Hi all! I've finally settled on a system that I'd really like to make a strong go at converting Dark Heresy to. It's currently on the cusp of releasing a near-final PDF for it's first setting: Mutant Chronicles. For those who don't know, the old Mutant Chronicles RPG was essentially the closest thing folks had to a Warhammer 40K rpg during the 90s. It's got daemon gods, space super soldiers, corruption, and lost technology. There are some wrinkles in the setting, such as its factions being more like shadowrun corporations, but the core idea is there.

The core mechanic of the 2D20 system is that you are given a set difficulty value of 1-5 and try to roll that many successes. A success on a die is determined by whether a result is equal to or less than the sum of a character's main attribute plus her skill rating. A player always rolls at least 2d20. Skills also have a focus rating from 0-5 that, if rolled on a die, is worth 2 successes. Players are able to roll additional d20s either with special talents, equipment, or setup actions, or by paying the GM special points that the GM can use to power up enemies and cause trouble for players. If a player rolls a 20 on a die, it either pays the GM 2 of those special points, or causes a complication for the character.

The new edition of Mutant Chronicles coming out includes rules for: Characters coming from a wide variety of planets, educations, and careers; big lists of guns and equipment with special abilities; lists of skills and special talents; magic powers; corruption of technology, places, and people; vehicles; a creeping horror mechanic in the form of the GM getting more and more of those special points; and has pretty much everything you'd want from a Dark Heresy game.

That said, there would need to be a good bit of conversion to be made for certain aspects of the game.

First, the current character creation involves choosing/rolling several things:

Note that every character starts with 5 "Life Points" that can be used to choose things rather than rolling, or added to skills or attributes.

-Setting your starting attributes (these all start at 5 and players can subtract from 1 to add to another with a minimum of 4 and a maximum of 6)

-Determining the faction of birth and an event that occurred related to being in that faction

-Determining social status, which influences income and class status

-Determining the environment grown up in

-Determining the education given as well as an event in adolescence

-Determining the first career a character was in

-Determining the second career a character was in (or staying in the first a second time), which may be taken from a list of "Iconic careers" that are more difficult to get into but are more powerful

-Choosing whether to take a third career/stay in a career for a second or third time (costs 1 lifepoint), then choosing whether to take a fourth career/stay in a career for a second or third time(costs 1 lifepoint).

-Final customization that includes spending points to adjust some things and finishing up derived stats

I think this could be kept mostly intact, with the faction of birth being replaced by Home World, the environment replaced with Subtype of Home World, social status staying the same, education being similar to Background from DH2, and then careers and iconic careers being kept the same.

So, my first questions to the folks of this forum are 1) what would you say is a good list of the different types of home worlds (Deathworld, Agriworld, etc.), as well as lists of subtypes for each of them?; 2) what are the educations/backgrounds that would exist in 40K; 3) what are the basic types of careers that exist in 40K; and 4) what are the "Iconic" careers of 40K?

For reference, the MC3 rules include 9 Factions (which I'd be changing to Homeworlds) each with 6 possible environments (which I'd change to homeworld subtypes). There are 16 educations, with players able to roll for free on COLUMN A of 1)Grew Up on the Streets, 2) Technical on the Job Training, 3)Rural/Colonial Education, 4) Clerical Education, 5) Teenage Draft, and 6)Pick from 1-5. Players can pay a Life Point to either choose from COLUMN A, or roll/choose from COLUMN B which is 1) Technical Pre-Career Training, 2) Creative Pre-Career Training, 3) Military Academy, 4) Mangerial Experience, or 5) Brotherhood Education. Players can pay 2 points to roll/choose from COLUMN C which is 1) Post Graduate Technical, 2) Post Graduate Scientific, 3) Creative Education, 4) Officer Trained, 5) Managerial Education, or 6) Brotherhood Apprenticeship.

