Why are the books so inconsistent?

By RMcD, in Rogue Trader

Okay this is a general grievance I have with a lot of how things are presented in Rogue Trader. In particular when basic things are inconsistent with formatting and rules it starts leaking into the actual mechanics. This happens in other games (like Hearthstone is a good example for almost no coherence between two things that do the same thing) and it really is a sign of some bad design.

Right now I'm going to show some examples.

Page 79 of Into the Storm. Nice list of skills and talents. First note how it is sorted, by Type, then by Cost, then Alphabetically by Advance Name.

Now look at Page 77 of Faith and Coin. Note how this is sorted: Cost then Alphabetically by Advance Name.

Okay, this is already absolutely horrible, this should never have been able to make it to print. This is a very basic design principle.

But that's not all, let's look at the Hatred (Xenos) talent, in the earlier book it is simply Hatred (Xenos) (x3), here for some reason they added Choose One Group? What this means, is by omission, all other Hatred (Xenos) talents are for all Xenos, even though if it is x3 and since there is no benefit from hating the same group multiple times it obviously doesn't mean that at all. I just do not understand how this kind of stuff could make it ever past the editing stage. Whoever designed the PDF must know the rules for the order advances should be in, whoever wrote the Skill surely must understand what Hatred (Xenos) is?

In the base book, say page 49 of the Core Rulebook, they aren't even sorted alphabetically! Sorted yes by cost, but not even by skill/talent, look at Dodge for example.

Other things that bug me, why is Flame Weapon Group a thing? Anything that can be represented by something else should never be replicated. For example on the same page in ITS it doesn't even use Flame Weapon Training it has Basic and Heavy as separate. If it was going to be a thing it should be Weapon Training (Flame), not Flame Weapon Training, the bit before Weapon Training always refers to Class of Weapon, not the Qualities, ie, Heavy, Basic, Melee, Exotic Weapon Training (X). Or All Weapon Training (Flame), either of those would have been better. Of course it specifies flame quality which means it is now completely abusable because there is a weapon upgrade Starflare Vents which adds Flame to any weapon. As long as it's not Exotic you can use it. Examples of weapons that aren't exotic, Kabalite Weapon's that Dark Eldar wield, Tau Weapons. Isn't that just grand?

Also another thing is when they can't use numbers versus digits. In one sentence they say in 1 sentence and in the next they say in one sentence. Be consistent (and obviously just use digits all the time in any non-flavour text).

Anyway this whole thing frustrates me insanely, surely their design team can't just have not cared about this?

Edit: This is ignoring blatant errors for example: in Faith and Coin saying Scholastic Lore (Military Tactics) for one of the items. Or in the Core Rulebook (even in 1.4 Errata) Trade is Intelligence based on the character sheet but differs per skill on skill page.

Edited by RMcD

You seriously need to calm the f*ck down. Noone in the history of this forum has gone on such a b*tchfest about the quality of FFGs books. In fact we have posters who worked on those books and better show some godd*mn social decency and respect the effort that goes into these works and not nitpick spelling, format, and minor mistakes.

In Shadowrun's Rigger 5 book there were entire statblocks missing or swapped with others by mistake, in the DnD 5e supplement Elemental Evil the entire Goliath race was broken on launch and had to be fixed. And lets not get into the mistakes found in CoC.

Dozens or people work on a book at any one time, all seperate writers that send in excerpts of the larger whole while also working on other projects simultaneously. Proof-readers exist, but people are fallible. So the creators take it for granted that their customers are not rock stupid enough to take obvious mistakes as truth.

Unless you find a major issue, such as the Space Combat in RT that was fixed by the community for example, keep these disrespectful, condescending posts to yourself.

Calm down and stick to playing.

You seriously need to calm the f*ck down. Noone in the history of this forum has gone on such a b*tchfest about the quality of FFGs books. In fact we have posters who worked on those books and better show some godd*mn social decency and respect the effort that goes into these works and not nitpick spelling, format, and minor mistakes.

They're allowed to lay criticism down. No reason to actively insult them.

You seriously need to calm the f*ck down. Noone in the history of this forum has gone on such a b*tchfest about the quality of FFGs books. In fact we have posters who worked on those books and better show some godd*mn social decency and respect the effort that goes into these works and not nitpick spelling, format, and minor mistakes.

I think you're more working up than me there. Also what's with the self-censoring?

