I know how you feel and tbh I was kind of trying to agree with you but not saying it very well. I try not take anything too personally on a forum because tone is almost impossible to determine. I agree that DnD as a system in no better or worse for roleplaying than many others I was just pointing out the type of setting usually associated with it. The same with DH but the setting is quite good for encouraging the sort of thing the OP was looking for. While I say that it doesn't limit either game or either setting to be played in that way and it is up to players and the GM how it all plays out.

I think what probably was a bad idea was to mix my own personal experiances and observation in with those views as it gave sort of the wrong impression.

Kaihlik

I still think expecting 40k fans not to want to kill **** is wishful thinking...

I would, if you have the books, start with doing wfrp, after a campaign or two, and after they've settled in, say that they are going to go futuristic, as the wfrp-40k jump is much smaller than just staight from DnD

Dezmond said:

I don't think anyone is saying "don't kill stuff". In fact that be stupid since the Inquisitions entire job is to purge the heretic, the demon, and the alien.

The question really being asked is that in any given individual game, where does the balance between investigation and combat lie, and that's up to the GM and the Players to decide.

In the OPs case it appears that the GM wants Investigation > Combat

The players want Combat > Investigation.

I agree if the GM is saying "there will be no combat at all in DH" then I agree the GM is an idiot, but I don't see the OP ever saying that. Its a matter of balance, and the OP and the players disagreeing where the balance lies.

As I said before, my group seems to be pretty shooty based but they do still get through a fair amount of investigation. The point I was trying to make with the pretty-impossible-to-kill-the-enemy scenario was that you can have lots of shooting, but dont always expect that to win the day for you. The point of the bonus knowledge skils was that while an unskilled and unknowledgeable character can spent a few days trying to do the grunt policing work to figure out the few clues they have, one who knows their stuff can look at a seemingly useless and obscure skill and figure out that its actually some part of a dastardly Xenos plot that probably originated from that planet over there and regardless of where it came from must have slipped through customs onto the planet by X, Y or Z.

My point is that by giving them knowledge they are free to spend less time investigating and more time shooting. Or they are free to spend less time doing the grunt work investigation and more time with the interesting investigation, interrogation and getting to the masterminds behind it all, without having some handy NPC have to explain it all to them because they failed their one relevant skill check that they had between them.

Xathess Wolfe said:

In this situation, I absolutely agree with you. If you've communicated up front what type of game to play and they agree, but then subvert your game, that's wrong.

You are correct also that I said it better before too, but I normally don't like to rehash things so I took the easy way out in my last post.

I think that a gaming group can only do well if there is open, honest communication. My last group ran games together for about 10 years before it broke up. We had our issues, but overall the core group of gamers in it were open and honest about what we wanted and that kept us together for a long time. Unfortunately at some point people's priorities and lives change and we have to move on.

I'm not and advocate for the GM to bend to the players desires and whims, but I do think you have to know what to expect when you go into a game. If your players hackNslash in every game they play, most likely DH will be no different.

I think that Leblanc has put it out rather nicely: "communicate" and "change group if that does not work". That is the only thing you can do. Trying to push combat oriented gamers to change their ways but punishing them for choosing weapons as a mean to solve a situation is usually a bad way to go. The only thing that is going to happen is that they try to find another way to kill their enemies, usually with bigger guns. That will probably result in another thread were the complain is that the players are powergaming and the majority of the response will be to use "consequences" aka punish them and then the circle is complete. Besides, the system encourges powergaming so it is not strange that it is a result. For the record I don't think that powergaming is any lesser form of roleplay meaning that I don't think the system is bad because it builds on character progression.

The players must know what is expected of them before the game begins meaning that you have to be very clear with what you want. If you have not manage to communicate what you as a GM think is important to change compared to how you use to play then they will not understand, meaning no change. So, communicate and if you all fail to reach eachother then find another group to play DH with. I don't mean you have to leave you old group but when you want to play a certain game in a certain way you might have to find other people.