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nosferatu1001 wrote:

incarna wrote:Patronizing does not betray my 100% accuracy

And that is where you are wrong. Proof by contra positive - your statement (unsupported) is false as I have statements that it is false. Your 100% accuracy drops to 0%.

I have supported my statement. You’ve elected not to accept my support as valid – and that’s your right. You’re entitled to your assessment of the game, and I’m entitled to mine – I think that once MOST players spend a little time with the system they’ll either house rule it out of stubborn devotion to all things 40k or discard it in search of a more sound RPG. And FYI, you’ve used the term “contra positive” incorrectly and the term is actually “contrapositive” or “contraposition” so perhaps let’s not get distracted by one another’s spelling and grammatical errors shall we?

nosferatu1001 wrote:

incarna wrote: – and I wasn’t patronizing or insulting until I was FIRST patronized and insulted by people who seem to take my critique of the system as some sort of personal attack.

Not patronising, just incredulity that you are the only person to have such a big problem, and your asinine and, frankly, stupid "examples" didnt help.

So when *I* make a point it’s patronizing but when someone else makes a point it’s “incredulity”. I’m a villain for my critique and you’re the hero for your rebuttal – you should work in politics. As for the examples – anyone with some Dark Heresy experience can tell that my examples were not far from the mark and would find humor in their validity.

nosferatu1001 wrote:

incarna wrote:I hold fast to my belief that you’re either not playing in accordance with the rules or are using house rules to modify the statistical chances.

You believe that. You're wrong, as has already been pointed out. But you have faith, and we all know that never listens.

It’s not faith – it’s a rational understanding of statistics coupled with a thorough understanding of the Dark Heresy rules set. My opinion isn’t invalid merely because you say it is. You haven’t managed to supply a valid counter, you’ve merely decided it was countered and presumably made the assumption that I’d accept something that never happened as having happened.

nosferatu1001 wrote:

incarna wrote:Your claim that your GM play tested and wrote part of the rules set is also meaningless.

It is as meaniingful as your belief. Sorry, your unsupported statement has no more weight than mine. thanks for proving your fallacy for me!

No, it’s meaningless to any argument in an anonymous forum. It may be meaningful to you but doesn’t support your argument to anyone else. “I wrote the rules for Warhammer 40k” doesn’t mean anything – maybe I DID write the rules for 40k, maybe I didn’t – one way or another only *I* know for a fact whether I wrote the rules for 40k or not so adding that tidbit to a discussion about 40k balance doesn’t support my position. As for my “fallacy” – you ought to understand by now that discussions in an internet forum are not legal arguments, they’re essentially value debates. The statement of my opinion is merely another way of saying “Unless you can provide some sort of valid argument to the contrary, I’m not willing to accept what you say as fact.” It’s a polite way of saying “we’re at an impasse in this avenue of this discussion so it may be more productive to focus it in other areas.” Or I coulda just said “I think you’re full of crap and, if you’re buddy wrote ANYTHING he probably wrote the stats of Nurglings and you’re using his miniscule contribution to the game to inflate your own position.” – but like I said, I was trying to be civil.

nosferatu1001 wrote:

incarna wrote:I don’t know that to be true, nor do I know what portion of the rules he wrote, nor do I think a gaming company that can have such profound oversights in game balance in both Descent expansions and campaigns to be above publishing horribly flawed rules.

It was to prove your claim that you know the rules better than anyone to be false. Again. You're not doing well here, are you?

But I am doing pretty well – I’ve presented a fairly strong argument and neither of can prove or disprove one another’s position. We’re both movie critics with opposing opinions and you’ve resorted to attacking me as opposed to my argument. That tends to be the death knell for the defeated – but if you’d care to change your tune, you’re more than welcome to. As for your “proof” – you must not understand what proof is – proof is concrete, observable criteria. “My cousin’s friend’s sister’s husband wrote the rules for Dark Heresy’s character generation system” doesn’t prove anything. It’s just an unsubstantiated claim that neither adds nor detracts from the discussion.

nosferatu1001 wrote:

incarna wrote:As was pointed out, very easy task of someone with AVERAGE human stats (say 35) = 65% chance of success. You can’t argue with math that but I don’t expect to influence you. You’re rose colored glasses are clearly firmly in place.

"your", not "you're". Not rose tinted at all, ncie of you to continue patronising.

