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I'm just curious: Has anyone every done up a for players by players set of rules for 40k meant to make the game enjoyable instead of keeping people constantly buying new plastic grey crack?

There are tons of independent miniature games compatible with 40k scaled mini's. Some of these games are even best described as "not 40k" (but licenses are licenses). I recommend looking up open Sci fi miniature game rulesets or just indie Sci fi miniature rulesets and your bound to find something "40k like"

 Matt Swain wrote:
I'm just curious: Has anyone every done up a for players by players set of rules for 40k meant to make the game enjoyable instead of keeping people constantly buying new plastic grey crack?

I recommend you go look at the proposed rules forum. People have been posting their own rule sets there since this forum was started.

Off the top of my head you've got the Oldhammer project here on DakkaDakka, the Boltgun Action rules (porting 40K to Bolt Action), One Page Rules's Grimdark Future, I believe there was a 40K port for Beyond the Gates of Antares, and certainly a bunch of groups just mutually pick an edition and play with it.

Add on to that Fandex's a plenty.

So yeah, people have made them. How much they get played is largely up to a group's willingness and tournament focus.

We have 2 current projects to make the "perfect edition" of 40K based around 5th edition core rules as it is considered by most players to be their favorite edition.

Our group uses 15 house rules from editions 3,4, 6, and 7th we put into 5th to make it more fun.

our thread is here

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/789567.page


If you want something a bit more home-made with fan made rules changes in a professional looking document you have Mezmorki's "pro-hammer" topic here-

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/791731.page

I'm working on a more fixed-7e Oldhammer project at https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/790996.page, but it gets updated less since my playgroup is smaller and less organized so I don't get as much testing done.

In my group we did modifiy rules to better suit our tastes but we essentialy kept on 6th edition and changed it rather than create a whole new set of rules

I tried to do that (at the time of the second edition), using my (limited) knowledge of the military doctrine (how the weapons work, what is the purpose and organization of the various kind of troops and how they must be used), in order to create a game that was more balanced, more credible (credible, not realistic) and more coherent with the Warhammer fluff. For example the Eldars should be the ultimate psychic race, with a very advanced psychic based technology, but if you read the rules you find out that the Grey Knights are the real ultimate psychic faction, with a very advanced psychic technology.
Unfortunately no one wanted give me the chance to try my rules (actually they did not even let me explain them), so I dropped the project, but I still think it would be became a very good set of rules.

P.S. I wanted also create the "Men of Iron Army" using the Battletech models, but this is another story.

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
In my group we did modifiy rules to better suit our tastes but we essentialy kept on 6th edition and changed it rather than create a whole new set of rules

Yeah we basically did the same. all the rules we added into 5th were better versions of the rules that existed before or after so we didn't make anything new. our big drive was to get back to the lore/fluff based rules. immersion in the universe is why we play 40K and from 8th ed on it is a completely different game that lacks that feel.

To this end we allow players to use whichever codex they feel best fits their faction within the framework of 5th edition core mechanics and USRs.
for example to best represent dark angels my pick is always the 3.5 mini dex, for chaos the 3.5 dex, for imperial guard the 5th ed dex, the 4th ed dex for nids and tau etc...

In fact i have a game schedules for next weekend against a player that is going to use the white scars index astartes/3rd edition rules.

I have been having loads of fun fighting the 3.5 version of khorne berserkers with my salamanders(5th) and allied grey knights(3rd).

Adding in newer units is pretty easy since 3rd-7th are cross compatible. for example our chaos player wanted to use a helldrake with his 3.5 codex so we use it's base cost from it's original entry and all vehicle upgrades/abilities come at cost from the 3.5 codex. a helldake with parasitic possession is a bit spendy but very worth it.

I am a bit surprised you are using 6th as the base, since it was such a bad edition that even GW killed it after only 14 months(it did have a few good rules here and there).

