So… where to start? I’m preparing to run the game next week from the pre-order PDF, and it seems a little incomplete.
General:
None of the weapons or other equipment are given any stats. I understand that the game is intended to use the skirmish game cards… but they aren’t included in the book at all. Do you need to download them from the website and carefully scan those for items that are not available in the RPG and/or have changed stats (I see there are at least a couple that have?)
Adventure (WARNING: Some minor spoilers for the adventure below!):
2) None of the opponents in the adventure are given equipment. The adventure states I should just give opponents what I want… but I have no idea what would be suitable for starting characters. It would be great to get a breakdown in the book (or at least adventure) of gear packages (rookie/standard/veteran) indicating what is suitable.
3) There is also no guidance about which opponents make for a suitable challenge. The adventure again simply states to choose a mix of the cards, but a veteran is much better than a standard raider, and I have no idea whether 1, 2, or more of a group should be veterans.
4) The adventure includes an encounter with both “immature/small radscorpions” and “adult radscorpions”, but only one unit card is given. Are the descriptions just flavour (i.e. all radscorpions use the given stats), or are some stats missing? The same encounter describes a radscorpion as “some distance away”, but gives no guidelines for how far or how long it might take to arrive.
5) None of the expertise skill tests in the adventure state the difficulty or resistance - should they be assumed to be 1 and 0 respectively? If so, that seems to make black/yellow effect dice on expertise skill tests largely superfluous…
6) Encounter C1 (p116) gives no guidance about how many foes should be used for a balanced encounter.
7) The second paragraph on p117 seems to be confused. It claims that Yarwen and company was behind the first encounter of the adventure, and the settlers want revenge against them… but as far as I can tell from the first encounter, Yarwen wasn’t behind that encounter at all???
8) Once again, there is absolutely no guidance for the encounter(s) with Yarwen and company, in terms of numbers (just mention of them being around a dozen), breakdown of unit cards or item cards. Some suggestions at least would be very welcome.
All over the entry for the RPG EXPANSION to Wasteland Warfare it says it’s an EXPANSION and gives you the option to buy it bundled with the 2 player starter set (or wait for the dedicated box at Christmas).
Yup. Download the rules you are missing (for free) from the website. Discard the items not used in the RPG. (Which items do you think work differently? I’m pretty sure they all work the same way.)
If you had WW, the unit cards come with default equipment and AI behaviour printed on them. This is not required for the RPG, but it’s a good guide to how to equip them. Failing that, playing the Fallout video games, Wastelanders tend to be armed with pipe rifles and pipe pistols. You need to tailor the combats to your group. If you’ve got a group made entirely of combat type Defenders/Hunters/Heavies/Infantry/Snipers/Thugs then you need to up the difficulty and better weapons (assault rifles, combat shotguns) will be required. The authors have no idea what characters you’re using.
See above. If your party is 3 Supermutant Heavies and one Thug, you’re going to need more Veterans than if you’ve only got Researchers and Technicians. Assuming you have 1 noncombat character, 2 average, and one combat specialist: I’d run 5 Raiders, 1 Scavver, 1 Psycho, 1 Veteran (all armed with machetes, pipe pistol for the Scavver and pipe rifles for everyone else).
Page 105, little grey box at the top of the page.
Again, depends on the party. If no-one in the party has access to Black and Yellow dice for the relevant test then they’re not going to pass a Difficulty 2, Resistance 1 test. If they do have bonus dice, then Difficulty 1, Resistance 0 makes their skills useless (well, there are rules for succeeding with extra Impact, so not completely useless). I would probably default tests to Difficulty 1, Resistance 1 but make things easier if that’s unreasonably punishing. Section 5 The Overseer is all about how to balance tests.
Action economy is a powerful thing. I’d run one per player character.
Yarwen was behind the attack on Hagerstown. The survivors formed a caravan and left to make the trek to the (relative) safety of Diamond City but were attacked several times by Raiders (including the attack in Chapter 1).
The battle map on page 112 lays out 1 Behemoth, 2 Hounds, 4 Brutes, 5 Super Mutants. If you were desperate to add a Hammer, I’d replace the mirrored Super Mutant directly in front of Yarwen. I would use the default equipment on the back of their unit cards, but without cards I’d say: Combat Shotgun on all the regular Super Mutants, Sledgehammers on the Brutes, Fire Hydrant Bat on the Behemoth, Mutant Hound Bite on the Mutant Hounds, Supersledge and Combat Shotgun for the Hammer. You can download the Battle Mode Force Lists for all the factions for free from the website to see what kind of equipment units typically have access to.
Well, I assumed that (based on the fact that the first words on the product page are " A STANDALONE ROLEPLAYING EXPANSION FOR FALLOUT: WASTELAND WARFARE" - apologies for the capitalisation, it’s copy/pasted from the page). Further on it does actually state it is standalone (though does also mention there that you need the free downloadable cards), and some of the bundles are just book and dice which backs up the idea of it being standalone.
Either way, there are several cards (Perks, Unit and item cards for opponents) that are called out in the book as not working with the RPG and nowhere does it provide a complete/exhaustive list.
My suggestion would be to a) include the relevant card PDFs with the book PDFs; and b) provide a consolidated list (either in the book or as a download) of which cards are usable as-is, and which aren’t - ideally with the text of any replacement cards. It should probably also mention the fact you need the cards in the book, not just on the product page!
Thanks for pointing out the minis on the battlemaps - I totally missed that somehow. While I think it would be good to also list the opponents (and/or include minis on all the battlemaps - that is possibly why I missed them after the first few didn’t have any minis), that does alleviate my concerns a bit.
