I'm sorry for those who were disappointed with the book.I loved it and I'm not even a nurgle fan!The intro was great.The rules for possesed SM were much needed.How to become a demon prince was IMHO priceless.And going over how to conduct a Black Crusade provided alot of good material that saves me from thinking up myself.My favorite of the four supplement books by far.The art wasn't half bad either.

Couldn't agree more and the artwork in the book is outrageously awesome.

Nurgle fluff? check.

Plaguemarine rules? check.

Nurgle worlds in the maelstrom? check.

Becoming a daemon prince? Aawesome!

Srsly what more do you some of you want?

More mutations, mostly.

But, uh, I honestly want a BOOK of mutations. With tables inside of tables inside of tables inside of tables!

As said before, all in all, it's a solid publication. Knee-jerk reactions inside for my own feeling of what would have been more efficient. Perhaps because I've been playing a system lately again which has the core rules compact and otherwise plenty of fluff only books. Unfamiliarity breeds wtf-moments!

Regardless, I would love, for the next publication, to see some of the universe's noncombat hazards detailed somehow. Diseases, toxins, radiation, natural disasters. It's more a general thing than what I'm missing in the ToD concretely, though. I, and our BC DM, do like making people sweat with things beyond critters at times

Dark Heresy Daemonhunters (a useful book for any BC GM due to its custom Greater Daemon and Lesser Daemon generation rules!) had a few somewhat more robust disease rules and the Dark Heresy GM Handbook inexplicably had actual expanded poison rules tucked inside of it. If you can find it, The core rulebook and the Tome of Corruption for Warhammer Fantasy RP 2e had (using roughly the same system as the FFG WH40kRP games) pretty good and dangerous rules for infections in the long term (my group uses a modified version of these and a poison system similar to it). I've always been shocked that the corebooks for the FFG RPGs have never included even rudimentary poison/disease mechanics.

More mutations, mostly.

But, uh, I honestly want a BOOK of mutations. With tables inside of tables inside of tables inside of tables!

Realms of chaos: Slaves to darkness. I know it's 1st ed WFRP and not realy compatible with FF 40k RPG's but for cheer inspiration and variety it can't be beat! besides tables for daemonic gifts of slaanesh and khorne it has a

D1000 (not a typo: THOUSAND!) list of mutations!

Dark Heresy Daemonhunters (a useful book for any BC GM due to its custom Greater Daemon and Lesser Daemon generation rules!) had a few somewhat more robust disease rules and the Dark Heresy GM Handbook inexplicably had actual expanded poison rules tucked inside of it. If you can find it, The core rulebook and the Tome of Corruption for Warhammer Fantasy RP 2e had (using roughly the same system as the FFG WH40kRP games) pretty good and dangerous rules for infections in the long term (my group uses a modified version of these and a poison system similar to it). I've always been shocked that the corebooks for the FFG RPGs have never included even rudimentary poison/disease mechanics.

Gracias, amigo!

Nurgle fluff? check.

Plaguemarine rules? check.

Nurgle worlds in the maelstrom? check.

Becoming a daemon prince? Aawesome!

Srsly what more do you some of you want?

ugh turns out they could have included a bit more weapons...

ugh turns out they could have included a bit more weapons...

Why's that?

BYE

In response to those that have replied, I understand that there is already a Great Unclean One in the main rulebook, but where every other Greater Daemon has some special power that is independent of their attacks, GUO's have nothing similar. I feel this should be corrected. Also,if not the Tyranids, they could at least have put something in for the sake of symmetry. (inb4 jokes about symmetry and Chaos). And like others I expected there to be more Gifts. That said, the content that is there I'm mostly happy with.

ugh turns out they could have included a bit more weapons...

Why's that?

BYE

I was just expecting more of them, Good selection of melee weapons, grenades are also good (rad grenades yay!) but no new guns? only new ammo? They could have put in some needle weapons, or a gun that works similar to those scourge shells, vomit throwing flamers, assault canons shooting daemonic larvae and flies... scourge missiles, scourge ammo for sniper rifles...

