become a common practice for gamers to PDF the copious manuals for role playing games because the dozens of supplements (each at over $30 a copy) present a serious barrier of entry to getting started in a new game. Once a gaming group gets going and folks are having fun players usually end up buying a printed copy of the important books for convenience. WFR 3rd ed. is a mashup of custom dice, action cards, and other materials that are probably not necessary for roleplaying but hard to copy. FFG decided to change the mechanics of WFR entirely in the process making older materials largely incompatible. Gone are the percentile dice I loved so much and replaced by “dice pools” (which reminds me of White Wolf which I don’t like). Add to these charges a ridiculous price ($100 for the box set) for epic FAIL.

Check out Zanysite’s review as well.

Maybe I can just get a few 2nd edition books off ebay.