Further, Dark Heresy is not exclusively or absolutely a game of espionage, infiltration, and intrigue. The premise of Dark Heresy supports those themes, yes, but it's a 40k RPG. The Warhammer 40,000 universe comes with inherent expectations of blowing things up with bolters and ripping them apart with chainswords. Militaristic overtones are a fundamental part of the setting. More than that, the possibility of trekking through the wilderness with only limited supplies (a situation for which encumbrance rules are valuable, as it imposes decisions about carrying supplies) is no less an element of Dark Heresy's particular slice of 40k than crime scenes and interrogations are.

Well, the encumbrance rules are pretty useless during Exploration Missions, because it is very situational that the Acolytes need to calculate carrying capacity (they will either have transportation or don't have enough stuff to carry around to begin with). It is almost like rules for a 180° quick-scope jumping attack in combat.

Though, I must add, I think the carrying/lifting/pushing rules are roughly fine as they are, they only need a note that they are intended for special situations and not for general use.

For the love of the gods, for the umpteenth time, they do!

LOL, then I suppose my character can load up with 6000 spare bolt rounds, 400 multi-keys and 9000 bottles of recaf, and simply tow this mass after himself no problem because they weight exactly 0 kg according to your "carrying rules for general use" .

I'm not even sure what you're talking about. You said that the rules need a note that they are intended for special situations and not for general use. I pointed out, for the fourth or fifth time in this thread alone, that they do. The rules specifically covers that Encumbrance only needs to be used when it's relevant.

You somehow took this as.. I don't know what you took it as, because I have no idea what you're even talking about. No-one even hinted at anything as ridiculous as what you took home from it.

No, I'm just telling that if the carrying rules were intended for general use, then there wouldn't have any items with zero weight. Especially items that are likely to be amassed (ammo). And in some cases, even common sense is useless. For example, I have no idea how much a bolt round weights - consequently, I can't figure it out how much I can carry of it or how much would be too much for my character. Do 4 clips of boltgun ammo have a considerable weight? Or can I carry around a huge backpack filled with boltgun ammo without breaking a sweat?

Each clip is 10% of the weight of the weapon itself, and it also notes "should it be important", so again, reinforcing that weight is only to be used when it's relevant.

Edit: I checked DH2. Yup, ammunition is still 10% of weapon weight by clip. Why is this important to know? It usually isn't, unless you're dealing with truly unreasonable people. But I'm happy that the rule is there so I can get the pleasure of beating someone with a rulebook once in a while.

So from DH1 to DH2, across all the Core Rulebooks, got this covered.

Anyway, I get the feeling we're actually on the same side here and you just misunderstood me. I think the rules are roughly fine as they are, precisely because they do have that note saying what you said you wanted it to say (or at least roughly the same).

So consider the beer a beer of truce, as long as I get to keep the sunglasses.

Good to know. For anybody who is interested, it's mentioned on page 166.

Further, Dark Heresy is not exclusively or absolutely a game of espionage, infiltration, and intrigue. The premise of Dark Heresy supports those themes, yes, but it's a 40k RPG. The Warhammer 40,000 universe comes with inherent expectations of blowing things up with bolters and ripping them apart with chainswords. Militaristic overtones are a fundamental part of the setting. More than that, the possibility of trekking through the wilderness with only limited supplies (a situation for which encumbrance rules are valuable, as it imposes decisions about carrying supplies) is no less an element of Dark Heresy's particular slice of 40k than crime scenes and interrogations are.

Well, the encumbrance rules are pretty useless during Exploration Missions, because it is very situational that the Acolytes need to calculate carrying capacity (they will either have transportation or don't have enough stuff to carry around to begin with). It is almost like rules for a 180° quick-scope jumping attack in combat.

Though, I must add, I think the carrying/lifting/pushing rules are roughly fine as they are, they only need a note that they are intended for special situations and not for general use.

For the love of the gods, for the umpteenth time, they do!

LOL, then I suppose my character can load up with 6000 spare bolt rounds, 400 multi-keys and 9000 bottles of recaf, and simply tow this mass after himself no problem because they weight exactly 0 kg according to your "carrying rules for general use" .

I'm not even sure what you're talking about. You said that the rules need a note that they are intended for special situations and not for general use. I pointed out, for the fourth or fifth time in this thread alone, that they do. The rules specifically covers that Encumbrance only needs to be used when it's relevant.

