Kain McDogal said:

Yeah, thanks for the insult. I really appreciate it.

For reference, I don't have to come to this forum and do nice things like provide my own (unofficial) answers on stuff I've written, or put together rules for things in my spare time. I do those things out of choice, because I'm a nice person who loves this hobby and this setting and am overjoyed at the continued chance to be allowed to play with it in a professional capacity. Lots of other writers choose to avoid the public forums, knowing that they attract both good and bad attention in equal measure, or because they're really busy doing a variety of other things. Others still choose to remain anonymous. The FFG staff (as opposed to freelancers like myself) are too busy actually working on these games to get involved in forum discussions themselves (trust me, there is a huge amount of work that goes into the production of a new book that starts long before the writers begin work and ends long after they've handed in their manuscripts) but they do read the forums (I wouldn't be writing for them if they didn't). I'm here because I feel that I can spare the time and because I still want to be a part of this community. All too often, someone comes along with an attitude that seems intent on making me regret that...

Back to the matter at hand. Your unveiled insult aside, I write rules more often than not. Edge of the Abyss, Hostile Acquisitions (which was 50/50 rules and background for me) and (the forthcoming) The Jericho Reach represent the largest background contributions I've made in any published book, with everything else I've done being primarily rules-related. I take pride in my demonstrated - and frequently lauded - capability to turn concepts from the background into game mechanics and statlines - indeed, that knack is (according to Ross Watson) part of the reason I was asked to write for FFG in the first place. Honestly, I find coming up with new and interesting background somewhat more challenging than I do putting together NPC profiles or weapon statlines or a string of talents or traits of the same word-count. Look at my webpage in my signature for an example - that's all rules material, with relatively little background. That should demonstrate where my strengths are with regards to writing and game development.

Now, I will admit that I can make mistakes - I can't, and won't, claim to be infallible - but in this instance, I do not feel that I'm making a mistake.

You, sir, are not the sum total of the target audience. Your desires and preferences are not the only ones which need to be taken into consideration during the development of a new book. Yes, you look first to the rules because you can come up with the narrative side of things easily... that's great for you, I'm happy for you, really. But you're not everyone. Others - like myself (remembering that I GM these games as well as write for them, and have done so since long before I started writing professionally) are the other way around, finding the rules easy to shape but ever-eager for new background to inspire those mechanical creations.

So I suppose that's a 'no' on the Biting Blade stats, then? A pity.

Do you prefer working on material with a particularly long and storied tradition in the 40k universe, or do you prefer developing more recently developed, RPG specific stuff? (IE, relating specifically to the Expanse, Calixis sector, etc)

LeSquide said:

The NDAs actually mean that those subject to them aren't allowed to reveal what has been cut from a book - it means we're not legally allowed to say what the original stats were, I'm afraid

After reading over the Micro rules myself, I conclude that they are hardly broken. If a player wants massive damage one-handed, recoil gloves and basic, undiminished weapons are readily available and don't cost a fortune to keep in ammo (as much as I have issues with recoil gloves as written). A micro relic boltgun would be nigh-impossible to obtain or gather ammunition for as has been previously stated.

By the way, thanks for the insights into the writing process Nathan.

Decessor said:

+1

The Arch-Militant in my games uses a Storm Bolter with Recoil Gloves on each hand...in Full-Auto.

For what it's worth, I've been very happy with FFG's releases out of the new 40K line, (growing admitance of the of problems Ascension aside).

And am rather eagerly awaiting the next.. well, every release. For Deathwatch especially.

*cough* I also have all confidence that if FFG were to ever publish rules for playable Dark Eldar in Black Crusade, they would be very well written... (subtle, I know)

MILLANDSON said:

I figured that'd probably be the case. Ah well, time to shelve that particular curiosity.

To be perfectly honest, I've got bigger bugaboos with the armoury section- specifically with the starship components. It'll get errata'd eventually, but there are missing stats for the Null Bay. Maybe I'd have gripes with other parts of the armoury section after spending more time going through it, but so far my impression has been good. Certainly not the sort of thing to cause the level of vitriol in certain posts of this thread.
Anyway- if there's anyone reading who knows what the stats were meant to be (after the editing in-house: don't want to get anyone into trouble with their NDAs), it'd be awesome.