For careers, there are 4 Columns (Pay 1 lifepoint to choose from A or B or roll on C or D, pay 2 Lifepoints to choose from C or D):

Column A: 1) Unemployed, 2) Corporate Worker, 3) Technical (repairman), 4) Farmer/Frontiersman, 5) Pick result from Column A, 6) Roll on Column B

Column B: 1)-3) Military (basic), 4)-5) Police (beat cop), 6) Criminal

Columb C: 1)-2) Medical (first responder) 3)-4) Academic (researcher) 5)-6)Media (reporter)

Column D: 1)-2) Corporate Executive, 3)-4) Ship Crew, 5)-6) Intelligence (operative)

Then there are around 20 or so iconic careers.

So I guess what I want to try and crowdsource from people is what they would see as being the main types of homeworlds, the average careers for people in 40K, and the iconic careers for people in 40K. Also, if people think there should be restrictions based around certain iconic careers, what should they be? Thanks for all of the help in advance, and I will get to work on adding my own lists here as I come up with them.

Here's what I've got so far:

Home worlds (subtypes in parentheses):

Death World (type of death world)

Forge World (manufactured item)

Fortress World (threat faced)

Frontier World (unique export)

Hive World (city culture)

Imperial World (technology level)

Penal World (type of prisoners)

Shrine World (reason for shrine)

Void Born (type of ship/fleet)

Backgrounds

COLUMN A: 1)OUTCAST, 2)MANUFACTORUM, 3)AGRARIUM, 4)GUARDSMAN DRAFT, 5) CHOOSE ONE FROM 1-4and 6) ROLL FROM COLUMN B

COLUMN B: 1) MECHANICUM 2) MINISTORUM, 3) ARBITES, 4) ADMINISTRATUM

COLUMN C: 1) NAVAL EDUCATION, 2) TECHPRIEST MECHANICUM, 3) SCHOLA PROGENIUM, 4) GUARDSMAN OFFICER, 5) NOBILITY EDUCATION, or 6) TELEPATHICA

Careers

Column A: 1) Unemployed, 2) BUREAUCRAT, 3) FACTORY WORKER, 4) Farmer/Frontiersman, 5) Pick result from Column A, 6) Roll on Column B

Column B: 1)-3) GUARDSMAN, 4)-5) ARBITRATOR, 6) SCUM

Columb C: 1)-2) CHIRURGEON 3)-4) ADEPT 5)-6) CLERIC

Column D: 1)-2) NOBILITY, 3)-4) VOIDSMAN, 5)-6) ASSASSIN

Iconic Careers

Adepta Sororitas

Imperial Psyker

Tech Priest

I'm glad you posted this. I've been keeping my eye on the kickstarter and plan on picking it up when it (finally) releases.

I did run through the online character creator app they made and wasn't super keen on how chargen is done, but I never followed MC before this so mostly it's just names without context and the rules are mostly lost on me since I haven't seen the rulebook yet.

I'm glad you posted this. I've been keeping my eye on the kickstarter and plan on picking it up when it (finally) releases.

I did run through the online character creator app they made and wasn't super keen on how chargen is done, but I never followed MC before this so mostly it's just names without context and the rules are mostly lost on me since I haven't seen the rulebook yet.

What don't you like about the chargen?

I should probably reserve judgement until I see what all of these options I'm choosing from mean, but it seems very long. Lots and lots of choices to make. Hopefully the rules will explain what the purpose of each step is.

The character creation system for Mutant Chronicles was designed to evoke the one from previous editions of Mutant Chronicles (which was also a lifepath system). Other 2d20 system games won't necessarily have the same way of generating characters (for example, Conan won't have a lifepath system for character generation). It's also been designed so that it can be expanded by subsequent sourcebooks - for reasons that make sense within the background, a character from Mishima (feudal japan as a massive business conglomerate, with samurai-run 'keiretsu' business groups as the building blocks of society) will differ in a number of stylistic ways to one from Capitol (corporate 'Murica in space), if only because Mishima has social castes (Samurai and commoners) while Capitol is more democratic (citizen-shareholders).