You somehow took this as.. I don't know what you took it as, because I have no idea what you're even talking about. No-one even hinted at anything as ridiculous as what you took home from it.

Chill man, it is called 'misunderstanding'. I thought that you were saying that the rules are intended for general use.

And LOL, I totally forgot that ridiculous 10% clip weight rule. Sheees... Thank you, now I remember that boltgun rounds change weight depending on whether they are in a normal or extended clip, and shotgun shells become lighter when they are loaded into a combat shotgun .

I still don't see it how 'only use encumberance for special circumstances' actually is functional.

Let's say you check encumberance at character creation, but then what? Unless 'everytime you gain a new item' is a special circumstance it's entirely possible for somebody (purposefully or not) to slowly crawl above the max weight he can carry. Then when the next special curcumstance that calls for checking encumberance comes, what happens? You either have to break the narrative gerisimiltude of the story or just handwave the rule away.

And yet we as a culture have chosen to support having professional critics and to take their opinions as important. I'm not a professional rpg critic, but I've noticed too many people interested in nerdy media take exception to having actual criticism leveled at it. At least in video games people can call it unintuitive and unfun and not be told that the game just isn't meant for everyone.

RPGs are an incomplete medium - the rules are not the game, and the contents of the rulebooks do not become the game until they make contact with a GM to interpret them. Consequently, a tabletop RPG is inherently more subjective than basically any other media, and thus analysis and criticism of RPGs is based on shaky ground... because the presence of the GM is a part of the game, and shapes it in a way that has no immediate comparison in other media.

I agree with you on some points - the matter of rules aped without regard for the context they existed under (as has been the case with the evolution of D&D and the games inspired by it) - but not the premise that more than a relative minority of RPGs can be described as "objectively bad".

They probably have zero weight because they are not intended to be hoarded.

"Should it be important to know how much ammunition weighs, consider a weapon’s full clip to weigh 10% of the weight of the weapon itself."

That's been the case since Dark Heresy 1st edition.

I still don't see it how 'only use encumberance for special circumstances' actually is functional.

Let's say you check encumberance at character creation, but then what? Unless 'everytime you gain a new item' is a special circumstance it's entirely possible for somebody (purposefully or not) to slowly crawl above the max weight he can carry. Then when the next special curcumstance that calls for checking encumberance comes, what happens? You either have to break the narrative gerisimiltude of the story or just handwave the rule away.

Special circumstance is like when you have to carry something you normally don't. Random Plot Items, the MacGuffin, you want to relocate a heavy weapon as a Sage, stuff like that.

This rule is so ridiculously inconsistent that it might not exist at all.

Thing is, what happens if you are about to lift the MacGuffin, calculate your encumbrance to see if you can and then realize just your usual gear pust you way over your msx carry weight?

Thing is, what happens if you are about to lift the MacGuffin, calculate your encumbrance to see if you can and then realize just your usual gear pust you way over your msx carry weight?

Let's be realistic here, no-one except the truly asperger (and I don't mean that necessarily as a pejorative, just as a statement of fact) is going to tell you "You're going to have to drop that laspistol you've been carrying since forever because you're 1kg over the limit."

And if you are way, way, waaaay over the limit to the point of everyone going "You're carrying WHAT?!", then you know full well that you shouldn't have been carrying that around.

Exactly what happens depends largely on your group and your GM. Like some many other things when it comes to player-to-player interaction, the rules don't specifically say.

Ultimately, it's up to each player to eyeball their equipment or confer with their GM whether something looks OK or not. Extra gravy if you actually list the weight(s) of your loot on your sheet.

God ****, guys. Nimsim goes and posts a very well reasoned, well written post about why the encumbrance system is bad and how it could be better, 20 posts go by and not a single one of the things he says is addressed, commented on, or refuted. Instead you talk about common sense and in what circumstances to apply the current encumbrance rules.

Were they bad ideas? Or did his whole post just go over your collective heads?

The level of discourse on these forums is ******* atrocious.

God ****, guys. Nimsim goes and posts a very well reasoned, well written post about why the encumbrance system is bad and how it could be better, 20 posts go by and not a single one of the things he says is addressed, commented on, or refuted. Instead you talk about common sense and in what circumstances to apply the current encumbrance rules.

Were they bad ideas? Or did his whole post just go over your collective heads?

The level of discourse on these forums is ******* atrocious.

He's not the only one posting here.