Just because people on this forum have worked on this product means that we're not allowed to criticise it? What kind of crazy nonsense is that.

In Shadowrun's Rigger 5 book there were entire statblocks missing or swapped with others by mistake, in the DnD 5e supplement Elemental Evil the entire Goliath race was broken on launch and had to be fixed. And lets not get into the mistakes found in CoC.

Dozens or people work on a book at any one time, all seperate writers that send in excerpts of the larger whole while also working on other projects simultaneously. Proof-readers exist, but people are fallible. So the creators take it for granted that their customers are not rock stupid enough to take obvious mistakes as truth.

Considering I explicitly mentioned Hearthstone as another example of terrible design I don't understand what bringing up other people flaws is meant to be relevant. Yes, I criticise 5th edition too. There are rules in that system that go beyond sense.

Dozens of people working on a book is no excuse. Twilight (the book) came out filled with typos, yet most other books manage to be proofread before hand. Why so inconsistent? Considering this kind of proof-reading is incredibly basic I think that FFG needs to rethink who they are hiring for this thing. Proofreaders are fallible but when your entire job description is stopping mistakes making it to print and yet you can't do something as simple as make sure the skills are the right ones?

Also, your last sentence is actually horrifying. FFG could have released a typo ridden unformatted raw text document with no paragraphs or pages and words switched to refer to other things at random, but because you can understand it that makes it ok? That's nonsense, only people who play Death Watch would know what Military Tactics is referring to. I don't know what the correct read about Trades is meant to be, considering that all the GMs I've spoken to have different rules on whether Int is used for Trade skills or not.

Unless you find a major issue, such as the Space Combat in RT that was fixed by the community for example, keep these disrespectful, condescending posts to yourself.

Calm down and stick to playing.

I guess FFG doesn't have to worry about sensible formatting or coherent structure when they have content police like you determining what people are allowed to criticise. "Sorry there Mr. SCKoNI doesn't think your criticism is major enough to warrant a post"

Also I think you should take your last point into your own reflection.

I guess FFG doesn't have to worry about sensible formatting or coherent structure when they have content police like you determining what people are allowed to criticise. "Sorry there Mr. SCKoNI doesn't think your criticism is major enough to warrant a post"

Now now, no need for you to insult either.

They don't have to worry about it because the line's ending.

One aspect of these lines has been, at least allegedly, a certain amount of copy-pasting. DH --> RT --> DW --> BC --> OW --> DH2E; each of these has been a continuation, of sorts, from the previous one, and while each often introduces new mechanics, sometimes drastically so, they all also contain often the same information. Regardless of which line you are in, you are in 40K, which has an established universe, bad guys, less bad guys you might actually rout for, and such. A problem with this has been, seemingly, when they went to make a new line, or a new book, and they were going to rehash the same bit of info, for the fourth time, they may have just said "to save some time, we'll copy-paste this from the last time we used it", and sometimes they didn't remember they were altering a mechanic, so it doesn't reflect that, or a similar typo carries over, again. it's not a great excuse, I grant, but when professional newspapers, like the one where I live, often read like they can't even SPELL editor, to say nothing of actually employing one, who is proofreading their product, some of the typos in these rather thick books seem excusable, at least once; we give them hell later, when the same error gets C-P into a later work, still uncorrected. There's a lot of stuff to read over, just like if you were making something like a video game, and we all know how buggy something like Skyrim could get, just as an example. Sometimes, one person is using the work of a previous writer, and then adding their own, with their own style, and not going back to fix it, because then it wasn't a time-saver.