I don't necessarily know that the lifepath system would suit 40k as-is - there's both more and less variety in the Imperium of Man than there is across the worlds of Mutant Chronicles, and society is a lot less 'free' (consider, for example, that many roles in the Adeptus Administratum are hereditary, and indentured servitude is commonplace).

As for the book's release... I won't commit to an absolute date, but it's close. I've been working feverishly on final error reports and all those other tiny little "end of the book" tasks that take far longer than they should.

Also note that you may wish to look into later versions of the system - those evident in the Infinity and Conan playtests - as well, as we're doing a few things differently in those (amongst other things, the injury system in Conan is somewhat different from the one in Mutant Chronicles)

So, thinking about things, I kind of agree that the career path system doesn't need to be all that detailed for a conversion. It could probably be pared down to the same 3 choices as the current dark heresy.

1) Choose or roll a Homeworld. This will grant stat bonuses, equipment, etc. AND a roll on a table for a single unique ability related to that homeworld (ie each homeworld will have a separate table).

2) Choose or roll a Background. This will also grant things as above, including a roll on a table specific to the background for a unique ability.

3) Choose/roll from a selection of Roles OR assign points yourself. This will be players' chance to either customize their character, or just choose a quicker option. There will also be a final table of unique abilities to roll on that applies to any chosen Role.

As far as Chronicle Points go, every player can start with a set amount that refreshes to that number at the start of each session, similar to the fate points in Fate. Players can spend these points during character creation to gain an extra unique ability (never a re-roll)

I'll try to plan out 10 each of the Homeworlds, Backgrounds, and Roles, with each Homeworld and Homeworld and Background having 5 different special abilities, as well as a table of 20 different Role abilities. Each ability would require a chronicle point to be spent or would only be allowed to be used once per session.

Home worlds (Possible abilities listed in parentheses)
Death World: Deathworlders must choose (or roll) from a list of environments that their death world came from. This environment will determine the context of their abilities

(ignoring status effect, immunity to a type of environment, use a physical attribute in place of a mental one, use of a poison, ignore improvised weapon penalty)
Forge World : Choose an item manufactured by the world that will determine ability context

(remember personally building a specific item and get a bonus with it, be able to repair an item with no extra parts or break it down for parts, have a contact/favor from the mechanicus, ignore fatigue, jury rig a one-use item without any parts)
Fortress World: Choose a type of threat faced by the fortress world that determines context of abilities

(can prevent initiative being interrupted by an enemy, gain contact/favor in military, ignore a fear effect, add teamwork bonus in combat, create cover out of nothing)
Frontier World Choose a main export/reason for maintaining this world that determines context for abilities
Hive World Choose a culture for the hive world that determines context for abilities
Imperial World Choose a level of technology for this world that determines context for abilities
Penal World Choose the types of prisoners on this world that determines context for abilities
Shrine World Choose a reason for the shrine that determines context for abilities
Void Born Choose the type of ship that determines context for abilities

Noble World Choose the type of noble family that determines context for abilities

Backgrounds

Normal Citizen: Choose an exposure to chaos/xenos that made you of interest to the inquisition
Schola Progenium: Choose an academic pursuit
Guardsman: Choose a role in the military
Mechanicum: Choose a the kind of technology worked with
Ministorum: Choose a tenet of the emperor focused on
Arbites: Choose a role within the arbites
Administratum: Choose a branch of bureaucracy overseen
Voidsman: Choose a role on the ship
Telepathica: Choose a type of psychic phenomena focused on

Assassin: Choose a method of assassination learned

Roles

These will be roles that basically focus on things like combat/social/technical expertise and serve as templates for players who don't want to customize their character. There will also be a table of special abilities to roll/choose from.

This should drop down character creation complexity quite a bit, I think. Any thoughts from people?

I'm continuing to brainstorm some stuff. Here's another thing I'm working on.

I've been brainstorming a bit for the Hack I'm working on for Dark Heresy. One of the things I've been working on is changing up the combat/injury system a bit. I've got 2 main goals: 1) Stress fatigue in combat and the idea of having an ebb and flow of personal energy that needs to be managed in combat; and 2) Model injury to where every time a person is actually "hit," they get an injury.