Common sense is the answer though, his idea about placing certain items into slots, based on weight class and affecting subtlety seems a lot of unnecessary bookkeeping to me. You'll get a lot of border cases with exceptions tied to them and I don't see how it even improves gameplay.

Instead of counting KGs, you'll be counting several types of slots linked to specific places on a character's body. Since each slot has a certain weight class, this also means that several items with different (but still approximate weights) go into the same slots. This also means that having a few dozen of these slots creates a potential deviation from the actual weight that a character is carrying.

So you'll end up with a system that is unnecessary complex, being forced to do the constant bookkeeping of rearranging your items along these slots, is unrealistic and doesn't add anything to the game except more limitations. I have 2 items of lower slot weight classes, all my lower slot weight classes are filled up, I have a large weight class slot, but I can't put those in there? Why not?

I'll take common sense, thank you very much.

Maybe it's just a difference of playstyle? Dare I say it's an opinion?

Edit: And this idea from Nimsim is not new, if I recall correctly, somebody already gave a more indepth explanation before about why a slot system is a bad idea.

Thing is, what happens if you are about to lift the MacGuffin, calculate your encumbrance to see if you can and then realize just your usual gear pust you way over your msx carry weight?

GM arbitration, as per the book. Largely, I'd say that it depends on just how much over the encumbrance rating you are.Let's be realistic here, no-one except the truly asperger (and I don't mean that necessarily as a pejorative, just as a statement of fact) is going to tell you "You're going to have to drop that laspistol you've been carrying since forever because you're 1kg over the limit."And if you are way, way, waaaay over the limit to the point of everyone going "You're carrying WHAT?!", then you know full well that you shouldn't have been carrying that around.Exactly what happens depends largely on your group and your GM. Like some many other things when it comes to player-to-player interaction, the rules don't specifically say.Ultimately, it's up to each player to eyeball their equipment or confer with their GM whether something looks OK or not. Extra gravy if you actually list the weight(s) of your loot on your sheet.

Edit: Even moreso since many circumstances will involve custom items with custom weight decided by the GM anyway.

God ****, guys. Nimsim goes and posts a very well reasoned, well written post about why the encumbrance system is bad and how it could be better, 20 posts go by and not a single one of the things he says is addressed, commented on, or refuted. Instead you talk about common sense and in what circumstances to apply the current encumbrance rules.

Were they bad ideas? Or did his whole post just go over your collective heads?

The level of discourse on these forums is ******* atrocious.

Ok.

And my problems with encumbrance, summed up.

1) it is unintuitive to have to add and subtract weights in kg. People don't decide something is too heavy because it is "20 kg past what I can carry"

2) the rules advise players to ignore encumbrance unless it becomes relevant, which implies that players are suddenly looking up and and adding weights when it "becomes relevant," or that players must actually always be tracking encumbrance so they don't have to halt an entire session for 10 minutes of referencing and arithmetic.

3) the encumbrance rules aren't even fully implemented for most equipment beyond combat-related items. Some combat items also appear to be balanced by their weight, again contradicting point 2).

4) the encumbrance rules seem to more about preventing from doing things than facilitating roleplay or improving immersion. Keep in mind that this is restricting players without actually ADDING anything to the game (including balance, as per point 3)

Those are the points I can immediately think of to write out. What do I think would be better?

1) every character has X number of "slots," an every item takes up a number of slots based on its size. When carrying an item, it's location on your person is written in the slots it takes up. Some talents/abilities/equipment allow extra slots.

2) every item has a subtlety rating based on size/power. Players have some sort of restriction on what items to carry (possibly slots, maybe number of items, etc). Carrying around heavy ordinance affects aubtlety. This would require a rewrite of the crap subtlety system.

3)players are EXTREMELY limited in what they can carry (one "main weapon", one side weapon, one special item, armor, and some miscellaneous. Items are very prone to wear and tear based on their level of technology and require regular ministrations by a tech priest. Or even just combine it with the slot system.

All of those would do more to encourage theme, provide strategic decisions for players, and so on.

1) No, but they do sometimes decide that they're carrying to much and then make choices as to what they need and what they don't. You're correct in that there's no magical point at which a load suddenly goes from 'fine' to 'too heavy'; but it's a game, and a limit has to be set somewhere. GURPS addressed this by having multiple encumbrance breakpoints; each adding a little bit more of a penalty. More realistic, but also more complex.

2) If you just note the weight of each item on your inventory along with its other stats, you can add them up in less than a minute.

