Peacekeeper_b said:

However huge hordes of necrons sweeping across a Reach fallen into obscurity is a possibility.

Alex

There's also the fact not everyone will be running canon time. and may want to have those said enemies showing up.

Dulahan said:

That is true. But they will still to thier timelines, locations and storyline as that is what the contract says they can do. Im sure GW really isnt too concerned with FFG revealing data on the necrons, its just they stuck FFG in the past of the GW current time in order to maintain some semblance of control of the RPG setting. "Can we have the Emperor come to life in an adventure?" "Well he isnt alive in our time line at this time, so he is still dead with the time we gave you." And so forth.

But if you want necrons, look at the wraits in TEP, its a great start.

kenshin138 said:

Hell, I'm pretty sure the Warp Gate is theirs.

This is a joke? The smile is throwing me off.

Anyways, no. Necrons don't use the warp. At all. However, the gate could have been built by a race trying to get at/away from the Necrons.

Warpgate looks like a crescent, Necrons utilize that design a lot, from pylons to starhips. Could be just a coincidence however, as for the Warp Gate using warp, perhaps it nothing more than a long range teleporter, and Necrons do use those Besides i always thought Halo Artefacts looked like they might have something to do with Necrons.

Halo artifacts are mostly of Yu'vath origin, the Yu'vath where probably one of the many warp race created to counter the necron but where just too much...

Just because the Imperium calls it a "Warp Gate" doesn't mean it uses the warp. Based on the description of traveling through it, it sounds nothing like the warp. You enter one side, have a brief bit of black disorientation, then are at the other side.

It looks and sounds Necron to me.

I actually think it's an Eldar webway portal. It looks like it's made of wraithbone from the picture we've seen of it.

The gate could also be a relic of the Old Ones, who definitely used warp travel and were masters of warp technology.

My group's Deathwatch campaign is set in the "current" 40K timeline; we saw no good reason to roll back the clock and try to ignore so much stuff that we all already know (about tyranids, space marines, the Imperium, etc). I've asked FFG before about the choice of timeline, and got no satisfactory answer, so I guess there IS no answer, other than GW wants it that way.

On topic, I hope to see less of what we already have plenty of (orks and eldar) and more weird, rare, and/or obscure xenos (the Hrud for example).

Direach said:

Bearing in mind that I have no official knowledge on the matter one way or another, as far as I'm aware, GW have been making a deliberate move in the last few years to stop moving the timeline forwards (the "present day" in the 40k rulebook, at the very end of the timeline, has the 13th Black Crusade begin literally less than a day before the end of the 41st Millennium), maintaining the "one minute to midnight on the doomsday clock" situation, and instead start working to fill in the gaps in the ten thousand year history of the Imperium, focussing mostly on the two and a half centuries at the end of the 41st Millennium.

The RP settings are smack bang in the middle of that period. As far as I'm aware, putting the RP settings at "present day" (the final date on the 40k rulebook timeline being being 997999.M41) would prevent any room for possible development - everything would be on the verge of happening, but nothing could actually happen because that would push the timeline forward and GW wouldn't approve it.

Again, speculation on my part, as I'm not privy to that sort of information.

I fall into the unknown races camp. I can make up stats for known races based on TT stats and existing 40K Roleplay stats easily enough. Devising some interesting xenos with devious plots and a good background histoy, culture, planet takes much more time. Also there exists enough art for the major races. If I create my own xeno race, I won't have any art to give to the players and say 'That's what they look like.'

But yeah okay some major races statlines will be inevitable. If so, I want to see harlequins. DW versus Alpha Legion, DW vs Harlequins, DW vs. Legion of the Damned, DW vs Tyranid Warriors... those are the match-ups we want to see.