So here's what I'm thinking.

1) Every player has a sort of Fatigue Pool representing how much energy they have for combat.
2) Every action that requires significant physical exhertion has an energy cost. Energy cannot be spent below zero, and the regular limits to actions will be in place. Actions cannot be attempted if there isn't enough energy for them.
3) A set amount of energy will be regained at the start of each combat round, as well as by using certain actions or momentum spends.
4) Wearing heavy armor or carrying a bunch of gear can reduce how much energy is regained each round, possibly dropping it into negatives.
5) When someone is hit by an attack, damage first goes toward their energy pool. This hit represents a character expending the extra effort to either avoid the attack entirely, or to turn it into a glancing blow.
6) Energy is not tracked below zero. However, the amount of damage taken that would be in excess of reducing to zero is tracked. I need to run some numbers, but I'm roughly going with -1 through -5 as a light injury, -6 through -10 as a moderate injury, -11 through -15 as a severe injury, and -16 or more as death.
7) When an injury is received, a hit location is rolled, that will determine what part of the body will be affected. The hit locations will be the legs, right and left arms, torso, and head. If the head receives an injury, it will be taken to the eyes, ears, or brain.
8) Light injuries add 1 dread/critical failure range to actions using that body part and represent heavy bruises, cuts, sprains and the like. Moderate injuries add 1 difficulty to actions using the body part, and represent broken bones or deep gashes. Severe injuries add 1 difficulty and 1 dread (cumulative with light and moderate injuries) and represent that body part being maimed/removed from the body (in the case of the head hit location, this is closer to maiming than removal).
9) Energy will continuously regenerate even when injured, and cannot be reduced below zero. However, if an attack would reduce energy to less than zero, existing injuries will add to the amount that determines what kind of injury is suffered. A new hit location is rolled for each injury suffered. Each existing injury adds 2 to the amount of the injury, unless it is on the same location, in which case it adds 5.
10) Certain deadly weapons will automatically add extra points to injuries they inflict.

So for example:
A) Sigmar has 15 energy. He takes a restricted action to move, costing 2 energy, and follows up with an attack with his sword, costing 1 energy. He now has 12 energy. He would normally regain 3 energy at the start of the next round, but his heavy armor reduces this amount by 2, so he only regains one energy, bringing him up to 13.
B) Sigmar has 4 energy and gets shot with a las pistol. The pistol rolls and deals 4 damage, so sigmar loses 4 energy. This reduces him to 0 energy. Sigmar barely dodges out of the way of the pistol but is completely out of breath now and vulnerable.
C) Sigmar has 0 energy and is shot again with the las pistol for 3 damage. The hit location is the head, and then the eyes, so Sigmar takes a light injury to his eyes. Any actions which he needs to use his eyes for will suffer a critical failure on a result of 19-20 rather than just 20. The las blast explodes on Sigmar's helmet and the flash has caused his vision to swim and be filled with spots.
D) Sigmar has 1 energy but is shot with an autogun for 5 damage. The hit location is his right arm. The damage would reduce Sigmar to -4, plus another 2 for the existing light injury, for a total of -6. Sigmar takes a moderate injury to his right arm, adding 1 difficult to all actions using it. Sigmar can feel a spray of bullets hitting his armor, and screams in pain as several of them pierce through his arm, rendering it near-useless.
E)Sigmar has 3 energy, but a grenade goes off right beside him, causing 8 damage. The hit location is his head and the eyes. The damage would reduce energy to -5, plus 2 for the arm injury, plus 5 eye injury in the same hit location, for a total of -12. Sigmar is blown backward as shrapnel shoots into his eyes, destroying them. Sigmar now adds 1 difficulty and 1 critical threat to any rolls using his eyes (in addition to the 1 critical threat from his light injury), and had better hope he can find a good deal on cyber eyes.
F) During Sigmar's turn, he has just 1 energy. He makes an adjust stance action to jump into cover for 1 energy, then spends his standard action building up his resolve, an action costing 0 energy. He rolls very well, and is able to regenerate the 3 energy he normally would at the beginning of a new round, plus 1 more for each momentum spent. Sigmar could also spend a restricted action to just gain 2 energy.
G) Sigmar, ready with his new cyber eyes, rolls into battle with 5 energy. He is unfortunately hit with a heavy melta gun blast that does a massive 11 damage. The shot lands on his torso. The melta gun unfortunately has a special ability that adds 10 to any injuries it causes. This means that Sigmar takes -16 energy. The melta gun flashes in one second, and in the next there is nothing left of Sigmar but a pile of smoking bones and ash. A fellow acolyte may want to spend a fate point to declare that his cyber eyes are still salvageable to be resold/re-used for later adventures.

