Part 1: Stats and Dice
Okay, so the book opens talking about some of the world of The Witcher and the plot of the games with a sidebar on dark fantasy and talking about how there's a huge GM's guide in here, which is true. There's no 'What is roleplaying' but I think that's further on the book (Future WiserOdin here: Past WiserOdin is wrong). There's also a sidebar on the dice we need, which are a d10 and a d6. We're going to skip forward from page 4, where this starts, to page 47, where they talk about what the stats do, skipping over the following:
6 pages of introduction
2 pages of explaining recent history (AKA PLAY THE VIDEO GAME)
8 sheets of important main Witcher plot characters, some of them made with as-yet-unreleased hero rules. We'll get to this. [7 pages]
The start of the character creation section [1 page]
Races [4 pages, mostly fluff]
The Lifepath (we'll get to a full dive of this and I'll even post the tables for it) [6 pages]
Life events and style (more tables, again, we'll get to it) [6 pages]
Professions (read: classes) [10 pages]
Again this was to get to stats. The layout of the PDF is lacking, to say the least. Speaking of those stats, they are:
Intelligence: governs 11 skills, gets you some extra skill points in character creation. A few of the skills are super fucking important (Awareness, Wilderness Survival, Deduction), and one of which is actually kind of broken. We'll get to this.
Reflexes: governs 5 of 7 combat skills, all of which are the melee combat skills, the two vehicle skills, dodge/escape, and is combined with intelligence to get you some extra skill points in character creation
Dexterity: Governs the two ranged combat skills, stealth, sleight of hand, and...athletics...huh.
Body: This is part of your health stat, your strength stat. Holy fuck I'm going to talk a lot about this one. It also governs Physique and Endurance (D&D fortitude saves)...which are skills.
Speed: Multiply it by 3 to get how fast you run (in meters), and then divide the derived run stat by 5 to get how far you can leap in meters.
Empathy: Governs all your social skills. All of 'em. All NINE of them.
Craft: Okay so this is the devoted crafting stat why is it a base stat? Anyhow it governs 7 skills in total including Pick Lock and First Aid. The design decisions get weirder.
Will: Covers all the spell skills. All of 'em. It also covers Courage (D&D will saves), Resist Coercion (WHAT), and Intimidation. This is also combined with Body, the resulting number is divided by two, and then put on a table to determine Hit Points, Stamina, Recovery (Health regen per day), and Stun (which is nonlethal damage).
Luck: I'm pretty sure this is a trap. This here is a pool of points you can temporarily use as a bonus on any roll you want. Any points used are used for the session. 10 luck is 10 points, which can all be converted in one shot to +10 to one roll for the session, or split up to little +1's or +2's or the like, but it has to be used before a roll is made.
Hoo boy where to start. You get what's supposed to be in each stat by rolling 1d10 9 times, rerolling any 1's or 2's. Or you can use the point buy table over to the side which has four different settings: Average (60), Skilled (70), Heroes (75), and Legends (80). Each stat can only go to 10, and you super duper want a ten in your preferred stat. Reflex and Int seem like god stats, and they are, but Body is stupid important and we'll fucking get to that one in combat. Boy do I have a bone to pick with this game's combat.
Technically we haven't even been introduced to how to resolve a challenge but you roll 1d10+stat+skill+bonus/penalty, and if it's not a combat skill then you can't critically succeed and you can't fumble it (Future WiserOdin: Past WiserOdin is wrong and stupid. A critical success and a critical fumble do happen for out of combat skills, they just don't ever spectacularly fail. They just normal fail). Crazy shit. If you are in combat and you fumble you roll a d10 and compare the result to a table and on a 1 to 5 nothing happens. 6 and higher is the land of get fucked based on what you were doing in combat. This applies to magic skills outside of combat too. We'll get into the details with screenshots later.
Oh right the d6 is used for all the different weapon damages in varying amount. Had to resolve that thread before moving on.
Next up: the rest of fucking character creation because no one can format a goddamn RPG book.