It's funny that they make such a point about it all being optional, because when I present it to my players, I'm going to tell them how manditory it is. 

Well, the mechanical bonus is sadly a bit of a bribe I think, kind of a "yes you can have the nummy carrot, but first you need to put a little effort into your character amd background for Mr. GM." As pathetic as that may sound a lot of the people I play with need some kind of device like this to get them thinking about their characters.

I dont think any tool to encourage players to get more involved with the game and thier character is bad.

Good point Badger, some players need to be "encouraged" (bribed) to do this stuff.  Though in long run I don't enjoy running games where those are the majority.  I can have about 33% "ride along, pure reactive, don't contribute input to story" at table but over that and it becomes "not fun" for me.

BTW, I am still finding when I mouseover the post editing functions (font size etc.) that they appear in Spanish (tried on two different computers)

I think these background cards are great. They provide fantastic story hooks for the PCs. There is no way for the PCs to know in advance what NPCs will be involved with an adventure and these background cards give them story hooks so that when they meet these NPCs they have some history. If these NPCs are involved in the stories, as it sounds like they will be, then these cards will add a lot of depth.

Looks great, hard to say if it works great. That depends on the rest of the campaign I guess. If they help the PC's get invested in the campaign in a good way it can be great. If it only feels forced (i.e. "I'll go talk to this person on my background-card because we have nothing else to do"). The bonuses seems to be nice and not game breaking, once per session stuff seldom breaks the game. The players in my group needs all the help they can get so this will be a nice addition and I think they'll be all over the cards when we start TEW.

Only thing I see as that might be an issue with these cards at this point is that 6 different backgrounds are quite few, and I feel that the re-usability of the cards is quite low. Use them once (we are 4-5 players) and almost all of them have been used. It is enough that one or two characters die and you have to start re-using cards or create a character without a card, that might feel boring.

Lastly, it's nice to get a "real" update about TEW at last.

valvorik said:

I normally only post from a tablet, so don't notice mouse overs. On the PC now and all my mouse overs for the post formatting is in a foriegn language too.

Doc, the Weasel said:

]

Same here !

JH

DevoutBadger said:

I have emailed tech support about that, for me it's Spanish and doesn't matter what PC or IP address I'm on.  Unless Spain just annexed Canada, something is up.

valvorik said:

..still so insulated  ;)

Yes, I'm getting the same thing.  Esta kinda' fun'a using'a de language-o' por el RPG supposedly-a set-a en de Germany de old-o'.  They could have at least-o put it in German.  Then we'd be onto something!

jh