Because I've seen a LOT of ragging on D&D from others in this forum. So I'm curious, is this a common thing? Because at my local GW, the manager runs his own D&D-esque campaign for his friends, the sub manager does too, and I personally really enjoy D&D and other TTRPG games.
It's just an easy target if you're making arguments from a position of rules focused design - and this forum is very rules obsessed I believe.
D&D is in many ways very poorly balanced, but in the right group that doesnt really matter as it's all about how the DM leads the story, and the rules are just one tool in doing that. I think a lot of people coming from a war gaming perspective really struggle to be ok with that though.
Stux wrote: It's just an easy target if you're making arguments from a position of rules focused design - and this forum is very rules obsessed I believe.
D&D is in many ways very poorly balanced, but in the right group that doesnt really matter as it's all about how the DM leads the story, and the rules are just one tool in doing that. I think a lot of people coming from a war gaming perspective really struggle to be ok with that though.
3rd edition had awful balance.
But ESPECIALLY relative to 40k, 5E and especially 4E had and have great balance.
I've definitely been rapidly losing interest in 40K (don't really play it anymore). I actually only started trying out D&D this year, and I've been thoroughly unimpressed.
So, I'm not really sure how to answer. I think I'd categorize them both in a similar vein; massively successful and mediocre (almost as a result). I've taken part in two D&D groups (both with decent GMs) and I don't think I'd get involved in another one. It's an exceptionally strict/boring version of a role-playing game.
If I were to enjoy D&D I think I'd end up doing what I do with 40K and massively house-ruling it, etc.
Elbows wrote: I've definitely been rapidly losing interest in 40K (don't really play it anymore). I actually only started trying out D&D this year, and I've been thoroughly unimpressed.
So, I'm not really sure how to answer. I think I'd categorize them both in a similar vein; massively successful and mediocre (almost as a result). I've taken part in two D&D groups (both with decent GMs) and I don't think I'd get involved in another one. It's an exceptionally strict/boring version of a role-playing game.
If I were to enjoy D&D I think I'd end up doing what I do with 40K and massively house-ruling it, etc.
That's pretty fair. Mind if ask what you voted on the poll?
But I've got zero issues with someone saying "Not a fan of D&D-doesn't scratch my itch," like you did. I'll agree that D&D's main power is that it's so damn big, so it's easier to find a group for that than it is Mutants and Masterminds, or GURPS, or Shadowrun, or any number of other RPGs. But it's a good way to get introduced to TTRPGs, I think, even if other systems do their job better than D&D does.
I grew up on DnD, and transitioned into TT wargames, etc.
DnD, like 40k, and almost all GW games, requires an agreement between players about what the game will be like, not to abuse broken elements, etc. Its a negotiation, but one that has an ultimate arbiter (the DM). If you don't like the setting, or the choices of characters, or the power level of the campaign, then you don't play, or it ends up miserable for all parties.
I like tabletop RPGs. I dislike D&D specifically because 5e isn't a complete or working tabletop RPG, it's a bland half-assed intro experience nobody seems to want to move beyond into more interesting things. I disliked 3e because while it worked really well it was impossible to get anyone to read enough of to actually use it, and I disliked 4e because it was an overly-abstracted handwavey combat-centric MMO pretending to be an RPG.
If 5e was an intro product and there was an "advanced 5e" game where bonuses/damage didn't scale linearly by level independent of class and where classes didn't shove players into one-dimensional boxes where you have one thing you do every turn, or if 4e had packaged itself as a wargame instead of an RPG, or if 3e had a sensible and easy-to-use tutorial path to make it easier to teach to new people, I'd be happy with D&D, but as-is they're trying to take single-purpose games and sell them as general-purpose RPGs anyone can do anything with, and everyone seems to be lapping it up and refusing to do anything other than D&D in the sphere of tabletop RPGs.
Come to think of it, I dislike D&D for a lot of the same reasons I dislike 40k.
3/5.
Waiting to roll dice, 2 people think their dumb af sidestory is funny and you realize you'd rather not dedicate a day of the week to that. Did have some fun leveling you and char building took too much of a backseat to the 2 drunken larpers.
Geez, you are comparing orange with apples here. D&D is a RPG in which the players and the DM play with one another and NOT against another like in a wargame.
I was a DM in a 3rd Ravenloft campaign for ten years and have only fond memories of the time.
Just don't take classes as a player with only D4HD and you should be fine.
I fell out of love with actual D&D due to the heavy reliance on classes and tropes. Ttrpgs in general are fun for me. A good dm and players can make any edition palatable, but so far more house rules or an open ended rule set are better than sticking to official books.
Geez, you are comparing orange with apples here. D&D is a RPG in which the players and the DM play with one another and NOT against another like in a wargame.
I was a DM in a 3rd Ravenloft campaign for ten years and have only fond memories of the time.
Just don't take classes as a player with only D4HD and you should be fine.
Elbows wrote: I've definitely been rapidly losing interest in 40K (don't really play it anymore). I actually only started trying out D&D this year, and I've been thoroughly unimpressed.
So, I'm not really sure how to answer. I think I'd categorize them both in a similar vein; massively successful and mediocre (almost as a result). I've taken part in two D&D groups (both with decent GMs) and I don't think I'd get involved in another one. It's an exceptionally strict/boring version of a role-playing game.
If I were to enjoy D&D I think I'd end up doing what I do with 40K and massively house-ruling it, etc.
That's pretty fair. Mind if ask what you voted on the poll?
But I've got zero issues with someone saying "Not a fan of D&D-doesn't scratch my itch," like you did. I'll agree that D&D's main power is that it's so damn big, so it's easier to find a group for that than it is Mutants and Masterminds, or GURPS, or Shadowrun, or any number of other RPGs. But it's a good way to get introduced to TTRPGs, I think, even if other systems do their job better than D&D does.
I actually didn't vote.
I think my issues with D&D is that it is an actual "table top" RPG. I enjoy much more free-form, flowing games which are more theater-of-the-mind kind of things. Give me a notepad, a handful of dice and let's cooperatively make a story. I hate strict rules in an RPG, seems to defeat the purpose for me. Hell, I could play a role-playing game with no dice or stats, just an evolving improvised story based solely on the GM's discretion, etc. D&D comes across as a tabletop wargame with combos/unlocks/etc. It feels very little like a true RPG to me.
I basically dropped d&d when I got into RT/2nd. RT had enuff RPG elements in it & had guns/artillery/not fantasy.
the only d&d I played was AD&D 2nd, while fun was lacking in the areas where 40k shined. the miniatures were another reason. whereas you would play w 1 mini for d&d, fielding an entire squad with an HQ/dope model was much more appealing to me. Surprisingly, my Mom was more than happy for me to stop playing D&D(weird 80's satanic panic whatever)& start 40k.
i can't really answer the poll because I mostly play a mash-up of 3.5 and pathfinder, but ive liked a version of D&D and played it a fair bit. no issue there. if anything i probably shoulda stayed there because it's worked out with me a lot better.
Eldarain wrote: Considering how much user input is required to make a decent game of 40k they should love D&D.
Sure. But then again, they fill roughly the same niche. No need to play both.
40K probably is the GW equivalent to WotC's D&D, while games like Kill Team Arena or Warhammer Underworlds are more closely aimed at a MtG-style game-player (with added miniatures).
As a(n ex) 40k player, I enjoy D&D and enjoyed 40k for vastly different reasons that can't really be conflated, given how different the games are. My playing of either never impacted my enjoyment of the other at all.
D&D was my first gaming experience, played at scout camp with a single d6, a golf pencil, and character sheets written on a torn up McDonald's bag. D&D and 40k have been my longest running games by far. I wrote a published a few D&D modules with Necromancer Games back in the third party explosion around 3e/3.5e. I don't have a current game and haven't even played the current rules, but I can say that I have a ton of affection for the game regardless.
My issue with DnD is it gives your "friends" a proxy for their poor social skills. eg, my character is an ass hat so I am juuuuuust acting out their ass hattery.
My issue with 40K is it gives your "friends" a rule set for their poor social skills. eg, the rule says I can F you so I'm going to F you.
redux wrote: My issue with DnD is it gives your "friends" a proxy for their poor social skills. eg, my character is an ass hat so I am juuuuuust acting out their ass hattery.
My issue with 40K is it gives your "friends" a rule set for their poor social skills. eg, the rule says I can F you so I'm going to F you.
You should get better friends.
I highly prefer table top rpgs over 40k. But I greatly dislike DnD itself for a number of reasons I have talked about in other places on DakkaDakka. DnD is pretty comparable to 40k in that they are both big name heavy hitters in their field but both, mechanically, pretty handily fail to do the things they are supposed to do well. Both are super entrenched in old mechanics from decades ago and refuse to grow up with later editions to newer and better design philosophies. At least in the rpg market there are so many options and getting your friends to play is as easy as saying "I want to run a game of X. Whos in?"
With games like 40k, it's heaps of time and money just to get the first game going.
D&D is fun enough but it is quite limited in its scope. It intended for very specific type of play and trying to do anything else is fighting against the system. But then again in any RPG a good GM matters massively more than a good system.
*shrugs* then i guess i like D&D 3.5 then. but thats not even what people think of as much when they think of D&D now, as 5E is a thing, and pathfinder just went to 2e not long ago.
Long time D&D player here, ultimately to like D&D you have to have a good group of people whom understand at the end of the day the rules are just suggestions, plays in a manner so everyone can have fun And that doesn't appeal to everyone here. D&D isn't a wargame, and well, we're here to dicusss a wargame, differant strokes for differant folks. go on a D&D forum and you're apt to encounter plenty of people who have the mind set of "I love the world of 40k, but the table top war game isn't of much intreast"
No one really "likes" DnD. It's the 40k of PnP RPGs.A game that's "fun" but has incredibly lackluster rules, that's so massive and has so much support that it's easier to bare with the rough system and play it then try to play something with better rules but a tenth of the playerbase.
BrianDavion wrote: Long time D&D player here, ultimately to like D&D you have to have a good group of people whom understand at the end of the day the rules are just suggestions, plays in a manner so everyone can have fun And that doesn't appeal to everyone here. D&D isn't a wargame, and well, we're here to dicusss a wargame, differant strokes for differant folks. go on a D&D forum and you're apt to encounter plenty of people who have the mind set of "I love the world of 40k, but the table top war game isn't of much intreast"
Yeah, but I don't see many people on GitP crapping on 40k.
I voted 5/5. Long time D&D player, and I think 5e is the best version of the game. I don't get the gripes about it being a "closed" system, but maybe that's just the experience others have had with it. Over the 20 years I've played, I've had some groups that just suck, so I can relate, but I've also played in some amazing games. So, I think (like 40k), what you get out of D&D is equivalent to what you put into it (and the types of folks you play with). It doesn't matter what game you try (40k, D&D, WoD, Monopoly, etc), if you're entire experience is centered around one or more people trying to "one-up" everyone else, or their goal is to "win" at all costs, you're probably not gonna have a good time with it.
Unless that's what you're into, and in that case you might wanna consider playing a single-player videogame.
redux wrote: My issue with DnD is it gives your "friends" a proxy for their poor social skills. eg, my character is an ass hat so I am juuuuuust acting out their ass hattery.
My issue with 40K is it gives your "friends" a rule set for their poor social skills. eg, the rule says I can F you so I'm going to F you.
You should get better friends.
I highly prefer table top rpgs over 40k. But I greatly dislike DnD itself for a number of reasons I have talked about in other places on DakkaDakka. DnD is pretty comparable to 40k in that they are both big name heavy hitters in their field but both, mechanically, pretty handily fail to do the things they are supposed to do well. Both are super entrenched in old mechanics from decades ago and refuse to grow up with later editions to newer and better design philosophies. At least in the rpg market there are so many options and getting your friends to play is as easy as saying "I want to run a game of X. Whos in?"
With games like 40k, it's heaps of time and money just to get the first game going.
Edited out the Call of Cthulhu reference? That game doesn't get enough love.
Side note: one of my current characters is based on 40k Orkz. He's a Half-Orc Barbarian from the giant raft cities of the pirating sea Orcs. He wields an anchor in combat, but isn't afraid to go bare knuckle if he needs to.
So, basically, your game of D&D is only as restrictive as you and your group lets it be.
flandarz wrote: Edited out the Call of Cthulhu reference? That game doesn't get enough love.
I just decided Vampire was a better choice for the "unnecessary drama" part of the joke.
I definately would prefer dating a vampire... although I think unnecessary drama would be a pretty inherent part of dating an eldritch horror, although for very different reasons...
Now, I get you can of course do what you like with D&D, but I find it easier to get to an equal understanding from a more grimdark starting point.
If you're looking for grimdark in D&D, check out Curse of Strahd. I don't wanna get into any spoilers, but it's pretty dang dark.
That said, I also enjoy VtM (and other WW games), CoC, DH, and pretty much any other system I can get my hands on. Cuz, honestly, the system matters a whole lot less than just having a good time with your pals.
I've been playing D&D and other table top rpgs for far longer than 40k, and I do rpg stuff far more often than 40k (once a week, barring incidents/schedule conflicts vs once every 3-6 months). The fun you get out of D&D and other tabletop games are highly dependent on your group makeup and the type of game everyone wants to play - if you get a group of hard core role players and a murderhobo together, or a vice versa, etc, the game could become boring to one or more of the players which could cause issues. So long as everyone is on board for what the game is going to be run as, or flexible enough so that everyone gets a little something, things usually go off without a hitch.
I do prefer game systems without levels though - like the old Star Wars d6, or Dark Heresy, etc, where players can specialize and spread out their roles outside of set classes. That said, so long as I have a good time, I'm willing to work with most systems (except "roll for anal circumference" Fatal and the like).
I think the people who enjoy miniature-based tabletop wargaming would probably enjoy miniature-based roleplaying and vice versa if they played with the same gaming groups they enjoy.
flandarz wrote: If you're looking for grimdark in D&D, check out Curse of Strahd. I don't wanna get into any spoilers, but it's pretty dang dark.
That said, I also enjoy VtM (and other WW games), CoC, DH, and pretty much any other system I can get my hands on. Cuz, honestly, the system matters a whole lot less than just having a good time with your pals.
Not able to partake in D&D as I do 40K, but do admire it. For a decent experience, roleplay games tend to need a group whereas a wargame only two people, so its mostly wargaming or Castle Ravenloft.
I play D&D when I can, and I'd like to try other RPGs like Star Wars, Shadowrun and even 40k if there's a good one out there. I dislike 5th ed. D&D immensely for dumbing down the granularity in player actions and in the ability to build a unique character, to fine-tune their skills, and what they don't do so well.
I want more narrative and immersion in my 40k, too, but I still want to be playing a tactical war-game of 40k, not a confused pseudo-war-rpg-dice rolling simulator-thing.
I've enjoyed every version of D&D except 4th. Wanted to even work as an adventure designer back in the 90's, and actually got a module published in Dungeon magazine.
But, like 40K, no game is perfect and D&D is no exception. But I'm having plenty of fun with 5E and my Ghosts of Saltmarsh campaign (not so much the Tomb of Annihilation game I'm participating in).
BlaxicanX wrote: No one really "likes" DnD. It's the 40k of PnP RPGs.A game that's "fun" but has incredibly lackluster rules, that's so massive and has so much support that it's easier to bare with the rough system and play it then try to play something with better rules but a tenth of the playerbase.
I dunno, I think it's more the oppisite of 40K.
people mostly find 40K appealing for the setting. we'll slog through the rules to play in the world.
D&D has no single setting, it's a "create yuour own world" deal (granted yes you can play in pre-genned stuff but I suspect on average most odn't) but it's a universal rules set everyone knows and can count on everyone knowing.
redux wrote: My issue with DnD is it gives your "friends" a proxy for their poor social skills. eg, my character is an ass hat so I am juuuuuust acting out their ass hattery.
My issue with 40K is it gives your "friends" a rule set for their poor social skills. eg, the rule says I can F you so I'm going to F you.
Your issue is that you aren't playing either of these games with friends.
redux wrote: My issue with DnD is it gives your "friends" a proxy for their poor social skills. eg, my character is an ass hat so I am juuuuuust acting out their ass hattery.
