There is no general 40K RP forum (there should be) so as DH is the Daddy and started it all i thought i would post this here.

The three setting system is groaning and creaking under the strain of the requirements of the three settings and it is now irking me. Some examples:

Many fearsome creatures from CA are no match for a marine. Lictor being the best example.

Dark Eldar weaponry from Purge the Unclean no match for a marine.

Bolters out of control.

OK they all relate to what Death Watch power levels have brought along but despite a lot of financial comittment to the system (i.e i own everything for all three settings) I am beginning to think that they might be better off starting over with a World of Darkness type approach and trying to establish a stable foundation and core rule system that better gels across the various source books that could then be released.

I know a lot of people will say 'they are separate from each other' but i am sorry for me they are not. I wager that most of us play these games becaue of the truly brilliant setting, i know i do, and therefore for me the three settings need to sync a lot more than they currently do.

Replicant253 said:

I have to agree. There is no excuse for the massive differences between all three games, especailly when Ross was chief on all three games, two of them when they were released.

I think it would be best, however, if the fans made thier own conversion errata between the three systems. Pretty much the entire game line fo 40K RPG, in my opinion, has been in a downward spiral since the release of Radical's Handbook.

Peacekeeper_b said:

I have faith in their ability to redeem themselves Peacekeeper_b. I literally had my mind blown (I mean, if Xisor repeatedly shot me in the head with a bolt pistol you couldn't get more in the way of gore) by the revelation that in Thousand Thrones the last scenario location was in fact a third Chaos Portal within the remains of an Old One ship. Put an entirely new spin on the entire adventure for me.

Replicant253 said:

On the other hand, I am a little irritated that most Stormtrooper (the one in my game with a few more XP for sure) at Ascension level would beat the crap out of any beginning Deathwatch Tactical Marine (who in fact is more or less a veteran of his chapter (already having served as an Assault and Devastator Marine)) in a bare-knuckle fight. Somehow a little weird in regard of the 40K background if you ask me...

The Baron said:

You mean The Thousand Thrones ? The 256 page soft cover book published in 2008? The one published by Black Industries and written by Green Ronin? Not FFG.

Luthor Harkon said:

I was irritated by the notion straight from the start that Storm Troopers were a rank 8 career title. That officers were rank 6 or better. Totally erased the notion of the young inexeprienced LT or the noble son given a higher rank by sure right of his bloodline. Sue these could be cosmetic things added as character flavor whenever the player and GM agree, but the skills even a young inexperienced LT would develope would be different from a rank 1 conscript.

Storm Trooper should have been a rank 4 alternate, and officer should have been a alternate career branch at rank 3 or so, if not at rank 1 (Conscript or Cadet).

But that was the horse that BI left for FFG to deal with. FFG just hasnt really done much of anything to fix it.

I find it wierd that a Arch Militant never has access to Swim and cannot get climb until Rank 5.

I find it even more awkward and inexcusable that the XP systems are different at all.

To me rules reflect dramaturgy, not the gaming realities physical rules etc. From that perspective I think they made the right design choice.
Three different rules settings for three different kinds of dramaturgy, all of them interesting to explore within the 40k universe. They reflect the same reality but experienced very differently, and you chose the rule system after what kind of mood and dramatulgy you are aiming for.

Of course every set of rpg rules got their kinks and bugs that either needs an errata or home made rules to fit your gaming groups need.

And even if I think the the design chose was right I think I could been done in a more streamlined way, making transitioning, combining and tweaking systems back an fourth easy to be able to fix the rules system to exactly the kind og dramaturgy you felt like (how gritty, how deadly, how epic, how combat focused, how skill focused etc). For an example where this has been done really well I would recommend people take a look on the variations of the ORE (One Roll Engine) system.