3) What? There are weights listed on every single equipment chart. As to the second part of this sentence, I'm not even sure what you're talking about.

4) I would find it very immersion-breaking and roleplay-damping for some power-gaming munckin to be walking around with an autocannon, a multi-melta, and 100 reloads for each. And yes, the rules are there to give a GM a non-arbitrary means to say "Nope, you can't do that". I don't think that's a bad thing. I happen to be blessed with better players than that, and I get the impression that you are as well. Not everyone is so fortunate.

1) This seems to me like it would be even less immersive and more "gamey" than an encumbrance system, though I'd have to see such a system fully implemented before I could make a judgement call on it.

2) Now this I'll agree with you. I remember in the first Beta that it stated that carrying Heavy weapons of any kind resulted in an automatic hit to your subtlety. I don't recall seeing that in the final product, but I might have missed it. Anyway, I don't use the subtlety system as written because I've been informally using such a system for over 20 years. My players know by now that rifles and armor draw attention. I don't need to track a numeric value to deal with that.

3) What if one person's "main" weapon as a stub automatic and another person's "main" weapon was a man-portable lascannon. Would they be treated the same?

And LOL, I totally forgot that ridiculous 10% clip weight rule. Sheees... Thank you, now I remember that boltgun rounds change weight depending on whether they are in a normal or extended clip, and shotgun shells become lighter when they are loaded into a combat shotgun .

Well, the other options were for ammo to be weightless or to put another column on the ranged weapon charts for magazine weight. Yes, it's a little wonky; but I think it was a reasonable compromise.

And that's exactly why I think encumberance only.in special circumstances doesn't work. If it is likely to require GM adjudication anyway why not drop the rule and just use GM adjudication?

Edit: Even moreso since many circumstances will involve custom items with custom weight decided by the GM anyway.

Sometimes it might be too iffy to make an easy call on it. Then there's always those players who insist that they should be able to carry everything and the kitchen sink without it slowing them down and will grind game to a halt with their arguing. In both cases, it's nice to have solid numbers to fall back on.

And LOL, I totally forgot that ridiculous 10% clip weight rule. Sheees... Thank you, now I remember that boltgun rounds change weight depending on whether they are in a normal or extended clip, and shotgun shells become lighter when they are loaded into a combat shotgun .

Well, the other options were for ammo to be weightless or to put another column on the ranged weapon charts for magazine weight. Yes, it's a little wonky; but I think it was a reasonable compromise.

Or just copy the ammunition table from OW and add a 'weight' column to it.

Well, the other options were for ammo to be weightless or to put another column on the ranged weapon charts for magazine weight. Yes, it's a little wonky; but I think it was a reasonable compromise.

Or just copy the ammunition table from OW and add a 'weight' column to it.

Which would not only take up as much space as adding a clip weight column to the ranged weapons entries but would also require looking that information up in a separate place.

I use logic for weight and gear beign carried; the tech-Priest can have more than the nimble assassin for example, due to strength, and being able to get your gear in your bionics as well...

and no, I didn't read the 4 pages concerning the weight and encumbrance.

And yet we as a culture have chosen to support having professional critics and to take their opinions as important. I'm not a professional rpg critic, but I've noticed too many people interested in nerdy media take exception to having actual criticism leveled at it. At least in video games people can call it unintuitive and unfun and not be told that the game just isn't meant for everyone.

Broadly speaking, any form of media is a pre-packaged 'experience' - it is what it is. This is even the case with computer games, because while they're interactive, they're only interactive within the range of capabilities pre-determined by the developers. Wargames and board games are build for particular play experiences "out of the box". They can be reviewed and critiqued because the experience doesn't change between people in any significant manner.RPGs are an incomplete medium - the rules are not the game, and the contents of the rulebooks do not become the game until they make contact with a GM to interpret them. Consequently, a tabletop RPG is inherently more subjective than basically any other media, and thus analysis and criticism of RPGs is based on shaky ground... because the presence of the GM is a part of the game, and shapes it in a way that has no immediate comparison in other media.I agree with you on some points - the matter of rules aped without regard for the context they existed under (as has been the case with the evolution of D&D and the games inspired by it) - but not the premise that more than a relative minority of RPGs can be described as "objectively bad".

They probably have zero weight because they are not intended to be hoarded.

