I can't believe this! Any true Warhammer roleplayer knows that the only true ruleset is the original one; "Warhammer: The Mass Combat Fantasy Role-Playing Game"!

Anything else is just pure deviance! Use fancy dice that I can't just nick from a backgammon set? Evil! Have more than 1hp? Blasphemy! Spare us from all these WHFRP v1 johnny-come-latelys!

Yes, this is tongue in cheek .. but in actual fact I do remember using this ruleset to roleplay back in the day.

I love that artwork. Wish I had a poster

Don't forget Rogue Trader (The Original) either. That also had rules for RPG play with the 40K battle System!

Wasn't the old Rogue Trader the old rules for the 40K mini game?

Yes. It was the first version I had that had the 40K mini game. It had a small section in it about running it as an RPG as well. Just imagine running around as a group of space marines...but this time since you can only take one hit...you sure don't want to go proving how tough you are!

Also, it was nice that in the back they included cutouts of units that you could use instead of buying minis, to have your own little battle. Make copies and you could have armies even.

Everything you needed except dice in the book, Battle rules and RPG rules as well. Of course the RPG was rather deadly...

If we really want to talk about the history of 40k....

If I recall correctly (and I'm remembering 25 years back), the initial design was to have a simple wargame including in the boxed sets of citidel figures (which had the same box art as I posted above). This got expanded somewhat into a draft sci-fi wargame called Rogue Trader, which then warped into Warhammer as they felt fantasy was thier core market. The inital design was heavily based on Laserburn (still got my copy somewhere) - see if you can find the link between that and Citadel Minutures in the mid-80's But as wargames didn't sell as well as Role Playing Games, they tried to hedge thier bets (hence Mass Combat Role-Playing Game)

Then some of the boxed sets of Citadel figues came with a coloured sheet of A4 with Warhammer scenerios for you to play with the figues from that box.

Rogue Trader was going to be the the Sci-Fi version, but due to the Boardgame (based on the 2000AD character) Rogue Trooper, it got renamed to Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader. But we're up to about 1987 here - positivley modern!

And the WHFRP came out at about the same time, and quickly became one of my favourite systems - a position it still holds today. And one of the great things is that they have contiuned to develop the world and the systems whilst retaining the core ideas, giving us greater insight all the time. So bring on v3, I for one will be delighted for any new ideas it can give me to present and play the Warhammer world (and new ideas at my age are hard to come by), and I'll be thankful that I didn't try to piss on Bryan Ansells parade when he first had the idea of "You know what? Lets do a redesign of Laserburn!" (my luddite days came when I was 20 and Warhammer battle went 4th edition and I felt they had dumbed it down - I have a feeling it was an age/insecurity thing)

Oh, 2 more things..

1- When I said "they continued to develop", I mean "everyone". The designers, the fans, you , me..

2- Ta for the birthday cake . That really stopped me from feeling old as I re-read my post above