The reality is this is 40k RPG 1st edition. It would be foolish to start over AKA WoD right now, when the system is still growing and getting momentum. Sure, this isn't a robust and mature system like D&D4E or Pathfinder, which have evolved over 30 years or so. Still, overall I think the good outweighs the bad. In 5 years or so once they've had more experience with the system a nice unified 40k RPG 2nd edition will be a great idea. For now we'll just have to explore things as they come and make them work.

There are definitely some great supplements in the works I am looking forward to. Only War and Judgement look great, I've been kicking around ideas for an all arbites or all imperial guard game. Xeno Compendium, Koronus Fleet and other stuff looks awesome for RT. Rites of Passage should be excellent for DW.

So keep playing and making suggestions. The overall system has good room for flexibility. They are definitely learning as they go. I think the multiple menus of advances from DW are excellent and if the other games do get a career overhaul I think that would be something to bring back to the others.

deinol said:

Yes, because the core system here has only been in use roughly for 24 years, since WFRP 1E.

Peacekeeper_b said:

Indeed. :¬D

WHFRP 1stEd. and 2ndEd. were excellent.

Actually they have even greater pedigree being BRP-derived rules; and they added a (for its time) innovative career system and dripping with Fantasy flavour.

And the rules were entirely appropriate to model the setting. Very good. All hail 1st & 2nd Ed.!

As to the OP, i have a feeling 'that boat has sailed'.

A unified 40k RPG wasn't the way GW/BI chose to take it and i'm guess FFG are unlikely to take that in a different direction. If they do, i seriously hope they don't use WHFRP 3rd Ed. as the model (personal preference of course).

We are served 40k roleplaying in a format that is a return to the very beginnings of roleplaying (the early boxed-set models of D&D / AD&D). Personally its not the way i'd have done it, but then i'm not a games designer. Seemed like an odd decision to me though...still does.

I'd have gone with generic rules and focussed suporting material - far more consistent and flexible. The current approach means that the rules have effectively been issued 3 times, with variations between each edition. Seems more sensible to issue them once, and then issue 'The Inquisition Sourcebook', 'The Rogue Trader's Sourcebook', and 'The Deathwatch Sourcebook'.

But there you go.

However, if i can just push my way past these unicorns on the lawn for a moment; as a personal preference i'd love FFG to produce their own 40k rules, perhaps using a more appropriate rules engine that models the vast variety of the 40k IP better, and a 'core rules and sourcebooks' model. I suspect i'm waiting in vain though! Hehe...

Until then, i'll struggle on trying to make sense of the three differing versions of the rules...

Luddite said:

Were they really BRP derived? Other than have percentiles for skills (which other systems like palladium have done) I don't really see any similarity.

Which part of the WHFRP rules got messed up in WH40k rpg? Full-auto? The stats for genestealers? Starships? From my perspective, the core of the system is still solid. Yes, I do wish there was one core book instead of 3, so we don't have to define "volatile" or "blast" each time, and I have issues with the way certain things are statted up in the system, but the system itself feels fairly rock solid to me.

I will admit I am slowly building my own personal unified rules files. So far I just have a spreadsheet of weapons that includes everything from DH and RT.

WFRP1 is clearly a ripoff of BRP as the most wellknown pecentile system of the 80ties (there have been a few other but very small engines like star frontiers or Powers and Perils which also used percentiles). And not a bad one.

Regarding the unification of the three 40k systems, I think that the current 2 decades old engine is not powerful enough for this task. It would need a extreme overhaul of it to reflect the subsettings in a proper way and simulate the tabletop AND the novels too. More organic would be to redesign the whole game with complete different engine and pay attention to the power differences from the beginning on.

I could imagine a core rulebook like Silhouette, Savage Worlds or Gurps did it and then several "add-on" settings like one for SMs, one for RTs etc.

superklaus said:

This idea gets put forward time and time again, and almost always by people who either invest in more than one of the games, or who want to use the rulebooks as sourcebooks for their preferred game...

I'm still to be convinced that this group - of which I am a part - is the majority.