My experience is that custom rules run into three big issues:
1) Your group's willingness to adapt to it. If you are just two to four players and are all for trying something new, great. If you are more, it quickly becomes complicated, because someone might actually like the way 40k is right now, plays the game in multiple groups, wants to be able to use the newest models, rules or discuss them online. There are plenty of perfectly valid reasons for not running homebrew set.
2) Replacing and gaining new players is difficult. Eventually, in every group people drop out because they move, family, their job or because they lose interest. Finding people who play/want to play the newest version of 40k is much easier than finding people to play some homebrew system.
3) Most people are not as good game designers as they think they are. One guy from our group organized a small campaign with synchronized games after the CA suggestions. His rules meant to incentive using roads made units stand anywhere except on roads, the AL player slingshot his berzerkers into combat by charging and killing his own hostages, the tzeench daemons used a ritual to force enemy gunlines on other tables to move or get blasted (his LoC tarpitted the auto-reanimating warriors in his game just fine) and the planet's governor was "assassinated" by a burna bommer from another game crashing into him.
While it was fun in general, the vast majority of his rules didn't work out at all and some of them archived the exact opposite.

Yeah, I've played with several optional rulesets. Usually what you're able to come up with in a few minutes is less well balanced than what a game design team came up with over the course of a couple years probably, so generally I go in wih reasonable assumptions that the players are going to apply some common sense in list building rather than trying to make every unit 100% balanced against every other unit.

 Matt Swain wrote:
I'm just curious: Has anyone every done up a for players by players set of rules for 40k meant to make the game enjoyable instead of keeping people constantly buying new plastic grey crack?

As others have said there are quite a few oldhammer rulesets, usually centred around 4e or 5e as a starting point.

I've got my own half-built system which I guess could be described as 'simplehammer', 5e era books with an effort to cut down on extra rolls and redundancy, but some players would find it very dry and restrictive. It's the 'make the game enjoyable' part that is tricky as different players enjoy different things, others would want a wider spread of books or traits or rules like overwatch and warlords, etc.

I think 'most' my homebrew body of work was around the 7th ed era, mainly as minute balance patches. This included:

Assorted 'unit balance' patches to make certain units either have 'a' purpose, or to otherwise remove extreme power roulette or make certain options require more 'headthought.' For example, the Riptide's Nova Reactor was modified so that rather than "gain a buff on a 3+, take a wound otherwise", it was "gain a buff on the first turn, a penalty on the subsequent turn." The reason for this was that in many cases, it was statistically 'safer' to risk the Nova Reactor in order to turn a 5++ into a 3++. By making it so the Riptide gains a 3++ on one turn, but loses its 5++ on the subsequent turn, there becomes more of a tradeoff.

Assorted 'core mechanic' tweaks to reduce randomness. Among them:
-Choosing Psychic powers at creation and making powers a 'degrees of success' system rather than a simple pass-fail.
-Reworking 'Stomp' completely.
-Consolidating the rules for Chariots and Open-Topped vehicles together into a 'Battle Platform' system.
-USR cleanup, and rolling up many 'bespoke' rules into the USR system. For example, adding a 'More Dakka'(X) USR which indicates that a unit can fire 'more than one' weapon per turn. Thus, Monstrous Creatures and Centurions have More Dakka(1), while a Tyrannocite or Walkers have More Dakka(!).

Faction Tweaks, whether at the army or the unit level. For Chaos Space Marines, playing a Legion army would turn Plasma into 'Chaos Plasma'. This meant that Plasma Pistols/Rifles/Cannons would fire an additional shot beyond their profile, but that every '1' rolled would count as two '1's rolled, meaning twice as many saves to potentially fail or twice as many Hull Points potentially lost; the tradeoff of course was having the ability to more reliably engage at the 24" rangeband which was something that Chaos generally had difficulty doing throughout that edition.

There were things about tweaking certain Formations to get rid of obvious Deathstar exploits as well, but that's a whole different thing altogether.

 Jidmah wrote:
...3) Most people are not as good game designers as they think they are. One guy from our group organized a small campaign with synchronized games after the CA suggestions. His rules meant to incentive using roads made units stand anywhere except on roads, the AL player slingshot his berzerkers into combat by charging and killing his own hostages, the tzeench daemons used a ritual to force enemy gunlines on other tables to move or get blasted (his LoC tarpitted the auto-reanimating warriors in his game just fine) and the planet's governor was "assassinated" by a burna bommer from another game crashing into him.
While it was fun in general, the vast majority of his rules didn't work out at all and some of them archived the exact opposite.