What can I say – I type pretty fast but, as I said in the first paragraph, let’s not get bogged down with distractions. There’s another death knell of the defeated – spelling and grammar attacks… and when I say “defeated” I mean someone who knows he’s losing the value debate because, as I’ve already stated, neither of us can prove or disprove our position beyond a reasonable doubt. It’s up to the readers of this thread to make their own judgment after reading it and perhaps playing the game. And as long as I’m being attacked, I will continue to enjoy patronizing you until you decide to behave like a big boy.

Oh my, this is getting ugly.

I think it's time to drop some prestige and face it: There are many ways to play RPGs, and some of the storyteller traditions does not resemble heroic dungeonbashing at all. Any attempt by players of one sort to convert players of the other sort is bound to be very difficult. It is mostly a flaw of our language developing too slowly that these very different forms of hobby are still covered by a single term.

I manage to both GM and enjoy epic campaigns of incompetent nobodies climbing up through the ranks and the power levels to do wonderful things for the benefit of the people who twist the teachings of the corpse that sits on the golden throne. I think the setting and the rules are very well adapted to create fishtanky and/or sandboxy adventures/campaigns. The printed adventures continue to amaze me as to what the writers come up with, compared to the railroded, shallow, unimaginative, presumtious, black-and-white DnD-like drivel that was around the last time I tried to GM pre-written RPG adventures. Admittedly, that was 10 years ago. I do believe that the general standard has increased since then. For example: The two days that can be spent intruiging, researching and plotting before the auction in the House of Dust and Ash adventure (from the Disciples book) is filled with excellent and dynamic plot hooks, reactive NPCs, a pressing feeling and plenty of flexibility. It was pure joy to read and apply it with my players.

I find the rules system is not getting in the way enough to be bothered to adapt another. A few houserules and a bit of "what the heck, that seems cool, so of course it works" suffices for my groups. Combine with a feeling from GM and players alike that the story is more important than the success or failure of individual characers, that is quite enough to bring the story forward despite the lacking rules.

One very important thing that makes the 40k universe so much more suited for epicness is the contrast of coolness. An ork warboss is made a thousand times more awesome by the addition of a snotling with a rotten fruit on a stick placed beside him. Marneus Calgar is awesome because most of the people in the Imperium are serfs opressed by a fascist religious state. When playing DH I really get a chance to illustrate that discrepancy. The lowlife scums that started the campaign can come back to their home turf five years later carrying the spoils of a glorious crusade in the name of the emperor. That is a situation wich really gives persepctive to awesomeness, and as such makes it all that more sweet.

I play Dark Heresy, both as a PC and as a GM, and I always have fun. The rules are okay, but they are far from the best things I've ever read or played. The books are absolutely gorgeous, though, and full of great stuff from cover to cover, so it's easy to forgive the rules for being less than perfect. It's usually either really hard or really easy to do anything depending on modifiers, and this can really screw things up if your character absolutely has to succeed, or if (as the GM) you really want to make it hard for the PCs.

Three things mitigate this 'life sucks for the PCs' syndrome. The first are Fate points, that allow characters to re-roll dice - I suggest giving PCs extra fate points early on. The second is combat - you roll so many dice one bad roll is rarely decisive (unless you've failed to parry an Ork nob's choppa, as my assassin discovered. Ouch!). The third is players who don't mind failing, all the time, and generally being losers. My group certainly falls into this category, and we usually use the game as an excuse to goof off. I've also dicovered that characters stop being totally helpless around Level 5, so maybe give everyone 2000 XP to start the game is a good solution?

Also, I don't think the rules are complicated at all. If anything, they're overly simple. Granted, this comes from a guy who likes GURPS and Exalted, so my viewpoint might be skewed. I'd rather play a tighter game, but Dark Heresy is great for getting people who like 40k but know nothing about roleplaying games into the hobby, which is always a good thing.

im selling a copy of dark heresy if anyone wants it great condition
and a purge the unclean Thats almost brand new

25$ for bolth

Grotzooka wrote:H.B.M.C., I think Mellon is coming at the "No more Imperium" from a fluffy angle, as in "facist evil governments of doom are bad" and not "let's get rid of the main point of the story".

So he's making a tautological statement. Ok. Great. Evil government is evil. Gotcha. Understood. Has no real bearing on whether Dark Heresy is or isn't a good game.

incarna wrote:Dark heresy CAN work if the GM is extremely liberal with XP and house rules...

