I played in a pre-release demo game of the new Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay last evening at Patriot Games in Huddersfield, UK.   That the game's designers have moved away from RPG conventions was obvious from just looking at the gaming table as prepared for play. It looked just as though you're prepared to play a board game. Cards, counters, little linked tracks of tiles and a range of custom dice that aren't numbered but have pictorial 'spots' are all present. All these materials and areas of your character sheet are color coded.

I won't go into details of the mechanics and rules here (they no doubt will be covered well elsewhere) but cover the experience of play. Our GM spent the first part of the demo getting us to read our character sheet and associated cards.  He then explained the core mechanism (how to choose the set of coloured dice you make a roll with). We then jumped into the provided scenario, which understandably given it's supposed to demonstrate the game in action quickly railroaded us into combat. The new Warhammer allows combats to be linked and so we quickly moved from the first two round rush of blood through one of the special "take a breather rounds" into a second combat.  By the third round of combat we had all got enough of a grasp of dice pool building and the mechanism for things to speed up.  All the accounting that you would normally associate with combat such as hit points, stun equivalents, and power recharges are all handled by counters and cards.  The game runs with good speed, and so soon early in your time playing the game (certainly compared with a DnD 4e combat.) After the second bout of combat we tripped through another take a breather round into a social encounter, using the same mechanisms to resolve social 'combat.' I had to duck out at the point to join my regular Thursday night game.

My impressions - provided you don't have baggy sleeves the counters and cards of a board game make a useful set of tools in the play of a well designed RPG. The price might seem a bit steep, we were told the RRP would be circa 80GBP (U.S. readers should bear in mind that back converting to USD will get you a price much higher than you'll see in the US). However, you have to bear in mind that a DnD4e bundle of PHB, MM, & DMG plus the needed dice, battle mat, pens and figures will easily set you back the same amount, and you will pay much more for the GURPS 4 book set required to run a Fantasy or Banestorm game in that system.  Even so I was a little disappointed that the books were softbound and that the starter set only contains enough materials for a GM and three players.  It would seem that the publishers are being a little too expansion sales greedy in not providing a sensible GM and 4 players.