There certainly are some grievous errors; I think Hostile Acquisitions had the Null Bay ship component, and then entirely forgot the entry for that table. Still, it's not at all unique to this line, alone. In my Revised Star Wars Corebook, the Emperor has Skill Emphasis (Influence), except Skill Emphasis is a feat for a skill, and Influence is another feat; you can't do this. He also does NOT have the Force-Sensitive feat, so he technically can't use Force powers/abilities. In my version of White Wolf's Wraith: the Oblivion, they forgot the mechanic for regaining Pathos, the fuel source Wraiths use for practically everything. On the last page of my edition, they have an errata entry with the great flavor text "Houston, we have a problem!", because of how critical this mechanic is. I'm lucky, because it's there, but first ed Wraith books? I'm not sure what they did. My Anime d20 Trigun book, if memory serves, has several stat blocks forgotten, one that has a special that was wrongly copy-pasted from something COMPLETLELY different, so it's wrong, and another stat block that was C-P, so if you like Gray the Ninelives, have fun using rules for the guy who trained Wolfwood, I think; I don't remember if it was part of that guy's, or Knives, of all people, but it was heinously erred, while this thin tome i no where near as substantial as several we've discussed. Most of these lines of word-rich, mechanics-heavy games will be rife with these things, for one reason, or another. I took a whole class, in college, on Visual Media Design, and one thing we talked about was word spacing. You pay by the word, occasionally by the character, and appearance can matter. If it will keep a sentence together, prevent part of an idea from going to the next line, by where you might forget what the prior bit had been about? :blink: , or preventing a large, empty space from occurring, they might swap to a number, rather than spelled out, even in the same block. It's dumb, but it's industry. Certainly, these might not be the excuses that work for FFG's projects, but...

And of course, many of us have, at one time, or another, taken our own shots at the editing in these books.They don't always deserve it, but this is the Internet; we complain.

Well you think RT was bad you should have seen Anima another thing FFG were doing now they really made a hash of it but as they no longer have either line why worry maybe another company will do a better job

Edited by greystroke

One aspect of these lines has been, at least allegedly, a certain amount of copy-pasting. DH --> RT --> DW --> BC --> OW --> DH2E; each of these has been a continuation, of sorts, from the previous one, and while each often introduces new mechanics, sometimes drastically so, they all also contain often the same information. Regardless of which line you are in, you are in 40K, which has an established universe, bad guys, less bad guys you might actually rout for, and such. A problem with this has been, seemingly, when they went to make a new line, or a new book, and they were going to rehash the same bit of info, for the fourth time, they may have just said "to save some time, we'll copy-paste this from the last time we used it", and sometimes they didn't remember they were altering a mechanic, so it doesn't reflect that, or a similar typo carries over, again. it's not a great excuse, I grant, but when professional newspapers, like the one where I live, often read like they can't even SPELL editor, to say nothing of actually employing one, who is proofreading their product, some of the typos in these rather thick books seem excusable, at least once; we give them hell later, when the same error gets C-P into a later work, still uncorrected. There's a lot of stuff to read over, just like if you were making something like a video game, and we all know how buggy something like Skyrim could get, just as an example. Sometimes, one person is using the work of a previous writer, and then adding their own, with their own style, and not going back to fix it, because then it wasn't a time-saver.

In that it reminds me very much of old programmers using older people's stuff. Over time all these error start to build up. That's why I think it is so important for companies to pay for proof readers. When you have dedicated fans often you can get people who would be willing to proof read just to read the content ahead of time, there's also a lot to be said about releasing PDFs before you release print copies, and actively asking for consumer feedback. You can outsource a lot of your work this way. I know I'd be happy to change the tables to correct order for free (and indeed I copied it all into excel and ordered it as I preferred because it was bugging me) and I'm sure, especially in a universe with so much lore even a company scale team cannot keep track of every bit of canon they may or may not break in releasing something or writing something.

Also as a sidenote, you really like commas. That sentence had more commas than words it felt like!

There certainly are some grievous errors; I think Hostile Acquisitions had the Null Bay ship component, and then entirely forgot the entry for that table. Still, it's not at all unique to this line, alone. In my Revised Star Wars Corebook, the Emperor has Skill Emphasis (Influence), except Skill Emphasis is a feat for a skill, and Influence is another feat; you can't do this. He also does NOT have the Force-Sensitive feat, so he technically can't use Force powers/abilities. In my version of White Wolf's Wraith: the Oblivion, they forgot the mechanic for regaining Pathos, the fuel source Wraiths use for practically everything. On the last page of my edition, they have an errata entry with the great flavor text "Houston, we have a problem!", because of how critical this mechanic is. I'm lucky, because it's there, but first ed Wraith books? I'm not sure what they did. My Anime d20 Trigun book, if memory serves, has several stat blocks forgotten, one that has a special that was wrongly copy-pasted from something COMPLETLELY different, so it's wrong, and another stat block that was C-P, so if you like Gray the Ninelives, have fun using rules for the guy who trained Wolfwood, I think; I don't remember if it was part of that guy's, or Knives, of all people, but it was heinously erred, while this thin tome i no where near as substantial as several we've discussed. Most of these lines of word-rich, mechanics-heavy games will be rife with these things, for one reason, or another. I took a whole class, in college, on Visual Media Design, and one thing we talked about was word spacing. You pay by the word, occasionally by the character, and appearance can matter. If it will keep a sentence together, prevent part of an idea from going to the next line, by where you might forget what the prior bit had been about? :blink: , or preventing a large, empty space from occurring, they might swap to a number, rather than spelled out, even in the same block. It's dumb, but it's industry. Certainly, these might not be the excuses that work for FFG's projects, but...

