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 fallinq wrote:
Well in that case you're out of luck, unless your local library has a copy. Books typically cost money, and scholarly works are less frequently pirated online than important stuff like 40k Rulebooks.

I'm genuinely mad about this. This is the first time I want to pirate a textbookish book, and I can't find it :/

I'll read it, though! ....somehow.

 urbanknight4 wrote:

 fallinq wrote:
Well in that case you're out of luck, unless your local library has a copy. Books typically cost money, and scholarly works are less frequently pirated online than important stuff like 40k Rulebooks.

I'm genuinely mad about this. This is the first time I want to pirate a textbookish book, and I can't find it :/

I'll read it, though! ....somehow.

If there is an university near to you it might be worth it to check their library.

 Resin Glazed Guardsman wrote:
One word, RELIGION.



Also ever see that episode of futurama that shows the bureaucracy of the year 3000 and how ridiculous it was? I imagine 40k being something like that but 1000x larger and more confusing. You need to get your sign off signed off by the hundreds of bureaucrats ahead of you for the simplest of things.

That picture is so false, it's painful. The fact of the matter is that the only time in which techology actually stagnated was the first couple centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire. From about 800 AD onwards, technology was advancing at pretty much the same rate as before, if not faster due to the Muslim Empire's emphasis on scientific developments, as well as the Church maintaining extensive records regarding arts and sciences.

If I knew one dumb graph on the internet would have derailed this thing sideways.... I would have posted it anyway!

All kidding aside yet another case of don't believe everything you see on the internet!

.... that's why I said this was neither the time or place to have that discussion.

Great input. Anyways... back to the Imperium. Do you guys think (or have any ideas yourself) that anyone will try to improve the bureaucracy?

Well the fluff says the numbers that make up the bureaucracy exceed the Guardsmen iirc. So good luck. If done peacefully and orderly going through that many employees would take generations and would require a whole new bureaucratic branch to oversee it and chances are they'll forget the spirit if not the letter of their job becoming yet another part of the gov't acting suspicious and persecuting it's own. Or the less peaceful way might cause so much blood spilled a rift to the Warp might spawn with Khorne Daemons coming out to join in the fun.

The Inquisition does occasionally purge the least-efficient of the Administratum's ranks.

 Psienesis wrote:
The Inquisition does occasionally purge the least-efficient of the Administratum's ranks.

"August 05, 41,987,

Today work was slow. Only a few hundred requests got done, and my boss shouted at us for not praising the Emperor enough.
The Inquisition dropped by. Took out Joe and Dave from Accounting with a shot from their Bolters. Less messier than last week, at least.
I always did tell them to work harder and sign their papers "The Emperor Protects"."

-Taken from the journal of Billy Bob Solanum, accountant at Ultramar

Basically.

For that matter, somewhere there's an Administratum Divisio responsible for handling the Inquisition's paperwork.

I have a mental image of an expense claim along the lines of:

30-50.999.M41:
~ 1 x Tempestus Scion Battalion; travel & subsistence for 1 day.
~ 1 x Ecclesiarchal Deacon; same
~ Use of Primus Cathedral; same
~ Sundries for Mass Blessing; 1000 people
~ Sundries for Mass Execution; same
~ Sundries for Mass Burial; same
~ 1 x Spicy Grox Steak Baguette & Recaff Meal Deal



My understanding of Burst Weapons is that they are the same 'physics' as pulse weapons, just with more barrels and a higher rate of fire - so both the physical component and the high-density power pack would be needed.

Yes, you can recharge a pulse rifle's power pack. But a lasrifle's power cell has the charging tech built in - the pulse rifle just has a socket to connect it to a reactor or city power supply grid. Which is fine if you have one. I get the impression that the Lasrifle came about because someone asked an STC system for a weapon for a frontier world - low maintenance and no supporting infrastructure required. If you're on a desolate, hostile world, or a derelict ruined city, and you've no idea where you are, the enemy is, and your support is, you have no supplies, and you have next to no technical skill, but you desperately need your gun to work, then the lasgun is the weapon you want. And since that pretty much describes the normal state of the Imperial Guard Infantryman....

Where did the 50 rounds value come from, by the way? In FFG roleplay games and I think the FPS Fire Warrior, pulse rifles are 36 round clips. Is this something they've redone in the new codex?

Remember that the Tau FW in FFG's Deathwatch is designed to be a cannon-fodder target against a pack of 5 Marines. The enemies in that RPG are, in the main, designed to die in droves.

The 50 shots comes from IA3 The Taros Campaing. It says it in the description of the FW's gear. I'll see if I can find the exact quote.

From page 80 of IA3 first edition.

...Power if provided by a powercell, which must be replaced after 50 shots. Tau powercells are standard fit for all weapons...

Remember that the Tau FW in FFG's Deathwatch is designed to be a cannon-fodder target against a pack of 5 Marines. The enemies in that RPG are, in the main, designed to die in droves.

Not in Rogue Trader, they aren't. Fire warriors feature in the Twilight Crusade campaign - and can even be Player Characters - and enemies with pulse weapons are something you run the **** away from.

