I was really excited about Warhammer Fantasy 3rd Edition and interested to see what Fantasy Flight Games would do differently by integrating some board game elements into RPG’s. Overall, I think they did some very interesting things. I am looking forward to playing the game for the first time.
The designers created this very interesting mechanic called the Party Card. The party card represents the demeanor of the party. The players can elect to be “Intrepid Explorers” or “Swords for Hire”. Each of these party cards provides the players with some special abilities and advantages. Not a bad idea really. It sort of clues the GM into what the players want to do. On the other hand, every party card also has a tension track. The tension track is supposed to signify the tension that is created when divergent cultures (i.e. humans, elves, dwarves, etc.) come together. Any time players bicker in character like an elf and dwarf would in Warhammer Fantasy, the tension goes up. The GM is supposed to pay attention for when characters bicker and waste time, and in turn move the marker along the tension track. The tension track varies in length but all have two benchmarks where negative effects happen. When the tension track reaches the end, it loops back around to the beginning.
Do you see the problem here? Notice how I haven’t mentioned the positive effects of role-playing and moving the tension track forward. Well, there aren’t any. This is where the designers failed very badly. Effectively, this game mechanic punishes the players for playing the tensions that exist between the races of the world. It literally causes players to stop playing those fundamental conflicts, and specifically those conflicts which create drama. It punishes players for role-playing their characters. Effectively, the designers have put a mechanic in place which stifles role-playing rather than encouraging it.
Of course, its easy to look at a game mechanic and just say it doesn’t work. The tension track is an interesting idea, but it has to be reworked a bit. What is my solution? My solution is to encourage the players to increase the tension track. It is still a rough idea, but the concept is to provide an additional experience point for each benchmark on the track that they meet. As players push the party tension higher and higher, they do suffer some ill effects, but they also gain something out of it. Additionally, if a player does something to lower the party tension, then he gains a fortune point for the party’s fortune point pool. This encourages players to push their party to the breaking point, and then bring the tension back down. It obviously isn’t a tested solution, but I think it has potential.