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  • Just finished Excession by Ian Banks, another fun and interesting book in his Culture series. Now a week to reread Replay for book club. #

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Roleplaying with Warhammer Quest

I remember very clearly where I was when I bought my first tabletop roleplaying game. It was before one of the $50 Friday night Magic tournaments at the Wizards of the Coast Game Center in Seattle (I won one of those you know – the high water mark of my competitive Magic career). Despite being a huge board game and video game playing in my youth I had never played D&D or any other roleplaying game. I vaguely know what they were from popular culture but I didn’t have any friends that played so that was that. I made it through college without running into any players but as I played more computer RPG’s and realized the group storytelling aspect I began to be more interested in tabletop RPG’s. I was pretty anti-fantasy at that point so D&D didn’t hold a lot of interest for me but I heard that TSR, in what would be one of their final releases before being bought by Wizards, was release a science-fiction RPG.

Alternity came out and I looked over the two core rulebooks and the Game Center for weeks on end. It was so strange to me that a game was being sold as just a book – and an expensive one at that. It took me over a month to decide to splurge on them. I read both books cover to cover and was fascinated. I played the game exactly one time. I ran an adventure in an icy research station from the Dark Matter campaign setting. I was a total nervous wreck and it really wasn’t fun for anyone. But that didn’t stop me from loving to read RPG books. I have a frankly embarrassing collection of them now considering that I don’t play.

When I got the D&D 4th Edition core books I first got the idea to use them as a replacement for the combat system for Warhammer Quest. I love Warhammer Quest but when I’ve gotten it out and set up to play with the kids I was always dissatisfied with the very simple combat. Rolling those d6’s seemed so boring. So I diligently read the D&D 4th Edition books – and it was way, way too complicated. D&D is an incredibly complex game at least by the standards of the board games I’ve been playing lately. There was no way to make it work. And that’s when I said no more RPG’s for me.

That lasted until the new 3rd edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay was released. The game system is quite different from other RPG’s is ways that seemed like it would work for me. I was also taken with the possibilities of using these new Warhammer rules with that old Warhammer game. Last night we gave it a first try and it was largely a success. On of the criticism of WFRP 3e is that there are not enough enemies and that came out in our game. I was drawing the cards for spiders and minotaurs that are not in the book. In the sprit of practicing being a game master I tried to make things up as well as I could. It worked OK but just like last time I found this to be very stressful even with just playing with my 7-year-old. I don’t think I’m cut out to be a game master without a lot more practice playing. We are about halfway through the dungeon and I hope to finish up tonight. I may write up the house rules I made to simulate some of the Warhammer Quest features like the Power Phase role. All in all it was a fun, if a bit stressful time.
Warhammer

Twitter Updates for 2010-08-25

  • Getting ready to play experimental game of Warhammer Quest using the character and combat rules from Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3E. #
  • The Warhammer experiment is working. http://yfrog.com/bh6krzj #

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