Fair enough on the Taros comment - that has to be about the only Imperial Armour book I've not read.

locarno24 wrote:

Remember that the Tau FW in FFG's Deathwatch is designed to be a cannon-fodder target against a pack of 5 Marines. The enemies in that RPG are, in the main, designed to die in droves.

Not in Rogue Trader, they aren't. Fire warriors feature in the Twilight Crusade campaign - and can even be Player Characters - and enemies with pulse weapons are something you run the **** away from.

Fair enough on the Taros comment - that has to be about the only Imperial Armour book I've not read.

Rogue Trader =/= Deathwatch,

Because it makes it more grimdark for everything to take longer.

Rogue Trader is kinda fringe, worse than video games, isn't it? And I'm pretty sure it isn't updated as often as the actual codexes and stuff.

The RPG Rogue Trader is published by Fantasy Flight Games, not by GW.

It has several updates to it, it's just not quite as popular as the bolter-porn that is Deathwatch, or the "original" game in the product line, Dark Heresy.

Which do you like better? I'm looking for a DM to run a game with in the future with Rogue Trader

Dark Heresy (with a few balance tweaks here and there) is my favorite of the series. DW bores me (Marines are great as background combat-monsters, they otherwise are nearly personality-less).

RT gets fun with the piracy and competition with other RTs angle. Especially if the PCs are accused (falsely or otherwise) and are on the run from Imperial officials.

Right now, though, I am involved in way too many games to take on another. I'm in 4 games IRL and 5 on-line RPGs. Plus 3 MMOs.

 Psienesis wrote:
Dark Heresy (with a few balance tweaks here and there) is my favorite of the series. DW bores me (Marines are great as background combat-monsters, they otherwise are nearly personality-less).

RT gets fun with the piracy and competition with other RTs angle. Especially if the PCs are accused (falsely or otherwise) and are on the run from Imperial officials.

Right now, though, I am involved in way too many games to take on another. I'm in 4 games IRL and 5 on-line RPGs. Plus 3 MMOs.

9 games plus 3 MMOs? Jesus, man... just 2 games would drain me lol.

I do software testing as a job, so I have lots of down-time on deployments, where I'm waiting for coders to re-code the crap they broke the first time before testing it again... so play-by-post games and low-key MMOs are the way to go.

The Fire Warrior game gave Pulse Rifles 32 shots in the power cell, rather than 36. Interestingly, it never had Kais reload the magazine (which is the circular bit), only the power cell (the rod in the stock).

Then again, it also gave him a Pathfinder pulse carbine (complete with nonfunctioning markerlight) instead of a regular one, so...

How do you find the FFG RPGs working on play by post, Psi? I've tried it and it always seems too clunky and slow.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
The Fire Warrior game gave Pulse Rifles 32 shots in the power cell, rather than 36. Interestingly, it never had Kais reload the magazine (which is the circular bit), only the power cell (the rod in the stock).

Then again, it also gave him a Pathfinder pulse carbine (complete with nonfunctioning markerlight) instead of a regular one, so...

How do you find the FFG RPGs working on play by post, Psi? I've tried it and it always seems too clunky and slow.

When I was running a forum, a bunch of people asked me tl include a segment for play by post DnD. It's slow, but it can be automated with clear rules and organized by a good DM.I might do it if I make another forum since roll20 isn't convenient for everyone.

DnD works OK, I've done that for a long time, but from what I remember there's a lot more back-and-forth rolling between the GM and the players in Dark Heresy, etc.

Also, if you want to do Play by Post, there's a wonderful website called www.rpol.net that is specially built for it, including private 'game' forums with integrated character and diceroller support.

Thanks, man. Im gonna see where i can get some players and then we'll go off into the stars to commit all sort of heresy.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
The Fire Warrior game gave Pulse Rifles 32 shots in the power cell, rather than 36. Interestingly, it never had Kais reload the magazine (which is the circular bit), only the power cell (the rod in the stock).

Then again, it also gave him a Pathfinder pulse carbine (complete with nonfunctioning markerlight) instead of a regular one, so...

How do you find the FFG RPGs working on play by post, Psi? I've tried it and it always seems too clunky and slow.

Pretty darn well actually, though I should add the caveat that the DH "forum RPG" I am involved in is attached to a table-top game, too. The forums are used for player-characters to go off and do things "on the side", like pursue their personal goals or participate in conversations with NPCs that might (in the game world) last an hour or two, but would be wasting time around the table as only 1 PC and the GM are involved in it. It's also used for some side-quests while the rest of the party is doing down-time activities or is otherwise not involved. It has been invaluable for world-building and the like, because given a few hours and a forum, I can write a lot about various places, people and factions in the game-world, whereas I couldn't necessarily lay that all right out on the table at the actual game.

That said, with the right group and the right forums with the right tools, I see no reason why a DH game could not be run via forums. Given the investigation nature of DH, over a series of massive battles and the like, as in DW or space-borne combat of RT, it's much easier to set scene and tone in text than by speech. You can also take more time coming up with suitable lines for NPCs and such, to make it sound much more dramatic and epic, than you can off-the-cuff at the table.