Alex

I'm hoping MoX will be a mixture of existing 40k alien races (Eldar, Ork particularly) and new threats from the Jericho reach itself. I'd like to surprise players with strange, unfamiliar xenos enemies but by the same token I feel as a gm that I shouldn't have to go trawling through a bunch of sourcebooks from other lines such as DH/RT for stats of two of the most long-established alien forces such as Orks & Eldar. The orks, as others have already pointed out, exist everywhere in the galaxy. Given the number of ancient threats 'slumbering' in the Reach the Eldar would be interesting antagonists in trying to prevent the Imperium from foolishly digging up 'dead' worlds.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

I have no official knowledge over this either, but it makes sense. Dramatic narrative in the context of roleplay requires players to feel like they're making an impact on the game world. If every aspect of the year 999 M41 is totally set in stone, players are going to wonder where they fit in. GW is going to be increasingly reliant upon plundering the backstory: age of apostasy, Macharian crusade etc etc. The future of 40k is...er...the past of 40k!

I was watching the Forge World interviews with Alan Bligh the other day, and he was talking about his desire to fill in some of the gaps in the timeline with unique background books. Given the quality of the Forge world background books in general, and the Badab War books in particular, I'm all for this! It would be nice to see some detail on the Novus Terra Interregnum and other huge swathes of Imperial history.

The actual problem with 999 is that they wouldn't be allowed to continue the timeline. As it stands they have been given a reach and the license to do whatever they want in there as long as it meets quality standards and doesn't conflict irreconcilably with 40K canon. That my guess at least.

Alex

ak-73 said:

Which is perfectly fine, i never understood the urge to play at the current timepoint of 40k. It offers next to nothing special, at least when played on a sector scale in a far off part of the galaxy, like Jericho Reach, Halo Stars or Calixis Sector. People who do not use the pregiven spatial setting (which i like a lot for all 3 games) might as well adjust the timeline as needed. And brewing up houserules for things like necrons is nothing in terms of work when compared to a full fledged personalised campaign background.

tkis said:

Yeah... well... other than the endless meatgrinder of Armageddon 3, the new Hive Fleet, the resurgence of the Necrons and the 13th Black Crusade. But yeah, beyond those, 999.M41 just has nothing special in it.

BYE

I suspect the idea is to sprinkle the book with hints of unique-to-Jericho species, as seems to be the way they've done in DH and RT publications (brief, far-from-fully-realized descriptions of agonizingly enticing species such as Slaugth, Cryptos, Enoulians, Simulacra, Yu'vath, Q'orl, Xenarch, etc.). Of course, unless the developers read these threads a LOT more carefully and considerately than I think, I assume we only make these inclusion requests to one another.

That being said, I'd like to know all about the "Lord of Lightning" mentioned in the timeline Know No Fear (263.M36). It's description sounded scarily similar to how one might describe a C'tan in an age that won't see a Necron awakening for another 5000+ years. More disturbing is the shattered trophy a single surviving Battle-Brother returns to Erioch, described as a "crystal heart". I read this and couldn't help but think that Deceiver shenanigans were afoot in Jericho. I see the single survivor being the C'tan mastermind himself in Battle-Brother form, returning an entirely unrelated and unimportant "artifact" as "proof" of the Thunder Lord's defeat, possibly in order to infilitrate one of the Imperium's most elite, powerful and independent institutions in the DeathWatch (and by extension, the Inquisition itself). I was inspired toward this theory after reading the new Dark Eldar Codex and reading of Lady Malys "encounter" with a being she "tricked" into forfeiting its heart. My mind spins with the age-old debates around the similarities between The Deceiver and the Laughing God and how this "concession" of the unnamed being's "heart" to Lady Malys simply screams, "The Laughing God strikes again, secretly manipulating you arrogant Dark Kin who think they can trick Cegorach, the god of such games!" Now, concerning this Lightning Lord, I see a similar "ruse" being hoisted upon the DeathWatch, except in this scenario I suspect The Deceiver. I am still very much on the fence concerning the idea of the two gods being one-and-the-same but this Thunder Lord is the kind of vague lore I find completely engrossing and absolutely worthy of the time I spend fruitlessly theorizing.