Change to the method described above, and anyone who only wants to play one of the games ends up buying two books, and there's no guarantee that it'd reduce the number of sourcebooks around (and, if they were 40kRP books rather than specifically Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader or Deathwatch, they'd all come under the same range... and games with large collections of supplements tend to be more intimidating to start than those without, as there's a lot more available material), so the only supposed issue it resolves is that each system uses the same version of the core rules... which is, IMO, hardly the most important element.

I've run all three games, and they all play differently and contain different themes and tropes, even accounting for a common core system; I'd rather not see them mashed together and risk losing the distinct feel of each game in order to satisfy what I believe to be a minority that wants a single game that tries to cover everything.

superklaus said:

superklaus said:

You couldnt be more wrong. Or to be more polite and proper, I couldnt disagree more. I do not see any correlation between WFRP1E and BRP other then the choice to use %. % sytems originate with D&D as well, for thief skills. It is quite obvious, to me at least in my view of the game, that most early games that decided to add skills to their systems, that they decided to use % systems for skills. Palladium did it, Star Frontiers, most D&D (AD&D) Class abilities defined as skills and so forth.

In fact, WFRP1E couldnt be more different then BRP, for example, and for starters, to the characteristics. BRP characters have several attributes rating from 3-18 (8-18 for some) where WFRP 1E has % based attributes. BRP uses a diverse number and type of die for damages, where WFRP 1E uses only D6 (with 2E using D10). WFRP 1E sanity/insanity rules worked differently (vastly) then the ones used in the BRP game that revolved around insanity (that being Call of Cthulhu).

BRP skills were based on their own base % chance and points placed into them, WFRP 1E skill chances were completely based on the characters stats. Individual BRP skills grow and get better as the characters use these skills, WFRP 1E skills only grow and get better as the characters core attributes were raised.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

I don't mind if the basics of the rules are duplicated in the three main books, but the reality is as the lines grow they are still going to have a large collection of books available. Dark Heresy already has a dozen books or so available, and each line seems to be getting at least 4 per year.

I would much rather have a consistent rules base for all of the games. Yes, they tackle different themes. But they are all part of the same universe and should be able to interact with each other. I think the biggest problem is tackling the novels vs tabletop divide. In the novels space marines are gods who laugh at, well, everything. In table top a squad of imperial guard can take down a few space marines with concentrated lasgun fire.

To be honest, the differences in rules between the three lines are mostly due to poor editing. The errata for Dark Heresy brings it pretty close to the same game as Rogue Trader. After a year I think the errata on all 3 will probably bring them a little more in line with each other.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Hardly the most important element? Well, perhaps. But it is AN important element, especially if you'd like to create stories with a broader focus than the current three-different-rulesets system allows. ("You three want to play a Deathwatch squad assigned to the Inquisitor player aboard the Rogue Trader player's ship? Ok!")

What makes it doubly frustrating is that there's no real reason for it to be like this (well, from a game-design standpoint, at least; it makes sense fiscally). Things like tone and theme are ultimately in the hands of the GM anyway.

A single system robust enough to handle any of the three styles of play (or hell, mixing all three together at once), would only offer greater flexibility to both GMs and players. How can that be a bad thing?

Timberboar said:

It's a matter of execution; as it is, it's really the details, rather than the core mechanics, that cause issues with cross-pollenation of the three games, and those issues are primarily with regards to player characters - it is far, far easier to use NPCs and the like from all three games in any of them, than it is to transfer over Player Characters. As far as I can tell, that is really the only sticking point when it comes to mix-and-match games.

But smoothing over that transition comes with a cost: how much of each game's distinct elements, of which the characters are a significant part, should be sacrificed in the name of catering to those people who want to dabble in everything?