And this is where I cannot agree. I don't think it requires the GM to be 'extremely liberal'. I'm following the rules quite closely, using the tables and modifiers as they are meant to be used (and doing my best to keep the 'crunchy' side of things out of the players' mind) and it's working just find. The flaws in DH are clear, specifically its over-reliance on tables and modifiers, but to claim that the game doesn't work - that's wrong.

H.B.M.C. wrote:
So he's making a tautological statement. Ok. Great. Evil government is evil. Gotcha. Understood. Has no real bearing on whether Dark Heresy is or isn't a good game.

I'll try to be more clear. First of all, from a meta perspective (in a completely different sense than usually on this boards, meta as in the blocks of whitch to build a story) the Imperium is indeed what makes the 40k setting a very good place to make stories in. I do no want to remove the Imperium from the fluff, because I don't want the much more humane world that would be the inevitable result :-)

That "Evil government is evil" has imnsho a lot of bearing on whether Dark Heresy is or isn't a good game. It is in fact the very foundation for making this my second favourite RPG ever. Because that is what makes the main characters anti-heroes from the start. No matter if you play DH, RT or the coming Deathwatch, your characters are still supporting the opressive fascist government. And the best part, the characters are so much a part of that system that they don't really notice the nastyness of it all and think they are doing something good.

All good stories are based on conflicts, and the 40k setting allows for some really multifaceted conflicts where a lot of sides can be considered equally "good" or "right" in the situation. I do believe this makes for better stories where the characters, and thus the players, can have a greater impact on how the story develops. The characters can choose sides without being constrained by the rather oversimplified fantasy staple concepts of good and evil.

In contrast I do understand the comfort and feeling of security that a traditional black and white fantasy world gives to players. It can be very relaxing to imagine a world where the bad guys always wear skulls and spikes/black stetson hats/goatees/are chinese/have german names/is an ork/has minions/sacrifices kids/etc. It makes things simple because you can feel good after you have killed a sentient feeling being that was obviously marked as belonging to team EVIL. This is especially easy if you did this while wearing the team-good-colours on your clothes and using game mechanics with the name "light" in them. I'm ranting, but I think you understand what I mean. Oversimplified conflicts make shallow stories.

DH and the 40k setting thrives on shades of grey. (It might be the very darkest 20% of the greyscale) That makes it easy to give power over the story to the characters, and thereby to the players. And it also makes any truly good and altruistic acts really shine by contrast.

HBMC - whcih was my point about Incarna. They have made an entirely unspported statement that you cannot play the RP and enjoy it unless you houserule and give away XP like no tomorrow - except our group managed perfectly fine.

Incarna - your statement it is impossible to play without fun if you follow the rules "is" proven wrong if jsut one group manages it. Our group did so, thus proving you are incorrect - whether you accept that proof or not is up to you (hence my belief claim - you believe you are correct, and wont accept anything to the contrary), however it should probably show you the low value of your claims. You can claim it is DIFFICULT to play, and requires a good GM, and that would be valid - but then that would imply you werent one yourself, and your ego seems to not let that happen. Your statement that neither one can prove or disprove is false - you just have to come to our group and see for yourself that your statement is false.

I'm not saying it is an easy system, and having a reliance on tables does, until your group is familiar, slow things down - however this does not mean it is a *bad* system.

Its an awesome system. Easy to pull offtrack (having never GMed anything else I don't know if this is the norm) but the rules and the playstyle allow battles to swing around easily and the ones doing the most damage to end up on the floor out cold simply from friendly fire.

All systems can be pulled off track, we managed to destroy a months worth of sessions in 5 minutes once, as we killed the "wrong" guy, mainly for fun.

Plus one fighting fantasy group has a reputation for always, somehow, managing to set towns on fire. Normally it isnt even meant!

You sound like fun to play with. Luckily, ours was offtracked first session so I now have to adapt as I go . Thinking of throwing the mafia at them.

Our group is good fun, I'm a tech priest on the warrior priest alt track, so i have a plasma pistol mechadendrite, a cortex implant and a medical rig Oh, and im slightly insane. Oh, and I'm the groups only doctor

I also have an unhealthy obsession with guns, the bigger the better. The group has learnt to hide their firearms from me, in case they come back shiny and suspicously well lubricated....