The Gaming Den

So they managed to produce a Witcher RPG. The only way that R Talsorian must have even been let within 10 miles of that IP is reciprocity for the Cyberpunk license. It's the only way I can assume that this happened.

I haven't read much of the core book yet but I will say it's poorly written, like grammatically and structurally poorly written with bad typos everywhere, it uses a lifepath system for chargen, and uses a slightly overhauled system the Cyberpunk 2020 used.

One of the stranger things is that it assumes that people would want to play like... halfling merchants or bards or Generic Armsman #347 or shit when you can run around as a witcher or sorcerer. Which I guess is okay because you can basically die on critical hits (natural 10 on 1D10) or critical fumbles (Natural 1) if the dice gods hate you. So everyone is apparently tissue paper and 20% of the time you run the risk of cutting your own head off or killing the other guys

If I can push myself through it I'll give a bit of a review. I am familiar with the first two books, and all 3 games, but the background chapters were fairly obtuse and uninteresting. If anyone wants to particularly savage it over a bottle of something alcoholic, I can probably share the PDF. The online consensus seems to be that the thing is poorly written and an anachronism of the 90s, and probably the mid 90's at that.

This was talked about on the Discord a little while ago.

The main point I remember is that apparently Heavy Armor is a crazy death trap to wear.

Yeah. It used to and still does give penalties to parrying and dodging, but now it doesn't stack with itself. Granted, now Light Armor is also going to be a death trap because all they have to do is roll over your parry/dodge/relocate and have a to hit roll 7 or higher than your armor's Damage Redu-I mean Stopping Power.

Edit: What the fuck do you have to be smoking to make armor check penalty apply to all defenses

WiserOdin032402 wrote:Yeah. It used to and still does give penalties to parrying and dodging, but now it doesn't stack with itself. Granted, now Light Armor is also going to be a death trap because all they have to do is roll over your parry/dodge/relocate and have a to hit roll 7 or higher than your armor's Damage Redu-I mean Stopping Power.

Edit: What the fuck do you have to be smoking to make armor check penalty apply to all defenses

Sorry guys, I started to get into it and then Destiny 2 Forsaken dropped and I decided that was a lot more fun than reading a TTRPG that is a serious throwback to the 90s, and not in a good way.

I couldn't even get past the lore and the world setting. I've read the witcher novels and played all the games and the lore/world building section just blew chunks. It's sort of "in character" but it's bad in character and the commentary on all the NPCs from the game and the novels is teeth gritting.

The amount of errata that's getting churned out is impressive too. Originally I was pissed that you could only buy a hardcopy at... was it Gencon? Gencon. But seeing how many errors, errata, and just plain fuckups are in the book, I'm glad I didn't get a first printing, even though I read better from dead tree books.

I have a new e-reader now so I'll upload the thing and see if I can get through some more of it, but I'm really not thrilled with the game right now.

TheFlatline wrote: Sorry guys, I started to get into it and then Destiny 2 Forsaken dropped and I decided that was a lot more fun than reading a TTRPG that is a serious throwback to the 90s, and not in a good way.

I couldn't even get past the lore and the world setting. I've read the witcher novels and played all the games and the lore/world building section just blew chunks. It's sort of "in character" but it's bad in character and the commentary on all the NPCs from the game and the novels is teeth gritting.

The amount of errata that's getting churned out is impressive too. Originally I was pissed that you could only buy a hardcopy at... was it Gencon? Gencon. But seeing how many errors, errata, and just plain fuckups are in the book, I'm glad I didn't get a first printing, even though I read better from dead tree books.

I have a new e-reader now so I'll upload the thing and see if I can get through some more of it, but I'm really not thrilled with the game right now.

As someone who's fully read through it, I find it more appealing than modern D&D, but that isn't saying much. Pathfinder 2 isn't looking much better but a shit playtest is a shit playtest. The amount of eratta being churned out to try to fix the game tells me someone cares enough to make this into more than just one player's handbook and nothing else. A lot of the eratta, from what I've read of it, was mainly PDF conversion errors, with some tense missing and some clarifications needed.

I don't honestly know how to feel about its design. On the one hand I'm opposed to the deliberate throwback designs but on the other hand, the game is putting forth way more effort to be a game and have actual rules for stuff. They even want to make monster manuals and such.

But that shouldn't be fucking praise, and the fact that it is is disgusting.