And before someone pipes up about freeform character generation and advancement, I'll make a further point: it isn't for everyone. There is only a single game I like with freeform character creation, and that's Mutants & Masterminds (currently further divorcing itself from it's d20 OGL roots with a DC Universe branded third edition which has proven to be so much smoother to play and run than 2nd edition), and even then only in the context of the group I play it with. In my experience, they tend either to be far, far too easily abused by players inclined to do so, or tend towards creating bland, homogeneous characters. A few restrictions and limitations - as Jervis Johnson has frequently said regarding army list design for Warhammer and 40k, things are defined as much by their weaknesses and inabilities as by their strengths capabilities - makes for greater character diversity, in my experience. A limited system, where characters have to rely on each other to cover as many eventualities as possible, is preferable.

I think N0-1_H3r3 hit a very critical point when he said "...anyone who only wants to play one of the games ends up buying two books...". I like the fact that with a single book I can play 'out of the box' and not have to worry about add-ons and the like. I suspect that a lot of people coming into RPGs based on the strength of the 40k brand wouldn't want to outlay ~$120 (Australian) just to see if they like the game.

One of the first problems of trimming setting specific aspects from the book, is defining what to remove. Do you take out the Character Creation steps? If you do that then no examples can be provided and things have to be explained in very conceptual terms which is usually problematic. What about weapons/equipment. There's some stuff that shouldn't be available to some character classes but ok for others (for example RTs walking around with Daemonhammers). Those are just two ideas off the top of my head and there are a load more.

However , I definitely see the merit in a single core rule book and I reckon it would make for a great supplement - something that isn't necessary, but ties all the rules into a single tome for those people who do play cross-over games, or multiple games in different settings. The rules themselves may prohibit such a thing (I can't see too much of a problem with RT/DH, but I haven't seen the rules for DW) but it may be something worth looking at for FFG. The problem there is determining which rules take primacy, and then making an 'overrule' effect where the supplement has 'authority' over the core books.

I suspect that this would be a Second Edition (ignoring the old school RPGs) thing though, and I have no doubt that the popularity of the system will ensure that the system endures long enough to reach that stage.

No arguments with the first bit.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

I think I may be misinterpreting what you're saying here, so apologies in advance if I've missed your point.

Why must anything be sacrificed? A stat-line is just a stat-line. The frequency of "whiffs" doesn't add any dramatic tension to my games, it just adds frustration and annoyance. As I alluded to earlier, it's up to the GM (with player support) to set the right tone for the game, no matter what tone that might be.

To borrow a concept from M&M 3E (you started it, it's a fair play ), there's nothing preventing a game like DH from having built in Power Levels. Just as you might have anything from a street level campaign (say, Daredevil) to a world-spanning campaign, a unified 40k RPG could have varying starting levels based on whether you're playing Acolytes, Ascended, Rogue Traders, or Space Marines. As you said, the base system works . It's those little fiddly details that are unnecessarily different that could use a little tweaking and tie everything in together so much more easily.

Peacekeeper_b said:

Well you have your opinion and I have mine. I played almost exclusively BrP/RQ from 1985 to 2002 (which has been No2 in sales and popularity directly after D&D in the 80ties) so I know the facts (not all of them are correct) you mentioned about BRP. Do you really think that "rippoff" means an exact rule copy? No, rippoff means more. It means a copy of playing concepts. Eg. the deadlyness and gritty feeling (D&D has nothing of this), the armor absorption (D&D has ACs, RQ has absorption too), % roll under, concept of skills (D&D has no noteworthy skillsystem, RQ has), hit locations (D&D has none, RQ has), Magic Points (D&D has vancian Magic, RQ has MPs) and much more. But If you still think that RQ and WFRP have nothing in common, I really dont care. Everybody can believe what he wants, even if it is bogus.

superklaus said:

My experience with BRP is mostly through Call of Cthulhu, so I can see now that RQ definitely had a significant influence on the development of WFRP. I definitely know that earlier White Dwarves included adventures for RQ and CoC before GW turned the magazine into 100% their own advert. I think the disagreement is mostly by degrees. Where I see "inspired by" you see "rippoff". I can certainly see where you are coming from.