My issue with 40K is it gives your "friends" a rule set for their poor social skills. eg, the rule says I can F you so I'm going to F you.
Your issue is that you aren't playing either of these games with friends.
agreed. D&D and 40k are games designed with the assumption of a social contract. if your "Friends" don't wanna follow said social contract well... don't play 40k and d&d with them
I find it okay, but it's far from my favourite rpg. 4e suffered from trying to be "table top world of warcraft" and 5e is better but not better enough in my mind.
Actually, I'm a pretty big fan of the 40krpgs - there's a lot of good stuff in them (I sort of bundle inquisitor in as more rpg than war game, but I'm primarily thinking dark heresy and spin-offs, and the newer wrath and glory).
It's a somewhat different experience to D&D, though - one thing to bear in mind is that a mid level character in Dark Heresy aspires to be one of the five point bonus wounds you buy the inquisitors in your table top army. "Oh sh**, he's got a lasgun" is a real thing because whilst we rag on it on the table top, it's still a bloody assault rifle......
locarno24 wrote: Actually, I'm a pretty big fan of the 40krpgs - there's a lot of good stuff in them (I sort of bundle inquisitor in as more rpg than war game, but I'm primarily thinking dark heresy and spin-offs, and the newer wrath and glory).
It's a somewhat different experience to D&D, though - one thing to bear in mind is that a mid level character in Dark Heresy aspires to be one of the five point bonus wounds you buy the inquisitors in your table top army. "Oh sh**, he's got a lasgun" is a real thing because whilst we rag on it on the table top, it's still a bloody assault rifle......
True dat, to all points, also about Inquisitor (what a game) and the lasgun. Reading about its intended effect on anything not wearing power armour is quite nerve wrecking.
D&D is in many ways very poorly balanced, but in the right group that doesnt really matter as it's all about how the DM leads the story, and the rules are just one tool in doing that.
A lot of people forget the Role-play part of Role-play games. So many RPGs just turn into a series of battles in which the players murder-hobo their way across the land. Either because the players are so combat focused OR The GM does a poor job of creating a campaign where role-play is encouraged. Which to be fair is a very difficult thing.
RPGs don't NEED to be as finely balanced as wargames do. Its ok if certain classes are 'weaker' since you have concerns other than DPS'ing in combat. RPGs get into trouble if their design focuses too much on combat OR the group ends up focusing too much on combat.
Not that there is anything wrong with people wanting to play a straight up combat DnD campaign. Its just that that by default leaves certain builds out of contention.
locarno24 wrote: Actually, I'm a pretty big fan of the 40krpgs - there's a lot of good stuff in them (I sort of bundle inquisitor in as more rpg than war game, but I'm primarily thinking dark heresy and spin-offs, and the newer wrath and glory).
It's a somewhat different experience to D&D, though - one thing to bear in mind is that a mid level character in Dark Heresy aspires to be one of the five point bonus wounds you buy the inquisitors in your table top army. "Oh sh**, he's got a lasgun" is a real thing because whilst we rag on it on the table top, it's still a bloody assault rifle......
True dat, to all points, also about Inquisitor (what a game) and the lasgun. Reading about its intended effect on anything not wearing power armour is quite nerve wrecking.
Pretty much all weapons in the FFG warhammer RPGs are dangerous.
Which is one reason I think they are an excellent set of RPGs, both Fantasy and 40k. They have a grittiness that lends some excitement. Its nice to have an RPG where even the most trash of enemies can be a threat to even high level characters, unlike DnD where level 1 foes are quite literally no threat to characters who have made it past level 5.
FFG's Old World and 40k. RPGs are also just excellently written. I think the fantasy battle ones have given me the most immersive campaigns I ever played.
Is the Rogue Trader RPG from FFG really as bad, system-wise, as people make it out to be?
The concept of it - playing a rogue trader and the most trusted members of their crew - is INCREDIBLY appealing to me. All the agency and much of the power of an Inquisitor, but without any overarching moral imperative, and room to be a completely self-serving b***h!
But I keep hearing the rules are really, really, really bad and it's better to just transpose the setting, characters, adventures, etc into a different game system.
Thoughts on that?
P.S. I can't believe people are complaining about balance even here in a thread on cooperative TTRPGs...
nataliereed1984 wrote: Is the Rogue Trader RPG from FFG really as bad, system-wise, as people make it out to be?
The concept of it - playing a rogue trader and the most trusted members of their crew - is INCREDIBLY appealing to me. All the agency and much of the power of an Inquisitor, but without any overarching moral imperative, and room to be a completely self-serving b***h!
But I keep hearing the rules are really, really, really bad and it's better to just transpose the setting, characters, adventures, etc into a different game system.
Thoughts on that?
P.S. I can't believe people are complaining about balance even here in a thread on cooperative TTRPGs...
Funnily enough, at the moment my extremely infrequent RPG group are playing a 40K campaign where we are members of an inquisitor's retinue. The DM has cobbled it together from the Call Of Cthulhu rule set, but honestly there's not a lot of looking up rules going on. Having a damn good time.
D&D is in many ways very poorly balanced, but in the right group that doesnt really matter as it's all about how the DM leads the story, and the rules are just one tool in doing that.
A lot of people forget the Role-play part of Role-play games. So many RPGs just turn into a series of battles in which the players murder-hobo their way across the land. Either because the players are so combat focused OR The GM does a poor job of creating a campaign where role-play is encouraged. Which to be fair is a very difficult thing.
RPGs don't NEED to be as finely balanced as wargames do. Its ok if certain classes are 'weaker' since you have concerns other than DPS'ing in combat. RPGs get into trouble if their design focuses too much on combat OR the group ends up focusing too much on combat.
Not that there is anything wrong with people wanting to play a straight up combat DnD campaign. Its just that that by default leaves certain builds out of contention.
locarno24 wrote: Actually, I'm a pretty big fan of the 40krpgs - there's a lot of good stuff in them (I sort of bundle inquisitor in as more rpg than war game, but I'm primarily thinking dark heresy and spin-offs, and the newer wrath and glory).
It's a somewhat different experience to D&D, though - one thing to bear in mind is that a mid level character in Dark Heresy aspires to be one of the five point bonus wounds you buy the inquisitors in your table top army. "Oh sh**, he's got a lasgun" is a real thing because whilst we rag on it on the table top, it's still a bloody assault rifle......
True dat, to all points, also about Inquisitor (what a game) and the lasgun. Reading about its intended effect on anything not wearing power armour is quite nerve wrecking.
Pretty much all weapons in the FFG warhammer RPGs are dangerous.
Which is one reason I think they are an excellent set of RPGs, both Fantasy and 40k. They have a grittiness that lends some excitement. Its nice to have an RPG where even the most trash of enemies can be a threat to even high level characters, unlike DnD where level 1 foes are quite literally no threat to characters who have made it past level 5.
some of my favorite D&D ahs been playing a bard, I was anything but a combat machine but I was the life of all the parties we got invited too. I was quite often opening doors. "ohh you're in town master bard? you must simply play for the count!"
I voted 5 as i love DnD conceptually. Like 40k there are a few fframeworks available to provide a commonground to work with and plenty of additional material to serve as inspiration to tweak that framework in any way you require (whether RAI or houserule).
Personally i enjoy most the incestigating characters/following leads/exploring cool locations parts of the game to the actual cut and thrust of combat, so perhaps the rules are largely irrelevant for me?
I like both. However, both games fall apart when their crowds mix. When a competitive 40k player tries to play D&D or when a full blooded D&D roleplayer tries to play 40k it usually ends in disaster for all involved (as shown by multiple posts on this thread). Both games seem to have something in common, but they really don't.
nataliereed1984 wrote: Is the Rogue Trader RPG from FFG really as bad, system-wise, as people make it out to be?
The concept of it - playing a rogue trader and the most trusted members of their crew - is INCREDIBLY appealing to me. All the agency and much of the power of an Inquisitor, but without any overarching moral imperative, and room to be a completely self-serving b***h!
But I keep hearing the rules are really, really, really bad and it's better to just transpose the setting, characters, adventures, etc into a different game system.
Thoughts on that?
P.S. I can't believe people are complaining about balance even here in a thread on cooperative TTRPGs...
I think they generally did way better with the Fantasy Battle IP than the 40k. one, oddly enough. Man, maybe I should bring some books home for the holidays and see if I can guilt trip my siblings into venturing into Sylvania or something
Rogue Trader has a system for naval combat, which I think might not translate as easily into other systems as the rest of the gameplay. I think I would go with whatever other game system you prefer from somewhere else and fit in the story, characters etc. It has been a while tho. Maybe it is not so bad/way worse than I remember. Last FFG40k. I played was Dark Heresy, which is fine.
Yes, For the Throne. Just change it if you don't like it people. What are GMs for if not for exactly that?
EDIT: You can't play an Inquisitor as a complete self-serving b***h???
Played AD&D in school back in the 80s along with some tabletop Chainmail (puts on own hipster glasses). I got back into D&D for 5e and have enjoyed it when I can. I find that RPGs require a certain level of time commitment that I have difficulty making. My work takes me odd places at odd times outside of my control. I can miss a Saturday with the 40k group without causing a headache, but an RPG group requires more consistency than I can provide.
There is an element of role play in tabletop wargames, at least for me. It's not the same as a true RPG, but it's there.
I took the poll to be less an invitation to criticize rules and more a test to see if 40k hobbyists enjoy RPGs. I answered in the absolute affirmative.
I like certain rpgs, I like certain genres of ttg.
I absolutely loved cp2020, Paranoia, WEG SWrpg, oWoD and Cthulhu now.
I don't care enough for D&D to hate it. I'm just not into fantasy hackenslash tropes.
But I also tired of playing 40k six years ago. Some of the models still grab my interest, but the mess of the game isn't something I wish to jump back into.
Jidmah wrote: I like both. However, both games fall apart when their crowds mix. When a competitive 40k player tries to play D&D or when a full blooded D&D roleplayer tries to play 40k it usually ends in disaster for all involved (as shown by multiple posts on this thread). Both games seem to have something in common, but they really don't.
that assumes they take the same additude into each game, if a compeitive 40k player goes into a D&D game intent on abusing the system, and 'winning' the game you're absolutely right he'll ruin the D&D game.
I play both 40K and D&D and i absolutely love D&D.
Played 3E 4E and 5E, then sticked with 5E because it is the one that i find more enjoyable.
Tried also many other RPGs, like Chtulhu, Exalted, Sine Requie and more, but in the end everything with a fixed setting just feels too limited and i go back to D&D.
JNAProductions wrote: Because I've seen a LOT of ragging on D&D from others in this forum. So I'm curious, is this a common thing? Because at my local GW, the manager runs his own D&D-esque campaign for his friends, the sub manager does too, and I personally really enjoy D&D and other TTRPG games.
Well personally i prefer less focus on combo's and combat in rpg's. D&d feels more like skirmish wargame than rpg.
I'm more for traveller style level of rules than d&d
AnomanderRake wrote: I like tabletop RPGs. I dislike D&D specifically because 5e isn't a complete or working tabletop RPG, it's a bland half-assed intro experience nobody seems to want to move beyond into more interesting things. I disliked 3e because while it worked really well it was impossible to get anyone to read enough of to actually use it, and I disliked 4e because it was an overly-abstracted handwavey combat-centric MMO pretending to be an RPG.
If 5e was an intro product and there was an "advanced 5e" game where bonuses/damage didn't scale linearly by level independent of class and where classes didn't shove players into one-dimensional boxes where you have one thing you do every turn, or if 4e had packaged itself as a wargame instead of an RPG, or if 3e had a sensible and easy-to-use tutorial path to make it easier to teach to new people, I'd be happy with D&D, but as-is they're trying to take single-purpose games and sell them as general-purpose RPGs anyone can do anything with, and everyone seems to be lapping it up and refusing to do anything other than D&D in the sphere of tabletop RPGs.
Come to think of it, I dislike D&D for a lot of the same reasons I dislike 40k.
If you don't mind me asking, which tabletop RPGs do you prefer to D&D?
Tbh I haven't seen much negativity about DnD on this forum, but maybe I'm looking in the wrong places!
I play DnD 5ed every Sunday and do enjoy myself.
I think I probably enjoy roleplaying more than I enjoy DnD though, it has too many rules imo.
However, some people in the group enjoy the stats optimisation and character builds side.
jeff white wrote: I took the poll to be less an invitation to criticize rules and more a test to see if 40k hobbyists enjoy RPGs. I answered in the absolute affirmative.
It is not a very good poll for that though, as there are a lot of people who love RPGs but wouldn't touch the D&D with a ten feet pole!
Jidmah wrote: I like both. However, both games fall apart when their crowds mix. When a competitive 40k player tries to play D&D or when a full blooded D&D roleplayer tries to play 40k it usually ends in disaster for all involved (as shown by multiple posts on this thread). Both games seem to have something in common, but they really don't.
that assumes they take the same additude into each game, if a compeitive 40k player goes into a D&D game intent on abusing the system, and 'winning' the game you're absolutely right he'll ruin the D&D game.
Even if he doesn't try abuse the system, the mindset is still "beating" the DM or "winning" a campaign. In an RPG, the game system is just a means to an end, not the actual game. People switching over from WH40k, MtG or similar games usually don't get that.
On the other side, people trying to "roleplay" in a game 40k will find the game is severely lacking support for that - there is no story told, and the game barely supports telling your own story.
It's not like people only have a singular experience with games. I am sure people were playing Monopoly, Clue, and Risk long before they played 40k or DnD. And I am sure they played some kind of pretend as kids running around at recess. People can play each game with different expectations for what that game is.
Wargammers do not pick up RPGs and think they need to compete and win. And DnD players do not pick up 40k thinking they want a narrative to explain why anyone on the battlefield gives a gak about being there. 1 person can do 2 things.
Jidmah wrote: I like both. However, both games fall apart when their crowds mix. When a competitive 40k player tries to play D&D or when a full blooded D&D roleplayer tries to play 40k it usually ends in disaster for all involved (as shown by multiple posts on this thread). Both games seem to have something in common, but they really don't.
that assumes they take the same additude into each game, if a compeitive 40k player goes into a D&D game intent on abusing the system, and 'winning' the game you're absolutely right he'll ruin the D&D game.
Not at my table/with the group I play with.
His futile antics will merely provide the rest of us with hours of amusement. And funny stories years down the road.
One of two things will happen.
1) After a bit of thrashing about he'll adapt to the game he's actually playing & the group he's playing it with.
2) He'll have frustrated himself to the point he drops out.
This of course assumes that he's not enough of an arsehole that we boot him out anyways. But then if he's that bad we likely wouldn't have invited him in the 1st place as our D&D game (wether or not we're actually playing D&D atm) isn't an open invite group.
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Jidmah wrote: People switching over from WH40k, MtG or similar games usually don't get that.
I prefer Pathfinder too. That said, most of my friends prefer 5e because there's too much stuff in Pathfinder to sort through.
That said, fantasy just isn't my thing, so I run Traveller and the FFG40kRPG's.
40k and D&D are not like each other though, even though tabletop miniatures games, card gamers, and roleplay gamers are generally all lumped into a similar category.
D&D, as a catch-all for RPG's, is about collaborative storytelling and imagination. A group of people work together to confront fun challenges that the GM creates for them and build a story about their characters.
Wargaming involves 2 people, who have showed up with a collection of pieces that will carry out a game against each other that is supposed to provide a balance between competitive balance and representation of actual combat, with the intent of winning and then going home. The storytelling and imagination is entirely separate from anything required for the game, except making you excited about it.
It is not remotely a given that a person who likes RPG's will also like wargaming, because they're basically nothing like each other at all, even though people on the outside categorize everyone who plays at the FLGS in one category.
EDIT: You can't play an Inquisitor as a complete self-serving b***h???
I mean, yeah, but she'd have to spend all her time faking some weird loyalty to the Emperor and humanity and blahblahblah.