Actually, ammo does have weight. Sidebar, page 166."Should it be important to know how much ammunition weighs, consider a weapon’s full clip to weigh 10% of the weight of the weapon itself."That's been the case since Dark Heresy 1st edition.

And I could make the same argument about any media. That movies are too complex for most people to understand every detail of it, that paintings would never ever brushstroke and form of light during viewing looked at. You get around this by either stating the context you're viewing it in, or just ignoring the context as an unknown variable and discussing what's left. You can't say ANY game is objectively bad if you're going to hide criticism behind "but the GM!" The quality of any art is interpreted by the individuals experiences and context, in this case their own mental "GM." We still judge plays even though directors and actors can significantly change how they turn out. RPGs also have hard objective rules that must be interpreted not as a series of Schroedingers cats that may or may not be in use, but instead as they are written.

and no, I didn't read the 4 pages concerning the weight and encumbrance.

If you're talking about the rules in the book, they take up less than a page (not including the weight entries on the item lists). If you're talking about pages of discussion in this thread, I think we're way beyond four.

RPGs also have hard objective rules that must be interpreted not as a series of Schroedingers cats that may or may not be in use, but instead as they are written.

A movie is what it is. Every shot, every line of dialogue, every piece of set and costume design, and every special effect is built towards a particular outcome - the film watched as an end result. Viewers can interpret it differently, yes, but the movie is fundamentally complete when released.

A boardgame is a set of procedural rules - if X then Y - which do not require external arbitration. The game's rules are the medium of play, and the experience is defined by that medium.

An RPG ruleset is incomplete: it doesn't function without a GM to run it. An RPG fundamentally requires the presence of one player with a different role and different responsibilities in order to function, much as a computer game requires a compatible computer to run... the difference being that a GM can actively and intuitively alter the rules employed as required by circumstances, while a computer can't. The GM is the medium of play, because the GM is the one that puts the rules into action.

In that regard, an RPG's rules have more in common with a movie camera than a movie - they're a tool used in the creation of the final work, and while it is important to have the right equipment when making a movie, it is one part of a greater whole.

That consideration, IMO, should heavily influence the way we evaluate and consider RPGs. Consider each medium on its own merits, rather than imposing the standards of one medium on another.

God ****, guys. Nimsim goes and posts a very well reasoned, well written post about why the encumbrance system is bad and how it could be better, 20 posts go by and not a single one of the things he says is addressed, commented on, or refuted. Instead you talk about common sense and in what circumstances to apply the current encumbrance rules.

Were they bad ideas? Or did his whole post just go over your collective heads?

The level of discourse on these forums is ******* atrocious.

He's not the only one posting here.

Common sense is the answer though, his idea about placing certain items into slots, based on weight class and affecting subtlety seems a lot of unnecessary bookkeeping to me. You'll get a lot of border cases with exceptions tied to them and I don't see how it even improves gameplay.

Instead of counting KGs, you'll be counting several types of slots linked to specific places on a character's body. Since each slot has a certain weight class, this also means that several items with different (but still approximate weights) go into the same slots. This also means that having a few dozen of these slots creates a potential deviation from the actual weight that a character is carrying.

So you'll end up with a system that is unnecessary complex, being forced to do the constant bookkeeping of rearranging your items along these slots, is unrealistic and doesn't add anything to the game except more limitations. I have 2 items of lower slot weight classes, all my lower slot weight classes are filled up, I have a large weight class slot, but I can't put those in there? Why not?

I'll take common sense, thank you very much.

Maybe it's just a difference of playstyle? Dare I say it's an opinion?

Edit: And this idea from Nimsim is not new, if I recall correctly, somebody already gave a more indepth explanation before about why a slot system is a bad idea.

To be fair, I meant those as three possibly different ideas, or ones that could all be combined. It would really depend on the importance placed on equipment by the setting. 40K seems I place a high value on it, though.

Addressing your points:

I'll go into more detail. You'd have every player start with X slots, possibly modified by items or talents. Tiny items, you can fit as many in the slot as you can write in there (yes this is Gamey and prone to abuse , so you could replace it with 5). One slot per small item, two per medium, three per large. Anything larger and you're just going to be encumbered carrying it around. When you place an item in its slots, you write how it is being carried above the slots (pistol in holster, sword in sheathe, etc). If a player attaches multiple things to the same part of his body or does not have a good way of carrying the item, he takes a penalty, at GMs discretion (rule of thumb being no more than 3 slots per hit location. This is about equal book-keeping to the current system but rather than being "how many more kg can I carry" it is "how much more room do I have" which is an importat distinction.