The big problem with the Tome of Decay is not so much what any given author wrote but the lack of cohesive proofreading. The books are too idiosyncratic; we still don't know what binding strength demon weapons that come off of a Gift are, or how drug addiction really works, mechanically. New archetypes keep getting written with skills that the base race already has, which leads me to believe that they're hiring people who don't actually know the game's rules. New fiddly bits is nice and all, but the system as a whole probably needs some tightening up. Like an errata document, or something, but that apparently isn't coming. You'd think FF would have a higher attention to quality and craftsmanship in that regard.

I must say, I consider Black Crusade Tomes to be, at very least, the finest bestiaries in whole 40kRPG line. We always get something iconic (pretty much every single nurgle daemon every mentioned), something more obscure (Nurgle Plague Towers and Plague Drons) and something cool and new (I personally fell in love with Rot Soldiers, they just ask to be included in Only War game).

I was just expecting more of them, Good selection of melee weapons, grenades are also good (rad grenades yay!) but no new guns? only new ammo? They could have put in some needle weapons, or a gun that works similar to those scourge shells, vomit throwing flamers, assault canons shooting daemonic larvae and flies... scourge missiles, scourge ammo for sniper rifles...

Books don't have unlimited space. Everything has to fit in.

BYE

I was just expecting more of them, Good selection of melee weapons, grenades are also good (rad grenades yay!) but no new guns? only new ammo? They could have put in some needle weapons, or a gun that works similar to those scourge shells, vomit throwing flamers, assault canons shooting daemonic larvae and flies... scourge missiles, scourge ammo for sniper rifles...

Books don't have unlimited space. Everything has to fit in.

BYE

It's very obvious that they tried to fold a whole bunch of content into Tome of Decay that shouldn't really be there, though, probably taken from a future project that got scrapped, likely due to the sheer number of character supplements that have been squeezed out for Black Crusade, and the pending scrapping of the game line (we all know it's happening; Black Crusade is easily the least played line, and they have DH2 to coddle now).

Tome of Decay is a let-down because instead of getting the singular focus on Nurgle and nurglite characters that the other Tomes more or less enjoyed, Tome of Decay comes across as a hodge-podge, a smatter of things that doesn't necessarily relate to eachother at all.

I guess my point is that while you say "everything has to fit in", I say that no, it doesn't. It's about prioritizing. It's about approach.

There's large sections of the book that has no business being in a tome dedicated to Nurgle. While the other tomes often introduced sections that provided interest and opportunities for all characters, they were at least tenuously tied to the concept of the book. Book of Fate got a whole bunch of psychic powers, Book of Excess got the social combat bit, Tome of Blood had the mass combat rules, etc.

Tome of Decay gets an atypical amount of Advanced Archetypes, an Alternate Career-like system that is the least interesting or useful system from a character concept and development standpoint throughout the entire WH40kRP lines, it gets the rules for running end-game (pretty much "post-game", by Core) black crusades, it gets (uninspiring, in my personal opinion) rules for end-game (again, pretty much "post-game", by Core) daemon princes, it gets an high-level/end-game adventure, and rules for creating daemon engines, and it gets rules for playing possessed characters.

None of these things particularly scream "Nurgle". The vast majority of this clearly belongs to a "Unaligned" supplement or a general game expansion. It is as if you'd include the content from Dark Heresy's Ascension in the Book of Judgement or The Lathe Worlds.

I would much rather have taken a table or ranged weapons featuring needle weapons, tox-guns or larvae cannons, scourge missiles, scourge rifles, and so on and so forth. And I say this as someone that things that endless tables and descriptions of weapons (or Talents, as has become the unfortunate norm in Only War) is pretty much a cop-outl.

To see the Tome dedicated to my favourite Chaos God reduced to a hodge-podge capstone fit-it-all-in-before-the-line-dies-because-we-suck-at-planning book is disheartening to say the least. Not even if this is the last book made for Black Crusade, it is to be considered worthy. It simply doesn't fit in with the other Tomes at all, and when judged, stands out as the red-headed stepchild, a bastard child in a family of what should've been quintuplets.

I was just expecting more of them, Good selection of melee weapons, grenades are also good (rad grenades yay!) but no new guns? only new ammo? They could have put in some needle weapons, or a gun that works similar to those scourge shells, vomit throwing flamers, assault canons shooting daemonic larvae and flies... scourge missiles, scourge ammo for sniper rifles...

Books don't have unlimited space. Everything has to fit in.

BYE

How is the space of a book determined? Is there a massive cost to adding 3 or 4 pages beyond the originally planned limit? Because of binding is there a "you must add in blocks 20" type rule?