LeSquide said:

Ahem. Biting Blade (2d10+17 R; Pen 3; Razor-Sharp, Tearing, +3 damage per Degree of Success)

Did you make up those stats? If they came from a play-test document then you really can't post them. If you can't discuss cut content then you certainly can't post it.


Also, just picking up on something Nathan said on the last page about balance. Not everything has to be or even should be balanced. This isn't a competitive game, so I don't see why every thing in the game needs to balanced against everything else. Tight rules? Yes, because ambiguity sucks, but if a weapon is just out-and-out better than something else, then really why does that matter? Nathan, from what he said, is a writer that doesn't make balance his chief priority. I differ from him in that I always take a players view of any weapon stats, and I 'sanity check' them before putting them down on paper. But even if we both ignored that, that's why we have play testing. If you throw a new book at 20-50 people and say 'rip this apart', they often will, and they'll see things that you don't (can't see the woods for the trees and all that). And even then mistakes will get made because, at the end of the day, we're all human (mostly...).

BYE

P.S. I do not speak for or on the behalf of FFG, my views are my own, etc. etc. disclaimer disclaimer!

http://www.n01h3r3.com/40kRP/children-of-isha.pdf

Straight from the horse's fingertips, as it were. Can't NDA prior work.

Ah, right, Nathan's homebrew stuff. Sorry, just wasn't sure.

BYE

H.B.M.C. said:

I agree with HMBC. I would argue that "balance" itself is not necessarily a desirable objective in every game scenario. On occasion, a GM will not want a player to be restricted to weapons or items that are, on the whole, all things considered, exactly and measurably proportionate in terms of efficacy/cost/availability.

Game balance is an important factor if two players want to play a tabletop game of 40k, and have two armies of exactly the same points value to go head to head with. Balance of that degree of precision is (in my view) potentially overly restrictive in the context of a RPG.

I would suggest that the narrative itself should routinely be acting as an important balancing element. Of course some weapons are going to be far more powerful than others, and apparently have fewer drawbacks. Of course astute players will seek to exploit this. It is the GM's role to police this tendency in players in any way he sees fit. Good GMs strike that difficult balance between preventing players from gleefully ruining a carefully planned scenario by becoming rules lawyers or munchkins whilst also allowing everyone to have fun.

There is a tendency among many RPGers to approach weapons only as a pure abstract set of numbers. To me, weapons (and other items of equipment) in 40k can never be seperated from the narrative; shorn of context, they are useless. The totality of an item of equipment in 40k does not rest solely in its statline.

H.B.M.C. said:

Right, let's try this again. Stupid phone browser seems to do nasty things to this forum, so I've had to wait until I got home to post this.

The stats for the Biting Blade and various other Eldar weapons from Children of Isha are, in cases where the item also appears in Hostile Acquisitions, deliberately different. That is, I wrote my part of Hostile Acquisitions quite some time before I put Children of Isha together, and the versions I wrote for Children of Isha are deliberately different to those that appear in Hostile Acquisitions in order to avoid breaching my NDA.

Also, the Biting Blade stats in CoI (reposted in this thread) include strength bonus, Crushing Blow, Master-Crafted bonuses and so forth.

Really? Your stuff for Hostile Acquisitions was written that long ago? And here I was thinking The Achillus Assault took forever to come out...

Lightbringer said:

That's also a really good point. The Arbite in our group is at the highest rank he can get, has combat-skills up the wazoo, has a pair of Tranter Handcanons, a Shock Maul and a Power Axe. He also has the exact same Combat Shotgun that he's had since the character was first created and still uses it. It's 'his' gun, and even if other weapons in other books are better, he's an Arbite, and Arbites use shotguns, so he will keep his shotgun. The Tech-Priest in our group is the same. He has an Omnissian Axe, and wouldn't dream of getting something 'better' because the Omnissian Axe is as much a symbol of the Ad Mech as it is a weapon.

BYE