A new designer diary has been posted for WFRP3 - a look at the character creation process, and a closeup of a few more career sheets.

You can read the new designer diary here.

Nice!

Of course I pulled the barber-surgeon...

Looks normal. I dont know how those advances work, but other than that looks similiar to 2-nd ed.
If I may ask, will there be some additional profession cards?
With other genders, and races?
In case If someone will feel like it's braking his immersion playing with a halfing male with a picture of an elf women on his profession card, or in case some more players had the same profession in the same time ?

Well, the career pictures have always been singe-raced and single-gendered... but I can see the fact having it always under your eyes during play may create a little "weird picture" sense ;-)

I'm pretty sure that the pictures on each career is a generic representation, just like in 2nd ed.

I mean, the burglar career, I think, in 2nd edition showed a halfling male, but that did not limit your choice at all.

Sunatet said:

I don't think many fans would appreciate career cards for every combination of gender and race. What's most important about the career cards are the text and numbers printed on them, not the artwork. However, you could scour the internet for character images, print those out and keep them in front of you, if you wanted a visual reminder. You could probably find something much closer to what you're imagining your character looks like, instead of having to always assume your character looks like the 'High Elf Female Envoy' career card.

I think the career cards are supposed to work exactly like the half-page career writeups in V2. We don't expect the artwork on the V2 careers to represent our characters. It's just some Coachman, not necessarily your coachman.

You probably won't need to have the career cards in front of you during play. Once you've read the career description on the back, the only time you'll probably need your career card is during character generation and when you're spending experience points. If you wanted to have more than one Coachman in your group, you could probably (very easily) share the card with another player.

Ok, ok, I'm just messing around

It's not immersion breaking. To say the truth I will probably never give any ot this to my players. They will be given a black&white copy

I can't even imagine what could they do to "my presssssioussssss" cards and handouts...

Considering of course, that I will be convinced to buy it

 Best and most informative preview so far - well, at least for me. Few thing I noticed:

-Cool skill names. Guile, Resilience, Discipline, and the best: Skulduggery, which reminds me Wizardry 7. :D
-Man, that barber surgeon looks nasty. I hope one day I can play one, with some added Gregory House and Jason influence...
-It's confirmed, that the basic box focuses on the Reikland, and it's area. I'm sure we'll see an Empire boxed set soon. I like the people of Middenland better. And those bastards who drink hot beer, and whose name I always forget...

The Barber Surgeon IS pretty bad ass.

I can't say anything in this diary appeals to me.  I don't care for point buys, the random selection of three career cards is board-gamey, I get the same feel from the other cards, puzzle-piece stances etc.  I suppose it is to be expected when you have a board game company designing an RPG.

I've gone back and forth in my level of optimism about 3e, and this diary pushes me back in the other direction (away from 3e). 

There's no real difference between rolling on a career chart and randomly selecting a career card. 

Cynical Cat said:

There are always multiple ways to accomplish essentially the same thing in a game.  Some are desirable, some are not.  Instead of rolling dice you could draw labeled ping pong balls from a sack, but it wouldn't appeal to me to do so.

Steerpike said:

Although FFG are mainly known for producing board games they have a long history of making high quality RPGs as well. One of my favourites is Blue Planet from 1997.

I'm certainly not 100% positive about  the 3rd ed., but complaining about drawing cards instead of rolling on a chart seems to me to be more a case of whining for whining's sake. I generally like point systems, but I need to see more before giving the thumbs up on this one. How much can we actually change our statistics? Will me and my friends coachmen be different and unique or basically the same?

Poe said:

Thank you for that information.  I wasn't aware many of FFG's exploits in the RPG arena.  I've heard of Blue Planet before, though, and heard good things.  I may have to look into that one.

DagobahDave said:

In short, the card are necessary for not relying on the main book every time, but they will work exactly like the careers of the 1st/2nd books, referenced only a couple of time, when needed, in downtime.

In addition, like old careers, they will only depict an iconic arkwork (Probabily a 3D image borrowed by the MMO, at least it seems from the preview).

Yeah, innovation. Yeah, speed. Yeah, new artwork. And all I need to do is drawing 3 cards...

Steerpike said:

picking from three cards is something everyone at the table can do VERY quickly at the same time. and this is a rule you can ignore if every one at the table already knows what they want.

other wise creation will take forever as each person reads all the dang cards.