So that's my idea in a nutshell. A lot of the numbers are just serving as placeholders until I can get the math in place. I want to emphasize deadliness of combat, have lots of limbs being lost, and also have players strategize about using the limited energy resource. I'd love to know what people think of this basic idea, though. I recognize that it's a large amount of tracking, but I think it could be tracked fairly easily with a good character sheet. I'm thinking having a numbered tracker for energy that a token can be moved up and down on, boxes to check for each injury for each hit location, a box that shows the total number of injuries and how much they all add to additional injuries, and a box for each hit location that shows the additional amount added by existing injuries to that location.

Let me know what people think!

Also, for those who don't know, here's a quick overview of the 2d20 ruleset:

1) The core resolution is to roll 2d20, compare each die against a Target Number (TN), and get a success for each die result that is equal to or lower than the TN. You want the number of successes to equal or exceed the difficulty of the check (ranges from 0-5).

2)TN is determined by your attribute (ranges from 4 to 16, give or take) plus your Expertise in the skill being used (ranges from 0-5). So if you have an attribute of 10 and an expertise of 2, your TN will be 12.

3) Each skill also has a Focus value (ranges from 0-5). If you roll a result equal to or lower than your focus value, you gain an extra success in addition to the 1 success you'd normally get. So if you have a focus of 2, a TN of 12, and roll 2d20 with the results of 1 and 8, you'd get 3 successes total.

4)You may purchase extra dice for a roll (up to 3 extra dice) by spending chaos points. Each player has an unlimited number of chaos points they can spend in this way.

5) The GM can spend chaos points to edit a scene in progress, activate NPC special abilities, or introduce bad things to the players. The GM's pool of chaos points is increased by players spending them.

6) Players also have a pool of Fate Points they can spend to either add a single die to their roll with a result of 1, or to edit a scene in progress, per the GM's permission.

7) If players get more successes than the difficulty, these successes turn into momentum. Momentum can either be spent immediately to add extra effects to a players action, or can be banked into a community pool that any player can use for their own rolls.

8) If a player rolls a natural 20 on a die, this is a threat result, and causes something bad to happen. Players can still succeed at an action, even if they roll this on one of their dice. Rolling a threat AND failing an action will be extra bad, obviously. The range for this can be increased to 19-20, 18-20, etc. by different statuses that can befall the character.

I'm continuing to brainstorm some stuff. Here's another thing I'm working on.

I've been brainstorming a bit for the Hack I'm working on for Dark Heresy. One of the things I've been working on is changing up the combat/injury system a bit. I've got 2 main goals: 1) Stress fatigue in combat and the idea of having an ebb and flow of personal energy that needs to be managed in combat; and 2) Model injury to where every time a person is actually "hit," they get an injury.

So here's what I'm thinking.

So that's my idea in a nutshell. A lot of the numbers are just serving as placeholders until I can get the math in place. I want to emphasize deadliness of combat, have lots of limbs being lost, and also have players strategize about using the limited energy resource. I'd love to know what people think of this basic idea, though. I recognize that it's a large amount of tracking, but I think it could be tracked fairly easily with a good character sheet. I'm thinking having a numbered tracker for energy that a token can be moved up and down on, boxes to check for each injury for each hit location, a box that shows the total number of injuries and how much they all add to additional injuries, and a box for each hit location that shows the additional amount added by existing injuries to that location.