Chicken/egg. This is a problem that would be solved if people played more homebrew rules since it'd make homebrew rules more tested and homebrewers into better game designers, but it's also a reason people don't want to play homebrew rules. I encourage everyone to iterate; nothing you build is going to work as you expect it to straight out of its first draft.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
...3) Most people are not as good game designers as they think they are. One guy from our group organized a small campaign with synchronized games after the CA suggestions. His rules meant to incentive using roads made units stand anywhere except on roads, the AL player slingshot his berzerkers into combat by charging and killing his own hostages, the tzeench daemons used a ritual to force enemy gunlines on other tables to move or get blasted (his LoC tarpitted the auto-reanimating warriors in his game just fine) and the planet's governor was "assassinated" by a burna bommer from another game crashing into him.
While it was fun in general, the vast majority of his rules didn't work out at all and some of them archived the exact opposite.

Chicken/egg. This is a problem that would be solved if people played more homebrew rules since it'd make homebrew rules more tested and homebrewers into better game designers, but it's also a reason people don't want to play homebrew rules. I encourage everyone to iterate; nothing you build is going to work as you expect it to straight out of its first draft.

That is assuming the person homebrewing rules is open for criticism, which they quite often are not.

I whipped up a set of rules based on Epic Armageddon recently. Haven't had the opportunity to try it out though.

That is assuming the person homebrewing rules is open for criticism, which they quite often are not.

Our group pre-empted that by all sitting around for a couple hours one night after gaming and discussing what rules worked and made the game more fun.

We first settled on the edition that had the least amount of bad core mechanics (5th) and went from there to make it even better. everybody had a say as to why the rules we ended up importing were used vs the ones not used.

so generally I go in wih reasonable assumptions that the players are going to apply some common sense in list building rather than trying to make every unit 100% balanced against every other unit.

The key is understanding what your group wants out of 40K. our rules are for casual play among friends where we roll dice and talk smack to our minis and each other. where the lore restrictions are far more important than pure power levels. if you are a super comp player you can break any edition and any codex no matter who wrote it. sometimes we do that for fun to see how badly you can break things GW wrote. we usually play a game of it with proxies and go "ok that was dumb" and we never do it again.

And some things are so broken we just refuse to use/play against them like the 7th edition blind/re-roll terminator deathstar. if the game isn't fun for both players we see no point in playing.

The best games are always the nail biters where it isn't over till the end of the last turn. often times some of my best games have been losses or ties and i will graciously thank my opponent for kicking my behind in a fun well fought game.

 aphyon wrote:

That is assuming the person homebrewing rules is open for criticism, which they quite often are not.

Our group pre-empted that by all sitting around for a couple hours one night after gaming and discussing what rules worked and made the game more fun.

We first settled on the edition that had the least amount of bad core mechanics (5th) and went from there to make it even better. everybody had a say as to why the rules we ended up importing were used vs the ones not used.

At this point 1) and 2) from my list above apply. If you don't have a small, stable group homebrews rarely, if ever, work. And even if it does, it tends to die when people drop from it or you have new joiners.

Well currently our player base is rather limited due to covid restrictions but we have added some new players just fine. granted that most of them have never played anything prior to 8th edition so the game mechanics between 5th and 8th are so different it is a new experience for them. they come into it without any preconceived understanding of the rule set.

We start them off by telling them that they need to forget everything about 8th/9th edition because this is a completely different game system. it just happens in the same universe.

 aphyon wrote:

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:
In my group we did modifiy rules to better suit our tastes but we essentialy kept on 6th edition and changed it rather than create a whole new set of rules

Yeah we basically did the same. all the rules we added into 5th were better versions of the rules that existed before or after so we didn't make anything new. our big drive was to get back to the lore/fluff based rules. immersion in the universe is why we play 40K and from 8th ed on it is a completely different game that lacks that feel.

To this end we allow players to use whichever codex they feel best fits their faction within the framework of 5th edition core mechanics and USRs.
for example to best represent dark angels my pick is always the 3.5 mini dex, for chaos the 3.5 dex, for imperial guard the 5th ed dex, the 4th ed dex for nids and tau etc...