I disagree that the system needs a complete overhaul. I think WFRP has withstood the test of time fairly well. WFRP2 is still one of my favorite systems, up there with Call of Cthulhu, Talislanta, and Pathfinder. I think with a little better editing and a more unified system the 40K RPGs are fairly good. My own personal opinion is that the game should be closer to the Table Top roots than the novels, but I know that opinions vary quite wildly in that respect. I do have a good base to run a lot of 40k games, although I'd love more rules for Eldar someday. The next game I plan is going to be an Imperial Guards game, and I feel I have adequate tools to do so even though it isn't quite as written.

I believe the only think they should change is the skills, make them better, as far as i saw , they are a little closed, and sometimes need some houserules for making some sense. But nothing a reedition of the corebook cant help, or as in Inquisitors Handbook, the system can be expanded so in other suplemments, we can see it more compatible with the other lines, Deathwatch, and rogue trader.

I hope they do this in that upcoming suplement called Daemon Hunters, since there they will mention the Grey Knights, it will be mandatory to compare them with the rules of Deathwatch, so maybe the compatibility will be improved.

superklaus said:

Im not sure what is worse, you self assurance or you lack of a real argument.

And for point of reference, I wrote for Chaosium.

And yes that is what rippoff means. Otherwise you use words like "influenced", "homage", "based on".

Fact AD&D 1E had a skill system all the way back to the Dungeon Master's Guide in 1979 and Weapon Proficiencies in the Player's Handbook of 1978, both of which were based on earlier Dragon Magazine articles. Oriental Adventures introduced the Non Weapon Proficiencies for the game in 1985, again based on earlier Dragon Magazine articles. Palladium Fantasy had a skill system going back to 1982, Rolemaster back to 1982, Champions back to 1983. With Runequest in 1979.

Armor absorption? The armour soak concepts has been present in a myriad of games since the late 1970s. Examples include Gangbusters, Champions, Runequest and more.

Magic Points? Really. Again, AD&D 1E has a Psionic Strenght system dating back to 1978 (Player's Handbook) based on material previously published in Dragon Magazine and referenced in the earlier work of the Monster Manual of 1977. The Psionic Strength points were spent to cast psionic powers, much like MP in Runequest. Further, in Runequest your Magic Points were based on a stat you had called POWer, where as in WFRP 1E is was based on a random number of dice you got per level.

Hit Locations? Seriously? D&D has had them numerous times, Champions has them, Recon has them, Boot Hill thrived on them.

The truth is, the only Mechnic that WFRP 1E shares with BRP is the use of percentile dice.

Deadly? Seriously? Original D&D, AD&D 1E and 2E were quite deadly, especially at lower levels. You know, when you had 1D8 Hit Points and people used weapons that could do 1D10 or 2D6 damage. I actually find WFRP 1E (and 2E) to be less deadly with the application of Fate Points and then you add in Toughness and Armour and it was not uncommon to be soaking 4 or 5 points of damage per hit, in D&Dif you were hit, you were taking damage and soaking none. Lets not forget the nightmare of the Naked Dwarf! In WFRP 2E it was even worse, as you could have up to 5 points of armour. But at least damage went form 1D6 to 1D10.

Another thing of difference isthe damage system, Runequest had impaling and criticals, but damage was close ended (ie, the roll did have the reroll and add property of Ulric's Fury). Where as in WFRP 1E (and 2E) have open ended damage and extensive critical tables.

And once again I refer to the characteristics being vastly different.

I will not rule out that the designers did indeed most likely look at Runequest/BRP for ideas, as well as D&D, Palladium and scores of other games. And it seems they even had a few innovations of their own (the career change system) but they did not ripoff RQ/BRP.

And we can all have our opinions, that is true. And you are free to have yours. But mine is far less bogus then yours. (only added based on your reference to some opinions being bogus and not meant as a insult at you, but more at your argument)