Let me know what people think!

Taken in isolation, it's a cool idea.

It's somewhat heavier than I'd go for 2d20, personally speaking; indeed, we're leaning towards a simpler and faster damage mechanic for Infinity and Conan. I don't like what this would do to game pace with an unfamiliar group. With the right group, it should work great... but it's a fairly niche cross-section of players that'll want those two elements modelled simultaneously. I can see it being faster to run if you're not tracking hit location injury, but that's more a personal preference (I've come to the belief that it's more hassle than benefit most of the time).

That aside, while I can see what you're aiming for, it's tricky to balance - penalise action too much, and people will sit still more often than not. Don't penalise it enough, and people will rush around in ways that you might not intend. It's a knife-edge to get it right. I wish you luck in your endeavour - it's not an easy prospect.

Thanks for the insight. I agree that it's definitely adding a heavy layer of complexity over the system, hence my mention of making liberal use of visual trackers for things. That said, I think having ridiculous injuries is a key part of a 40K system, particularly losing limbs. I also really like the idea of making combat more about resource management in the moment, as far too many rpg combats tend to be more about what talents and equipment are chosen beforehand rather than the tactics chosen during combat. I've been struck by the fact that wearing heavy armor is much more an issue of being a drain on fatigue than it is a drain to mobility, and wanted to include that in the game as the resource to be managed in combat. That said, the idea of tracking energy and so on for NPCs seems like a nightmare, so adjustments would have to be made. I'd love to trim as much fat off this idea as possible, though, and leave the core goals.

1) make combat into a game of resource management

2) make injuries brutal and memorable for players

As I look at goal number 2, it occurs to me that I could probably achieve it with something more akin to the Consequence system from Fate (players receive self-defined injuries acting as status effects that can be invoked to cause them difficulty). Maybe it would be easier to just go with that and just roll hit location to tell the player where the injury is located. In turn, this would limit players to three main injuries at a time. I may go with something like this, as it would be less to track.

For goal number 1, I'm thinking I'd make minor enemies have energy pools of zero, meaning any hit will lead to injury. Mid levels enemies would share a pool, and only major enemies would have their own energy pool. As far as streamlining combat more, I'm considering getting rid of the damage dice in lieu of set damage for each weapon and activating weapon qualities with momentum instead. I know that would speed up combat a lot, and I'm honesty not a huge fan of the damage dice in the first place.

Having seen the latest playtest for another 2d20 product, I've decided to pare down my ideas for injury and the like.

1) every character has a Vitality pool. Damage gets subtracted from this. It can be fairly easily regenerated during and after combat.

2) if a character takes damage when his vitality is at 0, he takes an injury. This injury adds 1 difficulty to physical tasks. You roll to see which body location the injury is at. If a character takes 4 injuries, they are knocked out, and if they take 5 injuries they are dead.

3) if an injury hits the same location twice, that location becomes unusable. If it hits the same location a third time, that location is destroyed.

4) if an attack deals 5 points over soak, it causes an automatic injury. If the attack also reduces someone below 0 vitality, the hit location becomes disabled/destroyed/knocks someone out depending on current level of injury. If it deals 10 points over soak, it automatically destroys the hit location or knocks them out depending on level of injury.

5) wearing heavy armor or being encumbered reduces vitality by a set amount while it is being carried. Vitality can also be lost from other events and cannot be regained until a combat encounter occurs or after a nights rest.

A similar system is used for mental attacks.

1) their is a mental vitality stat and different mental attacks can be used against it.

2) if an attack reduces mental vitality below 0, it causes a trauma that adds 1 difficulty to all mental-based tests. 4 traumas knocks someone out and 5 drives them completely insane.

3) the third injury causes a minor insanity and the fourth a major insanity.