But doesn't that sound kinda fun? I have had two major inquisitor characters in my RPG days. One who was a doubting, investigative Thorian, a good guy detective, barely holding unto faith and hope, whose biggest flaw was being a regular human in a world of crazy abe s**t deamons and rituals. On the other hand I had Ulysses Confligere. An abe s**t crazy Nietzsche quoting Istvaanist. Maybe slightly overpowered but more or less his own and everybody else's worst enemy. Mustache twirling villain and imperial hero in one. Man he was fun.
Jidmah wrote: People switching over from WH40k, MtG or similar games usually don't get that.
Oh BS.
agreed. People who can't grasp the differance between a RPG and a compeitive game aren't normal. they are, to put bluntly, one of two things 1: COMPLETE IDIOTS. or 2: Sociallyl maladjusted donkey-caves incapable of getting along with people whom use the veneer of "ohh I'm just trying to win man" to cover up for the fact that they're just dicks.
EDIT: You can't play an Inquisitor as a complete self-serving b***h???
I mean, yeah, but she'd have to spend all her time faking some weird loyalty to the Emperor and humanity and blahblahblah.
But doesn't that sound kinda fun? I have had two major inquisitor characters in my RPG days. One who was a doubting, investigative Thorian, a good guy detective, barely holding unto faith and hope, whose biggest flaw was being a regular human in a world of crazy abe s**t deamons and rituals. On the other hand I had Ulysses Confligere. An abe s**t crazy Nietzsche quoting Istvaanist. Maybe slightly overpowered but more or less his own and everybody else's worst enemy. Mustache twirling villain and imperial hero in one. Man he was fun.
Yeah, it could ABSOLUTELY be fun! It's just a Rogue Trader has a lot less limits on what your character can "get away with", since they have a comparable degree of agency as an Inquisitor but don't have a commanding organization breathing down their necks… that gives a bit more freedom to navigate the setting, you know?
Dark Heresy definitely sounds fun, and it's not like you're stuck playing a stuffy, sincere, puritan, but Rogue Trader just sounds a bit more appealing to my own tastes right now. At least as an introduction to roleplaying in the 40k universe.
I don;t play D&D, but I do love playing other roleplaying games like Prowlers and Paragons, Savage Worlds (in about 5 different sub-settings from fantasy to sci-fi), and several others, including a free Indie D20 game called Heroes Against Darkness, which I much prefer to modern D&D.
The last couple of editions of D&D just didn't appeal to me.
But I have also played and painted 40K for 25 years, so I guess I differ from some of the main group. Frankly I have heard 40k players rag on just about anything that's NOT 40K. Lots of claims that other games just "suck", even those with lots of critical acclaim. Even AoS barely gets a pass, if only for being from GW.
BrianDavion wrote: the inqusition, in fairness doesn't have a controling orginization breathing down it's neck, the inqusition is VEEEEEEEERY losely orginized
BrianDavion wrote: the inqusition, in fairness doesn't have a controling orginization breathing down it's neck, the inqusition is VEEEEEEEERY losely orginized
To be fair, there's limits to even what an Inquisitor can get away with. Like exterminatusing a bunch of planets to divert a Tyranid Hive Fleet, for example.
AegisGrimm wrote: I don;t play D&D, but I do love playing other roleplaying games like Prowlers and Paragons, Savage Worlds (in about 5 different sub-settings from fantasy to sci-fi), and several others, including a free Indie D20 game called Heroes Against Darkness, which I much prefer to modern D&D.
The last couple of editions of D&D just didn't appeal to me.
But I have also played and painted 40K for 25 years, so I guess I differ from some of the main group. Frankly I have heard 40k players rag on just about anything that's NOT 40K. Lots of claims that other games just "suck", even those with lots of critical acclaim. Even AoS barely gets a pass, if only for being from GW.
Huh, I usually hear the opposite. That whatever it is is vastly better than 40k, and everybody should play it instead, but in the end there's only a small cadre that plays it and everybody keeps playing 40k. There's maybe a dozen people who play Infinity at one of the stores, but otherwise, despite how often some other game is presented, in the end it's basically just 40k.
3.5 ed dnd has so many fricken supplement books and 3rd party books. This causes the hardcore players to mix and match rules that where not intended to be combined to create game breaking characters. Then the dm is forced to throw high level challenge rating monsters because 1 or 2 guys out of the group of 5 players is a power gamer causing the other players to suffer hard hitting monsters or bogus status effects.
Also it some how takes for ever create a scenario and conduct combat or for players to take their turns. Like 3 hours for one or two small combat sessions. Like really, players in my group take forever to decide what to do but always end up deciding to blindly run up to a powerful monster and attempt to hit an impossibly large ac since that monster was intended to go toe to toe with the power gamer's overpowered weeabo fighting magic character that can 6 attacks for 200 dmg at lvl 5.
In 3 hours i can play a 2000pt game of wh40k at a leisurely pace. Who ever goes first gets to destroy half of an army and then from there i just go through the motions of sportsman ship and control the remaining 40% of my army to capture obj since i no longer have the fighting capability. At that point i just make jokes since i already lost game and just have fun rolling saves.
CadianGateTroll wrote: 3.5 ed dnd has so many fricken supplement books and 3rd party books. This causes the hardcore players to mix and match rules that where not intended to be combined to create game breaking characters. Then the dm is forced to throw high level challenge rating monsters because 1 or 2 guys out of the group of 5 players is a power gamer causing the other players to suffer hard hitting monsters or bogus status effects.
Also it some how takes for ever create a scenario and conduct combat or for players to take their turns. Like 3 hours for one or two small combat sessions. Like really, players in my group take forever to decide what to do but always end up deciding to blindly run up to a powerful monster and attempt to hit an impossibly large ac since that monster was intended to go toe to toe with the power gamer's overpowered weeabo fighting magic character that can 6 attacks for 200 dmg at lvl 5.
In 3 hours i can play a 2000pt game of wh40k at a leisurely pace. Who ever goes first gets to destroy half of an army and then from there i just go through the motions of sportsman ship and control the remaining 40% of my army to capture obj since i no longer have the fighting capability. At that point i just make jokes since i already lost game and just have fun rolling saves.
Lance845 wrote:It's not like people only have a singular experience with games. I am sure people were playing Monopoly, Clue, and Risk long before they played 40k or DnD. And I am sure they played some kind of pretend as kids running around at recess. People can play each game with different expectations for what that game is.
Wargammers do not pick up RPGs and think they need to compete and win. And DnD players do not pick up 40k thinking they want a narrative to explain why anyone on the battlefield gives a gak about being there. 1 person can do 2 things.
What I meant to say is "People switching over from WH40k, MtG or similar games usually don't get that in the beginning".
However, that transition needs to be made. Monopoly, Clue, Risk and 40k all share one common thing - the entire game is in the rules and the objective is to win that game, either by getting all the money, guessing who murdered whom where first, capturing continents and amassing armies or by scoring victory points and destroying enemy units.
It's only natural when you introduce someone from such a background to an P&P RPG that they assume that the game is about optimizing builds, dealing/tanking/healing as much damage as possible to eventually defeat the final boss and win the campaign - just like they would when playing a RPG like Diablo, Divinity, World of Warcraft, Dragon Age, Witcher or Pillars of Eternity. I even have experienced this more often in D&D than in any other system since D&D is the foundation for many games which people have played and they assume playing it with dice at a table is the same as playing it on their PC/console.
There even are groups who keep playing this way and are having fun - they just keep buying dungeons/adventure books and beating those with their highly optimized characters.
Many people adapt to their groups eventually, but others don't. It's also a piece of work to get people used to optimization to drop that behavior, in the group im DM'ing it took one of my players 9 years to play his first non-min/maxed character.
Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:40k and D&D are not like each other though, even though tabletop miniatures games, card gamers, and roleplay gamers are generally all lumped into a similar category.
D&D, as a catch-all for RPG's, is about collaborative storytelling and imagination. A group of people work together to confront fun challenges that the GM creates for them and build a story about their characters.
Wargaming involves 2 people, who have showed up with a collection of pieces that will carry out a game against each other that is supposed to provide a balance between competitive balance and representation of actual combat, with the intent of winning and then going home. The storytelling and imagination is entirely separate from anything required for the game, except making you excited about it.
It is not remotely a given that a person who likes RPG's will also like wargaming, because they're basically nothing like each other at all, even though people on the outside categorize everyone who plays at the FLGS in one category.
I am not certain why 40k cannot be about collaborative storytelling and imagination. A pair (or group) of people work together to confront fun challenges that they create for themselves and build a story about their characters and armies.
People talk like you can't use 40k battles to tell stories.
Unit1126PLL wrote: I am not certain why 40k cannot be about collaborative storytelling and imagination. A pair (or group) of people work together to confront fun challenges that they create for themselves and build a story about their characters and armies.
People talk like you can't use 40k battles to tell stories.
Anyone who buys a 40k starter box or looks through a codex finds little to no rules support for doing so. They find rules for setting up and completeing a fight where one player beats the other.
Yeah, you can give every model a name and story. But when reading the rules why would you?
Unit1126PLL wrote: I am not certain why 40k cannot be about collaborative storytelling and imagination. A pair (or group) of people work together to confront fun challenges that they create for themselves and build a story about their characters and armies.
People talk like you can't use 40k battles to tell stories.
Anyone who buys a 40k starter box or looks through a codex finds little to no rules support for doing so. They find rules for setting up and completeing a fight where one player beats the other.
Yeah, you can give every model a name and story. But when reading the rules why would you?
Because lore is why you got into the game? Because lore is what helped you pick your faction?
40k is a pretty shoddy game as far as actual gameplay goes, so if you were playing it just for the sheer game-ness, I can think of tons of other, much better, miniature wargames. Even from GW
Edit:
I contest that they find little to no rules for doing so. I am in a campaign right now that uses CA2018's campaign experience gain rules, for example. There are rules supporting map campaigns, naming charts for your characters to find out names if you can't be bothered, etc. These are all pretty available, if you care to use them.
I very much enjoy DND. The 3/3.5 rule set is fundamentally simple. Roll a d20, add modifiers, did you roll high enough?
As my group’s primary DM, I had some asshat friends that wanted to play. And I’d invite them to short-term adventures, or to actively silly games (Kobolds ate my Baby!). But for the real gritty, serious, or survival horror games, I was picky about who I played with.
In that situation, you’re an author without control of the heroes. If your players are trying to sabotage the story, it’s a battle, not a game. In that regard, it doesn’t really matter what system you play. D20 plus modifier is just a simple means of resolving the unknown.
It’s a very poor combat simulator, but it’s not actively trying to be that. It’s giving a framework to the players and GM to avoid arbitrary decisions about hitting or missing... and how many time you need to hit the stone golem before it falls down.
I don't have a lot of experience with D&D but I've red, out of curiosity, the books from several editions. Overall, I think it is "okay". You can do a lot of stuff, but from what I have experienced, having too many rules about too many different things is not a good thing. It can really slow down the pacing and since I'm more of a "narrative" player, I don't like it. I always thought that, unless you have a very experienced GM and good players, you need to house rule a lot of things. But you can say the same for many RPG and not just D&D.
Overall, I only play with close friends or people that were recommended by said friends, who are also "narrative" players and we never had a single problem because if we are not happy with a particular rule or something, we could always house rule it. However, then, we have to keep tracks of what was house ruled and it can be just as tedious as playing with the full ruleset.
But I have to say, because I'm a "narrative" player, I heavily tend to prefer simpler rulesets which are designed to support narrative play. One that comes to my mind easily is Mutant Year 0. Yes, it uses D6, but it just works (and it really does, unlike Todd Howard "it just works").
Dungeons and Dragons has pretty much been okay every edition as far as TTRPGs go. It is a lot like Warhammer games in that it has a huge audience that understand how it basically works and that there is a huge audience playing it anywhere in the world. Plus, I think there is a lot of comfort in the familiar which keeps it and its clone, Pathfinder, going. It is only fairly recently with Youtube stuff would I ever encounter entire groups of people (save maybe children) that no one within the group had ever played when gaming. My experience has been up until that point that most of any given group has played D&D usually for quite a bit with only 1 or 2 brand new players that were just kinda expected to catch up with the game mechanics (which are simple enough to do) and Gygaxian Fantasy which is a whole lot easier post Lord of the Rings movies/video game rpgs. Like 40k, D&D is fairly accessible (read: easy to learn the basics) but tends to become more and more bloated with supplemental material as an edition lingers. And again, both games seem to have issues with players not self-restricting themselves--at least in my experience. It was very rare that any D&D group didn't allow every and any supplement a player managed to find including some years old Dragon magazine article for making ______ kind of character.
Probably the biggest issue I take with D&D is really only does Gygaxian Fantasy well. What I mean by Gygaxian Fantasy is that D&D is often its own kind of fantasy roughly based on Tolkien but with very dyed in the wool tropes and cliches that I am guess most of Dakka would recognize. Mechanically, D&D has a relatively simple attrition combat resolver where after a few levels players expect to win most fights only concerned with the amount of resources (hit points, spells and consumable items) used to win said fight. Death is usually not a quick affair in D&D which is a two-way sword. It is good that a player can accept some risk knowing even failure is probably not death but only a lost of hit points and maybe a status effect. Bad in that it is annoying difficult have quick life-and-death stakes without introducing an artificial system that circumvents hit points that I always felt tack on. So much of anything done in D&D is a grind. The game has always had a fairly weak non-combat skill resolution mechanic combined with a very pigeon hole class system making not combat campaigns a very poor fit compared many, many other TTPRGs. Up until 4th, the game also had a so class based balance issues in that non-spell casters power increased linearly while spell casters more more exponential. I remember one 3rd edition game, my 12th lv Transmutter found the party's fight against a Kraken adorable as they struggling in an epic battle until I got bored of the fight and disintegrated a large chunk of it finishing the fight. By 18th level, I was fighting a minor god solo, while my party kept her henchmen busy. That appears to be less of an issue now as I am playing a cleric in a 5th ed game and feel really dialed back in power compared to what I would have back in 2nd/3rd ed.
As for Dakka and TTRPGs, I think their is this wall or distance that many posters here place on the two games which I don't think are as far apart as they make them out to be. There seems to be a clear division that miniatures war games are adversarial contests between two parties and TTRPGs are co-operative, collaborative affairs to tell stories. While this is mostly true, it doesn't have to be the case in either and isn't a significant portion of the time. There is nothing stopping a miniatures war gaming pair of players to create a backstory for the game they are playing (I try to do that for nearly every game). It is even possible for both players collaborate on what moves would be the most optimal for both factions essentially playing both sides to their maximum effect (or at leas the best of the players involved). Conversely, I have played a few rpgs games where it was strangely adversarial with the DM/GM creating scenarios that they thought were just tough enough to kill a coupe of party members and played pretty much like a skirmish war game from there. That DM/GM's aim was to kill as much of the party as possible with no pulled punches. Their ultimate goal to leave at least one survivor to show that the encounter wasn't overkill or too hard for the party. I have even competed in a competitive rpg tournament way back in second edition where the goal was for your party to get further in a deadly dungeon within an hour of real time. It is was a competition where roleplaying mostly took a backseat (it was 2nd ed AD&D so par for the course) to fighting and surviving through a liner dungeon.
I don't think 40k players (at least on Dakka Dakka) not like D&D so much as they no longer see any connection between the two games beyond not really using electronic devices. I personally don't agree with that idea, but I do understand where it comes from. I play my war games like I play my rpg fights, I try my best to make the best moves most of the time, but I not going to let an epic moment go to waste. Besides, I have yet to play a GW war game that had as intense, pull-out-all-the-stops warfare that my 4th edition games had. I actually had to ask the DM of that game to tone it back as I didn't every single fight had to be a life or death struggle that took everything the party had to come out the other side.
D&D is currently my only game. I don't have to leave the house and drive for nearly 2 hours to play thanks to the internet.
I played just a little AD&D as I was getting out of the army the first time and that was very story driven and it seemed dice were optional. Later I played 3.5 or 3rd, which ever it was. I have my book around here some where.. But at that time I was playing lot more 40K and sitting t a table for several hours doing very little was not holding my attention, I could have played several games all day in the same amount of time and that seemed more satisfying. If I had it to do over again I would trade most of the time and money I spent on 40K for having played D&D and the whole not spending nearly as much money. 40K really cost too much when your an addict working on 3 or 4 armies at a time.