Other than my bunch of self-manufactured delusion I cannot avoid pursuing, I would toss more details of the incident on Andronicus Prime, titled as "The Darkfall" (268.M36) and "The Darkling Stirs" (273.M36) in Know No Fear. I find the idea of a city-sized craft careening out of control into a moon after a hasty ejection from the Warp (and what might have survived or "grown" in only five years from its destroyed remains on the moon's parent planet, worthy of being what one would call "The Darkling") genuinely intriguing.

Finally, just in case you wonderful folks at FFG actually do read this stuff.......

Please find a way to squeeze in as much Necron-related data (and game stats) as possible. I trust your supreme genius to concoct an explanation for their "early" appearance that GW will still deem canon-friendly. Hugs and kisses, FFG. Your legions of dedicated followers await your every machination!

I personally don't mind the way that FFG has been doing it race books. I just wish they were a little larger. Now part of it is a pretty good business strategy. Why republish Eldar Warlocks when they have already been published in Lure of the Expanse. Now some players will not like it because they want to stick to a single game line, but I tend to think of all three (DH, RT, DW) as a single line anyway. However, I do hope that they minimize the amount of Chaos forces in Mark of Xenos since it is a Xenos book, and the Deathwatch is primarily focused on Xenos. I suspect that they will reveal some new regionaly significant xenos race for Deathwatch like they did in DH and RT (The Slaught and the Yu'Vath). Although the Jericho Reaches are heavily influenced by canon alien races (Tyranids and Tau). So perhaps we will see more critter xenos.

Salcor

Given that Rogue Trader is getting its own bestiary book, they could be holding that one for things more significant to RT games, like the Eldar. I mean, looking at the DW core rulebook, the Eldar don't really factor in, yet they do come up quite a bit in RT, so putting them in that book, to my mind, makes more sense.

I could be wrong though. Dunno!

BYE

tkis said:

It allows DMs to create their own stories with major players without conflicting with canon.

I may speak out of ignorance with my very limited experience with Deathwatch, but I would also like to throw in with the "many new Xenos races" camp. More aliens to kill, and perhpas some interesting characteristic regarding the major ones. Necrons would be fun, but they are not on my top list although I wouldn't mind seeing some Lovecraftian aliens as well.

A short guide/advice to how to mechanics-wise construct new alien, similar to how White Wolf handeled the prospect of custom made Kindred bloodlines or Shapeshifter races would also be nice.

Salcor said:

That's the problem, DW does not seem quite compatible to the rest, as it employs some different/special mechanics and Unnatural traits make the player characters unfittingly invincible to much of what characters in DH/RT get attacked with - including the Eldar Splinter Rifles from PtU.

If DW gets new rules for NPCs and Equipment of Eldar and/or Ork origin (which does seem reasonable exactly because of this issue) I fully expect them to be notably more powerful simply due to balancing, similar to how Astartes bolters "magically" gained +5 damage in comparison to how they were described in DH.

Lynata said:

The sister has a point. However what if it was intentional to make the Marines so über?

Anyway, I recommend that you allow for the liberal use of Righteous Fury against Space Marines, as a simulation of a lucky shot - similar to how horde damage simulates a lucky shot through hail of fire. It's not perfect but it's okay. (Btw, with me hordes who don't get additional damage dice due to size can score RF in games I run too.)

Unless you want to do a rewrite of the whole damage system, you need a lucky shot mechanic. Alternatively you could rule that all shots who hit and are a rolled double (or which are divisble by 5 -> Harnmaster) ignore Toughness (or Armour) bonus, discarding the whole of RF instead.

Alex

ak-73 said:

I am fully convinced it is. The Deathwatch RPG seems to be designed to provide "epic" games from the get-go.

But that still leaves people with the issue that DH/RT-scale enemies and equipment will pose little threat to DW characters, and no challenge would be no fun (I suppose). Unless you employ Horde rules ... but this gets ugly when applied to Eldar, trust me.

A special, re-balanced set of antagonists and equipment converted specifically for DW-level games seems to be the best solution.

Lynata said:

Why does it get ugly with, say, Eldar guardian?

Alex