So as you may know iam about to run Purge the Unclean with my group of 4-5 people, I was thinking about letting them stay with the set gear at first, and with 1000 exp (400 starting and 600 extra) and throw them in the game.

I was thinking about being a total control freak and being quick start exp and starting gear only, but i desided not to. Iam kinda resenting letting my party get their own gear (last time we had 1.2k exp and 2k cash and we ended up with people running around with insane gear and weapons, and it took our team literally 30 minutes to go through a 2 part game). Now I am not sure i should do this whole starting gear and lets go! method. Should I make them give me a reason why a starting acolyte/conscript (if they're guardsmen) has hellgun?

Also I'm thinking of actually making my group rp, usually we just act as ourselves, and make it more of a video game than an Role Play.

What i was thinking was; every character needs a homeworld (named) like Balecaster if their a Imperial from a Fuedal world. Characters Like and Dislikes, What their general personality is (sorta using the books definitions) and a Mental Disability from the Insanity chart.

What do you think?

I demand that my would be players write at least 1 A4 paper of backround for their character. And for the example of the hellgun, depends on how well he writes the backround for getting it. But a guardsman in service of the Guard do not have a hellgun, maybe i would go for a hellpistol if he has the Sergeant rank(and the appropriate starting xp for that rank).

How long is 1 A4 pages?

I'd maybe say that the players can buy any weapon/equipment that is up to scarce. Any weaponry scare (or more) they have to come up with how they got it in character and you can charge them 1.5x or 2x the norm and ration ammo.

First off, should you make them RP? hell yes! it is an RPG afterall, I can't understand why you haven't before, if that's the way you like to run your games thats cool and all but why play an RPG if you don't want to RP?

About starting gear etc, the players in my group gets to start with the equipment the class's come with and will not be allowed to purchase new equipment but can come up with some good reasons for why they should have certain items (again, not weapons), and will have minimal starting cash, may seem harsh but it's something I want to try out.

If you're giving them some cash to buy equipment I'd agree with Baldrick about the limit of equipment (though nothing above Average cause i'm harsh like that ).

I'm a bit more loose on the roleplaying thing myself as not everyone is into or all that good at it. People like that though I do try encourage the 3rd person method like: "Trent runs up to the crates and takes cover" instead of "I run up and take cover".

I went for the blackmail approach of a small xp reward for a page of background, maybe you could do the same to allow 1 scarce bit of equipment?. I like your idea about getting them to solidly pick a homeworld it'll make designing player background missions easier.

Its the term for a standard piece of paper, "a4".

Cryxx said:

Well I wasn't the GM at that time, and our old gm didn't like us because we weren't hardcore rpers that he was use to.

Turpin said:

As a rule, a GM sets the tone of a game. If you want a game that's centered on roleplaying then I would encourage you to require your players to write up a minimum of one page of background (one that is plausible and consistent with your game and the 40k universe in general). Based on that, I would allow them to purchase certain equipment in keeping with their background (nothing better than scarce however). I would restrict all other equipment to average. I also probably wouldn't give them more than 1k in starting cash. This is all based on giving them 1000 xp to start.

As a general rule, I think it's wise to restrict players access to rare and very rare weapons, even at higher ranks. If you don't do this players eventually cease to see rare items as anything special, and that's not good. Keeping that in mind I think it's fine to let players gear themselves up with as many scarce items as they like after rank 3 or 4, but rare and very rare items should be a bit less commonplace. For instance, a rank 6 player should probably only have one rare weapon, possibly two in the case of dual-wielders. At rank 9, a player should possess one very rare weapon at most, and by rank 12, two. Of course, these are just general guidelines I like to use to keep my game focused on the nitty-gritty rather than shiny stuff. Feel free to do whatever you like.

and a Mental Disability from the Insanity chart.

I really wouldn't reccommend that. Insanity is pretty tough to roleplay convincingly and if everyone gets some kind of it, it risks becoming comical instead of horrifying.

Cifer said:

Well I rethunk that over and I decided to make it a Personality disorder, because everyone has one, as minor as it maybe.