Hi fellas,

I was browsing Warseer few moments ago and I found a topic in which, I suppose, we have first solid rumour of Deathwatch RPG heading our way. To quote the original poster:

Now those of you that read the GW blog will of noticed that today it was showing the guy who had the tour of the studio. So i couldn't help noticing this; The first pic which I nabbed off the site earlier today has been swiftly taken off and changed, or rather had some pics blacked out Sneaky GW Anyways here's the pics, I say we have a Pre-Heresy expansion heading our way. Or mybe it's just some 40k MMO artwork, who knows.

Here is censored picture:

And here is uncensored ORIGINAL:

The original poster thinks about Heresy/Pre-heresy Expansion or MMO, but look closely. There IS a "logofied" DEATHWATCH in there! Picture in ipper right corner looks like Clint Langley´s illustration to me and we know that he is doing covers of all WH40k RPG products as far I am aware. And in the left there are artworks which look like non-standard Astartes concepts.

What do you think? Is this credible ? Would Inquisition burn as at stake for forbidden divinancies?

Clint Langley didn't do the art for Rogue Trader, thankfully.

Nice for speculating. but no real answer, I thing. Hopefully we hear in the middle of the year, when Deathwatch will be released, if it will.

Very cool! Could be!

Looks like a lot of production stuff, so it could just be logo designs, doesn't mean they got books headed to the presses or whatever. But I mean, come on, we knew Deathwatch RPG was more than likely to come out.

*knock at door*

Hrm... 'scuse me one second guys, theres some guy from Gamesworkshop here in a black armor suit with a skull face outside my door wielding some crazy knife thing... be right back.

Of course the existence of Deathwatch is not really a secret.

FFG has said that they will be doing it.

The real question is when...

Steel Rabbit: My apologize I didn´t check that Mr. Langley isn´t in RT cover art. :-)

Brd. Maximilian: Actualy I would be suprised if Deathwatch RPG is comming this year, there is plently of stuff to be done for RT and there are promisies/teasers of many DH supplements this year after Ascesion (I hope it´s not overoptimism but a real thing), I guess next summer, or Christmas 2010 is more possible.

Mazinkeiser, schoon: Of course that we know/guess/wish that third WH40kRPG will be a real thing, but this seems to be a first proof of it.

By the way, it seems that FFG owns html of future Deathwatch site already, copypaste this to your browser and see yourself: http://deathwatchrpg.com/

Don`t mean this, TorogTarkdacil, only want to say, that FFG announce something this summer, about Deathwatch. A release date before 2011 is not very plausible, in my personal though,

Rogue Trader came out about 18 months after Dark Heresy. While I've not seen or heard anything official, the 18 month time frame seems to be the projected benchmark for the release schedules of the differing corebooks. This would give a tentative Q1 or Q2 release for Deathwatch in '11; though I would anticipate a more likely release schedule seeing it ship early Q4 of '11. Of course, I'm just speculating and could be entirely off.

-=Brother Praetus=-

Brother Praetus said:

Please remember that FFG didn't do the groundwork on Dark Heresy corebook, that was Black Industries before they sold the system to FFG.

So if it took FFG 18 months to do Rogue Trader after they acquired the rights, then i'd hope they take longer still with Deathwatch, as Rogue Trader was so unfleshed out as to be laughable.

Kasatka said:

It was? Guess I missed something then, since I've been running a TT game of it since the week I got hold of it when it was first released and never run into anything that was entirely missed out that I needed.

Would you like to provide some evidence for your supposition?

MILLANDSON said:

I dont have any EVIDENENCE, per see, but i do know that everytime I read through Rogue Trader, I get bored and move on to a Dark Hersy book.

I like the Koronus Expanse, I like some of the other background stuff and the starship stuff, I even like what few new characteristics for encounters were added (already had ork and eldar, but additional types of ork and eldar are always welcome, and loved seeing the Kroot). But the careers were/are dull overall and seem to miss some of the classic Role Play archetypes, like the fast talking rogue (who isnt a Rogue Trader) and so forth.

It would have been an excellent sourcebook for DH is all Im saying, but in my opinion, and from where I am sitting and how I felt when I read it, it doesnt hold on its own like DH did.

Peacekeeper_b said:

Seconded

gathrawny said:

And thirded ... sadly.

I agree that the characters in RT are somewhat bland, but I HATE the idea of HAVING to have archetypes. The less like D&D the better. The importance of a character shouldn't be boiled down to their 'best stat' like D&D is - I swear my character might as well have only had 1 stat for all the use they had.

Hellebore

Hellebore said:

Th Careers and Ranks in both DH and RT are archetypes.

Hellebore said:

Kasatka said:

IMO RT is just as 'fleshed out' as DH was when it first came out. Not all that much you can fit into one corebook, especially when you have to stick in a ship-combat system as well as the normal rules and a new setting. Some aspects of the game may not be to everyone's liking, but then again neither was DH.

18 months was the timeframe BI announced for each of the games. I think that FFG sticking to that timetable will depend on the market. RPG releases in general have slowed down over the past two years, presumably due to a lack of demand from the distributors (I'm guessing), so they may decide to stretch RT releases out more. Changing the schedule to 2 years would allow them to release it at GenCon 2011.

Sister Cat said:

I can kind of see why people are down on RT as opposed to DH, but I think that part of the reason DH seems richer and more nuanced is that it's had more supplements, which have given loads more character options, colour and background. Plus RT has the disadvantage of adventuring in a region which is deliberately a "blank slate," and the added issue of a far wider scale, which creates its own problems.