4) exceeding soak by 5 causes an automatic minor insanity. Exceeding by 10 causes an automatic major insanity.

I think that this should be a lot easier to adjudicate while still allowing for lots of limb chopping and the like. L

5) wearing heavy armor or being encumbered reduces vitality by a set amount while it is being carried. Vitality can also be lost from other events and cannot be regained until a combat encounter occurs or after a nights rest.

I've actually looked at this for Conan, and it requires a delicate touch - too big a penalty, and heavy armour more trouble than it's worth. You need to establish when the penalty kicks in as well - after X number of scenes/hours/whatever, rather than instantly (instant health reduction is more problematic than slowly accumulating fatigue). I'd suggest that the penalty is always 1, but it's cumulative, and accrues at a rate determined by the armour in question.

Keep an eye on Conan as well - we've got some ideas in development for location-based injury using the new damage model.

5) wearing heavy armor or being encumbered reduces vitality by a set amount while it is being carried. Vitality can also be lost from other events and cannot be regained until a combat encounter occurs or after a nights rest.

I've actually looked at this for Conan, and it requires a delicate touch - too big a penalty, and heavy armour more trouble than it's worth. You need to establish when the penalty kicks in as well - after X number of scenes/hours/whatever, rather than instantly (instant health reduction is more problematic than slowly accumulating fatigue). I'd suggest that the penalty is always 1, but it's cumulative, and accrues at a rate determined by the armour in question.

Keep an eye on Conan as well - we've got some ideas in development for location-based injury using the new damage model.

I was honestly thinking of just having a baseline for light armor (1 or 2 soak), with each additional point of soak increasing the vitality penalty by 1. This would mean that armor could prevent lots of light or glancing wounds (as well as making it harder to be injured), but that attacks able to pierce it would be harder to shrug off. I still plan on having Vitality being able to regenerate much faster than the baseline 2d20 system. Something like regenerating fully at the end of each encounter, or close to it, and having lots of opportunity to regenerate it during an encounter itself. Basically, I want vitality to be a resource that is mainly managed within the context of a single encounter, with its starting value for the encounter being determined by the story itself. I want the effects of heavy armor to be felt in each individual encounter, rather than taking time to build up or only coming up for encumbrance threshold.

I'm probably also going to do something with ammo management, too, as that's a pretty big part of the Dark heresy theme.

I've also gone ahead and redone the characteristics/skill. I've reduced characteristics down to 6 rather than 8, and each of them works with 5 skills (or affects vitality). Here they are. Characteristics are bold and Skills are italics

Physique

Athletics (feats of strength or physical prowess, including speed and the like)

Resilience (Ability to resist toxins and the like, as well as endure long term physical exertion)

Brawl (hand-to-hand fighting, as well as forcing people to do things through violence)

Melee (fighting with melee weapons)

Also determines Vitality

Agility

Operate Ground Vehicle (includes both piloting and use of large vehicle weapons)

Operate Flying/Space Vehicle (includes both piloting and use of large vehicle weapons)

Ranged (Light) (fighting with small ranged weapons)

Ranged (Heavy) (fighting with heavy ranged weapons)

Coordination (ability to dodge attacks as well as feats of balance or acrobatics)

Intellect

Tech-Use (use of technology for repair and operation)

Medicae (healing of injuries both mental and physical)

Common Lore (general knowledge, with various topics coming from character background or awarded by the GM; each known topic is listed for the character)

Scholastic Lore (scientific knowledge, including biology, chemistry, logic, and the like)

Forbidden Lore (knowledge of forbidden subjects, with topics coming from character background and experiences in gameplay; each known topic is listed for the character)

Fellowship

Charm (ability to persuade persons through humor, flirting, flattery, blathering, or the like)

Scrutiny (ability to take measure of a person, determine his or her thoughts or feelings, or if they are lying)

Command (ability to lead others, or exude authority)

Negotiate (ability to make deals with others, including bribery, buying, or selling)