In terms of the equipment… while I agree that it might be difficult to give one single set of gear balanced for all play groups, Modiphius devs know much better than I do at this point what would make a balanced encounter… I honestly have no clue and leaving things entirely in my hands tells me either that the game is very unbalanced (a fair encounter for one group of starting characters would wipe out a different group of starting characters), or that Modiphius just couldn’t be bothered including this info…
My suggestion of three tiers of gear (one for a combat heavy party, one for a balanced party, and one for a combat light party) should cover most of the bases and would at least give me some idea of what to use as a starting GM. Thanks for your suggestions though - they definitely help give me some idea, and it wouldn’t have been so hard for Modiphius to include something like that. What you have given with a disclaimer that it may need to be adjusted to suit your group is lightyears better than giving nothing and telling the GM to figure it out (and also what every other RPG on the market does) .
The same thing holds (perhaps even more strongly) for the radscorpions and the “little grey box” on the top of p105. That doesn’t actually give any concrete advice or numbers, and as a new GM I have absolutely no idea how to adjust the stats in a fair and balanced way. The dev know much better, and could have used this opportunity to provide an example of how it could be done…
Finally, where does the adventure talk about Yarwen being behind the attack on Hagerstown? I can’t find that information anywhere, and it seems unlikely as it is weeks of travel away from his current location.
Anyway - thanks for your advice. It definitely helps!
Before I preorder the RPG rule book I want to understand : what is the difference between the two version of the RPG rule books (normal and collector edition) beside the design of the cover ?
Whoops. I totally missed that. My bad! Sorry dude.
The idea of RPG cards is a good one.
The game is pretty lethal. You’re not playing the PC with Save Game slots. You’re playing characters in the wasteland who are likely to die.
For your immature radscorpions, knock 1 off every stat.
It doesn’t explicitly say Yarwen attacked Hagerstown. It says Yarwen attacked settlers and raiders and that the caravan was attacked. It also says the settlers want revenge. My inference is that Yarwen attacked Hagerstown – but it could, I suppose, be a typo.
I hope it will be there. Part of my reason for posting (apart from getting some help/advice on which opponents and equipment to use when I run it) is that I’d like the devs to clean some of this before the book is printed. I ordered a fancy collectors edition, so I’d like to see this stuff remedied before printing if possible!
Also, if possible, it would make a nice bonus for the collectors edition if it included the cards (with any changes needed for the RPG) in an appendix, like it does with the archtype cards. And while I’m wish-listing, a set of perk cards for the perks in the RPG book as well would be great. Even just as a printable PDF.
Ah right, thanks! I already found them, but I don’t think they are the same between the RPG and minis game (I know at a minimum, the RPG uses a superset of the mins game perk cards). Will have to go through them and check.
The RPG book is intended for players that have at least the miniatures game 2-Player Starter Set so they have the dice, and can use cards they have too. (This is mentioned lower down on the product page you mentioned.) Any cards a player does not have can be downloaded. The cards shown in the book are just there for reference and allows GMs to choose what equipment is used by NPCs. The Starter Set due for release at the end of the year will contain dice as well as cards that specifically support what’s needed for the scenario in the book - these will be the Archetype cards plus a mix of other F:WW cards.
To assist GM’s, a list of suggested equipment for the NPCs for each encounter will be posted in an FAQ which is currently being created. This will also contain a suggested mixture of NPCs for the encounters which give a choice.
For the Radscorpion encounter, the intention is that the immature Radscorpions are just bystanders and it is only the adult Radscorpion that is aggressive towards the players (defending its children). So, you only need one Radscorpion. With regards the distance away, the description isn’t specific as players may have approached the situation differently, or be travelling at day or night, or in different weather conditions, etc. So the description gives the GM the idea that the Radscorpions aren’t right on top of the players, but the GM decides what an appropriate distance is for when the encounter beings depending on the situation.
You are correct that the default Skill Tests Difficulty is 1 and default Resistance is 0. In this scenario, all tests are like that but many Skill Tests will have higher Difficult and Resistance, and some tests allow Impact to be accrued over multiple tests. (Advice on this for GMs is on p. 81-85.) Remember that Impact in excess of what is required may result in advantages if the GM decides that. You’re right that Yellow Effect Dice are less useful if the Resistance is zero (although they do have some other icons).
Note that nothing in the RPG’s scenario has different stats compared to the miniatures game - they use the same cards. The Radstag and Stingwing are not part of the miniatures game yet so are only in the RPG scenario as a ‘special appearance’ - when they do get added to the miniatures game, their stats may differ from those shown in the book, so the ones shown in the book will not be cards that can be downloaded (and their weapons are shown in the book too).
So the only thing which really “differs” from the minis game are the perks (and as you mentioned unreleased content), which are listed out in full in the RPG? If so, that is good news.
Looking forward to the FAQ with suggested equipment and encounter makeup - can I suggest that the details of the radscorpion encounter be clarified in the FAQ too, as what you say really wasn’t clear to me from reading the adventure, though it does make sense now!
I suppose seeing as you mention a FAQ, rather than changes to the book, that these clarifications won’t be in the final printed book then? That is a shame.
Thanks again - I’ll be running the scenario (at least part one) next Tue. I don’t suppose the FAQ will be ready by then? If not, would you be able to share some suggested encounter makeup/equipment (or at least confirm that what AndyG244 suggested would be appropriate) by then please?