And of course, many of us have, at one time, or another, taken our own shots at the editing in these books.They don't always deserve it, but this is the Internet; we complain.

Well I guess I should be glad I don't play those systems, I'm used to online based systems (like PF for example) where errata is quick and you can have format at your leisure because the systems are so open. Of course considering how much of this system you could post online (like all the ranks) without actually revealing anything (since you'd need the talent/skills chapter to know what anything does) it really surprises me that FFG haven't developed a computer based tool for browsing the system.

I know that I would enjoy it if I could just click on a talent and it pops up explaining what it is rather having to flip to the appropriate book page. Seems like you'd make more money too if the system was easier to get into in that fashion (rather than being faced with purchasing 16 books and not really knowing what to get).

Edit: Actually I have one question, when it says gain Trained Basic Skill of an Advanced Skill, why does it do that? As far as I understand Basic Skills you can roll at half untrained, but trained Basic Skills and trained Advanced skills are both rolled with your characteristic at full. What's the difference between giving someone Forbidden Lore (Xenos) as a trained basic skill, or a trained skill? Obviously giving it as an untrained basic skill makes sense since that does something.

Edited by RMcD

Okay I have more complaints and this thread is just going to be a category of them so if you don't like reading my complaints then I wouldn't recommend reading further, but if you can actually address them or want to discuss them I am happy to oblige. In particular my edit in my last post, I am sure I must be confused because they give Trained Basic versions of Advanced Skills so much. It must give some mechanical benefit that I am missing.

Every single class in this game gains Speak Language (Low Gothic) as a starting skill, you don't have to buy it. With that in mind, why is Speak Language (Low Gothic) given as a skill in any home world? Are they intending that you start the game with Speak Language (Low Gothic) at +10? Even worse is Noble Born which gives it as an untrained Basic Skill which is completely useless since you start with it trained no matter you choose.

Why does the Frontier World specify that Frontier people get higher wounds as a special trait? Every other Home World has a variety of wound rolls, and they already include it in the wound roll. I don't see why they need to write a trait for it.

Why don't they just use the already existing trait system for homeworlds and backgrounds? For example the Frontier World ability: " Frontier world characters may re-roll any Initiative Roll they make, though they must accept the results of the second roll." why not just say Frontier World characters acquire Fast Reactions Trait (I just made this trait up it doesn't exist). Along a similar line I don't understand why they bundle things into one trait, surely it would be simpler, more coherent, and easier to design if every single mechanical effect was independent. So for example if a trait gives you "+2 Initiative and +5 Wounds", surely it makes more sense for the trait to give you two traits, one is Initiative and one is Wounds.

I would imagine that when they design skills and talents and are balancing the game that they have rough costs of how valuable these things are so it seems to me to make sense to separate it out since you can replicate whatever you want by just giving people both the independent traits. Read another way I am asking why aren't Frontier Worlder's just given Sound Constitution Talent? It already exists right, why not just say "Tough as Grox-Hide" blah blah flavour, Frontier World characters gain Sound Constitution.

It also comes up when they use the Battlefleet system because instead of just reproducing the Void Accustomed trait from Void Born they tell you to go get the Void Born trait, well why not just have it in the trait catalogue anyway.

Their justification for duplicating the level 1 Starting Skills seems not coherent to me either.

"It is important to note that many Career Paths starting Skills and Talents are duplicated at Rank 1 of the Career’s Advances. This is an intentional duplication, and represents the training that is available to all Careers regardless of their origins. Future expansions for the Rogue Trader line may feature Alternate Career Ranks or backgrounds with different starting Skills, and therefore, this duplication serves a purpose for the overall Rogue Trader line. If a character already possesses such a Skill or Talent from Character Generation, he may not purchase it again at Rank 1."

