That's because it's based on BRP.

Edit: Looked up BRP. Wow, a 30 year old system, at its core. There are so many new and better systems to be used. Hell, I'm one of the weirdos that thinks Warhammer Fantasy 3rd Edition was one of the greatest roleplaying games ever released (mostly because it synthesized roleplaying and game in a way that hasn't been done as well by anything else, and because it took some of the best ideas from board game design).

Still, who are you responding to when you say "that's because it's based on BRP."

Nope, this is from a copy second ed., final. The melta thing was a reading error(it happens), but the frag nade blast radius is definitely 3. If it's not, it'd be great to know if we missed an errata somehow. Hence why I asked.

Okay, I double-checked, and the blast radius of Frag in DH2 really is 3. I could have sworn it was five. Guess reading errors happen to all of us

Actually, I've been a fan of Warhammer's percentile die ever since I first played it in WFRP 1e (yeah, that's the one from 1986). I can honestly say it's current incarnation (basically the version with all the changes introduced in Black Crusade and continued in OW and DH2) is one of my favorite mechanics of all times. The people I play with generally share my opinion on the subject, and at least some of us are genuinely excited with every new release (myself included, with a weird sorta-exception of 2e, because, again, bad taste in my mouth from the beta).

So please don't try to lend extra weight to your personal opinions by claiming everyone shares them.

No accounting for taste...but the fact that game is using a mechanic first used in 1986 which has never been copied or reproduced except by other GW licensees is pretty telling.

Sorry, but what exactly does it tell us? That only GW and it's licensees use a system that GW owns? Because that's, like, absolutely normal.

Also, isn't it telling that games using the evolutionary versions of this engine keep selling up to this day?

It's a tired system and people who are not set in their ways, who were born after the Carter presidency can see that.

I was actually born after the Carter presidency (a fact I just had to look up because I'm not from the States and had no clue when it was), thank you very much. In fact, my first contact with WFRP 1e was in 2003, I think. It was still a good system back then (though admittedly I wouldn't want to go back to it now).

It's not the best practice to accuse your interlocutor of being old and hidebound.

Seriously, look around the internet and see how many people have adapted this line into other systems. It's seriously medicine to a majority of the users.

If we were to judge systems by this oddly specific criterion, we'd have to conclude D&D 3.x is the only system people really like.

Wasn't WHFRP basically based on Chaosium's earlier material? Bit of a stretch to say "no deriatives" in that case...

Yeah d100 is used in Call of Cthulhu- granted, there's 2464563456 editions and it,s basically the same book with a few typos, new art and new layout, but you can get 5 people with 5 different editions, they make a character with their own book and you can play a game without having everyone confused.

With the changes in rules and such, you cannot do this with the 40k line, except for the first 3, as they were planned as such. Compared to BC, which hit everyone by surprise, and OW, which started small but could only develop in its own line due to the massive pool material available it's (almost) night and day.

And really, what's wrong using a system that's 20-30 years old?

If it ain't broken, don't fix it.

Another would be don't change a winning formula.

Change can be good, but change for the sake of change is not a solid foundation to explain the need for change.

Yeah d100 is used in Call of Cthulhu- granted, there's 2464563456 editions and it,s basically the same book with a few typos, new art and new layout, but you can get 5 people with 5 different editions, they make a character with their own book and you can play a game without having everyone confused.

With the changes in rules and such, you cannot do this with the 40k line, except for the first 3, as they were planned as such. Compared to BC, which hit everyone by surprise, and OW, which started small but could only develop in its own line due to the massive pool material available it's (almost) night and day.

And really, what's wrong using a system that's 20-30 years old?

If it ain't broken, don't fix it.

Another would be don't change a winning formula.

Change can be good, but change for the sake of change is not a solid foundation to explain the need for change.

Well, here are some basic issues:

Failure in this system is inherently boring, as well as occurring with a high amount of frequency.

The d100 system has always scaled poorly among different skill levels and especially for non-humans or monsters.