I think that explanation above differs from how you were seeing it, but let me know if it doesn't. You could end up in a case where a character is carrying maybe a dozen small vox recorders and another is carrying 4 large heavy bolters. Obviously there's a big weight difference, but the heavy Bolter player will probably get a penalty due to having no good way to carry around those items (one on the back, one in each hand and one on the leg?). Or maybe have certain weapons like a heavy Bolter count as being an automatic encumbrance penalty unless specially packed up, requiring a turn to get unpacked. Basically have them be a special "bulky class" that can only be carried around using up the arms and/or back. The system requires more adjudication on the GMs part, but should also provide fun for players writing out their equipment lists.

I don't really know how much rearranging players will have to do. I think you were assuming that the slots would be assigned to specific body parts by the system rather than te player, but it would be simple for a player picking up a new weapon to erase "back strap" for his gun and put "in hand" when picking up a new weapon to put on his back. And yeah, since each slot is equal, you'd have te option of having a bunch of small items, or fewer heavy items. Basically, everyone has X blank slots, to distribute among items and thir body as they wish, with penalties for poor placement, per the GM (which would require a sidebar on what constitutes poor placement). I think that addresses yor issues with it.

God ****, guys. Nimsim goes and posts a very well reasoned, well written post about why the encumbrance system is bad and how it could be better, 20 posts go by and not a single one of the things he says is addressed, commented on, or refuted. Instead you talk about common sense and in what circumstances to apply the current encumbrance rules.

Were they bad ideas? Or did his whole post just go over your collective heads?

The level of discourse on these forums is ******* atrocious.

Ok.

And my problems with encumbrance, summed up.

1) it is unintuitive to have to add and subtract weights in kg. People don't decide something is too heavy because it is "20 kg past what I can carry"

2) the rules advise players to ignore encumbrance unless it becomes relevant, which implies that players are suddenly looking up and and adding weights when it "becomes relevant," or that players must actually always be tracking encumbrance so they don't have to halt an entire session for 10 minutes of referencing and arithmetic.

3) the encumbrance rules aren't even fully implemented for most equipment beyond combat-related items. Some combat items also appear to be balanced by their weight, again contradicting point 2).

4) the encumbrance rules seem to more about preventing from doing things than facilitating roleplay or improving immersion. Keep in mind that this is restricting players without actually ADDING anything to the game (including balance, as per point 3)

Those are the points I can immediately think of to write out. What do I think would be better?

1) every character has X number of "slots," an every item takes up a number of slots based on its size. When carrying an item, it's location on your person is written in the slots it takes up. Some talents/abilities/equipment allow extra slots.

2) every item has a subtlety rating based on size/power. Players have some sort of restriction on what items to carry (possibly slots, maybe number of items, etc). Carrying around heavy ordinance affects aubtlety. This would require a rewrite of the crap subtlety system.

3)players are EXTREMELY limited in what they can carry (one "main weapon", one side weapon, one special item, armor, and some miscellaneous. Items are very prone to wear and tear based on their level of technology and require regular ministrations by a tech priest. Or even just combine it with the slot system.

All of those would do more to encourage theme, provide strategic decisions for players, and so on.

1) No, but they do sometimes decide that they're carrying to much and then make choices as to what they need and what they don't. You're correct in that there's no magical point at which a load suddenly goes from 'fine' to 'too heavy'; but it's a game, and a limit has to be set somewhere. GURPS addressed this by having multiple encumbrance breakpoints; each adding a little bit more of a penalty. More realistic, but also more complex.

2) If you just note the weight of each item on your inventory along with its other stats, you can add them up in less than a minute.

3) What? There are weights listed on every single equipment chart. As to the second part of this sentence, I'm not even sure what you're talking about.

4) I would find it very immersion-breaking and roleplay-damping for some power-gaming munckin to be walking around with an autocannon, a multi-melta, and 100 reloads for each. And yes, the rules are there to give a GM a non-arbitrary means to say "Nope, you can't do that". I don't think that's a bad thing. I happen to be blessed with better players than that, and I get the impression that you are as well. Not everyone is so fortunate.

1) This seems to me like it would be even less immersive and more "gamey" than an encumbrance system, though I'd have to see such a system fully implemented before I could make a judgement call on it.