I do not really like 8th edition because it feels like a living rule book that changes right after I play a game and when I get the time to drive 2 hours out for a game I am lost and it's a real buzz kill. I have some physical disability which is aggravated more and more from standing around a table and the long uncomfortable drive. Playing a game with friends from home has been a fantastic experience, so much so that I have not missed a single game. I am new to 5th and some of the current rules seem to light on rules in places to me but I can live with that I guess. What's even better is that I have started drawing again after not drawing anything for the better part of 20 years.
warhead01 wrote: D&D is currently my only game. I don't have to leave the house and drive for nearly 2 hours to play thanks to the internet.
Check out table top simulator, I know there's 40k minis up there, don't know if there's a community to play with or not though.
That said, D&D is fine, the hipster jokes earlier in the thread are definitely not wrong, it's a big tropey fantasy setting that people take way to god damn seriously most of the time. Which should really feel in place for 40k players. 5th edition is actually rather quick to play and actively encourages you not to waste time flipping through the book which was quite nice. The game itself is fine and fun.
Now, adventurers league, you couldn't get me to play that shy a gun to my head. The power gamey weasely bs that people put into the fixed rewards structure of that play style drives me insane. It's like 3.5 came back to take a bite out of a good game and attached itself like a fething parasite. All of which I could entirely stand if not for the endless whining when some one who does these things finds out he can't actually do the over powered thing he wanted to because someone else with reading comprehension in the group actually understood the rules he blindly tried taking advantage of.
I will admit, that could just be the people near me, but for all the RPGs I've played, anything with an official codified reward structure has sucked the fun out of the games almost as bad as the players who really just want an oversized hump pillow.
Unit1126PLL wrote: Because lore is why you got into the game? Because lore is what helped you pick your faction?
40k is a pretty shoddy game as far as actual gameplay goes, so if you were playing it just for the sheer game-ness, I can think of tons of other, much better, miniature wargames. Even from GW
Edit:
I contest that they find little to no rules for doing so. I am in a campaign right now that uses CA2018's campaign experience gain rules, for example. There are rules supporting map campaigns, naming charts for your characters to find out names if you can't be bothered, etc. These are all pretty available, if you care to use them.
When we played FFG's Arkham Horror game as replacement for our regular P&P night, the guys also turned that into an full-blown role-play, despite having no support for that at all. You can do the same for pretty much any game, if you want to.
All the rules you listed provide no support for actual role-play - simply because they don't tell a story. The entire "support" for narrative games by GW is basically telling you to create the narrative yourself. That's the very opposite of support. The DoW hexfield campaigns do a better job of telling a story than all of GW's publications from the last four editions combined.
All the rules you listed provide no support for actual role-play - simply because they don't tell a story. The entire "support" for narrative games by GW is basically telling you to create the narrative yourself. That's the very opposite of support. The DoW hexfield campaigns do a better job of telling a story than all of GW's publications from the last four editions combined.
*gestures wildly at the front half of every codex and rulebook, the entirety of Black Library, and 30 years worth of art, fiction and background*
All the rules you listed provide no support for actual role-play - simply because they don't tell a story. The entire "support" for narrative games by GW is basically telling you to create the narrative yourself. That's the very opposite of support. The DoW hexfield campaigns do a better job of telling a story than all of GW's publications from the last four editions combined.
*gestures wildly at the front half of every codex and rulebook, the entirety of Black Library, and 30 years worth of art, fiction and background*
All the rules you listed provide no support for actual role-play - simply because they don't tell a story. The entire "support" for narrative games by GW is basically telling you to create the narrative yourself. That's the very opposite of support. The DoW hexfield campaigns do a better job of telling a story than all of GW's publications from the last four editions combined.
*gestures wildly at the front half of every codex and rulebook, the entirety of Black Library, and 30 years worth of art, fiction and background*
And yet, he's still not wrong.
Uhhh…
The entire "support" for narrative games by GW is basically telling you to create the narrative yourself.
I enjoy D&D. Played everything up to 4th, and pathfinder. I’ve also played a huge number of other RPGs, and enjoyed them at various levels.
You can turn almost any role playing game into a roll playing game and min/max it’s mechanics and break the system. D&D gets a bit of a bad rep for the ability to break it, but it’s not exclusive to that. Unless you go diceless like Amber, anything with mechanics can be exploited by those with system mastery.
I will agree that any RPG requires a social contract. Especially if you have players with different levels of technical skills. In an RPG the goal is for everyone to have fun. Ideally everyone at the table is on board with this.
In recent years I prefer rules light systems. Savage Worlds probably being my favorite. Just enough structure to have you story on, and not a lot of places for the mechanics to show through. Currently playing in two games, one as the seneschal in a Rouge Trader game, helping our captain stay the course in the turbulent warp of the outer dark; the other a two-fisted pilot in a pulp-era Spirit of the Century game. Vastly different systems and characters, but both a lot of fun.
Unit1126PLL wrote: Because lore is why you got into the game? Because lore is what helped you pick your faction?
40k is a pretty shoddy game as far as actual gameplay goes, so if you were playing it just for the sheer game-ness, I can think of tons of other, much better, miniature wargames. Even from GW
Edit:
I contest that they find little to no rules for doing so. I am in a campaign right now that uses CA2018's campaign experience gain rules, for example. There are rules supporting map campaigns, naming charts for your characters to find out names if you can't be bothered, etc. These are all pretty available, if you care to use them.
When we played FFG's Arkham Horror game as replacement for our regular P&P night, the guys also turned that into an full-blown role-play, despite having no support for that at all. You can do the same for pretty much any game, if you want to.
All the rules you listed provide no support for actual role-play - simply because they don't tell a story. The entire "support" for narrative games by GW is basically telling you to create the narrative yourself. That's the very opposite of support. The DoW hexfield campaigns do a better job of telling a story than all of GW's publications from the last four editions combined.
Yes?
I mean, that's rather the point, innit? Telling the story with yourself and your friends, rather than reading it out of a novel.
Isn't that how D&D works too?
The preformed/prebuilt Curse-of-Strahd style adventures are suspiciously like campaign books in the vein of Psychic Awakening or that planet in the Indomitus Crusade during index 8th (fate of Konor iirc).
Edit:
I suppose I should try to understand your objections better. What do you mean when you say "support" that GW isn't doing?
warhead01 wrote: D&D is currently my only game. I don't have to leave the house and drive for nearly 2 hours to play thanks to the internet.
Check out table top simulator, I know there's 40k minis up there, don't know if there's a community to play with or not though.
That said, D&D is fine, the hipster jokes earlier in the thread are definitely not wrong, it's a big tropey fantasy setting that people take way to god damn seriously most of the time. Which should really feel in place for 40k players. 5th edition is actually rather quick to play and actively encourages you not to waste time flipping through the book which was quite nice. The game itself is fine and fun.
Now, adventurers league, you couldn't get me to play that shy a gun to my head. The power gamey weasely bs that people put into the fixed rewards structure of that play style drives me insane. It's like 3.5 came back to take a bite out of a good game and attached itself like a fething parasite. All of which I could entirely stand if not for the endless whining when some one who does these things finds out he can't actually do the over powered thing he wanted to because someone else with reading comprehension in the group actually understood the rules he blindly tried taking advantage of.
I will admit, that could just be the people near me, but for all the RPGs I've played, anything with an official codified reward structure has sucked the fun out of the games almost as bad as the players who really just want an oversized hump pillow.
Thank you. I do remember a table top simulator from....I'm not sure how many years ago. I don't know many people who would be interested in that I recall being very skeptical myself but maybe.
As far as the unchecked behavior in peoples D&D ect games. I don't get it. I mean I kinda do but the game I am in, for example, is a closed group. My brother has DM'd for the same group for about 20 years now and wont put up with disruption. The game is a bit of a home brew setting over laying the Silver Marches with black powder, politics and it's own money system.
What bothers me about 5th is the lack of defined skill growth compared to 3rd. If it's there I am just showing how much of a noob I am.
One think I have brought over from 40K is looking for the averages of a D6. What's the "critical mass" of D6's I need for a fire ball to hit the averages for damage out put... (On a fire ball.)
another problem I had with D&D or role playing is just the social aspect of being in character which had always felt strange to me so unlike before where I would play a fighter or some similar class I am attempting to play a social character with my wizard and just do more and be more involved during the games and that's gone surprisingly well but I think that is also because of knowing the people in the group for not quite 20 years. The jokes are rotten, twisted and fantastic.
I had thought about trying one of those adventure league games when I was thinking about getting into D&D. Not sure but I may give one of those a try in the future if the opportunity is there. I didn't start playing until the end of June and had been house sitting in May but hardly left the house to go to the game shop. Maybe next time.
I do remember playing one session of living city, I think that's what it was, way back in 97' or 98'.
All the rules you listed provide no support for actual role-play - simply because they don't tell a story. The entire "support" for narrative games by GW is basically telling you to create the narrative yourself. That's the very opposite of support. The DoW hexfield campaigns do a better job of telling a story than all of GW's publications from the last four editions combined.
*gestures wildly at the front half of every codex and rulebook, the entirety of Black Library, and 30 years worth of art, fiction and background*
And yet, he's still not wrong.
Uhhh…
The entire "support" for narrative games by GW is basically telling you to create the narrative yourself.
Yeah, the big bits of fluff in the codices and the BRB are great and all, but that's really just the world building part of an RPG. If having sufficient background, novels and art to role-play in is the metric, then MtG would qualify as an RPG as well, when it clearly doesn't.
All the rules you listed provide no support for actual role-play - simply because they don't tell a story. The entire "support" for narrative games by GW is basically telling you to create the narrative yourself. That's the very opposite of support. The DoW hexfield campaigns do a better job of telling a story than all of GW's publications from the last four editions combined.
*gestures wildly at the front half of every codex and rulebook, the entirety of Black Library, and 30 years worth of art, fiction and background*
And yet, he's still not wrong.
Uhhh…
The entire "support" for narrative games by GW is basically telling you to create the narrative yourself.
Yeah, the big bits of fluff in the codices and the BRB are great and all, but that's really just the world building part of an RPG. If having sufficient background, novels and art to role-play in is the metric, then MtG would qualify as an RPG as well, when it clearly doesn't.
MTG's computer game literally has a single player campaign mode where you battle it out against other summoners/planeswalkers, with each battle being part of the story.
It isn't terribly well written mind, but how small-minded must someone be to not understand that you really could play a narrative MTG campaign if you wanted?
I could, right now, whip up a plane and a few decks, with the players wandering around the Plane fighting each-other or my encounter decks when they reach certain hexes or whatever.
But… "Narrative" and "RPG" aren't the same thing? Nobody's saying 40k is an RPG!
Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader, Only War, etc are.
And lord almighty I would rather stab my eyes out with broken Christmas ornaments than have another thread turn into an argument about whether or not 40k works for narrative gaming. Especially not the nice, fun TTRPG thread.
Unit1126PLL wrote: I suppose I should try to understand your objections better. What do you mean when you say "support" that GW isn't doing?
Trying to understand what I want to say honors you and is done way to little
First of all I would expect campaign books that actually allow me to create and run a campaign - be it with my own story or one from GW. I'm trying to get a narrative campaign off the ground for our group right now, but I'm basically writing an entire game system myself, drawing from old edition sources and third party material to do so. Anything GW has published this edition is mostly worthless - battle honors allow no customization and are worthless for many units that don't fit the Space Marine template, custom characters range dude with worthless rules to unstoppable demi-god on the battlefield and more often than not fail to forge their narrative as soon as a squad of snipers get involved. Narrative missions are just fun missions, but don't actually tell a story. They can be used as frameworks for telling a story if you want to play a certain scenario, but so can most eternal war missions. If something get's labeled "campaign book", my expectation would be that I can buy that book, get a couple of players and then run that campaign from the book to play 4-6 games and then reach some sort of conclusion. Neither Vigilus nor Psychic awakening managed to that to any extend. Urban Conquest tried that somehow (I actually bought that book for this reason), but it failed. It has very specific requirements to your terrain collection and once again relies on random effects to spice up the game rather than actually adding narrative reasons for something to happen. As usual, these effects don't seem to have been designed with non-guard or space marine armies in mind, so if you are running Xenos or Daemons the mission/campaign round rules might randomly make you lose. I wouldn't call just rolling up random monsters from the monster's manual and beating them with your D&D group for experience any more "role-playing" than these campaigns.
Second, I have found forging a narrative on the battlefield extremely difficult when you are playing a mission that is telling you to win the game and punishes you in the overlying campaign if you don't. If the character that is my warboss is supposed to always pick a fight the most powerful combatant on the table he not only will lose that fight 4 out 5 times (Warboss suck in duels because reasons), it will also cost me the game because I just tossed out my one option to destroy enemy heavy vehicles. Many armies run into this issue when they try to act according to their fluff - the rules are just terrible at transporting all those awesome stories from the fluff (some written 5+ edition ago) to the battlefield. In addition, if you have some of your legendary models on the table, like the one devastator who killed three tanks in one battle with his missle launcher, the nob who fought 21 guardsmen on his own and killed them all or the dire avengers exarch who held out against Mortarion for four turns of combat until the battle ended - there is no way to actually keep writing their legend as the game is so deadly, that they are pretty likely to just go ker-splat turn one when a repulsor unloads a random ironhail something stubber into the only unit that is in range. We had a campaign where you could play a kill team mission and the winner could add his kill team to his army for the final battle. Guess what they did in that game? They were all shot dead by a unit of cultists. Another issue that most armies aren't robust enough to support playing anything but one of the working archetypes supported by the current incarnation of the rules, and I'm not just talking about the top tier builds. For example, if I wanted to run something like Buzzgobs Dreadmob, with a stompa, kanz, burnas and dreads, there is no chance in hell that this army is going to any serious damage to any shooty army before getting wiped out. A DA Deathwing, White Scar bikes, an eldar aspect shrine, a wych coven or a Night Lords jump pack force are all doomed to get slaughtered by someone who just put some guardsmen to hold the line in from of his imperial tanks or someone who just brought a random company of primaris marines.
Yes, you can put effort into making all that work, but I can also put the same effort into making a MtGRPG work, so from my perspective the simple truth for 8th edition is that it doesn't support role-play.
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Unit1126PLL wrote: MTG's computer game literally has a single player campaign mode where you battle it out against other summoners/planeswalkers, with each battle being part of the story.
It isn't terribly well written mind, but how small-minded must someone be to not understand that you really could play a narrative MTG campaign if you wanted?
I could, right now, whip up a plane and a few decks, with the players wandering around the Plane fighting each-other or my encounter decks when they reach certain hexes or whatever.
The point is that GW isn't providing something even remotely as good as those MtG scenarios for WH40k. Oh, and don't underestimate the work you need to put into such encounter decks, talking from experience
Okay! I get a lot of your points and I actually agree. However, my response would be:
1) 40k *should* be able to be played narratively. GW has offered support for this too, however hamfisted and bad it might be.
2) the failure of 40k as a narrative game is due largely to balance issues.
This last one I would like to expand on a bit, partly because I am involved in a discussion about it in the "playtest competitively" thread.
40k's imbalance does, in fact, make it hard to be narrative. Your stuff just vaporizes off the table like water on hot asphalt. What's worse is that *everyone* is a victim. Even narrative lists that are accidentally hyperoptimized evaporate if they happen to go second.
This is a problem with lethality being dramatically too high right now, and plagues all of 40k. When you say "40k doesn't function well as a narrative game", what it sounds like your objections are is mostly "40k doesn't function well as a game", period, narratively or otherwise.
In the other thread you will absolutely see I agree with that point.
Lastly, I do think GW tries to support narrative play. You yourself mentioned several tools and supplements which exist; the problem is that they are executed with GW's typical disregard for their own game.
I actually empathize with your point. In the other thread I even make some of the same arguments.
But in general I think 40k games should be narratively inspired above all else, and the fact that it hardly functions at all is a detriment to everyone, and is not limited to narrative.
Unit1126PLL wrote: I am not certain why 40k cannot be about collaborative storytelling and imagination. A pair (or group) of people work together to confront fun challenges that they create for themselves and build a story about their characters and armies.
