I don't know if anybody has done one of these already but if so here's another thread for players to voice what questions they'd like FFG to answer in the previews leading up to the release of Black Crusade (assuming anyone from FFG who has anything to do with the previews deigns to read them).

For my part I have two things (for now) that I'd like FFG to address.

1. Could they give a little more info regarding how different Black Crusade is going to be from the other WH40K Roleplaying games? I know alot of the people out there who are considering purchasing Black Crusade seem to be ok with with throwing out the levels and classes but I'm somewhat old school and while I've played and enjoyed games like Deadlands that have no classes or levels, the fact that FFG is going to be throwing out the rules that underpin the three other games in the franchise has me somewhat concerned. Besides personally not wanting to have to learn another rule system when I think the rules underpinning the other three games are still perfectly good, how much harder will it be to integrate this game with the others in the franchise, and how hard will it be for players of the other games to learn these new rules?

2. I'd like them to explain a little bit more about the two character types you can play in Black Crusade . FFG has (in my opinion) always made sure they didn't bite off more than they could chew when introducing new player types. In Dark Heresy (ok that doesn't really count as Black Industries did the work for that one) Acolytes of an Inquisitorial Acolyte cell were introduced. In Rogue Trader , Explorers were introduced. Ascension finally allowed players to be Inquisitors and members of their retinues as Throne Agents, and Deathwatch allowed players to be the superhuman Space Marines. In Black Crusade , however, FFG is introducing two new player types, the Heretics of Chaos and the Chaos Space Marines. I mentioned this already in my comment on the Screaming Vortex news article but I'd like to mention it here too. How is FFG going to give both the Heretics of Chaos and the Chaos Space Marines the attention they both need? Having to juggle two new player types rather than one my fear is that they may give neither the attention they deserve and we end up with two inadequately developed character types or they favor one over the other which will alienate those players who favor the character type that got neglected.

Those are the two big things I'd like FFG to answer. What about you guys?

I doubt much will change.

Honestly, all the loss of 'classes' will do is allow you take the skill advances when you want to. Yes, there's the semi classes with the chaos god alleigance discounts - but we don't have a clue how those will work yet. Still, you won't need to learn a new system, if anything it's just a simpler version of the system you already know. One that actually lets you make more creative things without being shoehorned into stupid roles that don't necessarilly fit what people would want to play.

Really, all classes do in the first three games is force you to have a schema for when you can take advances.

Better proof reading and editing.

Zamnil Blackaxe said:

Wait... it's not April 1. What RPGs do you read.

(Seriously, FFG is quite good compared to some companies. Good editing in RPGs just doesn't seem likely )

Zamnil Blackaxe said:

LOL. Dream on.

Dulahan said:

I imagine it will be a cross between the building a character from bottom up rules in ascension and the standard rules. In the Ascension rules you get ot build your rank 9 character buy purchasing anything you want from your career charts up to rank 8 at the prices listed. But you pay a flat out 500XP fee for any skill or talent you do not have normal access to (Elite Advances).

I could see the open ended rules for Black Crusade being more mandated, but cheaper. Meaning that you can buy any skill at standard ability (skilled/trained) for say 300 XP, buy the same skill up to +10 for 400 XP more and then 500 XP more for +20. With talents having a flat fee of say 300 or 400 XPs and you must meet all prerequisites or say pay a extra 50 XP fee for each prerequisite you dont meet. When you align with a certain god/daemon/philosophy or whatever, certain skills/talents get modifiers to the XP cost, some more, soem cheaper, some required, some prohibited.

The plus side? Every skill/talent generally costs the same. No skills/talents come in at 100 or 200 XP fees until/unless you side with a god/cult.

Whereas the benefit for PCs in the other games is you have yoru core skills that are easily available that are often 100 or 200 XP in price with a few that are 400 and 500 XP and some just not available except as elite advances. A character with a career is more focused on his or her actual task/job and has a harder time varying it up.

Wow, good point on the same pricing. If anything that should lead to the game being more balanced, especially with how wonky the career paths were in pricing at times.

With all that choice i'm interested in what the system will do to stop similar power builds. Sounds stupid, but certain things are better than others, a quick look through the psychic powers shows that some are better than others. Now i'm not saying that everyone will do it. but i have a bad feeling that you will end up with some carbon copy characters without strong demarcation just so everyone gets some light.

I'm not saying it will happen, but a closer look at 'classes' and skill progression, with maybe some examples would help.

I'm something of a Chaos fanboy. I have a wonderfully modded Chaos Space Marine army (that I rarely play as the current codex makes me sad) and as a Chaos fanboy I'm quite likely to purchase the collector's edition. So while I'm quite curious as to how they're going to handle the whole heretic vs. marine in the same book, I'd also like to know if there's going to be a collector's, when the collector's is coming out in relation to the release date for the standard edition, when the collector's will be available for pre-order, and how much it will cost (for budgetting purposes).

dorstein said:

I'm sure that the collector's edition will be the source of an article at some point but it will probably be talked about much closer to release (when they've finally figured all the game mechanics out and can concentrate on that sort of stuff). I'm probably going to buy the collector's edition as I'm a huge fan of Chaos Space Marines myself ( I too stopped playing them when the current codex came out without all the great wargear options the previous one had). In fact ever since Dark Heresy came out I've been waiting for the day I could play an RPG as a Traitor Space Marine.

As to an article about improving their proof reading ability I must point out that at least its not as bad as Rifts where you needed a whole supplement practically to fix whatever mistakes they made in the rulebook.