I personally think RT will develop over time into a game which is just as characterful and interesting as DH, given the support it deserves.

And I don't think that the characters are any less interesting in RT than in DH: quite the opposite. The core RT book allows the creation (I believe) of far more interesting characters than the core DH book allows. DH feels more in depth when combined with the various supplements, but I'm sure RT will match the number of options eventually.

Lightbringer said:

Granted, I like the "blank slate" of the Koronus Expanse, and I like the streamlined rules for psychic powers, and the rules for starships. For me, I guess it's just a personal thing. My gaming group is composed of stereo-typical thugs. Every campaign, every game (no matter the style), they are thugs. I'm just burnt out on it. DH lets me wean them off of that. RT is too much about acquiring wealth to allow me to do that, in a practical sense. So, while I have no issue playing RT, I have no desire to run it, at least not with my current group. My one true gripe with the careers and origin-paths is they just feel cookie-cutter to me. Maybe it's just me, but they don't excite me like I had hoped they would. What can I say?

As an aside (and a nod to the OP, since this conversation has been completely off-topic), maybe I will find it in my heart to allow my players to go back to their thuggish ways if and when Deathwatch comes out. After all, that game can only be about "hack, slash, flame, explode, find bigger guns" ... "we must have bigger guns!"

I think that DH is more popular than RT right now partially because of supplements. I do feel that DH has a better focus, despite the fact that both draw on the same background.

How many gamers would rather hunt down enemies of the empire as members of the Inquisition.... raise of hands please.

How many are out to profit on trading with other cultures.... raise of hands.... Not quite so many.

While I think RT has the capability of being great, the premise needs some additional assistance in the form of supplements and the broadening of what people can do with that background.

Crews don't have to treat their ships as a giant shopping cart in a galaxy of department store like planets. Profit factor can take a back seat to many different options. Perhaps the RT and his group have been commandeered by the inquisition (a way to bring DH characters into it). The players can also be more of a war force, raiding party, insurgent group. Maybe they take their ships out to intentionally land on planets and upset the local seat of power to turn the enemies of mankind against themselves.

I think a broadening of views as to what a crew is capable of doing in RT could help things go a long way.

With Deathwatch on the horizon, it will have it's own unique features in that you can play members of Deathwatch. People love the space marines. That's why over half the armies out there are marine based. I think that book will do well regardless of what they put in there.

DH may be the flagship product, but I think both splinter games with RT and DW will find their niches.

OK lets put it another way.

How many ship enemies are listed in the RT book?

How about the missing options that are key to 40k fiction such as torpedos and strikecraft?

Or mention of different qualities of ship components but no stats for them?

What would you say to the suggestions for integrating the new psy-system with the old one without really giving any examples or tables to aid in doing so?

So much potential in RT was, in my opinion, wasted on being open ended and hinting at future supplements. Well done, but i would like a system i can fully play now, or else why bother buying any new rpg from FFG if you have to wait till all the supplements are out.

Core DH was fully playable without supplements and they have only added to it since.

Kasatka said:

Well, this is completely covered in Ascension so maybe that's why it was a brief mention.

Kasatka said:

It is, and I fully agree with that (then again, I feel that Rogue Trader is more than adequate to run a game with by itself, without the need for any official supplementary material)... but back when DH was released, the furore about it 'not being a complete game' was loud and frequent, and only really died down when The Inquisitor's Handbook was released.

In both cases, there was material cut for space - with Rogue Trader, one of the Designer Diaries mentions vehicle rules and ship roles being dropped for space reasons, while in Dark Heresy, the Xenos creator from the GM Toolkit and the additional Corruption rules in The Radical's Handbook were both part of the rulebook originally (which suggests that RT has a significantly greater amount of unpublished material).

My point is that both games have had their share of complaints about lack of information and lack of material... but with Dark Heresy, those were two years ago, while Rogue Trader is still only months old.

There are a couple of big reasons I believe RT will probably remain generally less popular, unless FFG addresses them that is.

Firstly, the endevour concept and how it relates to actual play is not easy to grasp, and has not yet been properly shown and given examples of (imo) in the published adventures to date (not including Lure of the Expanse which I've not yet read). So far we've pretty much seen dungeons and variations thereof, where pcs are implausibly expected to place themselves in harms way at every possible opportunity. Even with a good few examples I do think the problem of converting an endevour to a game at the table will be remain essentially harder to do than most rpg games. Not impossible by any means, different certainly, but harder too.

Secondly, I think games with deliberately vague settings are usually doomed to fail. RT does have the wider 40K flavour to wrap itself in, so it may avoid this, however as a GM I'm not going to just buy sourcebooks that concentrate almost entirely on rules and crunch, and give little to no setting and fluff detail. We all roleplay to some degree to explore settings, setting and fluff is vital to the continued interest people will have in an rpg imo. FFG's clearly established vagueness policy will probably kill my interest in their books, I suspect I won't be alone. DH at least had the more detailed basis Black Industries established for the game, the Calixis Sector is solid, yes I want much more info and detail on it, but it is at least useable. The Koronus Expanse needs a lot more detail imo and it doesn't look like it's going to get it in any kind of organised way.

(Please don't respond by saying how much you like creating settings btw, I do too, however I also accept other writers can come up with stuff I want to use, and that I wouldn't have to spend time creating. Liking creating setting detail is not precluded by us all being given detailed regions of the Expanse.)

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