Peacekeeper_b said:

Space Gothic is or was a BRP -Runequest Clon, dak horros Space Setting, a mixture of Cthulhu and Science Fiction, with a bit of cyberpunk.

In Space Nobody Hears you Scream!

I could built a space pilot, a med tech, a military med tech a scientist , a few different kinds of soldiers including soldier-cleric, cleric, Heavy Weapons Trooper, normal grunt, etc pp at the start DH makes it more difficult to do that.

Well,

I just sent my players the Data Slates for their next mission, including their selected (by the Interrogator) equipment:

The equipment is way more than they are used too, way more.
* Combat Carapace (for the IG)
* Great Flak Coat's
* Photo-visors for all of them
* Tabards bearing the Inquisitorial seal

They are scared shitless, they figured this is to good to be true, or rather said;

If we're getting this, what are we up against...

Peacekeeper_b said:

This isn't at all accurate.

Eisenhorn starts with archeotech power sword and latter acquires a superb blade that he upgrades with pentagrammic runes and a custom made runestaff, the work in question being done by an arch-magos. He acquires those weapons specifically because his previous gear was insufficient to deal with daemonhosts. He and his retinue are armed as they see fit, which is mostly fairly inconspicous las and slug weapons, but they bring out the heavy stuff for assault work.

Cain doesn't directly work for the Inquisition, but has "retained" a set of carapace armour and is frequently backed up by specialists not the least of which is his melta wielding Untouchable aide Jurgen. Gaunt acquires a hierloom power sword of exquisite quality in Necropolis and he goes through several different bolt pistols in the course of the books. His men are a stealth regiment, but they have access to all sorts of military gear and they make use of it.

Within the bounds of their resources, these characters clearly do get better gear and "tool up" when expecting to face serious opposition.

Inquisition acolytes should be equipped as their status and the mission requires. They maybe able to keep some of the gear, they may not. Some enemies maybe lootable, others aren't. There's a fair amount of lattitude, but GM's should take into account that a number of careers (such as Guardsman) place a heavy emphasis on weapon proficiencies. If there are no opportunities to acquire those weapons (which is different than saying they should get something just because they want it), they're losing out on a significant part of their careers.

I understand what you just said. Completely. And Ill go one further.

At the end of the mission they were on, where they geared up for trouble, and when it went onto the next story, most of these characters resorted back to their original weapons.

Even Jurgen goes back to a lasgun.

How many of your players relinquish their melta?

And Ill step again in the other direction. A player sits down at a table, the GM says "Hey you want to play Dark Heresy?" and the players says "What is that?" The GM informs him it is a 40K setting RPG based on the inquisition. So go ahead and think of a character and we will build him in a moment.

After some though the players says "I want to play a roguish imperial guard officer who gets by on his guile and wits as well as his trust in his issued chainsword and bolt pistol." The GM replies "oh thats too bad, your a conscript with a lasgun. When I said think of a character I actually meant choose a career and one of 8 variant worlds of origins. Thats a shame though, I liked you moxy!"

So the player thinks, OK, Ill be a conscript but Ill build skills and talents around my Han Solo officer idea, only to find that because he is a Guardsman he will never be crafty, cunning or charming and only occassionally be roguish and if he wants a chainsword he needs to wait 3 or so ranks or beg for an elite advance.

Thinking abit, and looking at the book, he thinks maybe I can pull off this character as a scum or adept? Well as the adept, he isnt going to be very guardsman offficer like, and while as a scum he can be charming and persuasive and maybe a bit of a swashbuckler but will still lack access to military skills he wants.

So he winds up playng Corporal Solo with a rusty sword and a autopistol and doesnt enjoy the game.

With an open system for creation the player could through a couple of points to fellowship and strategy and still be able to use the weapons he envisions his character as having.

In the core book you have 8 careers and 4 origins, not all origins can be all careers. In essence, you get stuck with one of 28 preconceived archtypes. The only difference, perhaps a few initial XP skills and the stats. But two starting feral world guardsmen will in essence be the same character.

Starting characters don't have much in the way of options of where to go, but that changes rapidly. You can spend your xp as you see fit and between career tree splits, alternate careers (which can change characteristic advancement costs), elite advances, and elite advance packages there's a lot of ways to shape a character's development. You do need a GM who will meet you half way, but your game will have other problems if your GM won't. DH starting gear and power levels are low. I wanted my players to be more capable and started them with 1500xp and a few pieces of better gear instead of 400xp. In universe the Imperium does have advanced and powerful technology, but las and slug throwers are common weapons because they are fairly effective and easy to make.

Dark Heresy is built on the fairly typical rpg pattern of escalating power and danger levels, which is why miserly GMs are a problem because threats escalate but the capabilities of most combat classes won't (scholar path psykers being a big exception and another complication ) do so proportionately. My campaign is running on what I feel is the upper end of the "normal" gear range and the loot they're most interested in from heretics is lists of their friends and contacts.