The system encourages finding lots of modifiers in order to succeed, which in turn slows down play and punishes newer players

The combat system has never really bridged the gap between the fluff and playability (survivability vs. weapon performance, etc.)

The system,in it's "evolution" has constantly been adding on new rules that don't integrate well with existing ones, create unintuitive or broken interactions, or increase complexity without increasing depth

There is a very complex combat system with little guidance on actually using it or balancing encounters, due to the fact that the system is not actually possible to balance

The core system does not serve to emphasize much beyond getting into combat, with everything else being one-and-done skill rolls.

Those are the issues I could think up in about five minutes, but I'm sure there are a lot more. All of those issues have either been "solved" or at least addressed by more modern game systems. You can say if it ain't broke, don't fix it, but the fact is that the system isn't broken so much as outdated. People back at the turn of the 20th century thought a car going 15 miles per hour was unnaturally fast, but times have changed, and the introduction of modern technology has changed how we perceive things. RPG design is a technology itself, and seeing more modern designs has really highlighted the flaws in a lot of these old systems. Even to hear how a lot of people actually run things, most of the rules end up being ignored, which indicates that the system is wasting a lot of ink on things that won't be used.

Don't change a a winning formula? I'll admit that the books still sell well enough, but I'm curious how many new people are buying them as opposed to just the same old, aging audience. You know, The Simpsons is still on the air and McDonalds still sells a lot of cheeseburgers, but I don't see anyone calling them out as high quality any more. This isn't "change for the sake of change," it's "change because times have changed."

Nimsim, you did incredible justice to my thoughts, and I must agree.

Half the time, I am the person who defends this system to my group. Normally my group is half composed of ladies (they're a native V:tM group), all of them opted out by session 2. All of them cited these 30 year old rules as the boundary to their enjoyment. These are smart people, one a mathematician, to address preemptively any dismissal of their objection. They play fudge, cortex, d&d, HERO (YES, FLICKING HERO), but they drew the line at 40k rpg. We have two campaigns now, but the gender divide is not endearing. I would be interested if ffg had any marketing data on how many women game with the 40k line compared to their other rpgs.

I don't get it. Are women more predisposed to be on the cutting edge of traditional roleplaying game mechanics?

I'd expect it to be more connected to social/cultural environment and upbringing - in essence, how mind and personality were formed. Neatly explaining why there's an overlap between the sexes as far as question such as these are concerned. Current society just tends to push both genders into different paths much of the time, but you'll still end up with sizeable segments of "exceptions from the rule" on either side.

Perhaps there is an average that enjoys the storytelling aspect, but would prefer the ruleset to be kept neat and tidy? I can certainly understand how someone could regard DH as a mess, in some aspects (see Nimsim's list), and how this could become a point of frustration. The layout of the books (turn to page 207 for rules on this or that, page 207 tells you to look on page 84, page 84 references stuff from page 177, ...) often doesn't help either. I was thrilled by the game's complexity at first, but the more downsides I discovered, the more I drifted towards a "back to the roots" approach as it is presented in the rules-lite Dragon Age RPG.

A study on the subject of P&P preferences would certainly be interesting.

I'm really confused now. The reason I like this system is because it's rules-light, intuitive and fast

I'm really confused now. The reason I like this system is because it's rules-light, intuitive and fast

It's one of those really subjective things. I find the system cumbersome, unintuitive and extremely slow when it comes to combat.

In my experience, you're always trading something for something else, regardless of what system you're using.

Perhaps the current system is a bit on the general side, as in, it's not perfect and it's not bad either. Other systems could have some critical aspect for the warhammer40k experience to be perfect, but other aspects just plain bad.

Perhaps you people should come up with something using one of those newer systems? I mean, we already had a different thread going about the exact same thing as this thread. You have the people who bash/are disappointed about the current incarnation of the system and others who claim it is fine as it is.