I think it's blocks of 16 pages.

I think it's blocks of 16 pages.

You may be entirely correct, and know this from something I don't know, but in general, it differs from company to company, afaik, usually to a minimum of 4 pages added/removed, depending on method used for printing/binding the book(s).

And I want to stress that this can be a significant investment for a company, though, and honestly, if you are a serious company you shouldn't change the size of your books across multiple volumes. All of the "Tome of..." books are 145 pages.

It would be very odd if it changed from one volume to another. There really should just have been 5 Supplements.

They really, really should've published it like this:

Core Rulebook

GM Screen

Adventure (Hand of Corruption)

Tome of Decay: A Sourcebook for Followers of Nurgle

Adventure (Worlds of Death; Part I of the March to Apotheosis Trilogy)

Tome of Blood: A Sourcebook for Followers of Khorne

Adventure (Legions of Steel; Part II of the March to Apotheosis Trilogy)

Tome of Fate: A Sourcebook for Followers of Tzeentch

Adventure (Vortices of Horror; Part III of the March to Apotheosis Trilogy)

Tome of Excess: A Sourcebook for Followers of Slaanesh

Adventure (War of the Inner Vortex)

The Lost and the Damned: A Sourcebook for all Heretics on the Path to Apotheosis.

I have no idea what they were thinking when they launched the line and thought "Hey, let's publish a single adventure, and then cram out 4 to 5 character supplements in a row, each focusing on a single god, and hope people can keep the interest up for long enough." and then went "Woops, we've got all this stuff that we want to do for endgame play and general game expansion, but it doesn't fit in anywhere, and man, 5 supplements was way too much. How much can we neuter the Tome of Decay and shove in there before the line dies completely?".

Really, I love Black Crusade, it's actually one of the neatest systems in many ways, moreso than even Only War, and the only truly glaring flaw with the system itself was actually the introduction of the Advanced Archetypes, instead of content that would actually deal with options for existing characters.

But they really dropped the ball when it came to prioritization, the supplements and keeping the interest up.

n/m

There's is literally no point in arguing with you Fgdsfg. You always assume the worst, and thus there is no convincing you otherwise.

...

n/m

There's is literally no point in arguing with you Fgdsfg. You always assume the worst, and thus there is no convincing you otherwise.

...

Of course I assume the worst, but if you have any arguments at all, feel free to present them. Is there anything in my critique that is unwarranted?

Mind you, I'm not criticizing the content itself, I'm criticizing the way it was (is?) handled. Obviously something isn't right in the Black Crusade line, unless you want to argue that it's the least popular line - I might be wrong, after all, I just judge based on personal experience, there might be numbers saying otherwise.

I see the content in the Tome of Decay, and I compare it to the content presented in the other Tomes. Am I wrong in my analysis somewhere? To actually proclaim that there is no convincing me otherwise, you actually have to try to convince me first.

They only thing you said so far is that books have limited space and that everything has to fit in. My counter-argument was that it doesn't, you just have to choose what you fit in them. That is literally the only argument I've had with you on the issue here.

I'm not assigning FFG or you writers any malice, I'm just saying that things could've been handled much better. I don't have any insight into the creative process or the discussions within the development team, I'm operating on conjecture and my own analytical abilities based on the facts presented, that's really all I can do. If there is evidence to the opposite, I'd absolutely love to see it.

He does raise a valid point for the next product line, at least. Properly planning a release schedule (and polling your customer base on what they want to create said schedule) is a very good idea.

Fgdsfg,

While I totally agree with you on the fact that ToD is a rushed attempt at releasing post-apotheosis mechanics in a book dedicated to completely different subject, and just like you I feel bad for what I consider my favorite game of all WH40K RPG line, I would like to know what exactly have you taken into account when you assumed that Black Crusade is the least popular game of the series.

I would be curious as to the statistics, maybe FFG could put up a poll.

Fgdsfg,

While I totally agree with you on the fact that ToD is a rushed attempt at releasing post-apotheosis mechanics in a book dedicated to completely different subject, and just like you I feel bad for what I consider my favorite game of all WH40K RPG line, I would like to know what exactly have you taken into account when you assumed that Black Crusade is the least popular game of the series.

I would be curious as to the statistics, maybe FFG could put up a poll.