Alternate Career Ranks do not replace your Starting Skills you get from your career, and so are irrelevant to relisting. Backgrounds don't change what your Career starts with (though if you get duplicates you the Talented talent or increase a skill). It seems to me if they were going to include that it would have been nicer not to include any Starting Skills and allow players more options in choosing their starting talents/skills, with obviously some like Navigator having the new addition of "character creation only" (which it should have anyway, right now someone could get it as an elite advance which seems odd to me). This would have had the added benefit of freeing up more XP for expanding player's choice of backstory, though reasonably I think there's little reason not to start the game with 7,000 XP.

Edit: Along the same lines it bothers me when they name traits and talents in ways that would suggest flavourful effects without mandating them. For example Paranoia and Hatred. Hatred is of course different in other 40k systems so it makes it even weirder. If you want to mechanically influence people ala most of insanity and corruption stuff I feel like it should be done clearly and in a way segmented from mechanical traits that may be used for other things.

Edit:

Inconsistency in multiple choice for Peer talent:

Web of Contacts for Footfallen, choose one from a list (list has no or in it).

Noble Born, choose one from a list with or in it.

Edited by RMcD

Some alternative rank 1 careers DO replace the standard starting skills for a career. By listing them in the standard starting career, they are available to a character as elite advances at a standardized premium, rather than having to pay a much higher XP cost as a normal elite advance.

Edit: This is also a C&P issue carried over from DH1.

Edited by AxeSpanna

Some alternative rank 1 careers DO replace the standard starting skills for a career. By listing them in the standard starting career, they are available to a character as elite advances at a standardized premium, rather than having to pay a much higher XP cost as a normal elite advance.

Edit: This is also a C&P issue carried over from DH1.

Could you give me an example?

All rank 1 alternate career paths as far as I know say for example:

Note: Although this Rank replaces Rank 1 of the Navigator Career, it does not re-list the Navigator’s starting Skills and Talents. All Skills and Talents listed here are in addition to the Navigator’s starting Skills and Talents
If I was to take a reading that didn't have this Note then I would also have to assume that the Navigator did not get the gear they start with either, since that isn't relisted. However seeing as you get starting Navigator gear, talents, traits and skills from the same place it would make no sense that an alternate career rank would replace only part of it unless explicitly stated. So even if it didn't have this Note I would never assumed that you didn't get starting skills and talents (because it would therefore mean you are gearless too).

Starting Skills and Talents aren't the same as Rank 1 Skills and Talents though as I quoted, all Starting Skills and Talents are listed which I think is completely unnecessary.

On another note the Home World Child of Dynasty gets Speak (High Gothic) instead of Speak Language (High Gothic) and as far as I can tell the orders for characteristic bonuses (like all the homeworlds) in a list is completely random.

On balancing I'm really curious how they costed XP for the background stuff, in Into the Storm primarily. There seems to be little consistency.

Let's take a simple example that shouldn't provoke much disagreement:

Look at Lineages:

My Great Grandfather Built This Colony - +1 PF, Peer (Any)

Born to Wealth - +2 PF

Far-Reaching Contacts - Peer (Any) x3

These are worded in a similar way flavour wise, it's not like one carries with it a heavy burden or a sordid past. Now if I was to ask you the cost order I'm sure you could debate whether or not Born to Wealth or Far-Reaching Contacts would be the highest costed, but I don't think anyone would say the first one is the highest costed. In reality the 1st one is 350xp, the 2nd and 3rd are 300xp. What? The 1st one is half of Born to Wealth, and less than half of Far-Reaching Contacts. There is no synergy between the benefits that would suggest it should be marked up.

Just weird costing overall, I don't get it.

Edit: Also in one Lineage you gain the Paranoid talent. Now there is a Paranoia Talent and there's Paranoid which is what Death Worlder's get in their home world. What one did they mean? How would they not check talent names?

Edited by RMcD

Resistance (Psychic Powers) or Resistance (Psychic Techniques)

Rank 8 Rogue Trader can buy Resistance (Psychic Powers) as can Rank 2 Astropath. Notably Rank 4 Astropath can buy Strong Minded, unfortunately that requires the prerequisite Psychic Techniques which they don't get access to. You also get Psychic Powers resistance from Into the Storm's Warp Incursion Origin. How many erratas did the books go through and that wasn't picked up on? Crazy. Especially bad in the Astropaths case, since they managed to get the pre-requisites right in a way that would block Strong Minded.

