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So me and a few friends in my play group are interested in getting involved in a Warhammer 40k RPG. I've looked into it and I have found there are a few options, Deathwatch, Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader, and some Chaos one. My question is, which one(s) is/are the most user friendly, easiest to start up, and fun? What are the key differences? It seems one you play as a space marine, one as inquisition, one as a rogue trader, and finally as a legion traitor, is that right?

Anyways, I am sure I will have more questions once I get a few responses but the gist of this thread is to get a feel for what RPG book would be the best for us.

Well there are a lot of variables! How patient your group is, how alright with losing their characters they are, how much they want to really have to think in terms of investigating and what not, or if they would rather be able to focus more on the fighting.

If they'd prefer to focus on investigation, then I'd recommend Dark Heresy.

If they prefer violence, Deathwatch.

If they'd prefer an open ended adventure, Rogue Trader.

Thats really the best I can do, I only have experience in Deathwatch and now very limited experience in Dark Heresy. Wait for H.B.M.C. to comment here, he's really quite good with the FFG games.

Rogue Trader would be the 'best' one, if only because
-Characters starts as 'epic' (still human, but master of your own destiny rather than "do as you are told")
-You start with top gear (plasma guns, bolt weapons, good armour, power weapons)
-You start with a Ship (That you build yourself)!


Dark Heresy is more down and dirty Call of Cthulhu-esque investigation while Deathwatch is mega epic super human fighitng building sized monster and it's just Monday.

System wise, they are pretty much one in the same, apart from a few changes (one talent might be different from one game to the next, Psycik powers differ from Dark heresy ) but combat, skills, talents, gear is pretty much streamlined from one game to the next.

The real changes come from Black Crusade, the Chaos game. They over haul everything from combat to spending XP, so that one is a different beast.

I quite like Black Crusade, but its likely to not be everyone's cup of tea.

Thanks for the input everyone.

I think our major concerns are the atmosphere of each respective book, IE: what we will be doing and so on. The rofue trader stuff just didn't seem appealing. Dark Heresy and Deathwatch more so.

It had been mentioned that this all depended on patience and how comfortable the group is with losing it's characters. I understand why Dark Heresy might be slower paced however what is the potential for character loss across the books?

Potential for loss?

This is 40k; and in the grim darknees of the far future, there is Only War, so death is rather 'high', in quotation as players have fate points which can grant re-rolls, gain wounds back, or in case of burning it, saving your life (kinda like karma in shadowrun)

keeping in mind, it depends on the GM; I had one throwing us furies and demaons at rank 1 in a Dark Heresy game..

Dark Heresy: since you start at the bottom of the ladder, you got crappy gear, crappy gun, no knowledge, but chances are the mook facing you is as bad as you- so use terrain and your brain.

Rogue Trader: you got top gear and weapon, crewmen you can order around too but you,ll be facing ancient evils, other rogue traders, Orks, Dark Eldar, Warp monsters, not to mention you are doing ship battles: a kilometer long ship blowing up around you can ruin anyone's day...

Deathwatch: you,re a Space marine, so you can die, jsut that'll be quite the show, or a horde that rolled quite well.

Another thing to keep in mind is that mechanically, each game is, in part, a more refined and balanced version of the previous game. Dark Heresy may have the most supplements and been the first one, but it greatly suffered from Black Industry's original design. Rogue Trader and Deathwatch improved on DH, primarily in terms of psychic powers and issues involving fully automatic weapons. Black Crusade further refined game balance to the point that the original lead designer strongly suggests using the changes in Black Crusade if you plan to play any of the three previous games. It also dropped the rigid class system, going for a more flexible approach. Furthermore, there's another RPG coming out sometime soon called Only War, where you play as the imperial guard. From the Beta release of it, they've done a really fantastic job of tightening the mechanics even further and following in Black Crusade's footsteps.

In short, whichever one you pick, look up the errata first. There have been ALOT of changes, and in the case of Deathwatch, the entire armory has gotten an overhaul.

Yeah, thought I cannot support the changes in weaponry, not ot mention the changes in psychic powers form DH to RT was simply to show the difference between a normal psyker and one more powerfully bound to the Emperor's soul.

'Course I might be the only one I knwo who run DH as is rather than running it with another system

Inquisitor Jex wrote:
Yeah, thought I cannot support the changes in weaponry, not ot mention the changes in psychic powers form DH to RT was simply to show the difference between a normal psyker and one more powerfully bound to the Emperor's soul.

'Course I might be the only one I knwo who run DH as is rather than running it with another system

I'm okay with the two different psychic systems, but the old weapon stats were a major problem, especially when every person in the party picks a heavy bolter, because nothing else was even remotely useful.

Only War is very user friendly. It's Imperial Guard based though, which might be too limited for your tastes.

