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I herd that they are doing a d20 system for 40k next year can anyone add turth to this or is it just wishful thinking.

There is definately a 40K rpg coming out next year, but I don't think it's d20. But I don't know that for sure.

You might be thiinking of Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay.

I'm not aware of the details, but just note that roleplay does not necessarily
mean d20. The d20 open game license is a generic ruleset FOR roleplaying
games, but that does not automatically mean that Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay
will be using the d20 license.

License=money to someone else+GW/insanity+'is there really a demand for this?'=a half-baked knock-off of WHFRP.

Wait, wasn't Inquisitor the knock-off of WHFRP?

Regardless, the likelihood of 40kRPG being D20 is less than zero.

Inquisitor was an original and quirky system all its own. Totally unrelated to WHFRP. It was also a good excuse to paint and play with lovely 54mm models.

hey, the green ronin guys do good stuff, if anything, the 40K RPG will be a heckuva read

I'm pretty sure it's based on the Warhammer fantasy RPG which is a real shame. WHF RPG is one of those 'realistic' systems where you start out as an oppressed peasant armed with a stick and where combat is realistic to the point that after 2 or 3 fights you're a hopeless cripple and your preist can't heal you cause he's still an acolyte learning how to use a candle snuffer.

I hear it's a good ststem but to me it sounds like a chance to live a fantasy life EVEN MORE MISERABLE THAN REAL LIFE!

Now try that in a science ficiton game where the standard weapon is a .75 cannon that fires explosive rounds and you'll get a game where the only rational course of action is to play a navigator on a spice freighter or a moister farmer.

Im very interested to see where they go with this.  A friend of mine and I came up with our own system for playing a 40K RPG a couple years ago and just about have all the kinks worked out.  It is a combination of all the games we have played (and there have been a LOT). 

Basically the game we came up with was a way to directly convert your character from your codex.  We turned the 1-10 stats of the tabletop game into 1-100 stats the directly relate to the stats of the table top.  Meaning a 4 weapon skill in table top translated into a 40 which could go from 40-49 before reaching 50 (or 5).  Its a percentile dice game aswell where everything in the whole game works off of 2 D10.  Damage is directly related to the skill of the attacker, if your shooting someone with a bolter and your score 75% damage you do that percent of the weapons maximum damage (40 because its STR 4) which would be 30.  You have to be a little adept with math (or a calculator) but it does not bog the gameplay down and we have really enjoyed it

Posted By Kid_Kyoto on 12/16/2006 9:17 PM
I'm pretty sure it's based on the Warhammer fantasy RPG which is a real shame. WHF RPG is one of those 'realistic' systems where you start out as an oppressed peasant armed with a stick and where combat is realistic to the point that after 2 or 3 fights you're a hopeless cripple and your preist can't heal you cause he's still an acolyte learning how to use a candle snuffer.

I hear it's a good ststem but to me it sounds like a chance to live a fantasy life EVEN MORE MISERABLE THAN REAL LIFE!

Now try that in a science ficiton game where the standard weapon is a .75 cannon that fires explosive rounds and you'll get a game where the only rational course of action is to play a navigator on a spice freighter or a moister farmer.

I last played WHFRP about 15 years ago, and didn't think it was all that bad back then.  Has it gone through a significant change?

I do remember there being some career tracts that were lame... I think one started as Rat Catcher or something.

If there is a 40K RPG, its too bad it doesn't stick to a d6 game like GURPS.  

-Jmz

Well a "Rat Catcher" mean you go down in the sewers and fight Skaven. So it not that much of a 'weak' class since rats are almost always faster, meaner, and can though lighting bolts at you.

I don't see the problem if beginning characters can't do much since its a simple fix to just start everyone at level 5 or something.

WHFRP had a ton of different careers; when generating your character you rolled two or three of them at random and picked one. Each gave your starting equipment and money, and a set of skills and stat increases you could buy once you had enough experience. Once you were tired of a given career, you could switch over to another or to an advanced career (if you met the prerequisites and could access any appropriate training).

The experience system was SLOW. A lot of the careers were very evocative and realistic medieval jobs, like Ratcatcher, Toll Collecter, Student, Bawd (etc.), but as you can see, many of them weren’t exactly heroic. A Ratcatcher was a genuine rat catcher, not a Skaven-Fighter. I think a terrier was included in your starting equipment. The mage-type characters started out as apprentices, who really did suck, and advancement was long and slow for them too.

The combat system was LETHAL. You could sustain a fairly small amount of damage, and any given hit might score a critical hit, which was rolled on a chart and could include all sorts of nasty permanent disabling or disfiguring injuries, or even instant death. You started with a small and finite number of Fate points which could be used for various purposes, but it always seemed to me that they were too valuable to spend on anything but saving your character from the results of the damn critical chart.