Inquiry (ability to get information out of individuals or from social surroundings)

Mental Strength

Coerce (ability to intimidate others into doing what you want)

Discipline (ability to resist mental attacks or some social actions)

Vigilance (ability to detect ambushes, dodge mental attacks)

Psyniscience (ability to detect and use psychic powers or phenomena)

Also determines Mental Vitality

Cunning

Deceive (ability to convince others of lies)

Awareness (ability to perceive surroundings or notice things)

Skullduggery (ability to break into things or steal things)

Survival (ability to survive in hostile environments without resources, and ability to work with animals)

Stealth (ability to sneak around unnoticed)

I'm going to work a bit on balancing out which skills can oppose which, as well. I'm thinking of allowing any social skill to be opposed by the same social skill, Scrutiny opposing Charm/Deceive, and Discipline opposing Command/Coerce. Yes, that means that Negotiation can only be opposed by Negotiation, and I wouldn't allow Inquiry to be opposed at all. Coordination can oppose any kind of physical attack, while melee and brawl can oppose each other. Vehicle attacks are opposed by the vehicle's skill or by coordination, depending on what's being targeted.

I made a lot of the choices for skills and characteristics very purposefully, and my intention is to have them be able to cover every kind of action that would need to come up in an investigative game. I also attempted to have each characteristic have some measure of utility for social, investigative, and combat encounters. I'd be interested to hear more feedback, however.

Some other stuff on character creation/advancement:

Remember the core mechanic is to roll a number of d20s and get a success for every result at or below the target number. The target number equals characteristic + skill expertise. If you roll equal or lower than skill focus, it counts as 2 successes.

Character creation will have you choose characteristics from an array, something like 12, 10, 7, 7, 7, 7. The characteristic at 12 is your major one, the one at 10 is your minor, and the others are all baselines. You can subtract from one baseline to add to another so long as none of them exceed 10 or fall below 5.

Your major skill will start with 6 points of expertise and 6 points of focus to distribute among its skills. A skill
Must have at least 1 point of expertise to add 1 or or more focus to it. Skills have a maximum of 5 expertise and 5 focus. Every point of expertise gains a choice of two talent. Each level of expertise offers two new talents to choose from, or choosing a previous one. Players can also choose to spend an expertise/talent to increase vitality/mental vitality by 2, up to a number of times equal to the maximum skill value.

Your major skill is the same, except it starts with 4 expertise and 4 focus, and a maximum skill value of 4. Baseline skills get 6 focus and 6 expertise to spread among all 4 baseline characteristics, and have a maximum skill value of 3.

Advancement works such that at the end of each session, each player gains 1 expertise AND talent in a skill of their choice, as well as 1 focus in a skill of their choice. Remember that focus can exceed expertise, so long as the skill has at least 1 existing expertise. Every time a skill gets the maximum amount of expertise added to it, it's characteristic increases by 1. If a target number ever exceeds 19, the excess is instead added to the focus of the roll.

So those are the basics for character advancement. The frequency of advances can be decreased for campaigns with more frequent sessions or that are expected to take a long time.

Did you get any further with this? I like the system but having got MC book I'm not really keen on the world.

Did you get any further with this? I like the system but having got MC book I'm not really keen on the world.

The later versions of the system are refined in a number of ways - the Infinity Quickstart demonstrates some of these changes (though not all of them), and the Quickstart for the forthcoming Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of (not yet available, but it'll be released when the Kickstarter begins on the 16th of February) demonstrates the current state of the rules.

We'll have a more stripped-down version of the system for John Carter of Mars later this year as well.

Infinity in particular is built to support in-depth hacking and psychological warfare as well, so it's got more in-depth social conflict rules than many RPGs (which I'm quite proud of, as I've tried to make it mechanically interesting while still encouraging roleplaying). They're not completely isolated sub-systems, though - the hacking rules work similarly to the normal combat rules, and all connect to the same damage system (so trying to hack a security system would involve attacks against a firewall, while threats and intimidation are attacks that inflict mental damage).