I'm starting up with my group as well. Since they're not that familiar with 40k (two know only broad strokes, and one has read a few novels) I'm going for Rogue Trader, though I'm tempted to play it stripped right down to Firefly/Milennium Falcon size, rather than giving them an army and a battleship to command from the get-go.

You realize that starting with a battleship would be overpowered and not actually befitting a Rogue Trader game anyway, right?

A small, armed freighter ship makes more sense.

The Rogue Trader stuff just didn't seem appealing for the group, too 'Han Solo-ish' for us (if we wanted to play Star Wars we'd just get their source books).

The idea for playing a Warhammer 40k RPG for us is to get immersed in the iconic Warhammer lore that deals with the Space Marines or Imperial Guard (mostly the Space Marines). The inquisition sounds fund but not sure if I want to be locked into that role.

What comes to mind is D&D when not 'everyone' was from the 'same' group or mindset. (Chaotic Evil, Good, Neutral, Lawful Good, etc etc). It seems like the Warhammer books kind of put you in one group or role and that is where you are. (Maybe I am wrong in my interpretation from what has been said however).

Well if you want to play space marines, then its deathwatch. However you are kind of on the one moral compass there, although you could get some inter-chapter rivalries and stuff going I guess

 Melissia wrote:
You realize that starting with a battleship would be overpowered and not actually befitting a Rogue Trader game anyway, right?

A small, armed freighter ship makes more sense.

Well, a battleship fits with the original fluff of a Rogue Trader, but not having read the book yet, and having heard that the PCs basically are the command crew of a ship (people have compared it to Star Trek) I prefer to avoid extra crew or a large ship and let them work their way up to something like that as we slowly learn the rules.

I figure some Han Solo meets Serenity meets Traveller meets Twilight 2000 would be a nice way to figure out the system, and from that we can extend in any direction.

You should go read the book then?

Also, a battleship does NOT match with the rogue trader fluff at all. It'd be easier to get a fleet of cruisers than a single battleship.

RT fluff? I mean as long as its a flamboyant type captian of his won ship, 'could be any type really....

 Melissia wrote:
You should go read the book then?

Also, a battleship does NOT match with the rogue trader fluff at all. It'd be easier to get a fleet of cruisers than a single battleship.

Any reason you're being annoying and pedantic? Rogue Trader fluff goes back a lot further than this book as well, kids. Also try reading your own silly sig. But it's ok, I've put you on ignore. Bye now.

I know full fething well that Rogue Trader fluff has existed since before the publication of this book. Even if that assertion had a point (and it doesn't, because what you posted doesn't line up with Rogue Trader era fluff anyway), the fluff has changed since then, and unsurprisingly the Rogue Trader book is the best source of modern Rogue Trader lore.

As for that little bit at the end, I couldn't care less if you ignore me, it doesn't change the fact that you're wrong. Or that trying to toss around the word "kids" as if it makes you sound intelligent and mature (especially since you're probably younger than many of the posters in the thread anyway) simply falls flat on its face.

I love how a simple thread has downgraded itself to arguing, that seems to happen a lot on Dakka.

The point of the thread was to get an idea of what book would best suit my group as well as my own tastes.

Probably best if we chalk this one up as closed, save more back and forth bickering over a thread that was not at all designed to cause any argument...just requested simple information.

Welcome to the internets.

Your query has been discussed a couple times, though, so if you'd like more input ... here's another thread with more posts including descriptions and comparisons!

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/460643.page

 Lynata wrote:
Welcome to the internets.

Your query has been discussed a couple times, though, so if you'd like more input ... here's another thread with more posts including descriptions and comparisons!

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/460643.page

No kidding, nonetheless thanks for the information.

 Melissia wrote:
You should go read the book then?

Also, a battleship does NOT match with the rogue trader fluff at all. It'd be easier to get a fleet of cruisers than a single battleship.

The Rogue Trader RPG as written seems to assume the characters are in control of a ship far from a 'battleship' in Warhammer terms but is still a very large ship, far from the Millenium Falcon/Firefly scale ship. The rules definitely indicate a large crew (much larger than a standard RPG party) and a pretty massive vessel, although I can't quote numbers. Enough that there's no real chance of a single crewman being irreplacable, even for specialist positions like navigators.

The canon for the setting really doesn't support a small ship as viable. It seems that a lot of power and mass is necessary to make Rogue Traders profitable: a Firefly is a relatively large 'shuttle' in this setting, and presumably couldn't support the Geller fields and drives to travel in the Warp.

The biggest difference between the existing 40k RPGs is the tone of game they best support; Rogue Trader is set up to run games that work like Star Trek, where you've got your one ship and crew facing down the unknown; Deathwatch (and Only War, when it comes out) is much more of a military-oriented setup where you take orders and go on missions to explode things; Dark Heresy is rather more open-ended and investigation-oriented; and Black Crusade can be run as all of the above but evil.