The way they fleshed out the setting was incredibly evocative, and some of the scenarios and adventures published (this was the late 80s) were seen as among the best-written RPG supplements ever. As I understand it, you really needed to play it as a mystery and roleplaying-centered game, and minimize the combat.

I haven't read the new edition of the game, so I'm not sure what (if any) improvements they've made.

Off topic, but are you sure your .sig is big enough vult?

Big enough for me to ask him to trim it down.

Posted By Mannahnin on 12/16/2006 8:05 PM
Inquisitor was an original and quirky system all its own. Totally unrelated to WHFRP. It was also a good excuse to paint and play with lovely 54mm models.

I'm running a RPG base on Inquisitor.....the 40K Universe is so big it's so so easy to write for.

as long as they don't give Eldar -str or -con 'cause they're elves and we gotta balance', it should be decent. 40k is inherently imbalanced, which is what makes it cool.

But isn't Inquisitor their RPG system already? It'd seem odd to license something that competes with previous product

IF the new 40k RPG is like Inquisitor, it has lots of potental......I LOVED Inquisitor....It was a goo dgame.

But if its like WHFRPG.....I dont know if its going to be worth it.

I actually preferred the "realistic" systems a lot more than the "OMG LETS MAEK EVREE1 A HERO!" systems. The Cthulhu game was fun. Mess with supernatural creatures, get your soul sent to a pocket space in a corner or something. Doesn't really matter since I tried playing a few table RPGs but quit 'em all and found other things to do. Like play video games with my buddies where we can have social interaction like "Halo's Master Chief is totally awesome" and talk about real issues like the fact that Kirby is unbalanced in Super Smash Brothers (I think?).

Then again,this is my ideal D&D game so take it as you will.

We played a D&D campaign back in 3rd ed. based on the Warhammer universe. It worked pretty well. Hijinks indeed.

40k rpg? I so don't want to hear about your character...

I wonder if this is an offshoot of the "hyper-detailed" 40K rules we were promised. Instead of being free in White Dwarf, I wonder if GW decided to develop it further and lauch it as a RPG.

Whatever happens, any "hyper-detailed Advanced 40k" ruleset is most definitely going to be offered "free", not by the current management at least.

There's actually going to be three 40k RPGs, using roughly the same core rule-set (although annoyinglythey're not going to release one book of cure rules and then setting add-ons like new World of Darkness - you'll be getting the same core rules set with each book. *Sigh*). Rules are supposed to be a tweaked version of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay - tweaking in the direction of removing a lot of the character crippling, I hope, and obviously updating for 40k.

The three systems are going to be -
1. Dark Heresy
2. Rogue Trader
3. Deathwatch

Anyone worried about nerfed characters ought to opt for the latter of the three I feel Apparently each game will have a very different feel (obvious, but there you go) - Dark Heresy is essentially going to be Inquisitor, the RPG, Rogue Trader will be somewhat like series one of Star Trek, and Deathwatch will be a little like an action movie in terms of death defying antics.

Posted By Kikkoman on 12/17/2006 11:21 AM
But isn't Inquisitor their RPG system already? It'd seem odd to license something that competes with previous product

Inquisitor wasn't really an RPG, it was a story-based miniature skirmish game. It didn't really work well for more than three players; one GM and an Inquisitor hunting down another Inquisitor or chasing a daemon or whatever. A cool concept, but not especially fun, especially since people who have just built a bunch of scenery and minis that are incompatible with every game out there aren't usually interested in having to dream up a story on top of it. And since GW doesn't sell Inquisitor books anymore, there's no competition to speak of.

The big difference here is that the RPG doesn't involve minis, so it's probably targeting a differing audience. I'm guessing that said audience is the thousands of former 40k players who sold their armies on eBay sometime after the release of the third editions of 40k and D&D—we all know which third edition actually made customers happy.

Perhaps the problem with Inquisitor (and I say this without having actually played the
game) was its lack of any kind of progression for characters merged with a minute combat
system that required large scale structures for things to be interesting at all.

In other words, it was too weird in too many ways to be successful.

The minis are nice, though.

This is funny, actually. 3rd edition D&D made miniatures central to the game. It also had gamers revolting over the massive changes to the system. Then said changes turned out to largly be improvements and the game was much strengthened and much expanded its fanbase.

2nd edition 40k was a terribly random and unbalanced game, and 3rd ed fixed most of the issues with it. It also reduced points costs to allow players to use larger numbers of figures in play, which they were already doing. Almost everyone played 2k-3k points games in 2nd, because 1500 got you maybe 20 models. The international tournament and league scenes also exploded after 3rd came out, not coincidentally, given that the game was more balanced and supported structured play better.