Unless they're different things in which case it is weird that it isn't under the talents page. I wonder if I went through the entire rogue trader catalogue and wrote down every skill and every talent how many would be not real? I might very well do that.

In fact since it is called Psychic Powers in every other addition I do not understand why they would ever bother even changing the name of the resistance. How unnecessary is that, what could possibly have been the motivation to mess with their naming scheme in a way that would trip themselves up? I would love to get access to their design and balancing notes just to try and understand their motivation to make the decisions they made.

Edited by RMcD

Seriously man, we get it. You've got an endless laundry list of issues with Rogue Trader and the 40k lines in general.

You know that complaining about this game after it's not had a new book in years is probably close to the actual definition of useless?

On top the the fact that FFG is no longer going to have the license as of February?

The time to have picked the rules apart was 4-6 years ago. FFG has given up its license with GW. They will no longer publish 40K or Warhammer of any stripe. We here on this forum are 40K fans, for the most part. We aren't concerned with the rules as they stand so much as we are concerned with what will happen to the game next. Will GW license to another company?

I've got a trunkload of gripes about the rules, but talk about water under the bridge...

FFG turned the 40K genre into RT. I'm glad they made that decision. I personally don't care for BC-style games, but I think RT and BC were their best lines. They were really open campaigns that gave both GMs and players free reign over gigantic sandboxes, and I appreciate their efforts in that direction.

I'd like to thank FFG for putting together a very playable set of rules that did a good job of capturing the spirit of 40K. I ran or played in 5 campaigns that spanned a total of over 200 weeks since RT was first published. Those were good times, games that will be talked about and toasted for some time to come, equal to any campaign we have ever played, D&D, AD&D, 3.x, MERPS, GURPS, Runequest, Traveller, Star Frontiers, what-have-you.

Thanks for the memories.

The time to have picked the rules apart was 4-6 years ago. FFG has given up its license with GW. They will no longer publish 40K or Warhammer of any stripe. We here on this forum are 40K fans, for the most part. We aren't concerned with the rules as they stand so much as we are concerned with what will happen to the game next. Will GW license to another company?

I've got a trunkload of gripes about the rules, but talk about water under the bridge...

FFG turned the 40K genre into RT. I'm glad they made that decision. I personally don't care for BC-style games, but I think RT and BC were their best lines. They were really open campaigns that gave both GMs and players free reign over gigantic sandboxes, and I appreciate their efforts in that direction.

I'd like to thank FFG for putting together a very playable set of rules that did a good job of capturing the spirit of 40K. I ran or played in 5 campaigns that spanned a total of over 200 weeks since RT was first published. Those were good times, games that will be talked about and toasted for some time to come, equal to any campaign we have ever played, D&D, AD&D, 3.x, MERPS, GURPS, Runequest, Traveller, Star Frontiers, what-have-you.

Thanks for the memories.

Well I intend to first redo Rogue Trader and then make a single 40k system so conglomerating my ails while seeking feedback is beneficial to that goal, especially since I really doubt that GW will use the same system. It seems to me since we know the product line is ended there is actually no better time to fix the errors and bad rules since there will be no future content to outdate or errata over it.

Not to be rude, but you can conglomerate all your ails on your own. You've heard out feedback, and it's that we don't have a desire to hear someone tear the line apart again. We have literally heard it all before over the years.

GW likely isn't going to do anything with the license anytime soon.

As for fixing it, We already do that on our own as you've seen with Errant Knight's home rules thread, but you seemed to only want to gripe about those as well.

The time to have picked the rules apart was 4-6 years ago. FFG has given up its license with GW. They will no longer publish 40K or Warhammer of any stripe. We here on this forum are 40K fans, for the most part. We aren't concerned with the rules as they stand so much as we are concerned with what will happen to the game next. Will GW license to another company?

I've got a trunkload of gripes about the rules, but talk about water under the bridge...

FFG turned the 40K genre into RT. I'm glad they made that decision. I personally don't care for BC-style games, but I think RT and BC were their best lines. They were really open campaigns that gave both GMs and players free reign over gigantic sandboxes, and I appreciate their efforts in that direction.

I'd like to thank FFG for putting together a very playable set of rules that did a good job of capturing the spirit of 40K. I ran or played in 5 campaigns that spanned a total of over 200 weeks since RT was first published. Those were good times, games that will be talked about and toasted for some time to come, equal to any campaign we have ever played, D&D, AD&D, 3.x, MERPS, GURPS, Runequest, Traveller, Star Frontiers, what-have-you.

