Something I've been working on for a while is the idea of a Universal 40k rpg system. I've got to the stage that I'm starting to share information to my players for them to have a look at and find fault/merit with, and I thought it might be something that you fine fellows might be vaguely interested in.

The system is designed to be Rankless (kind of) and balanced for anyone to play. It's not near complete, but the absolute basics for Inquisitotial and Asastes characters has been laid out - enough to start messing around with, anyhows. If any of you would like to have a look, throw in your 10 thrones and give me some feedback, it'd be great (positive or constructive feedback preferred - if you want to just flame me, can I politely ask that you do so through limerick or something similar so we can all have a laugh. Cheers.)

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AihgPzi5giNydHVNblEzWl9kRU5PellqaGdwTVVVUGc&output=html

(It appears that Google Docs is playing silly buggers with formatting, but I'm not in a great place to fix it right now - I'll try to upload a better version soon).

I really like what I see. I've been doing this with a very stripped down system (effectively everything has costs that you list as secondary and a lot of the detail was left out), but this is a big improvement.

I wish I could figure out how to download it so I can look at it offline.

By the time I get 1.2 ready to send out, I'll make sure I find a good site to share it from. Sadly, I used to use Mediafire but… uh… yeah, that's not an option anymore (unless it's back up and I haven't noticed ). If anyone can recommend a good site, I'd be ahppy to use it to host!

I also love what I see. To be honest, I really dislike the original balancing in DW. Our group has houseruled tons of stuff and also created our own skill and experience tables. But your system is better, because its simpler. I'm very eager to see more. Did you find a hoster?

Why do you need a host? You can download docs straight from google. Just press Ctrl+S.

Also, awesome stuff here. You might want to expand some of the rows/columns in places, especially under notes and new gear. Reading one really long line of text can be annoying.

Thanks for the positive responses people! Grandly appreciated.

I'm going to see if I can reformat so it looks a little nicer in GoogleDocs, because it's the only free hosting site that isn't flagged at work and that's where I'll be uploading from most of the time (it's also where I print copies for my players, but let's not go into that direct abuse of printer access).

v1.2 is (hopefully) going to be out later this week (real life having destroyed my time to write rules) and will contain more badges, the librarian's Knowledge Doctrine, fixing up some wording and (touch wood) finalising how humans use psychic powers (librarians will be using their normal system, as well as costs unless I see something I dislike).

I MAY be making a universal psychic system in line more with 6th ed 40k, where the codex powers are supported with the psychic disciplines, rather than the generic astartes ones. But we'll see how that goes.

Still. More feedback! Make characters, see if they work! Find the horrifically broken combos that I've somehow misssed!

I would really love to see a different approach to Psychic Powers, since the Astartes Powers are powerful but really boring.

Furthermore I would like to see your approach to Solo- and Squad Modes. This is a field I think can be expanded further for Astartes as well as for inquisitorial Groups.

We all appreciate your efforts. If you need help in anything, just ask.

Nightwing said:

The approach I'm looking at for psychic powers is to present the five disciplines (Biomancy, Divination, Pyromancy, Telepathy and Telekinesis) in the Rogue Trader format (which - format wise - is pretty much the same as Deathwatch). Each chapter will get three of these (most commonly Pyromancy, Telekinesis and Telepathy) in addition to their published codex powers. Like everything else, these powers will be brought in line, cost wise, with the mortal versions.

I'm kinda proud of my idea for squad and solo modes. While they'll be largely unchanged, I'm thinking about expanding the line a little and focusing on making squad modes far closer to the squad. Still playing with it. I AM planning on introducing the following modes for Ordos and Dynastic characters:

Influence and Inspiration modes (Dynastic characters) - Chosen for each Endeavor the group embarks on:

Influence modes change up the various uses that Profit Factor can be used for - whether inspiring specific adeptus to make them more amenable to the dynasty, making certain tests (such as repair tests or upkeep tests) much easier or negating them entirely, or reducing the risk of using profit factor in risky ways.

Inspiration modes add bonuses to the masses of downtrodden individuals that make up the bulk of the dynasty - improving ship combat stats, ground force benefits and reduces the penalties for long range exploration.

Sleeper and Cell modes (Ordo characters) - Chosen for each Operation the acolytes embark on:

Sleeper modes help acolyte cells when they are not actively moving to pursue their targets - speeding up information gathering, helping them remain undercover in hostile regions, and faking their own deaths (it comes up more than you think).

Cell modes help acolytes when they're more directly pursuing their Operation - getting damage bonuses against specific targets, defenses against gaining corruption and insanity, and gaining bonuses to see through disguises and falsehood.

Now, the FUN part of these is that some of them can be unlocked for other groups in certain ways. Tactical Marines can bring non-astartes into a squad mode by yelling instructions at them. The Rogue Trader can tell the Astartes to play it cool as he brings them all into the party without the astartes looking like graceless chumps, and the Inquisitor leading all of them in a hunt for an arch-traitor that it takes the Deathwatch, a dynasty, AND the might of the Ordos to bring to heel. So that should be amusing

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand I'm glad you asked about wanting to help If anyone has the ways, the means and the desire - there are two things I'd love for people to do.

1.) I am useless with character sheets - always have been, always will be. If someone isn't like me and wants to knock up a sheet I would love them forever.

2.) Use the system with your groups, even if it's just character creation, find the bits that don't work and let me know what they are. Something as simple as "I don't understand badges" to "Why is [skill] Phlegmatic? Are you trying to destroy my character? ANSWER ME, YOU HANDSOME JERK YOU!", I'll try to get you an answer and incorporate it into v1,2.

Cheers again!

Your ideas for Squad Modes are awesome! It would also be a good time to rebalance them. FFG really has problems to balance abilities and costs.

As for Psychic Powers I'm absolutely for expanding the five disciplines, since they make more sense to me than the Chapter specific powers. One of the goals should be to look out for powers that become obsolete because of others or powers that practically have identic rules. In my opinion Chapter psychic powers could even be passive modifiers to general psychic powers to represent that they are not truly "unique" powers, but just different interpretations of certain powers.

Besides from around 30 new Talents, our group has implemented the concept of "stacking" Talents. In general that means that certain Talents can be bought more than once from different places, with a cumulation of effects. I.e. Mighty Shot is stacking. It could be found in the General List, the Devastator List and for Imperial Fists etc. This allows the players to have different approaches to build their characters. One of the weaknesses of the original system was that characters with the same specialties tend to be rather similiar (not to say identic). With the introduction of humours etc. it is already possible to differ more from each other. Still maybe stacking Talents could also be included to enhance diversity.

Indeed I can create Character sheets as soon as know what changes makes sense. Listing the Skills in the humour categories might be a start. This is the modified character sheet we use right now. It would be no problem to change it. It is a writable pdf:

http://www.file-upload.net/download-4531365/Charactersheet-formular.pdf.html

Our group will play test your stuff (in combination with our own stuff) at the end of july. Maybe until then we could bring some compact pdf with the new rules out.

For the Emperor!

PS: Weapon Training is kinda missing in the advancement trees.

The weapon training skills are listed in the talents under "Basic Training" "Pistol Training" etc (names shortened to fit them in the columns better ). They're kinda scattered around the place, but you can find at least one in each humour.

That's quite a nice character sheet! I was sold as soon as I saw there was a section for combat stimms

I'll see what I can do about rewriting this into PDF format. It'll probably make life a lot easier for everyone involved. I'll get the rules I want to update updated then work on formatting… before jumping back to the rules work