People talk like you can't use 40k battles to tell stories.
You can invent a story about your game versus I, but at the end of the day, one of us won and one of us lost and we went home to make new lists and play someone else next week.
D&D isn't about winning or losing. Victory is what you make of it. Theres an evolving story of the party's characters facilitated and curated by the GM.
40k "Narrative" is like old fashioned wargaming with scenarios and asymmetric objectives.
And of course, when you're playing D&D, you're playing with your friends together. If we play 40k, I have all my pieces, you have all yours, and I play against you for my guys to beat yours.
Lastly, I do think GW tries to support narrative play. You yourself mentioned several tools and supplements which exist; the problem is that they are executed with GW's typical disregard for their own game.
From the Duncan-Rhodes-Is-Leaving thread:
I think the Warhammer TV crew don't even get the early glimpses and previews, other then by maybe a few weeks to prep their promotional stuff.
I imagine for most of them the main perks are about the 50% employee discount, being around a whole ton of very passionate and talented hobbyists, and getting to work on something you love.
...which is part of why it baffles me when people complaining about things like 40k imply that GW's ground level employees are lazy, don't care about the quality of their releases, and/or are just trying to squeeze money out of the fans any way they can. The CEO and executive management are obviously prioritizing profits and keeping the shareholders happy, as is true of any company, and do stuff like impose a pretty ruthless release schedule, but the actual background writers, game designers / rule writers, sculptors, illustrators, product developers, and graphic designers? Aside from old timers like Jervis Johnson, Jes Goodwin, Aly Morrison and John Blanche, they're like 90% people who grew up playing Games Workshop games and are totally passionate about it, and try to make the best products they can. It's just that it's a hard job, done by fallible humans, with lots of priorities to juggle, and the aforementioned brutal release schedule, so they make mistakes and can't be all things to all people.
I mean, just look at Duncan. You can tell that guy 100% cares about the community and wants everyone to enjoy the hobby as much as possible, and get as much out of it as possible. I think he's the norm, not the exception.
Unit1126PLL wrote: I am not certain why 40k cannot be about collaborative storytelling and imagination. A pair (or group) of people work together to confront fun challenges that they create for themselves and build a story about their characters and armies.
People talk like you can't use 40k battles to tell stories.
You can invent a story about your game versus I, but at the end of the day, one of us won and one of us lost and we went home to make new lists and play someone else next week.
D&D isn't about winning or losing. Victory is what you make of it. Theres an evolving story of the party's characters facilitated and curated by the GM.
40k "Narrative" is like old fashioned wargaming with scenarios and asymmetric objectives.
And of course, when you're playing D&D, you're playing with your friends together. If we play 40k, I have all my pieces, you have all yours, and I play against you for my guys to beat yours.
One of us won and one of us lost, but that doesn't mean we make new lists next week. Oftentimes I'll take the same list, with the same characters, week after week, and when I play someone else I can fluff that game too. After all, unless they have their own fluff (in which case we should play a narrative campaign!) they could easily all be on the same planet.
LoftyS wrote: No option for "used to love D&D, not anymore" (3.5th edition is good, everything past that was terrible)
Not that i'd agree with your assessment of the editions, but good thing with RPGs is that unlike with wargames it is pretty easy to keep playing the old editions. You only need to have the books convince couple of your friends to do it.
LoftyS wrote: No option for "used to love D&D, not anymore" (3.5th edition is good, everything past that was terrible)
Not that i'd agree with your assessment of the editions, but good thing with RPGs is that unlike with wargames it is pretty easy to keep playing the old editions. You only need to have the books convince couple of your friends to do it.
LoftyS wrote: No option for "used to love D&D, not anymore" (3.5th edition is good, everything past that was terrible)
Not that i'd agree with your assessment of the editions, but good thing with RPGs is that unlike with wargames it is pretty easy to keep playing the old editions. You only need to have the books convince couple of your friends to do it.
nataliereed1984 wrote: Is the Rogue Trader RPG from FFG really as bad, system-wise, as people make it out to be?
The concept of it - playing a rogue trader and the most trusted members of their crew - is INCREDIBLY appealing to me. All the agency and much of the power of an Inquisitor, but without any overarching moral imperative, and room to be a completely self-serving b***h!
But I keep hearing the rules are really, really, really bad and it's better to just transpose the setting, characters, adventures, etc into a different game system.
Thoughts on that?
P.S. I can't believe people are complaining about balance even here in a thread on cooperative TTRPGs...
I've never found it that bad. There's a huge amount of detail in the game, but it's not too bad mechanically. The key element is that Rogue Trader is completely foreign to 'classic' rpg play, and some people have trouble adapting, especially as the gm.
The party's main assets are their ship, wealth and political contacts. In a lot of cases, an adventure where a star trek setting would be "beam down to the surface with Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Security Officer Sucks-to-be-you", a perfectly sensible response in rogue trader is "flatten ten square kilometres with orbital gunfire, land a battalion of armsmen to secure the ruins, and then we -might!- think about going down in person...."
I find the FFGRPGs to be a fairly bland core system padded out with a massive dictionary of traits. Most of the play time every time I've tried it consists of people flipping through books to figure out what any of their abilities actually mean; unless you're prepared to have one person memorize the whole thing or write up your own reminder text it's fairly difficult to use.
nataliereed1984 wrote: Is the Rogue Trader RPG from FFG really as bad, system-wise, as people make it out to be?
The concept of it - playing a rogue trader and the most trusted members of their crew - is INCREDIBLY appealing to me. All the agency and much of the power of an Inquisitor, but without any overarching moral imperative, and room to be a completely self-serving b***h!
But I keep hearing the rules are really, really, really bad and it's better to just transpose the setting, characters, adventures, etc into a different game system.
Thoughts on that?
P.S. I can't believe people are complaining about balance even here in a thread on cooperative TTRPGs...
I've never found it that bad. There's a huge amount of detail in the game, but it's not too bad mechanically. The key element is that Rogue Trader is completely foreign to 'classic' rpg play, and some people have trouble adapting, especially as the gm.
The party's main assets are their ship, wealth and political contacts. In a lot of cases, an adventure where a star trek setting would be "beam down to the surface with Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Security Officer Sucks-to-be-you", a perfectly sensible response in rogue trader is "flatten ten square kilometres with orbital gunfire, land a battalion of armsmen to secure the ruins, and then we -might!- think about going down in person...."
All the rules you listed provide no support for actual role-play - simply because they don't tell a story. The entire "support" for narrative games by GW is basically telling you to create the narrative yourself. That's the very opposite of support. The DoW hexfield campaigns do a better job of telling a story than all of GW's publications from the last four editions combined.
*gestures wildly at the front half of every codex and rulebook, the entirety of Black Library, and 30 years worth of art, fiction and background*
And yet, he's still not wrong.
Uhhh…
The entire "support" for narrative games by GW is basically telling you to create the narrative yourself.
Yeah, the big bits of fluff in the codices and the BRB are great and all, but that's really just the world building part of an RPG. If having sufficient background, novels and art to role-play in is the metric, then MtG would qualify as an RPG as well, when it clearly doesn't.
As much as I hate what MTG has become recently, Ravnica is a fantastic setting. Time Spiral/Ravinica Standard was a golden age that will never be surpassed.
BaconCatBug wrote: As much as I hate what MTG has become recently, Ravnica is a fantastic setting. Time Spiral/Ravinica Standard was a golden age that will never be surpassed.
For me, my fondest MtG memories are from Ice Age. I feel all warm and fuzzy remembering it.
Honestly, a box of upopened Ice Age decks (failing that, boosters) would probably be one of the absolute best Christmas gifts anyone could ever get me. Hasn't yet ever happened, though.
nataliereed1984 wrote: Jidmah, how do you feel about Kill Team and/or Necromunda's campaign rules by comparison?
Haven't played Necromund at all, but Kill Team works a lot better, since single characters matter much more, experience gain is meaningful and the campaign doesn't punish you for not archiving a major victory.
Okay! I get a lot of your points and I actually agree. However, my response would be:
1) 40k *should* be able to be played narratively. GW has offered support for this too, however hamfisted and bad it might be.
Should? Yes, of course! But GW hasn't shown any support besides lip service. I'm fairly sure they don't even know how to create a narrative experience besides having a group which does such things naturally. Have you seen those linked game rules in CA2019? It was one of the reasons why I bought that book and it was an utter disappointment. 11 pages of rules which have yielded less interesting ideas than a thread I started here on dakka which only went on for one and a half page. Not to mention that they just forgot some factions in their narrative stratagems, like orks.
2) the failure of 40k as a narrative game is due largely to balance issues.
This last one I would like to expand on a bit, partly because I am involved in a discussion about it in the "playtest competitively" thread.
40k's imbalance does, in fact, make it hard to be narrative. Your stuff just vaporizes off the table like water on hot asphalt. What's worse is that *everyone* is a victim. Even narrative lists that are accidentally hyperoptimized evaporate if they happen to go second.
This is a problem with lethality being dramatically too high right now, and plagues all of 40k.
Yes, I agree. Having a narrative game was much easier in 5th when no single unit could wipe another unit in a single shooting phase.
When you say "40k doesn't function well as a narrative game", what it sounds like your objections are is mostly "40k doesn't function well as a game", period, narratively or otherwise.
Eh, IMO this is a jump in logic. The game can be highly lethal and still properly function, and in my opinion it did so pretty well before marine supplements happened. I had tons of fun games in this edition, but it's more like playing a game of risk or MtG than a game of D&D.
Lastly, I do think GW tries to support narrative play. You yourself mentioned several tools and supplements which exist; the problem is that they are executed with GW's typical disregard for their own game.
"Do or do not, there is no try." I can see they are trying, but I also see them failing in the very same way they already failed in the FW Imperial Armour books a decade ago. And it would be so easy to gather experience in that area. Just host a narrative event at warhammer world for random people showing up, and they would probably be run down by people willing to play. The result, right now, is that there is zero support for planing an executing a narrative campaign, and you have to do all the work yourself.
But in general I think 40k games should be narratively inspired above all else, and the fact that it hardly functions at all is a detriment to everyone, and is not limited to narrative.
I also disagree on this. People should be able to have fun in their hobby in anyway they want. A proper balance benefits all parts of the game, from competitive to casual, from organized tournaments to narrative play. Considering how much work companies like WotC, Blizzard, Riot Games and others (even P&P companies!) put into fine-tuning their games for the entire spectrum of their audience, it saddens me to see how slow and heavy-handed GW is acting. They are getting better, but the Terminus Est changes its course faster than GW does.
Unit1126PLL wrote: I am not certain why 40k cannot be about collaborative storytelling and imagination. A pair (or group) of people work together to confront fun challenges that they create for themselves and build a story about their characters and armies.
People talk like you can't use 40k battles to tell stories.
You can invent a story about your game versus I, but at the end of the day, one of us won and one of us lost and we went home to make new lists and play someone else next week.
D&D isn't about winning or losing. Victory is what you make of it. Theres an evolving story of the party's characters facilitated and curated by the GM.
40k "Narrative" is like old fashioned wargaming with scenarios and asymmetric objectives.
And of course, when you're playing D&D, you're playing with your friends together. If we play 40k, I have all my pieces, you have all yours, and I play against you for my guys to beat yours.
One of us won and one of us lost, but that doesn't mean we make new lists next week. Oftentimes I'll take the same list, with the same characters, week after week, and when I play someone else I can fluff that game too. After all, unless they have their own fluff (in which case we should play a narrative campaign!) they could easily all be on the same planet.
If I lost, I'm definitely making a new list. That means that my previous list was bad, or at least worse than my opponent or poorly optimized. Why would I play losing game after losing game. If I won, I'll still probably make changes to my list since there's aspects that are certainly less than adequately performing in every game. Of course, sometimes it's locked from game to game, like for a league or tournament, or I want to give some idea another chance, but you get the point, there's not a lot of point in repeatedly playing the same list if you're not winning, so somebody should be coming back with a new list.
The point of a competitive wargame is to win. Even a narrative scenario like this:
the point is to secure a victory in accordance with historically inspired objectives with historically inspired forces while preventing your opponent from achieving theirs and destroying their force.
D&D doesn't have a win condition. You never win D&D, you just play and overcome interesting and exciting tribulations together that the GM thinks up because she thinks they'll be interesting and fun and create a compelling narrative.
Winning SHOULD be based on more than your list. If it's just the list that determines victory or defeat then why do you play instead of exchanging lists, doing the math, and calling good game? The list SHOULD be one of the least impactful elements for victory.
Lance845 wrote: Winning SHOULD be based on more than your list. If it's just the list that determines victory or defeat then why do you play instead of exchanging lists, doing the math, and calling good game? The list SHOULD be one of the least impactful elements for victory.
What you brought in your list is fundamentally defined by your strategy for victory and determines what tactical options you will have available.
The majority of potential lists will be unviable all the time, since at the very minimum you need to be able to respond effectively to a significant variety of threats that the enemy may present. In addition, if you want it to actually be good, you need to have a path to victory, threats that the enemy must service, yourself.
You can't just bring whatever crap was on the shelf today and expect to win if you don't have a coherent strategy.
Winning is also based on more than your list, but if you don't have an adequate list then you've failed the first bar. That said, just having an adequate list isn't going to get you very far if you don't know what you're doing with it. You also need to have a command of the system and the tactics and how the units interact.
redux wrote: My issue with DnD is it gives your "friends" a proxy for their poor social skills. eg, my character is an ass hat so I am juuuuuust acting out their ass hattery.
My issue with 40K is it gives your "friends" a rule set for their poor social skills. eg, the rule says I can F you so I'm going to F you.
Your issue is that you aren't playing either of these games with friends.
agreed. D&D and 40k are games designed with the assumption of a social contract. if your "Friends" don't wanna follow said social contract well... don't play 40k and d&d with them
AnomanderRake wrote: I find the FFGRPGs to be a fairly bland core system padded out with a massive dictionary of traits. Most of the play time every time I've tried it consists of people flipping through books to figure out what any of their abilities actually mean; unless you're prepared to have one person memorize the whole thing or write up your own reminder text it's fairly difficult to use.
Smart character sheets are the best thing since sliced bread - for any system with feats/traits/talents/quirks/whatever.
And yes, I agree, but I think that was more an issue for high level games and particularly for Deathwatch - Marines don't really fit in the scale of what is essentially WHFRP in a false nose and glasses, so the book spends ages teaching you rules for fear, corruption, fatigue, starvation, encumbrance, etc, etc (just like dark heresy) but then spends an equal amount of time giving astartes special rules that amount to "ignore this section.....and this section...and this..." and then has to include whole new sections to allow hordes of weaker enemies to hurt you at all. Deathwatch is worth skipping.
Only war (guard) is a lot more sensible and playable as "shoot em up rpgs" go. You're a guardsman. Orks are scary. Tactics become more than just optional extras if you want to live.
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What you brought in your list is fundamentally defined by your strategy for victory and determines what tactical options you will have available.
Agreed. But at the same time how a list performs in a given game will vary wildly based on how it is employed (and the tyranny of the dice). I never get people whose first response on losing a game with a list is to change their list rather than practice a bit more, try different tactics, and different "choose-on-the-day" options (warlord, warlord trait, relic) and then modify the list once you've got a better feel for what the list lacks compared to your preferred play style.
I'm kinda baffled, what beyond the faction background and some sample narrative missions do you need for something to be considered narrative support in 40k?
It's not going to be all that much more than scenarios and tossing your own fluff at it. Unless you're asking for a campaign system which is a separate thing than explicitly narrative.
YeOldSaltPotato wrote: I'm kinda baffled, what beyond the faction background and some sample narrative missions do you need for something to be considered narrative support in 40k?
It's not going to be all that much more than scenarios and tossing your own fluff at it. Unless you're asking for a campaign system which is a separate thing than explicitly narrative.
Maybe I'm just missing something. So, here is an example - I have a bunch of orks, pretty much every unit from the store available at least once. My friend has some primaris Dark Angels and some death wing units. My warboss is called "Dakkan da Hyena" and his Captain is "Eugen von Kronfeld". How would you try to tell the story of those two facing off with their armies in a single game? Restriction: You are not allowed to implement even a single house rule.