2) Now this I'll agree with you. I remember in the first Beta that it stated that carrying Heavy weapons of any kind resulted in an automatic hit to your subtlety. I don't recall seeing that in the final product, but I might have missed it. Anyway, I don't use the subtlety system as written because I've been informally using such a system for over 20 years. My players know by now that rifles and armor draw attention. I don't need to track a numeric value to deal with that.

3) What if one person's "main" weapon as a stub automatic and another person's "main" weapon was a man-portable lascannon. Would they be treated the same?

1) Even a gradually increasing penalty for weight still has the issue of being unintuitive. It comes down to 1 kg being the difference between penalty 1 and penalty 2. And it also doesn't address HOW things are being carried. Keep in mind for people carrying around weapons as part of their job, the only things they're really going to be concerned about the weight of in the field are huge bulky things that they can't carry for long or that require all of their strength to carry around.

2) but then the rules say to only use them as needed. So they're contradicting things. And I don't believe that most stat blocks list weapon/armor weights for NPCs. And the mental image of stopping a game (when weight becomes relevant, per the rules that fdsfg keeps mentioning) for everyone to add up a dozen values each, double checking, and so on, seems like it would completely halt a game and story and whatever mood was set up.

3) lots of items have no listed weight. Most things with a weight listed are combat related. If an item is meant to be balanced by its weight, the rule that encumbrance should only be used when relevant means that those weapons are only balanced when the GM seems it relevant to do so. As opposed to other weapons that are ALWAYS restricted by ther mechanics.

4) again, I don't really see the need to have a rule exist SOLELY for the GM to say you can't do that, when the rule could add more to the game for the non-munchkin players and the non-put upon GM.

Please note I was listing the three system ideas as quasi-independent ideas, rather than a cohesive system.

1) see above for more detailed implementation.

2) if I were to do a subtlety-based system it would probably be akin to just having encumbrance/ carrying limits very minimally tracked, with all of the attention being on how subtle a weapon is. It could be use for the slot system with an option to "hide" weapons that causes a one turn penalty to draw them out. The point of a subtlety baed symptom would be for players to think less about how much they can carry and more about what message their equipment is sending. And also feeling like badass super spies.

3) this would be taken care of by certain weapons having a bulky trait that gives their carriers penalties to movement or the like, and other weapons being very fragile technology. Basically players can choose between big slow weapons, fragile weapons, reliable weapons, etc. this would also be very Gamey, but would allow for some fun roleplaying about equipment choice and allow players to build niches in combat.

[edit: since Nimsim beat me posting, this is to n0-1-h3r3]

...

You are aware there are roleplaying games that don't have a GM, right?

You seem to be saying that since RPGs require a human element to make whole, that the framework written cannot be evaluated. In your analogy, if the rules of the game are a camera, what you're saying is that pointing out that the camera can only film what is in front of it isn't a fair criticism because a person (the GM) can just pick the camera up and turn it around.

It's missing the point.

RPGs also have hard objective rules that must be interpreted not as a series of Schroedingers cats that may or may not be in use, but instead as they are written.

That's something I dispute, for reasons I've already pointed out. The notion of RPG rules as a loose collection of tools and ideas for GMs to employ when running a game is not an unusual one, nor is it a particularly new one, considering that the notion originated in the games that inspired the first RPG.

A movie is what it is. Every shot, every line of dialogue, every piece of set and costume design, and every special effect is built towards a particular outcome - the film watched as an end result. Viewers can interpret it differently, yes, but the movie is fundamentally complete when released.

Ah, but a movie is not what it is. Take a look at something like the old black and white Frankenstein. That movie was at the time utterly horrifying, and people fled the theater or passed out from shock. Now, we see that movie as a cultural artifact. It no longer scares us, but it evokes other feelings and emotions. The context through which it is viewed matters. The "GM" of perception matters in how we see movies. Yet they are still open to criticism.

RPGs also have hard objective rules that must be interpreted not as a series of Schroedingers cats that may or may not be in use, but instead as they are written.

A boardgame is a set of procedural rules - if X then Y - which do not require external arbitration.

I see you've not tried playing many of FFG's board games before the errata. And there are plenty of games in which arbitration is required (Apples to Apples or Cards Against Humanity), or negotiation is required (any games with direct player interactions). Player interaction is of great importance in many games, and the ability of the game to facilitate this is important in how it is judged.

RPGs also have hard objective rules that must be interpreted not as a series of Schroedingers cats that may or may not be in use, but instead as they are written.