Thanks for the memories.

You know what, Errant Knight, I'd like to second this. I've been a pretty big fan of 40k since 2003, or so, when one of my friends dumped way too much money into 6+ separate armies, just so he could facilitate others playing with him, and he allowed me the privilege to paint some of the minis, play several of the armies, and get to know some of the fluff, WITHOUT me having to invest money into it (honestly, it was much more affordable then, but I had no job in college, at that time). We tried to make our own 40k line, and it only sort of worked, but it was 40k, and it was fun.

40K can be a very grim, very dark, very restrictive verse, where, be you a Space Marine, or a humble Guardsman, there is Only War. I could've played Deathwatch, or Only War, and probably enjoyed it, if my later gamer friends hadn't hated the setting, but something more "a game, with story" would've been better, and while I don't want to rag on Dark Heresy, needlessly, Scooby Doo40K Adventures was never really a great idea, in my mind. Rogue Trader, though? That was the best idea I feel they ever had. Give you the greatest creations of Mankind, Cart Blanche to do pretty much whatever you want, and actually have the ability to change the story, with your own two hands, if you wish. A crazy lunatic, with a mighty ship, and the best the Imperium can crew it with, that would've been fun; hell, for me, someday it still might be. Thank you FFG for making a new Star Wars game line, though I still don't entirely understand it, but, more than that, thank you for taking one of the coolest options in 40K, and making it playable. Is it flawed, in a few places? Of course it is. Does it fall apart, once in a while? Yep. But it might very well be one of the best ways 40K, as an RPG, could be expressed, and done justice. It might've been nice to see it revamped, and adapted to the OW/BC/DH2 rules frame, but oh well. Do I have as much faith in GW's own abilities? I don't know, yet, but possibly not.

Can you people stop hijacking my thread thanks.

Go make your own thread to talk about how great this game is.

Edited by RMcD

Ok then, didn't you already get your answer as to why the books are so inconsistent then?

They're old, every other book in the FFG 40k line (including Fantasy) is in a similar state, and that's just the way it is. It's not a matter of the design team not caring as with anything else it's about resource management and how much time they had to edit the books. Which because they're in the business of making money was likely as little time as was deemed necessary to bring a product to market with minimal errata.

So case closed, no need to reply anymore at all really if we're all going to be like this.

Can you people stop hijacking my thread thanks.

Go make your own thread to talk about how great this game is.

You're one arrogant little f*cker. I'm genuinely glad that you came to our forum during this difficult time, its really galvanised me to try and protect this game from punks like you. So thank you for reminding me how important RT is to me and everyone else here.

Like I stated earlier in this very thread, there's no need to insult.

Ok then, didn't you already get your answer as to why the books are so inconsistent then?

They're old, every other book in the FFG 40k line (including Fantasy) is in a similar state, and that's just the way it is. It's not a matter of the design team not caring as with anything else it's about resource management and how much time they had to edit the books. Which because they're in the business of making money was likely as little time as was deemed necessary to bring a product to market with minimal errata.

So case closed, no need to reply anymore at all really if we're all going to be like this.

Well I guess a better thread title would have been: Why are there inconsistencies and on fixing them.

And while your explanation makes some amount of sense the fact that they bothered to release 4 versions errata makes me wonder why they didn't fix the other things. It surely wouldn't have added much time and I can't imagine I'm the only person to notice say the Psychic Powers/Techniques thing.

One inconsistency that gets me is when they talk about how long a ship cay stay out in the void (RT Core pg 191) they say "Years or Decades". Then later in the book they specify 6 months before **** starts getting bad (RT Core 227).

How do you tend to play it?

And while your explanation makes some amount of sense the fact that they bothered to release 4 versions errata makes me wonder why they didn't fix the other things. It surely wouldn't have added much time and I can't imagine I'm the only person to notice say the Psychic Powers/Techniques thing.

Errata creation takes resources as well. Someone has to look at the feedback and judge whether the responses are worth anything and then likely get at least some other people from the design team that were busy with something else to talk about the issue and proposed solutions and even then if they are worth errata in the first place or whether people will fix it on their own and they don't feel the need to give official answer.

Same reason we didn't get a final errata for DH1 after everything was out for it and DH2 was announced likely.