My players are great horders and looters (particularly the Tech Priest and Guardsman) and I've given them (as a group) a fair amount of extra toys; a "Tithe Collector" armourded vehicle (see my Dark Reign article - shameless plug), a servo-skull, a bunch of more mundane items, free passage on starships etc.

But the way I've always figured it as a GM - it's EASY to take away gear again (malfunction, left behind in the heat of battle, destroyed by the enemy, stolen) if necessary - it's far harder to remove XP or abilities if something is being abused or throws play balance out of whack. In that respect I'm probably more stingy about XP rewards: of the two longest serving characters one has just hit rank three the other is almost rank four.

I played an assassin from rank 1, now i have 5800xp and my equip is just an armored bodyglove, not even good quality, and a mauler that i bought, still using the same hunting rifle, now faring a little better that i can use man-stopper on it. If the acolytes are doing ok with the actual equipment, i dont see why you should throw better one. Yes i have wet dreams with a NOMAD , it has become the main drive force for the assassin and now is more of a role play thing, than just to get better equip. And after all who needs kick ass equipment when you have crazy-**** talents!! I mean no penalties for distance or aim!! 80 in dodge, 80 in move silently and all of this without any equipment.

Peacekeeper_b said:

More than you might think. The problem with the meltagun is the lack of range, ammo-per-clip and rate of fire... it's a very specialised weapon. The character will probably keep the weapon... but they'll only bring it out for special occasions, when the group is likely to face very tough or very heavily armoured adversaries and needs a personal anti-tank weapon to do the job...

Peacekeeper_b said:

Or the GM - remembering that all rules are guidelines at best and a minor irritation at worst - takes the player's concept and, using the tools available to him, adjusts the options available to the character. It really isn't difficult to come up with an alternate background or a couple of alternate ranks to tweak the way a character advances to better fit a concept (that's what I did with the Skitarii character in my group). In some cases, the changes are even smaller - one of my players had his character die (and an awesome and stunningly dramatic death it was) recently, so has brought in a new one, a Noble-born Assassin. He doesn't want to engage in melee at all, and is more of an infiltrator than a hired killer, so I allowed him to swap the advancement costs of his WS and Fel scores... so he gets cheap fellowship and expensive weapon skill. One simple change that took mere fractions of a second to consider, and the character concept is that much easier to achieve.

Similarly, one of my players, who had to leave because of work commitments in another part of the country, pops back to Reading occasionally and has been running Imperial Guard themed games. His brief at the start of character creation was that we got X amount of XP, which could be spent in X and Y ranks, and then Y amount of XP which could be spent in another rank, and a single appropriate skill or talent based on our chosen speciality (sergeant, heavy/special weapon, vox operator, medic, etc). We got to the end of that first saturday's play, and he gave us a couple of hundred more XP to spend, and opened up a fourth rank for us to buy from. Aside from that Imperial Guard minicampaign, he has no experience of GMing whatsoever, and only started roleplaying a couple of years ago... but he's quickly and effectively picked up on the idea that the rules can be bent and twisted and reworked to suit the campaign with little effort.

The rules are, as with any game, a starting point and nothing more... it is the responsibility and duty of the GM, any GM, to bring the system and setting to life for his group.

As far as I'm concerned, character creation is not a solo matter. Players do not create characters in isolation - rather, they create characters under the supervision, and with the assistance, of the GM, whose presence allows the rules to be nudged and tweaked in order to bring the players' character concepts to life more effectively. Recently, I've been doing this with WFRP - even the much-vaunted WFRP careers system is open to plenty of GM tweaking to turn the building blocks of skills, advances, talents and careers into actual characters.

Peacekeeper_b said:

In my experience, the problem there with open systems is that, without a strong idea of what kind of characters people want to be, everyone ends up pretty much the same anyway, because everyone will go for the best skills, talents and advancements. The only exception to this that I've come across is Mutants & Masterminds, and even that's more a matter of the genre than the system itself. You'd never see a character who didn't buy up WP, BS and Fel (the three most broadly used characteristics) at every opportunity... the problem with the appearance of infinite diversity is that it so often results in characters who are bland and generic... you don't have seven hundred choices, you have four really good choices and six hundred and ninety six mediocre ones.

Peacekeeper_b said:

I also tend to like flexible open creation systems, however I'm going to have to vehmently disagree with you here.

The quoted statement reduces character to game mechanics.

In any even halfway decent RPG w/ even remotely competent/imaginative players you can have five characters whose sheets are identical except for the name line, and yet have each be very, very different characters.

Peacekeeper_b said:

Completely off topic, but I'm right there with you. I'd love to see an open system for 40K roleplay like the one you are suggesting and if you are working on one, or even just bouncing ideas around for one, I'd like to help.