Review of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay

[Spell]

Reader 1: "Hey, someone wrote a positive review of Warhammer Fantasy RPG. It said that we should go out and buy the book and would even make a good setting for the legions who play D&D/d20."

Fan: "It says the game is like D&D!? Get my pitchfork and torch."

just because he gave 4 stars to the core book (a positive review, in fact), it doesn't mean that said review was correct at all about his claims of warhammer being derivative of D&D.

as other people have pointed out, if i read in a review that game X is derivated from game Y, chances are i'm not buying it, if i don't like game X, or if i own it, no matter how raving the review was.

in addition, you have to allow that people do have strong feelings, from time to time. the fact that D&D is hated by a lot more people than, say, Call of cthulhu or Warhammer FRP is only a reflection of the state of the market. D&D is a MUCH MORE widespread game, so no wonder it gets a bigger share of the hate...

does that mean that everybody stating his opinion of why Ryan was wrong has an anti-D&D agenda? good grief, that would be just as narrow minded as bashing a game system because of its name!

 

[Spell]

Wow, I too am surprised by the vitriol that has come out in this thread.

funny, i'm not...
it seems to me that Ryan, not being a random fanboy, should weight his words much better. it's not the first time that i see a flame war starting because he was "misunderstood" or because he wasn't too clear...
maybe he should pay more attention not to be misunderstood?

 

[S'mon]

I think that the use of the term "derivative" in my original review has caused my meaning to become distorted. I've asked GamingReport to revise the review as follows, which I think better encapsulates my opinion:

Change:

"The Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay game is a clever derivative of D&D 3rd Edition with an innovative character advancement system, "

to

"The Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay game shares many similar design goals to D&D 3rd Edition, and uses a "basket" of mechanics and mechanical design choices that are clearly influenced by the design of D&D 3rd Edition.

This reviewer's opinion is that this represents a positive and successful attempt to marry a valuable and loved heritage with a state of the art design philosophy.

The game also features a number of other systems that are either unique to the WFRP game, or are borrowed from other successful RPGs. These include the innovative, incremental character advancement system, a brain-blasting insanity system, and a metagaming "hero point" system.
Integration between all these sub-systems is good, and the complete game works well as a cohesive whole.

The game is "

I think that's much better. I don't entirely agree with it, but it's much more justifiable than the original wording.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

it seems to me that Ryan, not being a random fanboy, should weight his words much better.

So he should just expect to have a flock of readers who are reading his stuff waiting to take something in the negative way, almost trying as hard as possibly can be done to read something negative in what he writes?

 

[S'mon]

funny, i'm not...
it seems to me that Ryan, not being a random fanboy, should weight his words much better. it's not the first time that i see a flame war starting because he was "misunderstood" or because he wasn't too clear...
maybe he should pay more attention not to be misunderstood?

I haven't actually seen much if any vitriol in this thread, if there was any presumably the mods have deleted it. I think people have been pretty polite while still strongly taking issue with the perceived errors in the reviews.

 

[Spell]

Although I did not find his review of the main book to be negative hes "bias" towards the d20 system is rather obvious.

even for the casual reader? ever for somebody who doesn't read the credits of the D&D book line? even for somebody who doesn't use enworld boards?
i don't think his bias is that obvious... just because you are/ have been instrumental in the design and success of a game system, it doesn't mean that you can't be anything near objective, when looking at other games.

in all fairness, if it wasn't Ryan, i think the majority of us would have agreed at this point, that they were not well written or too informative.

let's forget for a moment that i believe that basing a whole review of a game on a comparison bewteen that game and another one is misleading and often tells me little about the game being reviewed, unless i'm aware of the other one works and is designed.

my view on the subject is that, even if warhammer was an almost verbatim transliteration of D&D (which is not, by any stretch of the imagination), the feel of the world alone (even in its "washed up" heroic new version) is so different from 99% d20 published worlds out there to make you feel you're playing a different game.

an example: AD&D 2nd edition. one system.
can you really say that a dragonlance campaign would be similar to a dark sun one? both might be heroic... but the feel is so different that you are effectively playing two different games.

