The Witcher RPG is out

[Yora]

After a two year delay, the Witcher RPG by Talsorian has finally been released as pdf last week and the print version sold at GenCon. Which I assume will have a main print run soon.

Pdf price is at 22€ and the whole thing comes up to 336 pages.

Page
4 Introduction
20 Character Creation
71 Gear
98 Magic
124 Crafting
148 Combat
178 World
210 Game Master's Guide
236 Witchers
252 Relics
266 Bestiary
314 Quests
326 Character Sheets
330 Index

Without having read through it yet, this looks like it's a reasonably managable game and not an overdesigned bloat of minutia.

[avalkauskas]

...and how is it? I was on the fence at GenCon.

[Yora]

Looks pretty bad. Nothing really stands out and the combat system looks unplayable. It tracks facing in combat and the field of view restricted by helmets. Combat in Witcher should be fast and fluid, this looks more appropriate for naval battles.
While the art is good, 70% of it I've seen before, and I suspect that actually all of it is old concept art from CD Project. That doesn't impact the rules, but it adds to the impression that this was just thrown together in a rush. A rules system of the shelf, art from the shelf. And with this amount of content I don't understand how this was delayed for two years.

[Lacco]

Looks pretty bad. Nothing really stands out and the combat system looks unplayable. It tracks facing in combat and the field of view restricted by helmets. Combat in Witcher should be fast and fluid, this looks more appropriate for naval battles.

While the "facing in combat" and field of view restricted by helmets sound as neat ideas, the question is application (and playability). I myself am a fan of quite rules-heavy system, which however in-play works very fluid and still has enough complexity for me. How is the facing tracked? And how does the field of view impact the combat mechanics?

I agree that Witcher should have really memorable, fluid and fast combat sequences - Sapkowski's combat descriptions were the reason why I spent few months digging for good combat systems.

[Knaight]

Looks pretty bad. Nothing really stands out and the combat system looks unplayable. It tracks facing in combat and the field of view restricted by helmets. Combat in Witcher should be fast and fluid, this looks more appropriate for naval battles.

I've never liked facing rules at this scale for that reason - people can turn around very quickly, and moving their head for vision is even faster. Whole troop formations? Sure, those can take a while to turn around. Vehicles? I'm all for it, particularly for anything properly categorized as a ship, including the sort of heavy equipment the term "land-ship" can reasonably describe.

[Kyrell1978]

I played this game when it was called Elric. Lol.

[Particle_Man]

So this is a fantasy heartbreaker with a license?

[Beleriphon]

So this is a fantasy heartbreaker with a license?

Not quite, its the same game engine as Cyberpunk 2020 and similar. So its tends to be weird and goofy, and weird, and old school, and full of tables, and full of things that really don't help or matter.

[tensai_oni]

There was a Witcher RPG made some 15+ years ago, before the franchise was popular on a multinational level. Because of that it was mostly limited to central-eastern Europe and wasn't released anywhere else, as far as I know.

It was... okay. Had a few neat ideas here and there and was simple to play, but overall nothing special. Also witchers and spellcasters were far more powerful than ordinary characters, which on one hand is (mostly) setting accurate, but on the other doesn't make for a balanced play experience.

Not quite, its the same game engine as Cyberpunk 2020 and similar. So its tends to be weird and goofy, and weird, and old school, and full of tables, and full of things that really don't help or matter.

Now who thought that is a good idea, I'll never know. I thought this kind of RPG died off in the 90s and for a good reason.

[Delta]

Sounds like you're much better off using a Witcher setting for Savage Worlds if you want some fast monster-slashing action?

[Morty]

The Witcherverse really isn't a unique enough setting that it requires a separate system, yeah. Anything that can do fairly gritty and realistic fantasy will do the trick.

[Scots Dragon]

The Witcherverse really isn't a unique enough setting that it requires a separate system, yeah. Anything that can do fairly gritty and realistic fantasy will do the trick.

Given the spells certain magic-users can pull off, and the collection of races including humans, elves, half-elves, gnomes, dwarves, and halflings, you can easily just use (A)D&D.

[Morty]

All else aside, the problem here is magic. Witcherverse magicians draw power from the elements to cast spells, which is generic to work with most systems... but probably not spell slots. The iconic witcher fighting style has also never been supported in D&D.

[Rhedyn]

Sounds like you're much better off using a Witcher setting for Savage Worlds if you want some fast monster-slashing action?

I half expected this to be a Savage Worlds supplement.

[Max_Killjoy]

All else aside, the problem here is magic. Witcherverse magicians draw power from the elements to cast spells, which is generic to work with most systems... but probably not spell slots. The iconic witcher fighting style has also never been supported in D&D.

Agreed. It's not the sort of magic that can be modeled with the Vancian goofiness of D&D.

As for the Witcher RPG, in general, this looks like a someone spending most of their budget on the license, getting the art thrown in, and slapping in a system that doesn't fit.


How much setting detail is in the book? I find most of these license-based books tend to skimp on the meaty setting goodness even more than most original RPG settings do, maybe because they think everyone buying it will already be a huge fan and have the setting memorized.

(Oddly enough, I was about to post a comment in the main RPG forum about a used book I just picked up, along the same lines.)

[CharonsHelper]

...Also witchers and spellcasters were far more powerful than ordinary characters, which on one hand is (mostly) setting accurate, but on the other doesn't make for a balanced play experience.

Frankly - they should have stuck with this. Not that they should have had a horribly balanced party - they should have just had all PCs be some stripe of witcher or spell-caster. They could easily have had each witcher school be a different class/archetype, and while the books don't go in-depth (at least as far as I've read) it does seem that there are different spell-casting specialties.

Leave the men-at-arms & bards to the NPC classes.

It would have especially worked if the default setting wasn't during the books/game, but centuries before back when they were still making new witchers and there were more monsters out there to fight. (The books talk about there being fewer & fewer monsters, largely because the witchers have been hunting them to extinction & civilization expanding etc.)