In that regard, an RPG's rules have more in common with a movie camera than a movie - they're a tool used in the creation of the final work, and while it is important to have the right equipment when making a movie, it is one part of a greater whole.

But some cameras and some tools are better at their tasks than others. Not all hammers are equal. Nor are all hammers equal for all hammer-related tasks. I can judge that toolset by how it fosters play. I can judge the rules of an rpg by how well they represent the setting, how easy they are to use, how much a GM should ignore or modify them during play, and how much guidance they give for actually using them. I can also judge a setting by how much it gives players to do, how cohesive it is, how well it fits into gameplay, and so on. In fact, I would judge the 40K setting (as a playable RPG setting) to have a serious issue of being schizophrenic between the grinding horror of war and grimdarkness, and the coolness and humor of flying space monsters and rocket guns. The game itself shares these issues, rather than smoothing them out.

You can't call an rpg a toolset and avoid criticism because tools can be judged by their ability to fulfill a purpose, and can very obviously be analyzed for what purpose they're fulfilling.

You can't claim that there is no inherent purpose for an RPG, because the tools making it up give a hint of that purpose, the setting gives a purpose, the adventure it provides hints at that purpose, and the book itself discusses that purpose.

The only thing I'm wondering right now is if we'll break the 30 page record this time around.

And that's exactly why I think encumberance only.in special circumstances doesn't work. If it is likely to require GM adjudication anyway why not drop the rule and just use GM adjudication?

Edit: Even moreso since many circumstances will involve custom items with custom weight decided by the GM anyway.

Because the GM needs something to base that adjudication of of. You could use that exact argument to drop the entire ruleset, since the GM can and will adjudicate anything and everything.

The option is to have a system that is actually prohibitive, rather than a system that gives you a rule to work of of when it's relevant.

Also, obviously, no rule can account for "custom items with custom weights", same as the rules cannot account for other custom rules that the GM will come up with or arbitrate. Again, this is basically the same as arguing that there should be no rules at all.

1) Even a gradually increasing penalty for weight still has the issue of being unintuitive. It comes down to 1 kg being the difference between penalty 1 and penalty 2. And it also doesn't address HOW things are being carried. Keep in mind for people carrying around weapons as part of their job, the only things they're really going to be concerned about the weight of in the field are huge bulky things that they can't carry for long or that require all of their strength to carry around.

2) but then the rules say to only use them as needed. So they're contradicting things. And I don't believe that most stat blocks list weapon/armor weights for NPCs. And the mental image of stopping a game (when weight becomes relevant, per the rules that fdsfg keeps mentioning) for everyone to add up a dozen values each, double checking, and so on, seems like it would completely halt a game and story and whatever mood was set up.

3) lots of items have no listed weight. Most things with a weight listed are combat related. If an item is meant to be balanced by its weight, the rule that encumbrance should only be used when relevant means that those weapons are only balanced when the GM seems it relevant to do so. As opposed to other weapons that are ALWAYS restricted by ther mechanics.

4) again, I don't really see the need to have a rule exist SOLELY for the GM to say you can't do that, when the rule could add more to the game for the non-munchkin players and the non-put upon GM.

Please note I was listing the three system ideas as quasi-independent ideas, rather than a cohesive system.

1) see above for more detailed implementation.

2) if I were to do a subtlety-based system it would probably be akin to just having encumbrance/ carrying limits very minimally tracked, with all of the attention being on how subtle a weapon is. It could be use for the slot system with an option to "hide" weapons that causes a one turn penalty to draw them out. The point of a subtlety baed symptom would be for players to think less about how much they can carry and more about what message their equipment is sending. And also feeling like badass super spies.

3) this would be taken care of by certain weapons having a bulky trait that gives their carriers penalties to movement or the like, and other weapons being very fragile technology. Basically players can choose between big slow weapons, fragile weapons, reliable weapons, etc. this would also be very Gamey, but would allow for some fun roleplaying about equipment choice and allow players to build niches in combat.

1) I see where your'e coming from; I guess it just doesn't bother me. Just out of curiosity, how do you feel about the Fatigue mechanics? There's a magical amount of tiredness that suddenly makes you less effective. Does that bother you in the same way?

3) What things?? Clothing and Personal Gear has weight listed. Tools have weights listed. The only thing I don't see listed weights for are most of the drugs, which I just assume are meant to have a negligible weight per dose.