YeOldSaltPotato wrote: I'm kinda baffled, what beyond the faction background and some sample narrative missions do you need for something to be considered narrative support in 40k?
It's not going to be all that much more than scenarios and tossing your own fluff at it. Unless you're asking for a campaign system which is a separate thing than explicitly narrative.
Maybe I'm just missing something.
So, here is an example - I have a bunch of orks, pretty much every unit from the store available at least once. My friend has some primaris Dark Angels and some death wing units.
My warboss is called "Dakkan da Hyena" and his Captain is "Eugen von Kronfeld". How would you try to tell the story of those two facing off with their armies in a single game? Restriction: You are not allowed to implement even a single house rule.
Decide on an interesting context in which these two characters would face off against one another, that fits with your vision of the generals and their armies and what they're about. Flip through your rulebooks and supplements to find a narrative or matched play mission that fits well with what you came up with. Play that mission, and use your imagination to flesh out the events as they occur and imagine ways and reasons that unusual or climactic moments in the game happened. There you go.
Admittedly, house rules and making stuff up on the fly ("wouldn't it be cool if the space hulk we arrived with starts breaking up in orbit, and all our units have to make random rolls not to get hit by debris?" or whatever) can add a lot to this kind of play, but they're not necessary.
YeOldSaltPotato wrote: I'm kinda baffled, what beyond the faction background and some sample narrative missions do you need for something to be considered narrative support in 40k?
It's not going to be all that much more than scenarios and tossing your own fluff at it. Unless you're asking for a campaign system which is a separate thing than explicitly narrative.
Maybe I'm just missing something.
So, here is an example - I have a bunch of orks, pretty much every unit from the store available at least once. My friend has some primaris Dark Angels and some death wing units.
My warboss is called "Dakkan da Hyena" and his Captain is "Eugen von Kronfeld". How would you try to tell the story of those two facing off with their armies in a single game? Restriction: You are not allowed to implement even a single house rule.
Same as we've always done. We'd generate a mission, set up the table, & play a game. The first game, even if our heroes had heard of one another, would tell the initial battlefield meeting of these two soon-to-be-epic foes....The exact story would develop as we played. Future changes to lists, models used, etc would simply be further developments & future chapters of their rivalry.
I love D&D. I've got a regular group of people I play with (all girls aside from me, yes D&D girls do exist) and it's a lot of fun.
I still much prefer 40k, however. I see the two hobbies as being connected in many ways. I for one used the painting skills gained in 40k to create some great looking D&D miniatures.
I played and GMed Deathwatch and the Black Crusade RPGs for a few years, and they were great fun despite being d100 systems, which are usually pretty bad for anything other than simulationist misery porn.
Savage Worlds is a brilliant RPG, and would suit a pulpy 40K perfectly.
My PERSONAL D&D experiences have been awful. I got kicked out of a group in college because I played a chaotic neutral barbarian who...shock...dropped an informant off a building, killing him, after getting the necessary information. Then kicking down the bad guy’s front door; I was told I wasn’t taking it seriously. Second group involved the very definition of bad-stereotype players running roughshod over the game, game master and making it a terrible experience. So I like the concept of D&D, but experience has sucked and I have nothing positive to say about it from personal experience.
I love d&d. I've been playing it and 40k since the 80s. They both scratch a different itch in my opinion.
Notice how people can cite their favorite edition of D&D, but few people can say what their favorite edition of 40k is? I really think D&D reached its pinnacle with 3.5/Pathfinder. 40k has good good ideas scattered throughout its editions that it never consolidated. Terrain rules in some editions that weren't there with USRs, etc. Combine that with the power creep and contradictions in each army book. Although once you get past the core books of D&D it can get pretty bad.
BaconCatBug wrote: As much as I hate what MTG has become recently, Ravnica is a fantastic setting. Time Spiral/Ravinica Standard was a golden age that will never be surpassed.
A good second place to the golden age of MTG; Urza block / Mercadian Masques followed by Masques / Invasion. 3 years of unparalleled genius both from designers and writers. Original Ravnica is the closest Wizards have since come to that epoch.
Red Marine wrote: I love d&d. I've been playing it and 40k since the 80s. They both scratch a different itch in my opinion.
Notice how people can cite their favorite edition of D&D, but few people can say what their favorite edition of 40k is? I really think D&D reached its pinnacle with 3.5/Pathfinder. 40k has good good ideas scattered throughout its editions that it never consolidated. Terrain rules in some editions that weren't there with USRs, etc. Combine that with the power creep and contradictions in each army book. Although once you get past the core books of D&D it can get pretty bad.
3.5 was the edition I played most and I fondly remember the group I played with back then, but I prefer 5E, and I'd even put 4E above 3.X - the only thing 3.X has going for it is how many source books and rule books it had (which was great), but with that came tons of Prestige classes that completely fethed up any resemblance of balance the game could've had (and balance-wise the game was already broken straight out of the core rules. Fighter vs Wizard power curves, anyone?)
4E completely threw all that out of the window and created something entirely new, but was way too bland since all you had were the basic roles, and every class was simply one flavour of those roles, with everyone having like "a D8 at-will attack that also delivers a debuff", for example. But if you just ignored that rules-wise it didn't matter what kind of striker you played, and just focussed on the RP aspects, it was fine - and you'd not run into the issue of having classes that are completely useless in combat at certain level ranges.
5E seems like it's trying to find the balance in between these two editions, and is so far a great experience - I only recently got back into D&D, not much experience (literally - we're level 4) yet with 5E but so far everyone in the group is enjoying it. There were a few minor things that confused us, but so far everyone gets to participate in meaningful ways (both in and out of combat) and that's the best you can hope for in an RPG ruleset, in my opinion.
AegisGrimm wrote: I don;t play D&D, but I do love playing other roleplaying games like Prowlers and Paragons, Savage Worlds (in about 5 different sub-settings from fantasy to sci-fi), and several others, including a free Indie D20 game called Heroes Against Darkness, which I much prefer to modern D&D.
The last couple of editions of D&D just didn't appeal to me.
But I have also played and painted 40K for 25 years, so I guess I differ from some of the main group. Frankly I have heard 40k players rag on just about anything that's NOT 40K. Lots of claims that other games just "suck", even those with lots of critical acclaim. Even AoS barely gets a pass, if only for being from GW.
Huh, I usually hear the opposite. That whatever it is is vastly better than 40k, and everybody should play it instead, but in the end there's only a small cadre that plays it and everybody keeps playing 40k. There's maybe a dozen people who play Infinity at one of the stores, but otherwise, despite how often some other game is presented, in the end it's basically just 40k.
Yeah, in my area I figure I am part of the vast minority that doesn't just play 40K or Age of Sigmar in their most common forms. I'm not even sure I could get a skirmish game in of either system, or any of the Specialist Games, because they aren't the big "2". MAYBE Warcry because it's new enough. But God forbid I want to get some people to play something non-GW. If I am very, very lucky, it would probably be an entire game using resources entirely of my own and an opponent I can con into what amounts to a Demo game.
Every once in awhile I see Facebook posts in the local group about getting together to play a game of Kings of War or maybe Infinity because someone from the other side of the state that plays will be in town for the weekend or something, but I can only imagine what the work would be to get anyone interested in something non-standard that I own like Song of Blades and Heroes, Dracula's America, or even something Oldschool GW like Battlefleet Gothic, original Necromunda, etc.
Jidmah wrote: Restriction: You are not allowed to implement even a single house rule.
This is your problem. Pull out the stupid bs to have fun with it and don't worry too hard about playing competitive.
Dakkan laid waste to the shrine world of Whateveritis and is laying siege to the temple containing the ever holy cod piece of the emperor. Kronfeld is responding to preserve his holiness' saintly crotch cover from the fiendish greenskin.
From there you can easily pull it out in a couple ways, if you want to play bog standard from there you absolutely could. Or you can take some inspiration and impose atypical restrictions on both forces. See, Kronfeld is making a precision strike to stop Dakkan from opening the temple which Dakkan is conveniently exactly four turns away from doing unless Kronfeld can take a point deep in Dakkan's deployment zone. As a result the only thing Kronfeld can put on the field the first turn are things disembarking from drop pods, with fliers and fast attack being able to enter from the side of the board at the end of his first turn and everything else the end of turn two. Meanwhile you have Dakkan on the backfoot and forced to actually defend something when most of his boys are off in the more interesting fights. He starts with half his army on the field and can place one unit on his board edge at the end of the battle round for every unit destroyed that turn as his boys hear something interesting.
Is it fair? Possibly, but it's going to drive some different list building and tactics than the standard stand and shoot at things game.
From there, you could do a follow up game depending on who won. If the marines take the temple, throw a meat grinder at them to hold it against the mass of the greenskin forces. If the greenskins take it, go for a convoy based mission where the marines attempt to seize the defiled relic back before it gets to a strong hold.
And round it out without whoever won that one fighting from a prepared position against the other one with the primary goal being breaking the stronghold to get the goods.
It's all a bit of stupid, but you've got a series of games with some fun differences to them tied together based on a loose story dependant on your actions.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
harlokin wrote: Savage Worlds is a brilliant RPG, and would suit a pulpy 40K perfectly.
The SciFi Companion for it is reasonably good for jumping that gap too.
YeOldSaltPotato wrote: I'm kinda baffled, what beyond the faction background and some sample narrative missions do you need for something to be considered narrative support in 40k?
It's not going to be all that much more than scenarios and tossing your own fluff at it. Unless you're asking for a campaign system which is a separate thing than explicitly narrative.
Maybe I'm just missing something.
So, here is an example - I have a bunch of orks, pretty much every unit from the store available at least once. My friend has some primaris Dark Angels and some death wing units.
My warboss is called "Dakkan da Hyena" and his Captain is "Eugen von Kronfeld". How would you try to tell the story of those two facing off with their armies in a single game? Restriction: You are not allowed to implement even a single house rule.
I am not going to use your example but an actual game I played this weekend. I have a Primaris only army that roughly fleshed out they were given their chapter name during the Devastation of Baal. Well, a friend of mine has a Tyranid army with a bunch of the bigger Forge World nids in it. He also picked up the Blood Angel/Tyranid Psychic Awakening book. Well I asked him if he minded running a 'historical' 40k game of what exactly happened on Baal when my chapter was there hoping that the PA book would have a good mission in it. Sadly, the one mission in there didn't really work for the game we wanted to play so we went BRB for a kill point game.
So the story so far was the Avenging Eagles had arrived with Roboute Guilliman to lend aid to the Blood Angels and their beleaguered successor chapters. After giving the Sons of Sanguinius some much needed respite, the new Primaris including what would become the Avenging Eagles pushed fight further into territory already controlled by the Tyranids who now had created bigger, more exotic strains with strains never seen before (the Tyranid player was using the new subfaction trait options from PA). Would this push become disastrous or will it allow even more time for Imperial forces to launch a larger, more coordinated counter-attack?
Spoiler:
The spoiler above shows the beginning of the battle. The markings indicate movement the Dimachaeron only held back by Intercessors from stunning the marine tanks. While pushed back momentarily, everything unloaded into the beast that could causing grievous wounds but not felling it. It was until Captain Clash aimed his master-crafted instigator bolt carbine and with a perfect shot pierced the staggering creature's eye and brain felling the mighty beast. It was that action and well as the victory of this engagement that lead him to be chosen by the Ultramarine Primarch to become chapter master of the Ultima founded Avenging Eagles.
That same game had the Phobos Lieutenant demonstrate he perhaps takes too great of risks as he charged a last of a genestealer swarm with only a pair of knives. Potentially leaving him exposed to further threats or even if he should fail being torn limb from limb from the rending claws of the still very dangerous xeno. The spoiler below (you can just see his blue force sword inside the front of the building) show Librarian Brother Bastion attempting to hold back the psychic might of the xeno invaders (mostly the Swarm Lord but the 'nit player also had another psyker as well). He was performed admirably, the Swarm Lord obviously grew tired of this small minded thing interrupting and had a giant winged Tyranid come crashing into the ruins to deal with it and bashing the sneaky post-human wizard.
Spoiler:
The space marines were victorious here. And while this battle didn't matter all that much in the wider struggle for Baal, it did aid the Imperial forces and also gave the Blood Angels (the ones that knew of it) some measure of respect toward the new Primaris. In honor of this battle and those that fell defending Baal. The Blood Angels honored the Avenging Eagles whose tanks not bear the blood drop and angels wings.
This was still just a regular game of 40k with story elements happening organically as the game continued. That chapter master thing actually happened too. I had simply ran out of things to shoot the Dimachaeron. My Repulsors' big guns weren't being all that successful and my small arms couldn't much past 5+ they needed to wound. I had managed to get the thing down to 2 wounds, but ran out of shooting. Then I checked an saw my Phobos Captain did have line of sight and a weapon in range. It was kinda a long shot with a single attack. However, +2 re-rolling 1s would easily hit, the wounding was still going to be an issue. I managed to roll a 5 and the Tyranid player failed its Save dealing it 3 damage. I can't remember if is also had a FNP, but it was dead.
The point is narrative, I think just giving the game a couple of sentences of what the fight is about and occasionally describing/interpreting what the dice are doing is all that is really needed to string together a decent narrative of what happened. It is no Lawrence of Arabia, but does allow game to feel more impactful and memorable.
Ishagu wrote: I love D&D. I've got a regular group of people I play with (all girls aside from me, yes D&D girls do exist) and it's a lot of fun.
I still much prefer 40k, however. I see the two hobbies as being connected in many ways. I for one used the painting skills gained in 40k to create some great looking D&D miniatures.
I think that's a very antiquated stereotype, D&D is pretty main-stream now. There are a lot of RPG players of the feminine persuasion.
That said, I only know 2 other women who play miniatures wargames.
Ishagu wrote: I love D&D. I've got a regular group of people I play with (all girls aside from me, yes D&D girls do exist) and it's a lot of fun.
I still much prefer 40k, however. I see the two hobbies as being connected in many ways. I for one used the painting skills gained in 40k to create some great looking D&D miniatures.
I think that's a very antiquated stereotype, D&D is pretty main-stream now. There are a lot of RPG players of the feminine persuasion.
That said, I only know 2 other women who play miniatures wargames.
Seconded.
(Deleting everything further I was gonna say cos I don't want to cause anything to go off-topic again)
timetowaste85 wrote: My PERSONAL D&D experiences have been awful. I got kicked out of a group in college because I played a chaotic neutral barbarian who...shock...dropped an informant off a building, killing him, after getting the necessary information. Then kicking down the bad guy’s front door; I was told I wasn’t taking it seriously. Second group involved the very definition of bad-stereotype players running roughshod over the game, game master and making it a terrible experience. So I like the concept of D&D, but experience has sucked and I have nothing positive to say about it from personal experience.
That's unfortunate. D&D is a social experience, and if you are in a bad society, it will come off as bad.
Most of my D&D experience comes from Bioware mostly because I never had a group to run the PnP with. My Brother-in-law has gotten interested in it, but we're an hour of hellish traffic away from each other now, and I rarely can get out of the house.
40K, along with any tabletop wargaming, is in a similar boat. Your local group will have a lot of bearing on your enjoyment of the game experiences.
nataliereed1984 wrote:Decide on an interesting context in which these two characters would face off against one another, that fits with your vision of the generals and their armies and what they're about. Flip through your rulebooks and supplements to find a narrative or matched play mission that fits well with what you came up with. Play that mission, and use your imagination to flesh out the events as they occur and imagine ways and reasons that unusual or climactic moments in the game happened. There you go.
ccs wrote:Same as we've always done. We'd generate a mission, set up the table, & play a game. The first game, even if our heroes had heard of one another, would tell the initial battlefield meeting of these two soon-to-be-epic foes....The exact story would develop as we played.
Sorry you two, but that's... just playing a regular game though? I can literally do the same in a game of risk or any other board game.
