Bartertown.com

Anyone played this?? Its now in hardback book form & less like a boardgame- so I was thinking of trying it.

I played it years ago, I don't know what the new version is like. Compared to other games, I recall it being savage, random, and cruel. A very fun game.

the characters have careers and races rather than classes.

It's detailed but not overly crushing like ICE rolemaster and the like.
It's not as simple like Savage Worlds and is very lethal.

It's by far and wide my favourite roleplaying game. EVER.
The first edition book if you can track it down (hint!) was one of the most complete "single tome" RPG books you'll ever find. Rules, careers, monsters, plots, maps, layouts, equipment, currency - everything in one book. It worked on d100 though which some people winged about (don't ask me why...). It was very bloody and my campaigns with it were very deep. Also, it is fully integrated with the epic Enemy Within Campaign - one of the best RPG campaigns ever written I feel. It also exposed the Warhammer world as it was at the time of writing - the Emperor was a weakling, the Counts held sway, the world was pre-Storm of Chaos (not that current GW even factors that in anymore!)
The second edition was slightly more accessible in terms of organization, it was full color, and broke the rules down into several books - still amazing value, though. The Empire was "updated" in light of the new fluff, with a centralization of power to the now "cool" Emperor and a different stat system.
I'd say grab both (if you know where to look!) and read both editions. You'll enjoy it, it's not a dungeon crawling exercise but was, depending on the skill of your GM, a deeply political, dark and very dangerous setting. Think Renaissance meets Holy Roman Empire meets hordes of dark fantasy monsters where things (including PCs) die. Often. Though slavery, drug addiction, random slaughter. A stabwound in the gut by a knife during a brawl in WFRP is a BIG deal. Like in real life. PCs are not immortal LVL such-and-such superdudes while everyone else is fodder. A pack of Orcs to the average Empire dweller spells almost certain death. Vast tracts of the Empire are completely uncivilized, travelling is a huge deal. With combat being so deadly and dangerous, the RPG element was exploded a thousand-fold.
It CAN focus too closely on the political "Chaos cultist" route if you're not careful as that's the underlying theme but you can have many, many, MANY adventures before the party is involved in any of that.
Great resources are available online, steer from the 3rd edition as you would from a pack of Skaven Plague Censers - they've watered it down, A LOT, to make it accessible to the newer generation. It's a card based-RPG-fast and accessible no-brainer of a game which, in all honesty, is well suited for its market I believe. Kids these days have often been denied the OPPORTUNITY to experience RPGing, thus buying a game in a box with a familiar presentation of cards, tokens (especially for the RPG elements of alignment and reactions, and careers) and skimpier writing offers them the possibility to access the game quickly.
Me, I suggest you delve into WFRP as it was originally designed, improved if streamlined in 2nd edition, and forget Fantasy Flight's new edition altogether UNLESS you're from the latter readership in which case yes, go for it. It's a pseudo-RPG in a box with big guidance built into the system to alleviate many's lack of time/imagination.
My two cents of the proverbial
punkskum@gmail.com
Steven

I played the 2nd ed myself. I was impressed how it was run or could be, though I never really played it enough or owned enough of the books to say that I knew the system well. I have played a lot of RPGs though. That ed was one of the few eds that came with a self running system where you almost do not even needs a GM to play it. You go to town then you make decisions until you ran out of money or you pass out. There are worse things than passing out like dying from a bar fight, which can happen and probably will at some point.

Quests could be even randomly picked up, or you could have someone leaving bread crumbs a long the way to a common theme the group wants to do. The dungeons could be complete random by using cards to see what was next, and there was random monster chart with certain rooms having named creatures in it monsters.

I have nothing against the above person posting, but I tend to laugh a little, as the 2nd ed of this game also had a lot of cards in it. Sure the monsters were not based on card-board pop-ups, but there was loot cards and encounter cards and what not.

I personally think that pop-up monsters are silly, and I wont use them, however I have been using cards I made for cheat sheets for nearly 2 decades. 3X5 cards are my friend! I even color code them, so that I can orgainize them fast. I would even color in a pattern so I could see what area they were in... I was creating "Zones" before video games were cool. heh I would split it up by area, draw lines with a maker, scratch stars with a felt-tip, or use a cheap ink stamp to mark the top and back of th cards.

I only say that because if games were rational back then when I first started, I would have used them then too, however I agree the way games are designed now is different to back then. Most games have always wrote the sytem to a 3rd or 4th level, with the fluff taking it to a much higher level, but the rules were more complex and less gimmicky than either 3rd ed of WFRP or to name another classic who has gone too far both with cards and with simplifying the game and that is 4th ed of DnD.


I personally think that the world design is the most important part if you want to play WFRP, if the world design doesn't matter a whole lot than there are many other games out there with good mechaincs. heh


Anyways, I know I took it a bit off topic, but I hope I gave it some perspective as well.