Ryan's reviews ignored this element. They also ignored the fact that the many "similarities" between Warhammer 2nd edition and D&D 3rd edition are there because D&D 3rd edition borrowed some ideas from the original Warhammer (and from a number of different sources, as well).
i would not dream to say that D&D is derivative of Warhammer, or Call of Cthulhu, or Ars magica, or whatever. D&D 3rd edition is vaguely derivative from AD&D, and that's it.

As Ibram says, the similarities between different systems in the market today, are more the result of a general favourable attitude towards streamlined system than anything else.

GURPS 4th edition is more streamlined than its 3rd edition. so is the new world of darkness. so is warhammer, and so is D&D. they all have combat actions, they all have magic systems, and they all are about "heroes" against some sort of "bad guys"... does that make them all derivative from one another?

finally, i do agree that the prices of the books is a bit high... having said that, most RPG books today do seem to me to be a bit pricey, even wizards of the coast's ones.
and i do have to say that the bestiary is one of the best examples of that type i have seen in ages (maybe the monstercomicon is up there, too). in my opinion it beats the monster manual any time.
the fact that there is no treasure table, no hint on how to make magic items, and not a huge number of monsters are flaws only if you intend to play Warhammer as a D&D spoof. nothing wrong with that.
on the other hand, if you claim that the book is poor because it doesn't break a decennal design philosophy that attracted all the past fans of the game to begin with, then you are being a bit big headed, aren't you?

Having the first half of the book devoid of game mechanics was a wonderful idea.

i couldn't agree more. i do have an agenda here: more fluff and less crunch!!!

I'm not sure what new creatures a GM would need to add that could not be done so by modifying an existing creature.

at least that is a very legitimate request. i do think that the standardisation of D&D monster manuals is, in the long run, cause of many more troubles than it's worth, but i also see that such feelings comes from my view of game mastering, role playing and design philosophy.

 

[Spell]

besides, as somebody else already asked, what has this thread, or Ryan's reviews for that matter, to do with any discussion of rule light vs. rule heavy game systems???

 

[Spell]

So he should just expect to have a flock of readers who are reading his stuff waiting to take something in the negative way, almost trying as hard as possibly can be done to read something negative in what he writes?

no. but i've seen the "i've been misunderstod" self defence a bit too much... frankly, i'm stating to think that he's making it on purpose. that, or i should allow that a game designer (who earns his living throw writing and using words) suddenly forgets how to phrase a sentence in a way that it explains what he means as soon as he's not writing about game rules anymore. or that Ryan is not a good writer to begin with, so he just can't explain himself. i can't choose the least offending option, and, being here to discuss and not to insult, i prefer to say that he should expect people to judge his words in a different light or take offence at them, just because he's a game designer.
after all, if you saw a review of steve jackson claiming that D&D is a "clever derivation" of GURPS, wouldn't you be pissed off? what if a random fan would make such a claim? would you honestly feel as much offended? i don't think so... else you would see hate threads every time a poor review see the light of the day on the net (and there are a lot of them out there).

 

[Turjan]

besides, as somebody else already asked, what has this thread, or Ryan's reviews for that matter, to do with any discussion of rule light vs. rule heavy game systems???

Ryan's interest in WFRP2 results from this thread, where a 'rules light' vs. 'rules heavy' discussion lead to the discussion of other game systems. Briefly, WotC had done some market research on popular RPGs during the late days of AD&D2E, and the claim was that rules-light games don't actually play any faster than rules-heavy ones. WFRP2 was mentioned in this thread as a somewhat streamlined alternative to D&D3E (this is a very shortened version of a very long thread, so please don't draw any wrong conclusions from my words), and Ryan declared that he wanted to have a look at that game. The review in this thread is the result of this closer look. I think that's principally a good idea, btw.

 

[Turjan]

I've been toying with the idea of buying all of the mainstream RPGs released so far this year and doing a grand tour of them all, with detailed reviews written up after 2 or 3 sessions of playtesting.

I just want to mention that I think this is a great idea. I'm not sure whether 2 or 3 sessions will be enough to do all systems justice, but this will be sufficient for a general overview. Some games are hard to get used to if you come from D&D, though .