Plus Dakkan will probably unepically be boltered down after destroying a vehicle as is the fate of every warboss in every game, while Eugen must stand still in the middle of his army to keep everyone in his re-roll bubble.
nataliereed1984 wrote:Admittedly, house rules and making stuff up on the fly ("wouldn't it be cool if the space hulk we arrived with starts breaking up in orbit, and all our units have to make random rolls not to get hit by debris?" or whatever) can add a lot to this kind of play, but they're not necessary.
css wrote:Future changes to lists, models used, etc would simply be further developments & future chapters of their rivalry.
YeOldSaltPotato's question was "What beyond the faction background and some sample narrative missions do you need for something to be considered narrative support in 40k?", both of your answers basically confirm that you do consider the "support" provided by GW to be insufficient to tell even a simple story.
You can turn your game into a story by creating the narrative yourself. But all the work needs to be done by the players, there is no support from GW for this whatsoever.
Jidmah wrote: Restriction: You are not allowed to implement even a single house rule.
This is your problem. Pull out the stupid bs to have fun with it and don't worry too hard about playing competitive.
Thanks for the personal attack, but please explain how "creating house rules" is "native support" you claimed that GW has? That's the very opposite.
Dakkan laid waste to the shrine world of Whateveritis and is laying siege to the temple containing the ever holy cod piece of the emperor. Kronfeld is responding to preserve his holiness' saintly crotch cover from the fiendish greenskin.
From there you can easily pull it out in a couple ways, if you want to play bog standard from there you absolutely could. Or you can take some inspiration and impose atypical restrictions on both forces. See, Kronfeld is making a precision strike to stop Dakkan from opening the temple which Dakkan is conveniently exactly four turns away from doing unless Kronfeld can take a point deep in Dakkan's deployment zone. As a result the only thing Kronfeld can put on the field the first turn are things disembarking from drop pods, with fliers and fast attack being able to enter from the side of the board at the end of his first turn and everything else the end of turn two. Meanwhile you have Dakkan on the backfoot and forced to actually defend something when most of his boys are off in the more interesting fights. He starts with half his army on the field and can place one unit on his board edge at the end of the battle round for every unit destroyed that turn as his boys hear something interesting.
Is it fair? Possibly, but it's going to drive some different list building and tactics than the standard stand and shoot at things game.
From there, you could do a follow up game depending on who won. If the marines take the temple, throw a meat grinder at them to hold it against the mass of the greenskin forces. If the greenskins take it, go for a convoy based mission where the marines attempt to seize the defiled relic back before it gets to a strong hold.
And round it out without whoever won that one fighting from a prepared position against the other one with the primary goal being breaking the stronghold to get the goods.
It's all a bit of stupid, but you've got a series of games with some fun differences to them tied together based on a loose story dependant on your actions.
Yes, awesome!
However, ideas in this paragraph to make WH40k a narrative created by you:
- restrictions on armies
- a temple as primary target for both forces
- four turn countdown to drop the warboss
- marine forces coming late to the party
- cut ork force in half but allow endless reinforcements
- follow up game on the same table
- prepared position game
- relic convoy
- break the fortress
Ideas in this paragraph to make WH40k a narrative create by GW:
Which brings me back to your original question, what do I need more than just fluff and missions? Stuff like what you wrote.
I have turned Magic the Gathering into a story about four planeswalkers trying to unearth a conspiracy on Ravnica, so I obviously have the means to tell a story using WH40k. But WH40k doesn't provide any more support for that than MtG does.
Saturmorn Carvilli wrote: I am not going to use your example but an actual game I played this weekend.
Spoiler:
I have a Primaris only army that roughly fleshed out they were given their chapter name during the Devastation of Baal. Well, a friend of mine has a Tyranid army with a bunch of the bigger Forge World nids in it. He also picked up the Blood Angel/Tyranid Psychic Awakening book. Well I asked him if he minded running a 'historical' 40k game of what exactly happened on Baal when my chapter was there hoping that the PA book would have a good mission in it. Sadly, the one mission in there didn't really work for the game we wanted to play so we went BRB for a kill point game.
So the story so far was the Avenging Eagles had arrived with Roboute Guilliman to lend aid to the Blood Angels and their beleaguered successor chapters. After giving the Sons of Sanguinius some much needed respite, the new Primaris including what would become the Avenging Eagles pushed fight further into territory already controlled by the Tyranids who now had created bigger, more exotic strains with strains never seen before (the Tyranid player was using the new subfaction trait options from PA). Would this push become disastrous or will it allow even more time for Imperial forces to launch a larger, more coordinated counter-attack?
[spoiler]
The spoiler above shows the beginning of the battle. The markings indicate movement the Dimachaeron only held back by Intercessors from stunning the marine tanks. While pushed back momentarily, everything unloaded into the beast that could causing grievous wounds but not felling it. It was until Captain Clash aimed his master-crafted instigator bolt carbine and with a perfect shot pierced the staggering creature's eye and brain felling the mighty beast. It was that action and well as the victory of this engagement that lead him to be chosen by the Ultramarine Primarch to become chapter master of the Ultima founded Avenging Eagles.
That same game had the Phobos Lieutenant demonstrate he perhaps takes too great of risks as he charged a last of a genestealer swarm with only a pair of knives. Potentially leaving him exposed to further threats or even if he should fail being torn limb from limb from the rending claws of the still very dangerous xeno. The spoiler below (you can just see his blue force sword inside the front of the building) show Librarian Brother Bastion attempting to hold back the psychic might of the xeno invaders (mostly the Swarm Lord but the 'nit player also had another psyker as well). He was performed admirably, the Swarm Lord obviously grew tired of this small minded thing interrupting and had a giant winged Tyranid come crashing into the ruins to deal with it and bashing the sneaky post-human wizard.
Spoiler:
The space marines were victorious here. And while this battle didn't matter all that much in the wider struggle for Baal, it did aid the Imperial forces and also gave the Blood Angels (the ones that knew of it) some measure of respect toward the new Primaris. In honor of this battle and those that fell defending Baal. The Blood Angels honored the Avenging Eagles whose tanks not bear the blood drop and angels wings.
This was still just a regular game of 40k with story elements happening organically as the game continued. That chapter master thing actually happened too. I had simply ran out of things to shoot the Dimachaeron. My Repulsors' big guns weren't being all that successful and my small arms couldn't much past 5+ they needed to wound. I had managed to get the thing down to 2 wounds, but ran out of shooting. Then I checked an saw my Phobos Captain did have line of sight and a weapon in range. It was kinda a long shot with a single attack. However, +2 re-rolling 1s would easily hit, the wounding was still going to be an issue. I managed to roll a 5 and the Tyranid player failed its Save dealing it 3 damage. I can't remember if is also had a FNP, but it was dead. [/spoiler] The point is narrative, I think just giving the game a couple of sentences of what the fight is about and occasionally describing/interpreting what the dice are doing is all that is really needed to string together a decent narrative of what happened. It is no Lawrence of Arabia, but does allow game to feel more impactful and memorable.
Thanks for the write-up, that actually was fun to read.
However, I think what you are describing is not actually comparable to what a game like D&D offers. In addition, as I have explained in a previous post, I have found it increasingly difficult for games to actually write their own stories, since 8th often has armies completely wiped out, and single characters like your Brother Bastion just keep getting blown to smithereens over and over again - some armies even specialize in wiping out characters, like ravenguard or eldar. Since 8th the narrative of Meanmek the Big Mek has been "got riddled with sniper bullets a few seconds into the battle, but somehow survived". I also picked orks and marines on purpose, because both marines and ork characters tend to not really do any epic things on the battle, because they either need to be in very specific positions or need to do very specific things(often resulting in their death) to make their army work. My Death Guard chaos lord in terminator armor has been wading through legions of enemies he cut down with his trusted axe plaguebringer, has destroyed tanks with his combi-bolter and received dozens of gifts of chaos for cutting down enemy characters. My tallyman has legendary aim with his plasma pistol and the insane foul blightspawn has melted entire destroyer units with his plague sprayer and walked away from the following necron onslaught barely living. But alas, not every character is as durable as a plague marine.
harlokin wrote: I played and GMed Deathwatch and the Black Crusade RPGs for a few years, and they were great fun despite being d100 systems, which are usually pretty bad for anything other than simulationist misery porn.
Savage Worlds is a brilliant RPG, and would suit a pulpy 40K perfectly.
The newest game - Wrath & Glory - is a pretty good ruleset, if only GW/Cubicle 7 would actually ****ing publish anything for it.
harlokin wrote: I played and GMed Deathwatch and the Black Crusade RPGs for a few years, and they were great fun despite being d100 systems, which are usually pretty bad for anything other than simulationist misery porn.
Savage Worlds is a brilliant RPG, and would suit a pulpy 40K perfectly.
The newest game - Wrath & Glory - is a pretty good ruleset, if only GW/Cubicle 7 would actually ****ing publish anything for it.
I found the ruleset a bit lite for me, and the production values (particularly compared to FFG) are pretty awful.
harlokin wrote: I played and GMed Deathwatch and the Black Crusade RPGs for a few years, and they were great fun despite being d100 systems, which are usually pretty bad for anything other than simulationist misery porn.
Savage Worlds is a brilliant RPG, and would suit a pulpy 40K perfectly.
The newest game - Wrath & Glory - is a pretty good ruleset, if only GW/Cubicle 7 would actually ****ing publish anything for it.
well given C7 just lost one of their flagship games due to a lisencing dispute I guess they'll have more time for W&G :(
Jidmah wrote: Restriction: You are not allowed to implement even a single house rule.
This is your problem. Pull out the stupid bs to have fun with it and don't worry too hard about playing competitive.
Thanks for the personal attack, but please explain how "creating house rules" is "native support" you claimed that GW has? That's the very opposite.
Then I'll just leave you to it then. None of that was intended as an attack, I am saying 'do something stupid to change up your play experience' not some attack directed at you.
I think you have missed the entire point of all my posts in this thread.
I'm not lacking the means to change up my experience. WH40k as a game is.
Yet you claimed it has native support for narrative gaming when it actually has almost none. This thread has more narrative content than CA2019 does, and it has an entire chapter dedicated to that.
And you’ve actively ignored the core concept of Narrative gaming. It doesn’t need support. It’s two, or more - I’m not judging, consenting players that agree to customize their gaming experience to answer a “what if...” question.
Every single mission in the book or in the players’ imaginations can be a narrative play. That’s the beauty of narrative play. It lets your imagination run free. In that sense, it’s like DND. Both players create a backstory for why they’re at this battle. Maybe you have a planned mission, and do that ahead of time, or maybe you roll it up at the table and decide to wing it.
Either way, your army becomes your “character” for the battle. You decide what they *try* to do, and the dice determine if the unit is successful. Just like DND. Both players can be competitive, if they want. Real-life Generals want to win.
Narrative play is something you can just tack on to any game. You don’t need official rules to run a last stand. Or a breakout scenario, or a Space Hulk battle, or a slowly rising lava battle. You can just do it.
Eldarsif wrote: Love DnD. It has a flexible ruleset that just enables fun without adding to much baggage on top.
Agreed, our d&d group agreed while playing 3.5 that we would not use save or die spells if the DM didn’t either as it’s just not a fun mechanic, the fights are still plenty lethal but it isn’t all about who gets the initiative and If the other side makes the save or not. We also agreed except for thematic and narrative purposes to not using tons of mass stuns or grapple abilities to just negate any challenge in a combat, from the player side it’s not a lot of fun to spend most of a combat just sitting there making your 1 save attempt per turn and not doing anything else.
In 40k it is pretty fun to run the games with some basic narrative to what’s going on, I have a new group of space marines that is a custom chapter so as characters achieve something cool or epic they get named and then they slowly get a history of deeds. At our FLGS we are trying to setup a loose narrative event so we have some kind of story about what’s happening on the FLGS(haven’t named it yet) planet or system. We are toying and with trying some of the linked battle rules from CA19.
nataliereed1984 wrote:Decide on an interesting context in which these two characters would face off against one another, that fits with your vision of the generals and their armies and what they're about. Flip through your rulebooks and supplements to find a narrative or matched play mission that fits well with what you came up with. Play that mission, and use your imagination to flesh out the events as they occur and imagine ways and reasons that unusual or climactic moments in the game happened. There you go.
ccs wrote:Same as we've always done. We'd generate a mission, set up the table, & play a game. The first game, even if our heroes had heard of one another, would tell the initial battlefield meeting of these two soon-to-be-epic foes....The exact story would develop as we played.
Sorry you two, but that's... just playing a regular game though? I can literally do the same in a game of risk or any other board game.
Plus Dakkan will probably unepically be boltered down after destroying a vehicle as is the fate of every warboss in every game, while Eugen must stand still in the middle of his army to keep everyone in his re-roll bubble.
Well, YOU asked me/us how we'd do it. And said there couldn't be any house rules.
Since I'm not psychic the odds of me typing up whatever answer you wanted to hear is pretty low... Or were you just looking for someone to stroke your ego & agree with you that as is it's unsupported?
Jidmah wrote: Yet you claimed it has native support for narrative gaming when it actually has almost none. This thread has more narrative content than CA2019 does, and it has an entire chapter dedicated to that..
Several people told you how to get the narrative out of normal missions in the books. This for some reason is not good enough for you. Sure, you can always enhance your experience by making your own custom rules and missions, but as it has been demonstrated the official missions work just fine for narrative play.
Jidmah wrote: Yet you claimed it has native support for narrative gaming when it actually has almost none. This thread has more narrative content than CA2019 does, and it has an entire chapter dedicated to that..
Several people told you how to get the narrative out of normal missions in the books. This for some reason is not good enough for you. Sure, you can always enhance your experience by making your own custom rules and missions, but as it has been demonstrated the official missions work just fine for narrative play.
That's assuming the rules even allow narrative immersion. They don't though whatsoever. At that point you're paying money for GW to say "modify the garbage we sold you".
Ishagu wrote: I love D&D. I've got a regular group of people I play with (all girls aside from me, yes D&D girls do exist) and it's a lot of fun.
I still much prefer 40k, however. I see the two hobbies as being connected in many ways. I for one used the painting skills gained in 40k to create some great looking D&D miniatures.
I think that's a very antiquated stereotype, D&D is pretty main-stream now. There are a lot of RPG players of the feminine persuasion.
That said, I only know 2 other women who play miniatures wargames.
Seconded.
(Deleting everything further I was gonna say cos I don't want to cause anything to go off-topic again)
This seems common maybe? I know my girlfriend loves the pictures I send of the nicely painted minis on Instagram (lots of great folks to follow there), but doesn't like the idea that "your dude" is gonna die most likely, especially after all that work you put into it. In D&D, there isn't that same investment.
That's assuming the rules even allow narrative immersion. They don't though whatsoever.
Yes they do, you're just bad at it. And as this thread was actually about D&D look at its rules, it is super gamey and has a lot of really weird ways of abstracting things. Yet people manage to roleplay using it just fine, and that is an activity which requires much higher immersion than a wargame.
Always hated D&D, enjoy roleplay games, just found D&D far to restricting, decent systems have no issue with say a priest picking up a sword, or a mage wearing armour - they won't be any good with them but its possible
of course a decent GM gets around all that as then the rules are simply a guide anyway.
never got me head around the hit system either, how gaining experience allowed you to survive a hit from a honking great sword better, yeah its an abstraction but it could be done better
ironically Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay was a hell of a lot better as a rules system and a decent background
there are it must be said some very nice expansions for D&D as background materials, but forget the rules
prefer GURPS or Traveller, where there is more to it than combat and the non-combat bits don't feel like an after thought.
oh yes and the whole "linear warriors and quadratic wizards" thing sucks
nataliereed1984 wrote:Decide on an interesting context in which these two characters would face off against one another, that fits with your vision of the generals and their armies and what they're about. Flip through your rulebooks and supplements to find a narrative or matched play mission that fits well with what you came up with. Play that mission, and use your imagination to flesh out the events as they occur and imagine ways and reasons that unusual or climactic moments in the game happened. There you go.
ccs wrote:Same as we've always done. We'd generate a mission, set up the table, & play a game. The first game, even if our heroes had heard of one another, would tell the initial battlefield meeting of these two soon-to-be-epic foes....The exact story would develop as we played.
Sorry you two, but that's... just playing a regular game though? I can literally do the same in a game of risk or any other board game.