I personally prefer Dark Heresy, since the theme and tone are more versatile and since you have the option of continuing to play for far longer (there's a sourcebook that continues character advancement up to Rank 16).

Of course, they're all technically cross-compatible, Rogue Trader characters' rank 1 is Dark Heresy characters' rank 5, Deathwatch characters' rank 1 is Dark Heresy characters' rank 9, and the rules for Grey Knights in the Dark Heresy epic level rules are on par with Deathwatch, so if you wanted to you could make a crossover and let players make characters from anywhere.

AnomanderRake wrote:Of course, they're all technically cross-compatible, Rogue Trader characters' rank 1 is Dark Heresy characters' rank 5, Deathwatch characters' rank 1 is Dark Heresy characters' rank 9, and the rules for Grey Knights in the Dark Heresy epic level rules are on par with Deathwatch, so if you wanted to you could make a crossover and let players make characters from anywhere.

I'd highly advise against that, unless you'd be comfortable with (a) some players of the group having a tendency to not be able to harm the enemy and getting instakilled, or (b) other players of the group having a tendency to roflstomp the opposition, or (c) that you introduce two types of enemies in each encounter for every sub-section of your players to fight.

Normal humans got the short end of the stick in these systems, period. Unlike in GW's own RPG, they get worse weapons and worse armour - on top of a smaller resilience. Stuff like psychic rules are different in each system and Marines are so broken that the designers had to come up with special "Horde rules" (which magically magnify a weapon's damage potential) to make ordinary enemies a challenge at all. Not to mention that some types of enemies outright exist in different versions depending on which game you play. There's a reason why Deathwatch genestealers are much more dangerous than their Dark Heresy variant.

You can do crossovers, but I wouldn't do it without major modifications to certain rules. The individual games were specifically designed for a certain type of characters as well as the tone you mentioned, and their rules reflect this. "Horde rules" for example are absolutely fine if your game is supposed to consist of ~4 larger-than-life demigods waltzing through hundreds of foes laying waste to entire armies. Against normal characters, the way the rules work (make the Horde's members ridiculously easy to kill, but magnify damage to a level where it may scratch FFG Astartes) just gets them killed. We tried it once in our Dark Heresy group - not advisable.

Another workaround would be if you simply push normal humans into a nomcombat role where they aren't expected to actually kill anything but rather use their wits to help the group along. I'm not really convinced of this approach, though, as it necessitates breaking the game up in different segments where the players who are "not featured" by the moment will feel relatively useless.

We managed to use horde rules in an ascension level game. Wouldn't recommend it in anything below ascension though.

RT and DH characters are the most compatible out of all the systems. We've managed to have those be fairly seamless.

Yes, DH and RT are well compatible on the basis that both deal with regualr humans; bring in DW into the equation, and things gets a little weird.

Well, more like RT and DH have a good focus on things which aren't combat-- namely, commerce and investigation, respectively.

Only War doesn't necessarily mesh that well with them for a similar reason, although it is certainly better than deathwatch. I can see, say, a medic, techpriest, or operator working in an RT/DH setting. Or a DH techpriest/explorator, assassin, militant, or DH psyker (oh god DH psykers) working in an Only War setting.

But a heavy gunner may find that there's little for them to do in a DH or RT session most of the time. And an Adept might find themselves as basically useless in an OW game. I mean it's possible to build characters in OW for a DH/RT setting, but it's not how it was designed.

Much of that hinges on how one interprets the various characters and their personalities, of course. A normal human heavy gunner is still a normal human, and as such will have hobbies, preferences and dislikes he is going to voice throughout the game, in addition to generally being more versatile than a monastery-dwelling Astartes who - in my mind, which I realise is somewhat opposed to how they are portrayed in some licensed fiction - tend to be somewhat removed from what ordinary people do in their spare time.

By extension, this issue also applies to Sororitas, but due to their Ecclesiarchal role there is still some connection to the average populace, even if it's just spiritual counseling or generally being a moralistic PITA.

A focus on combat always limits a character's allroundedness, but roleplaying is something they all can do - the extent of which depending on their individual background.

Rogue Trader gives the players a lot of freedom unless the Rogue Trader is an NPC, which in that case you might as well play Dark Heresy. But if one of the players is the Rogue Trader then the amount of freedom the players have makes it that much harder for the GM to GM.

In Dark Heresy you basically work for an inquisitor and you just do what you're told to do, and you can possibly execute that task however you want but just get it done.

Deathwatch is the same thing but it's boring because you're a Space Marine and all you do is kill everything unless the GM is clever enough. Plus you can completely break the game by making really overpowered characters.

Last we have Black Crusade, you are with Chaos and you go and do evil chaos things for whatever reason you want. I'm currently playing that right now, I might give details later.