In fact i have a game schedules for next weekend against a player that is going to use the white scars index astartes/3rd edition rules.

I have been having loads of fun fighting the 3.5 version of khorne berserkers with my salamanders(5th) and allied grey knights(3rd).

Adding in newer units is pretty easy since 3rd-7th are cross compatible. for example our chaos player wanted to use a helldrake with his 3.5 codex so we use it's base cost from it's original entry and all vehicle upgrades/abilities come at cost from the 3.5 codex. a helldake with parasitic possession is a bit spendy but very worth it.

I am a bit surprised you are using 6th as the base, since it was such a bad edition that even GW killed it after only 14 months(it did have a few good rules here and there).

Didn't go that far as to use straight whole codeces, but we do actually sometimes take units from older codices or profilres from other codices if we prefer.
When I played my couple first 40k gam though I only had a 3.5 guard codex to put against a 6th chaos codex and in the end, it ended up fun. Got stomped both times but i don't know wether the codex or rather I was to blame

Picking up older editions and or using a adapted version is basically at this stage pretty much needed considering one of my armies is R&H and GW has done jack all until they squatted over the duration of 8th so...

can only recommend, alot of the older books also have A LOT more charachter to themselves, f.e. CSM 3.5 is from a conceptual work in regards to what CSM should be alot better then ANY dex GW released afterwards for CSM.

As allways, allways cooperate with each other and discuss what you want and what not.

Thanks to aphyon for mentioning ProHammer.

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Just take me to the rules!
ProHammer: Enhanced 5th Edition (Living Rules Link)
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ProHammer is based on 5th edition. I've played a decent number of games over the past month with my small group, all using tabletop simulator. It's gone over well so far, and we're constantly making minor tweaks and adjustments, pulling in other ideas from other editions where it makes sense. The goal is to have any 3rd-7th edition codices work for it without having to make any codex-specific modifications (there are some things like formations that 7th edition added that we don't allow in ProHammer).

All in all, ProHammer strives to keep the gameplay and depth centered on movement, board position, target selection, use of terrain, etc. I.E., all the stuff that makes tactical miniature games the type of games that they are. IMHO, 8th and 9th edition went off the deep end in terms of making the game about list building and combo'ing special abilities with certain stratagems or force traits. All of that pulls away from the focus on the table and makes the game more about managing resources (command points) than it does position and maneuver. We just wanted a more classic feeling game, and thus ProHammer was born.

I think the key to success on homebrew stuff is that your players need to have a casual and calm attitude towards it. If people are coming into a homebrew rule set with a competitive, win at all costs, attitude - they (and you) are going to get frustrated quickly. If players are simply invested in the journey, and not the destination (i.e. winning), you'll have a much better time of it.

Thanks to aphyon for mentioning ProHammer.

You put a lot of work into it, i may not need it but you should get the credit

I think the key to success on homebrew stuff is that your players need to have a casual and calm attitude towards it. If people are coming into a homebrew rule set with a competitive, win at all costs, attitude - they (and you) are going to get frustrated quickly. If players are simply invested in the journey, and not the destination (i.e. winning), you'll have a much better time of it.

That is the most important thing. it goes back to what kind of game you want your 40K to be. winning or loosing is part of the mechanics of the game. however the thing that draws and keeps most people playing is the lore. without the story the minis are just minis, lots of companies do a great job making minis.

It is the silly things the rules make happen in the older lore focused editions that happen because that's what a certain unit/faction would do in that situation in the universe.

We had a game where the khorne beserker squad with kharn in it had the (moveable) game winning objective....but since they were playing under the 3.5 chaos codex rules they blood frenzied (damn those nails!) and ran with the objectives towards the closest enemy unit instead of away from it. sillyness ensued and it was great fun.

 Matt Swain wrote:
I'm just curious: Has anyone every done up a for players by players set of rules for 40k meant to make the game enjoyable instead of keeping people constantly buying new plastic grey crack?

I've been brainstorming a few home brewed rules, and trying to come up with updated vehicle design rules. That's about it.

Are any of these like an ongoing project? Updates to include units from new codexes?

Ours is only for codexes from 3rd-7th so all the units there can be used, anything from 8th+ do not work because the systems are not compatible.