Plus Dakkan will probably unepically be boltered down after destroying a vehicle as is the fate of every warboss in every game, while Eugen must stand still in the middle of his army to keep everyone in his re-roll bubble.
Well, YOU asked me/us how we'd do it. And said there couldn't be any house rules.
Since I'm not psychic the odds of me typing up whatever answer you wanted to hear is pretty low... Or were you just looking for someone to stroke your ego & agree with you that as is it's unsupported?
Also
a) What is or is not a "regular game" depends on the player, and who they usually play with.
b) It IS narrative gaming. It's just not campaign gaming.
c) It is a hell of a lot different than just throwing two forces on the table, then playing a bare-bones Matched Play mission, with no imagination or story or characterization, and no in-universe context, just for the sake of seeing which of the two players wins, like in tournaments.
nataliereed1984 wrote: [
c) It is a hell of a lot different than just throwing two forces on the table, then playing a bare-bones Matched Play mission, with no imagination or story or characterization, and no in-universe context, just for the sake of seeing which of the two players wins, like in tournaments.
Even during tournaments I've had narrative develop.
Ex;
Ages ago (somewhere during 3rd ed) I was playing my DA in a tourney at GenCon. My jump pack assault squad got the piss shot out of them destroying a pair of L.Russ. As the game progressed the squads Sgt in the casualty section got knocked off the table. The fall sheered his plasma pistol arm off at the elbow. No idea where the bit bounced off to (you know how it goes, you drop a bit & it'll scatter off to the furthest most unlikely place possible. And we're in a HUGE hall with 100's of people.).
Well, I still have 3 more games to go that afternoon.
And I don't have any replacement bitz or extra jump sgts. with me. The best option I had on me was a black sharpie. So I blacked his stump so it wasn't unpainted plastic showing.
I'm also a strict WYSIWYG player as far as my weapons are concerned.....
So the Sgt had to lead his squad into three more battles that day armed only with a power sword.
All day long I kept getting asked things like "Aren't you forgetting to take your extra melee attack? (for weapon + pistol)" by foes.
Me: "No, because he doesn't have a pistol. Look at the model."
Opponents were very confused by this response in a tourney.
So I patiently explained that he'd had his arm blown off assaulting a L.Russ in the 1st battle of the day. The black carapace had done it's job & sealed the wound, but the apothecaries hadn't caught up to him yet to attach a bionic replacement. And, since I'm a strict WYSIWYG player as far as my weapons are concerned, that I would not be using an un-represented weapon.
So afterwards I wrote myself a note to build the sgt a bionic arm & put it in the case with him.
Well, I own several armies. And I rotate playing them. So the next week I pulled out my Tau or something for down at the shop. And after that my SW or such. Then some Guard, then....
Eventually a year passes & it's back to GenCon. The DA were (& still are) my "traveling army" - best painted, most compact, and could take on anything. I pop the case open the night before in the hotel & realize I never did make the poor sgt. his replacement arm.
So once again he fights all day long at a disadvantage.
With me having much the same conversation. Only now it's been a year since he's been maimed & who knows where the techs sent his arm.
This time, one night shortly after I get home (but several months after I've shelved the DA again) I DO craft him his arm. It goes into the magnetic screw dish on my desk & I think I'll pull the DA out tomorrow & attach it.
HAH!
This cycle repeats for another 2.5 years. I pull the DA out of storage, don't think about the arm in the screw dish until I'm playing, get home late & plan to fix it tomorrow....
Narrative: The Sgt lost his arm while destroying a L.Russ. The techs then had a heluva time getting his bionic replacement to him as he kept being transferred to different warzones (or at least that's the official line they give on the matter).
In the end though he did eventually get his bionic arm modeled. Still has it today too.
greatbigtree wrote: And you’ve actively ignored the core concept of Narrative gaming. It doesn’t need support. It’s two, or more - I’m not judging, consenting players that agree to customize their gaming experience to answer a “what if...” question.
The claim was that WH40k does have native support for narrative gaming. It doesn't. I wish it had more.
Every single mission in the book or in the players’ imaginations can be a narrative play. That’s the beauty of narrative play. It lets your imagination run free. In that sense, it’s like DND.
Absolutely not. D&D provides you with background that you can actually play in, character progressions, customization options and vast array of things help you tell your story. On top of that, actual stories.
I do understand what narrative gaming is and it's actually my preferred way of playing, you don't need to berate me for doing it "wrong". But if you tell me that GW helps you with narrative gaming even one bit, that is simply not true at all.
Both players create a backstory for why they’re at this battle. Maybe you have a planned mission, and do that ahead of time, or maybe you roll it up at the table and decide to wing it.
Either way, your army becomes your “character” for the battle. You decide what they *try* to do, and the dice determine if the unit is successful.
... and then one army gets deleted be the end of turn 2. Great story!
Narrative play is something you can just tack on to any game. You don’t need official rules to run a last stand. Or a breakout scenario, or a Space Hulk battle, or a slowly rising lava battle. You can just do it.
Thanks for telling me what I have written in four previous posts. Except you have also told that all the work for a narrative game has to be done by the players, which is exactly my point.
ccs wrote: Well, YOU asked me/us how we'd do it. And said there couldn't be any house rules.
Since I'm not psychic the odds of me typing up whatever answer you wanted to hear is pretty low... Or were you just looking for someone to stroke your ego & agree with you that as is it's unsupported?
The claim was that Warhammer 40k natively supports narrative gaming. I disagreed with that in my opinion WH40k provides no support for narrative gaming besides some more complex missions, and all the actual narrative work done by the players.
You said that narrative gaming is supported by the rules, so I asked you to describe what support you were thinking of. You then just proceeded to tell me to run a regular game, which has all the problems I outlined in my answer here.
Which brings me back to my statement that narrative gaming in WH40k does not work well at all, and that the only real way to do it is that the players have to do it.
In fact, this is a very similar debate to when players claim that balance is fine, if you add dozens of house rules to fix it. Which basically means it's not fine.
Jidmah wrote: Yet you claimed it has native support for narrative gaming when it actually has almost none. This thread has more narrative content than CA2019 does, and it has an entire chapter dedicated to that..
Several people told you how to get the narrative out of normal missions in the books. This for some reason is not good enough for you. Sure, you can always enhance your experience by making your own custom rules and missions, but as it has been demonstrated the official missions work just fine for narrative play.
Please go read the thread before attacking me personally. If you had done that, you'd known I have no problem creating narrative games.
I have a problem with GW selling(!) "narrative rules" which tell you to create the narrative yourself and in no way help you with that.
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ValentineGames wrote: Players actually having to put effort into something themselves?
That's unspeakable!
... if it weren't for five people claiming that you don't need to put any effort into creating a narrative, which then go on to list dozens of things they do themselves to create a narrative out of the bland game that 8th edition is. And then they proclaim how much of an awesome job GW has done to create the narrative for them and how it's exactly like D&D.
Are you arguing that 40K does not have native support for narrative play?
Now, Robin Cruddace in the Jan 19 WD does mention that "on the other side, is narrative gaming, where the players themselves take part in the design process..." So the players having some control over the narrative game is a design feature. The game designers provide us with baseline Attack/Defend scenarios with special rules/Stratagems and let us come up with the terrain, forces and stories. Since we all have different collections that makes some sense. But let's park that.
I will argue that narrative gaming is supported by 40K. The basic rule book has a section on it to include some simple campaigns so there is native support there. For narrative inspiration we have the Black Library and three decades of lore development. We had the Kronus campaign when 8th dropped. We had the Vigulus campaign a year ago that included stories for context and many missions. There was a campaign pack available to clubs/FLGS that my FLGS did indeed use. CA18 had quite a bit for narrative gamers. It had Custom Characters included in the Open Play section but it mentioned that they would be good for campaigns, and indeed the Vigilus Campaign used Custom Characters. So your Ork Warboss could develop his skills as he went through the campaign. The CA18 Narrative Portion had Battle Honours as well as the city fighting portion, not to mention new Narrative Play missions. So while you could certainly say that you do not like the native support that 40K has for narrative gaming, I don't think that you can convincingly argue that it is absent.
Having said all that, effective narrative play requires two willing players who invest some creativity into the design of the scenario/campaign. Enjoying the emergent narrative during competitive matched play also requires some willingness on the part of the player to recognize and celebrate those moments.
Jidmah wrote: Yet you claimed it has native support for narrative gaming when it actually has almost none. This thread has more narrative content than CA2019 does, and it has an entire chapter dedicated to that..
Several people told you how to get the narrative out of normal missions in the books. This for some reason is not good enough for you. Sure, you can always enhance your experience by making your own custom rules and missions, but as it has been demonstrated the official missions work just fine for narrative play.
Please go read the thread before attacking me personally. If you had done that, you'd known I have no problem creating narrative games.
I have a problem with GW selling(!) "narrative rules" which tell you to create the narrative yourself and in no way help you with that.
I have read the thread and I am not attacking you. I repeat: Several people told you how the normal missions in the books work for them as narrative content. But no rule can force you to use your imagination.
On the Narrative 40K subject.
It's interesting because there are so many ways to approach it.
My group does it in several ways. My friend plays Word bearers, he fields Erebus in most of his games and plays him in a way that he doesn't usually die. He runs away before that can happen. My other friend is fixated on trying to kill Erebus. they have this running revelry in that way.
My games I tend to write battle reports for creating an over all narrative of WAAAGH! GorGak invading a system and around events from those games win or not it doesn't matter to the story when the game is over. I've use the same load out for my war boss nearly unchanged for 5 editions. (Makes me wish there were rules for building my own special character that were completely usable across ever format of play. I recall wanting the HWKC and the Suppa Shootas, just because .)
Narrative games could be put together with something as simple as themed terrain on a table and objectives placed in what look like key features on the table and not so much as Ideally placed objectives. Usually we just place them but it we always have one or possible two objectives that we never fail to have bloody fights over ever game there's always one.
We don't tend to handy cap our lists, games with that group of friends, unlike my games with my other friend who I really power down to play with but we like exciting games that aren't one sided and overly stressful. These games are fun for me because they are opportunities to bring the kitchen sink full of units that are "less optimal" creating interesting lists that are fun to play.
We've used to open play cards to set up missions and deployments but we figure out the rest as we go to have crazy games. usually keeping tract of units destroyed and objectives taken at the end as well as table quarters and just what ever else is worth remembering. Our last game his Marines were defending the center flanked on the left and right by my Ork deployments with several of his units in reserve as a relief force. If I remember.
In the end we adjust our play and expectation based on who we are playing with and some of us choose to cheer cool moments that happen during the game as much as we like to have won.
There's a quote I will probably get wrong about Pro-Wrestling.
I's something like, "It's not about the finish it's about the ride"
You don't get on a roller-coaster to get off you get on for the ride. That's how I approach most of my games. A near win/loss or a tie is preferable to a one sided win/loss ever time...not counting those Tournament games that I really commit to, like once a year but even still that's not as fun for me as it used to be.
Heh, which one? There's like 3-4 generations of it, with some having 2-3 editions each. I played the isometric 3D one that came out after Bioware's Icewind Dale, but none of the others.
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I got NWN's 1 and all the related comparable expansions over Steam this time last year! I've played it through 4 or 5 times an keep finding things i had missed the times before.
I'm still looking for a way to expose the false Helmites But I don't think there is a path to actually do that before the end of chapter one.
The game is a little buggy as some point before lvl 40 there is a window of a few lvl's where the game passes out just a little too much XP. I really wish there were more expansions available.
This is what got me to actually play D&D.
greatbigtree wrote: And you’ve actively ignored the core concept of Narrative gaming. It doesn’t need support. It’s two, or more - I’m not judging, consenting players that agree to customize their gaming experience to answer a “what if...” question.
The claim was that WH40k does have native support for narrative gaming. It doesn't. I wish it had more.
Every single mission in the book or in the players’ imaginations can be a narrative play. That’s the beauty of narrative play. It lets your imagination run free. In that sense, it’s like DND.
Absolutely not. D&D provides you with background that you can actually play in, character progressions, customization options and vast array of things help you tell your story. On top of that, actual stories.
I do understand what narrative gaming is and it's actually my preferred way of playing, you don't need to berate me for doing it "wrong". But if you tell me that GW helps you with narrative gaming even one bit, that is simply not true at all.
Both players create a backstory for why they’re at this battle. Maybe you have a planned mission, and do that ahead of time, or maybe you roll it up at the table and decide to wing it.
Either way, your army becomes your “character” for the battle. You decide what they *try* to do, and the dice determine if the unit is successful.
... and then one army gets deleted be the end of turn 2. Great story!
Narrative play is something you can just tack on to any game. You don’t need official rules to run a last stand. Or a breakout scenario, or a Space Hulk battle, or a slowly rising lava battle. You can just do it.
Thanks for telling me what I have written in four previous posts. Except you have also told that all the work for a narrative game has to be done by the players, which is exactly my point.
Man, I really don't know what you're talking about with no support for narrative gaming.
You realize that we're in our second published campaign, right? That's six books [so far this edition] entirely devoted to a story that involves 24 factions, right?
What about linked games in CA 2019 the evolve from Kill Team through 40k and into Apocalypse? What about the fact that since all Blackstone Characters have both Kill Team and 40k rules,so that you can grow from an explorer to a skirmish tactician to a general to a company commander, gathering forces from dozens of different theatres of war on hundreds of planets, taking part in historical conflicts as part of an ongoing story line, as well as building your own characters and worlds.
Every play a Streets of Death Campaign from Urban Conquest? Ever use the battle honours system from CA 2018?
Warhammer 40k has always given us ample tools to create story-based gaming, but this edition, with the synergies between games of different scales, two of which [BSF and KT] are Explicitly campaign based, and the addition of the campaign books... It actually means something to be a veteran now! I mean, if you fought in Vigilus with an army, and added a few new units at some point after the campaign ended, and then all of the sudden,your army is in it again with Psychic Awakening, you know those Vigilus vets are telling all the green recruits down the trenches that we've been here before, and our faith in the Emprah got us through!
We absolutely have been given the tools and ongoing support for narrative gaming- more this edition than ever before. I' sorry you don't see them, but personally, I don't know how you can miss them because narrative is really the only way I play, and I've never run out of material. Maybe you could tell us specifically what you think is missing in terms of support for narrative play and we can make a recommendation or two for you. It's possible that we're talking about two different things.
As for the other part of the topic, D&D, it is also cool; my favourite was 3.5 edition because I thought the skill/ feat system was awesome, though I agree that the "fantasy trope" does favour combat more than, say World of Darkness. That's not so much about the systems as the genres. I really liked Darksun and Eberron; I also thought the Legend of the Five Rings/ Oriental Adventures tie ins were awesome.
Personally, I find Warhammer far more immersive; building an army list requires more thought than building a character- there are just so many more moving parts. Even once the list is built, you're still not done, because you've got painting choices to make.
warhead01 wrote: I really wish there were more expansions available.
This is what got me to actually play D&D.
I'm not sure what comes with the Steam package, but if you've already played Pirates Of The Sword Coast and Darkness Over Daggerford, you could try looking at the highest-rated user-created content here, or check out online persistent worlds (effectively MMORPGs) like Ravenloft and World Of Greyhawk...
warhead01 wrote: I really wish there were more expansions available.
This is what got me to actually play D&D.
I'm not sure what comes with the Steam package, but if you've already played Pirates Of The Sword Coast and Darkness Over Daggerford, you could try looking at the highest-rated user-created content here, or check out online persistent worlds (effectively MMORPGs) like Ravenloft and World Of Greyhawk...
Thank you!
I remember finding that site but I think the steam version has some compatibility issues. I will have to see if those have been resolved.
Daggerford in the end annoyed me as it is very encapsulated to a story so I felt very much on the clock. There was more I wanted to see but then it was over. I did like the world map feature.
I also have the Pirates of the Sword Coast but haven't finished that I build characters that were not compatible to that adventure and just didn't get back to it.
I bought all the available mods on Steam because they went on sale and en the end spent very little.
One thing that I was trying to do with NWN's was to play every character class but I got stuck on wizard, I found them to be very enjoyable. I dug up my old D&D 3.5 book to kinda help me with the feats and spells.