Agreed.  Second ed was a cool universe with a miniatures game attached to it which was a travesty.  Games took hours too long and eldar and space wolves were unbeatable.  The models and art were horrible.

On the original topic, I like deadly roleplaying systems.  When I run games, my theory is "don't get into a fight if you don't want it."  When I used to run Rifts, you you got into a gunfight and expected to have volleys of 4 mini-missiles shot at you!  It keeps players on the edge of their seats.

I hope 40k is harsh and mean.  The universe is harsh and unforgiving.  If your inquisitional acolyte is dumb enough to get shot with a plasma pistol in the face, then he deserves to be dead.  When humanity numbers untold billions, he will not be missed.

This is funny, actually. 3rd edition D&D made miniatures central to the game.

Sorry, my original wording was poor. I meant to say that the miniatures hobby won't be the focus of the 40k RPG, as opposed to the tabletop game, where GW seems to emphasize the greater hobby concept over simply playing the game.

2nd edition 40k was a terribly random and unbalanced game, and 3rd ed fixed most of the issues with it.

3rd edition was also where GW started dumbing things down, became less responsive to customers, and shifted from selling big armies to older players to making the game into a hobby for kids. I'll concede that 2nd edition was terribly broken, but I recall GW gaming being a lot more fun back then. Of course, I should lay the blame on the business people who deserve it and not the rule desingers.

I hope 40k is harsh and mean.
It should be, but that probably won't do much for sales. I remember reading once that the 3rd edition D&D designers looked back on 1st edition and calculated the survival rate of low-level characters and found it to be, well, realistic given the setting. So they tried to make 3rd edition very forgiving and survivable, and believe that this is one of the reasons that it has been so popular.

Posted By supabeast on 12/20/2006 10:21 PM

2nd edition 40k was a terribly random and unbalanced game, and 3rd ed fixed most of the issues with it.

3rd edition was also where GW started dumbing things down, became less responsive to customers, and shifted from selling big armies to older players to making the game into a hobby for kids. I'll concede that 2nd edition was terribly broken, but I recall GW gaming being a lot more fun back then. Of course, I should lay the blame on the business people who deserve it and not the rule desingers.

was 2nd ed really more adult oriented than 3rd? I don't think complexity of rules really matters, kids can learn quickly anything thats interesting to them. Chess probably has more devout adult players than children, and it's a simple game.


so, any random guessing on what d20-esque stats everyone will have?

let's see...
space marines: str+10 dex+4 con+10 int+2 wis+4 cha+2
Eldar dex+8 int+8 wis+8 cha+8
Ork str+6 con+10 int-2 Cha+18

Though instead of obscenely weak humans (appropriate) we are more likely to get wussy 'balanced stats' where everybody not human has a -2 for every +2

Not sure how they'll handle it in the 40KRP game, but in d20 there's the option of "ECL" (I think it's called) wherein a particularly powerful race is considered to be of a higher level than they actually are. So, a 1st level Space Marine might be balanced by the fact that the other PCs in the party are all 6th level normal humans. The Space Marine has an ECL of +5 (for example).

As far as Space Marines go, I wouldn't necessarily think their intellectual faculties are any better than normal humans. Some (Blood Angels, Chaos) might even be worse. Their Str, Dex, Con, though... Those would be very high.

I just hope they let us play a Dreadnaught.

In my opinion, space marines should not be given a level adjustment to balance them with other characters. They should be a campaign unto themselves. Either everyone is a space marine or nobody is, because space marines are epic. They should be like gods to the normal people of the galaxy. Not only are space marines enhanced and given the best gear, they were the best warrior from their world before the change and have fought in countless battles over centuries since. In D&D terms, they should be epic level- 20th level minimum, with a major template to account for their stats and all of the special things their SM organs do, as well as having power armor and bolters as minimum gear. You could do scouts and have them slightly less powerful, but they're still really tough. An RPG should be like the fluff, one unit of space marines can take on an army of anthing else and win.

Space Marines would almost have to be NPC's really. Most don't wander around in groups of 2 or 3 getting into adventures, excluding Deathwatch or Grey Knights perhaps*. I agree with TCC that if it is allowed it would have be all Marines basically.

OTOH I could see playing a Fallen Angel trying to find redemption. The other characters stumble upon him hiding in the backwater of a planet while running from something nasty and he gets involved. Trying to play the hero all the while trying to avoid his true past being discovered or something along those lines.


*Those two groups though seem way to veteran to be PC's.