The LAF Games Workshop Discussion Thread

[Momotaro]

Come to think of it, D&D has a warning for GW - tinker too much with your game and you can split the player base, as 4e did.  And that's when a lot of people went to play rivals' games.

Back to Warhammer... the "buckets of dice" approach was going out of fashion when 3rd Edition was published; it certainly was when Kings of War imitated it two decades later.  So what's up with that?

To me, Warhammer games are designed to do two things:

1) Make the player feel badass - roll tons of dice, use awesome special abilities to roll even more and turn the tide of battle!
2) Reward system mastery - pore over the rules and codices to create clever rules synergies in your army lists, plan how to attack the strengths and weaknesses in specific army builds.

I'm not going to make the gross generalisation that these are the hallmark of younger players, but I will say that the rules meet those design goals admirably.  For me, I no longer have the time to paint hundreds of models, optimise army lists or play straight 48-hour gaming sessions as I did in my 20s.

I'm beginning to think that the Commands and Colours boardgame series (especially Ancients or Battlelore) have a the right balance for me of depth, playing time and numbers of models I need to paint to use the games with minis.

[Momotaro]

Got photos of both my daughters having a massive strop on the battlement of Lindisfarne Castle...  

Which proves your point, yeah 

[Too Bo Coo]

my old man would have got 6 months of perfect behaviour out of me if a castle visit was in the offing. 

the oldest fortress I have seen up close is a thai brick fort which was 18th C. I saw some cowboy era forts in the US but they were really a wooden stockade with loopholes or a wood and stone blockhouse more than a large fortified structure.

Both of those I will note were overseas too. There is nothing here in the way of any fortress like thing until the war era forts on sydney heads and the like. Simply no first hand references for game designers here.

I must say I do love reading those life in the middle ages or life in the dark ages books where they go into daily life of everyone. When you read about how the bottom of society lived and simple daily life it puts the sorts of eras FRPG's like to base themselves on into a much more defined perspective.

I have the warhammer FRPG (first version) and it has the right amount of poop and mud and muck and blackened stumpy teeth that you can have a quite historical feeling and much richer for it game universe.

 

There are a few nice places near Amsterdam. Mulderslot is one.

[Argonor]

This is my neighbour:

http://www.egeskov.dk/

Actually, the castle is renaissance, and situated about 2 km away, but our garden borders on the count's property (yes, we have a count living in an old castle, just on our doostep. Creepy, innit?  ).

This one is where the medieval kings of Denmark held their annual 'Danehof' ('Dane Court'), which has been revived as an annual medieval market:

http://www.visitnyborg.dk/denmark/nyborg-slot-danehofslottet

About 40 km away from where we live.

So, yes, lots of historical stuff to go around, even in little old Denmark. Note, that we don't have rocks/mountains, so most buildings are constructed from bricks, as we have plenty of clay and gravel.

[Cultist of Sooty]

so did your FRPG games have a 'historical' feel to them having all those references around or am I speaking out of my ass?

My circle mainly played sci fi and horror stuff. Lots of Call of Cthulhu and Traveller. Though our Call of Cthulhu was probably more like Scooby Doo than it was like Lovecraft.

You know Dragon Warriors  is still around?

http://serpentking.com/

[Vermis]

I'm not going to make the gross generalisation that these are the hallmark of younger players

I'm going off that particular tack anyway. I still think it's wonky game design, tho.

[Momotaro]

Save it for Frothers mate.

[nic-e]

Well there's a bit more to it than that - spells, special class abilities and so on.  But in general the AMOUNT of rules is pleasantly low.

You know that the basic game is a free download on the Wizards site?

http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/basicrules

There's a DM Guide with treasure, magic items and monsters, and a Player's Guide with four classes (Fighter, Rogue, Cleric and Wizard) and four races (human, various elves, dwarfs and halflings).  It's surprisingly complete - there are a lot of spells in there too.  The free documents will be updates as the new rulebooks are published.

The Hoard of the Dragon Queen has a free online supplement with more monsters:

http://dnd.wizards.com/products/tabletop-games/rpg-products/hoard-dragon-queen

The actual paid-for starter set is a rules booklet, a set of pre-generated character sheets and an adventure/mini-campaign booklet.  You don't need to buy it to play the game.

The hardback Player's Guide has more classes, more races and a full spell list.  Feats are optional, and vastly cut down from the 3e madness.

The only downside so far is that the dm's guide and monster manual won't be out until DECEMBER! but yeah, 5th ed is so smooth i've been able to start a group of complete rpg virgins without any trouble. (the campaign supplied with the starter set is a bit meh, it exists to introduce you to the game, so it serves its purpose.)

[Argonor]

so did your FRPG games have a 'historical' feel to them having all those references around or am I speaking out of my ass?

I certainly have a tendency to try to make fantasy settings in line with (western/central European and British) history (stone castles, etc), not so much themed after Danish history. We never had the wilderness, great forests, rivers, and mountains that populate most fantasy settings, and thus not so many places for dwarven halls, elven forteresses, and dragons' lairs.

[beefcake]

Just got confirmation that space hulk is on its way. Be happy to see it arrive.

[nic-e]

Dark eldar have just dropped. some pretty looking plastic pics that could be good for converting into mutants/inq28 warbands.

[Diakon]

I suspect every european LAF'er has some sort of medieval detris within 5km of their dwelling if not closer

I live in a small village on outskirts of York. Just behind my house (where I walk my dog) there is a protected arable field from the dark ages. York practically is a castle. 10-15 minutes drive from my house is Sheriff Hutton Castle (a crumbling ruin but beautiful). A bit further out we've got Castle Howard. A bunch of Abbeys. York Minster. Scarborough Castle. Also you can hardly move in the countryside round here without seeing tourist signs saying "Medieval Church" and what-not.

Totally see what you mean.

[Vermis]

Save it for Frothers mate.

What, a jokey pic?

I'll explain more, then. Like I say, I'm not so convinced by the old arguments I made, and I don't think I was as absolutist as all that anyway; but I still think that some of the points and reasons you brought up in your previous post explain a lot of the 40K/WHFB appeal to kids and why some older gamers go off them. (time, if nothing else) So I raised an eyebrow that after all that reiteration, and given your wording, you think my old argument is not just wrong, but perhaps even offensive.
I didn't want to drag the whole thing up again (like what I'm doing right now) so I stuck up a pic ref that I thought was a bit of mild ribbing. Looks like that didn't go over well. I'm sorry about that but, to be honest, only a little. (I didn't think Vic 'n' Bob were that inflammatory?)

In the meantime, I'm still confused by the point that all the appearances of control, powerful rules and buckets o' dice are neither here nor there to GW's target market. Genuinely. I'm not being confrontational there, just unconvinced.

[Major_Gilbear]

In other news, it looks like the next GW release is Dark Eldar.

Sadly, they only get two plastic kits (5 Wracks @ £22 and a Haemonculus character @ £15).

I am disappointed to see how many units are still in that crappy resin for DE, and rather hoped they might get a few more plastic kits to replace them with. Sadly though, if they didn't replace the crappy resin already for this release, it just means that any other releases will be extra to the army rather than new kits to replace older ones in poor material.

Sigh.

[beefcake]

I reckon more will come out soon. They have to pad out white dwarf weekly now don't they so it would make sense to put a months worth of miniatures out over the course of a month instead of in one go at the beginning of the month.