November 19, 2024
Hi everyone,
As you can tell from the title of this post, we are happy to officially announce that the 3rd edition of our games is coming out soon!
We don't have a release date yet, because we are currently finishing up the last changes to Army-Forge, and we don't want to commit to a specific date until that is done (and risk disappointing everyone if we need more time to fix things).
Over the new few posts, we are going to discuss 3rd edition with you, so strap in for the ride.
First off, what is 3rd edition, and why are we doing it?
The 3rd edition of our 5 mainline games (Grimdark Future, Firefight, Age of Fantasy, Skirmish, and Regiments) is the exciting next chapter in the future of OPR, bringing you a new and improved version of our games, clarifying many things, re-balancing others, and overall giving you a better version of our games.
This new edition isn't doing any radical changes to the games, everything you know and love is still there, things are still familiar, and in fact, to the untrained eye it may seem that not much is being changed. But the devil is in the details, and the combination of many tiny changes all across the board serve to provide you with the best version of our games we have ever made.
As many of your know, all of our mainly games are currently in a bit of a state of limbo, stuck somewhere between 2nd edition, and what we have been calling v2.50 for the last year.
What originally was meant to be a small series of changes that started almost two years ago, has spiraled into the OPR you know today, with Army-Forge serving as the back-bone of our games, and Army-Forge Studio (available on Patreon) giving players unprecedented access to creating their own wargaming armies.
Whilst these last two years have been great in terms of growth and accessibility for our games, they have unfortunately also been very confusing times. That's where 3rd edition comes in, to put that chapter of confusion behind us, and allow us all to move forward together under the same banner.
As part of this transition, we are re-vamping the version numbers we use for our games, and in the future the games will be at v3.0.0, giving us a fresh start.
For those that care about the details, this is how the new version numbers work: the first number is updated between editions, the second number is updated whenever the rules change, and the third number is updated whenever small fixes are made (grammar mistakes, layout issues, etc.).
For everyone else, all you need to do to play the latest version of our games is just to download the rules from the OPR website, and get the latest army lists from Army-Forge. Whatever is on the website is always the newest release, so there is no need to track down documents and check version numbers if you don't want.
Now then, what are the details of the 3rd edition changes?
One of our top goals with this new edition was to clarify common confusions that are currently present across the board. This has meant a review of all of the rule books, army books, special rules, etc. to already include all of the answers to the frequent questions we get.
To do this, we have taken most of the content from the FAQ, as well as taken a deep dive into all of the questions people ask on Discord, Facebook, Reddit, and more, and folded them into the rules. On top of that, we have taken most of the clarifications that were previously only available in the so-called "Competitive Rules", and have put those directly into the core rules, so that you don't have to flip between multiple documents to get the most balanced version of the games.
We are also consolidating some of the terminology across the games, to make it easier for people to transition between them. So in the future you won't be using the Wizard or Psychic rules anymore, but instead have the Caster rule, which is the same across both games. Another one is the use of Pinning and Wavering, which are being both replaced by the Shaken rule, making it clear that they both work the same across games.
We have also taken some of the special rules that were previously only available in some of the games, and made them available in all games. So in the future you can expect to see things like the Artillery rule in Grimdark Future games (now re-named to "Entrenched"), and the Relentless rule in Age of Fantasy games. This will also open up more possibilities for custom armies made in Army-Forge Studio, giving all of you even more things to play with.
There are lots of background app things that are being updated as well, but we won't bore you with the details. The only thing you need to know is that we are making our app more robust, and studio is getting a few new tools to further streamline the creation of custom armies.
Finally, some notes about book naming and cover art, which we should clarify already.
In order to clear up confusion as to what is what, we are going to be re-naming a few of the books as follows:
About the cover art: As many of you already noticed, we are slowly changing the art style of OPR into something more painterly and heroic, which can better represent the wonderful fantasy of our worlds.
Originally our plan for 3rd edition was to get tons of new art done, and completely re-vamp the look and feel of the games. It became clear to us at some point that it was going to take us way longer than we expected to get all of that art done, and we don't want to keep holding back our improved rules and gaming experience, just because of the art.
So, for now the plan is to update all of the cover art with new covers based off some of our existing illustrations that are in the new style, making them look like the covers you see on the OPR Home Page. Then, once we are ready, we will update all of the rules with awesome new art, giving you the best books OPR has ever made.
Alright, there is much more to talk about with 3rd edition, but this article has dragged on for long enough, so we are going to stop here. :)
Before we go however, one important note: OPR games are ever-evolving, so 3rd edition is not the end of our journey. We have lots more in store for you, with expanded rulebooks, army overhauls, and much more. We are also going to keep updating and improving the rules, as well as make sure to fix any changes we're making with 3rd edition if they are not well received, giving you the best wargaming rules ever.
Keep your eyes peeled for the next 3rd edition post, where we will talk about some of the rules changes that are coming!
Happy Wargaming!
– OPR Team
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