Ok, we now know there are going to be "agitators, apprentice wizards, commoners, dilettantes, soldiers, thugs, zealots, and many more."

Varnias Tybalt said:

I like having all the different described careers to help me flesh out the NPCs who are more than extras in my stories.  I like putting some curbs on my own arbitrariness as a GM by having fleshed-out plausible NPCs. I find all those careers helpful in this.

I also like having my PC come from origins rooted in everyday Warhammer society, and not necessarily professional adventurers from the start.

Lastly, I think that the publishing history of WFRP has demonstrated that there has been a demand for more careers. Note all the different supplements from v1 and v2 that had extra careers available in them. FFG even published the Career Compendium which bundled all (or most) of these (from v2), so it's not as if this has escaped them.

This may mean that they're simply trying to slim this game down to a ready-out-of-the-box-heroes game concept (which is VERY D&Dish). However, I suspect that they're going to introduce and try to sell the other careers in later supplements. Given the rather steep price for the core box, and all the physical gamings aids they want to produce, I imagine that these other supplements are going to be expensive too.

I still need a good reason to move from v2 to v3. I'm simply not going to play v3 if they're going to try to milk me as their cash cow, without which they give me something that I cannot get in v2. I have absolutely no assurances that they're ever going to produce as much material as was produced for v2, so the argument that v3 is being actively published while v2 is not is not one that holds any water for me. This is made even more poignant by the idea that they're going to be producing extra career supplements, the effort for which could be put into producing sourcebooks.

GM's don't need the "boring" careers, but they are quite useful and should be retained. 

Cynical Cat said:

Hehehehe. :)

Indeed... but then again, you may WANT players, a common setting, paper and pencils...

Ah... need is a very relative thing. 

Jericho said:

jadrax said:

I was just about to say the same thing... ABOUT GM'S!

I swear, in every single game you just know that the GM is a double agent in kahoots with the enemies of the scenario. I mean who is it that let's the bad guys know where the PC's are hiding? Who is it that let's the bad guys stage nefarious ambushes? It's the GM of course!

So the next time your GM asks something along the line: "Okay, so what are you guys doing?"

Refuse to answer the question! I promise you, he/she will use the intel to tip off the player characters enemies! Gamemasters are the worst kind of snitch there is!

(P.S I would just like everybody to know that im a GM as well )

Regarding D&D vs WFRP 1e/2e NPCs.

In both systems, you can use the PC creation rules to create NPCs. And IMO, a good GM will do just that, because the NPCs should be using the same mechanics and rules the PCs have to use. 

However, D&D's NPC weakness - and the probably reason that seperate "mook rules" popped up in D&D for NPCs is the time it takes to make a single NPC who is truly a match for the PCs. If you need a NPC blacksmith who is going to be capable of taking out the party's 12th level fighter in a fair fight, then you have to spend the time making a 12th level fighter who happens to be a blacksmith.

In contrast, a GM can use the WFRP 1e/2e PC generationg rules to whip up a fairly unique NPC capable of matching the PCs in what ever area the GM needs them to in no time at all.  Take a standard Human stat block, flip to the career you want, randomly select a few advances, skills and talents, add some equipment and you're done.  Time to make a fully stat'd WFRP NPC that obeys the exact same rules the PCs do is short enough you can do it on the fly, and the players will never know.

That's one of the things that drew me to the WFRP rules system.  For D&D I need lots of pregenerated NPCs to slot in where I need them, and the time that takes means it's nice to have a good computer program for doing so, and lots of prep time before a session.  But for WFRP, an Excel spreadsheet with the right formulas can whip up a page full of humans, elves, or even orcs that I can use as baseline stats for any NPC I need, and a set of 3x5 index cards to hastily write them down when needed.

And that, IMO, is also why those basic careers are important to any core set of WFRP

In contrast, a GM can use the WFRP 1e/2e PC generationg rules to whip up a fairly unique NPC capable of matching the PCs in what ever area the GM needs them to in no time at all.  Take a standard Human stat block, flip to the career you want, randomly select a few advances, skills and talents, add some equipment and you're done.  Time to make a fully stat'd WFRP NPC that obeys the exact same rules the PCs do is short enough you can do it on the fly, and the players will never know.

Technically this is only correct if you are talking about a basic career. In order to create an accurate NPC with WFRP 2 rules, you need to go through all the NPC's previous careers, giving him all the advancements, skills and talents from them. This could be a pain in the rear-end. If you were writing material for a BI supplement and wanted to include an NPC, you had to show the work - list out all his previous careers and show that you had applied all the advances 'n stuff when determining the finished result. Very annoying.

Easier option: don't bother. Take the NPC you want and give him whatever skills you want. Odds are that you'll never need to know what the Innkeeper's Trade: Innkeeper skill is, so why bother writing it down?

I find it wasteful of time to bother working through all of an NPC's background careers if it is unlikely that interaction with that NPC is going to be significant.  Since most NPC's the party encounters are going to be seen once and never again, I find it much simpler to simply give them the things it is reasonable they will have as they need it and move on.  For important NPC's I will of course do more.  Important almost never includes the stats for random barkeep #3 or dung picker #2 that they might happen to need to ask about one rumor and never see again.  YMMV

Thats one of the joys of Warhammer, all you have to write down is "Arthur Schopenhauer - Astrologer, Ex Student" and you have almost everything you need to know, as should his stats ever become important you can quickly work out if he should have a given skill/talent."

macd21 said:

Even when applying an advanced career, generating a full character in WFRP 2e is still a breeze.  Compared to D&D, I can create a fully stat'd 3-4 career WFRP NPC by hand in half the time, or less, than I can create a 10th lvl fighter in D&D using eTools or the new 4e PC software.  And using Excel and macro's, even quicker if I want - for some careers, like Soldier, I've done just that. 

Why take the time?  One of the things that my players like about my WFRP campaigns is that every NPC is "fully" realized from their perspective.  Sure, that innkeeper they met in session two may never be seen again.  But how cool is it when some surprise the players throw at me in session fourteen let's me turn that innkeeper into a significant character that becomes important from that session on? And lets me do it with the appearance I planned it all along. The fact that I have pretty much full stats quickly for just about every NPC they encounter means that the players can't metagame who is important and who isn't.  It means that I can often reference past NPCs - NPCs who seemed unimportant at the time, which gives my campaign "life". They rarely catch me off guard by turning to an unplanned insignificant NPC, instead of the one I planned. In fact, I often don't have to plan who is significant, and who isn't, because every NPC is potentially significant.

Sure, I realize that much of this can be done by winging it, and not writing the stuff down. I just find that doing so gives me more options. Players appreciate options. I don't do that for my d20 Modern game because it's a PITA to do in d20, and players who've been in both have actually complained about it. And in WFRP 1e/2e, because of the way the career system is, even though it takes a bit of extra time, it doesn't take hardly any all compared to many other game systems.

I realize that this isn't everyone's cup of tea. But it's one of the strengths of WVRP 1e/2e, and one of the reasons I like those systems.