So what's the point still? FFG tried to go for a new system and saw it wasn't going anywhere. They could have cancelled the whole thing and just not bring out anything, at all. No new lines, nothing. Their 40k license is still valid for other products. The 40k Conquest cardgame just came out for instance.

So come up with something together and maybe they'll even adopt it at some point. (Or just continue beating a dead horse, doing nothing)

Honestly I think that's the best part about 40k rpgs from FFG. They're iterative, and at least from what I've seen each iteration is a bit more streamlined and smooth.

Comparing 2nd to 1st it's drastically different in terms of complexity (at least from my perspective) Nearly every facet is easier.

However as I hear and read more about more narratively based systems I become more enamored with them. Unfortuantely the group I run for prefers a more complex type of system, and for that the 40k rpg is it for them. At least if we're playing a scifi game, for some reason we still play 20 systems.

As far as the genders go, from my experience trying to get more women to play, women seem to be turned off by how grimdark the 40k setting is. Also, the setting is highly masculine. The question I get is, why isn't there any female space marines or at least an equivalent? Personally, I have in the works, a plan to make one of the lost SM legions all female and living in exile until it is the right time to come forth. Emperor orders them to become exiled having forseen the future and knowing that they will be needed in the distant future.

You have Sisters of Battle, they are the counter-point to space marines, I see no issue.

They still don't hold a candle to a Space Marine though. They are not equals.

So aside from male-only space marines, what else is considered to be highly masculine?

As far as the genders go, from my experience trying to get more women to play, women seem to be turned off by how grimdark the 40k setting is. Also, the setting is highly masculine. The question I get is, why isn't there any female space marines or at least an equivalent? Personally, I have in the works, a plan to make one of the lost SM legions all female and living in exile until it is the right time to come forth. Emperor orders them to become exiled having forseen the future and knowing that they will be needed in the distant future.

Thats heresy. And you know it.

Space Marines are all male. This is because they were made from gene-seed from the emperor himself, who was male.

Such a thing like a female Space Marine does not exist, and every attempt by a magos biologis to create one would be the worst tech-heresy, that would not only offend the mechanicus, but also every single space marine chapter.

What comes next ? Male sororitas ? Tender Khorne Berzerkers ? Friendly tyranid diplomats ? Ork mediators ?

As far as the genders go, from my experience trying to get more women to play, women seem to be turned off by how grimdark the 40k setting is. Also, the setting is highly masculine. The question I get is, why isn't there any female space marines or at least an equivalent? Personally, I have in the works, a plan to make one of the lost SM legions all female and living in exile until it is the right time to come forth. Emperor orders them to become exiled having forseen the future and knowing that they will be needed in the distant future.

Actually, Malcador (the closest advisor of the Emprah) proposed the idea of female Primarchs, but the Emperor dropped the idea because redesigning the implants for female use was ridiculously complex thus time-consuming in an era where time was a precious resource. The Emperor had to work with the simpler male biology because the clock for the Great Crusade was ticking.

A Sister's stats are never going to exceed 65 or 70 and a marine's stats start at that value. I personally don't have a problem with it but female players made this an issue in the past mostly in regards to DW campaigns.

Nobody has a problem with the fluff. Im only relating how the game system alienates female players. While this may or may not be an issue for ffg, it is for some of the female audience.

Well, Deathwatch is just all about Space Marines. It's difficult to look past that.

Space Marines are basically monks (those were all male IRL as well) and the Sororitas nuns (all female).

There is a reason why Space Marines call eachother "brother" and have Fortress Monasteries and stuff. Same for Sororitas.

So basically what you're asking here is to have female monks and male nuns.

If FFG brought out a game that's purely focused on the Sisters of Battle, would 40k then suddenly be highly feminine?

Im not suggesting changing the way things are as I don't really have a solid solution to the issue. Im just putting it out there. Ive had a far harder time pitching a game of Dark Heresy or DW to females than any other game and was pondering why this was the case.

Perhaps they just like newer RP systems.