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1. Would you still play it?

2. What scale do you think would be appropriate to capture the feel of the setting and more of the lore accurate stuff without having to put everything on a 48" table with 25mm+ minis?

I would think squad level, with 50m hexes so you can put almost anything on a 24" map giving 1200m of range which is pretty good for most direct fire weapons in a combat environment and you wouldn't have bizarrely slow fliers.

-STS

I'd totally play a 40k RPG (and I have).

I think 28mm IS the best scale for a 40k game, because vehicles are in important part of 40k, and if you scale infantry up to 50mm, you have very few viable vehicles- bikes and dreads are about the limit.

If Inquisitor had been released as a rulebook for use with 40k miniatures, it would still be alive and well today. The scale was literally a license to fail. Building terrain for 54mm scale was also a nightmare.

If 40k wasn't a miniatures game....

slade the sniper wrote:
1. Would you still play it?

Well, I've played a bit of the one RPG some years back. I've played 40k Risk, & Space Hulk. And I've played several of the computer/consul games - Spacehulk, Fire Warrior, & the DoWs.
So yeah, I might play some of it now & then.
But my hobby is heavily skewed to minis wargaming, so if 40k ceased to be a minis game I'd rarely concern myself with it.

slade the sniper wrote:
2. What scale do you think would be appropriate to capture the feel of the setting and more of the lore accurate stuff without having to put everything on a 48" table with 25mm+ minis?

Wait, I thought we were talking about if it weren't a miniatures game.

1. No way - way better rulesets out there than current 40K (even previous editions would be superior IMHO)
2. That's easy - the current Epic Scale (as used in LI and AT18)

My reasoning for Epic scale comes from a couple of things: The scale gives 4 times as much play space, so matches wouldn't be corny 1st turn charge parking lots, the 2" unit coherency means you just as well might not bother using single models, just use a single base for denominating a unit and up its wound/attacks appropriately, this will also remove a lot of the sillyness with wound allocations et al. Finally, you could field Apocalypse sized games without breaking a sweat, which would start to resemble some stuff you have in them books etc

You didn't play Heroes of black reach then?

The problem with 40k is that it doesn’t know what scale it wants to be. It wants the granularity where the sidearm for your sarge is a meaningful choice, but also flyers zooming around and titanic god-engines striding across the table.

Both are fine, but pick a lane.

If you remove the minis and want to capture the feel of the setting, I’d go big. Turn it into a hexmap game with chits to represent squads. Epic scale level battles.

slade the sniper wrote:
1. Would you still play it?

2. What scale do you think would be appropriate to capture the feel of the setting and more of the lore accurate stuff without having to put everything on a 48" table with 25mm+ minis?

I would think squad level, with 50m hexes so you can put almost anything on a 24" map giving 1200m of range which is pretty good for most direct fire weapons in a combat environment and you wouldn't have bizarrely slow fliers.

-STS

1. I need more clarification? If it didnt start off at a miniatures game? There are non-miniature based games that are set in the 40k world, so there are non-miniature 40k games.
2. By scale do you mean like... playing individuals in an RPG vs playing a squad in a skirmish game vs playing an army in a wargame, vs playing multiple armies in a conquest style game vs playing spaceships vs playing fleets of spaceships? Like... risk, or other games?

For the "without miniatures" do you mean tokens or markers that are used for individuals and/or units?

I'd probably play it still, just as I play the video games, because I like the lore. More than that, if it weren't for the lore, i'd not play 40k because most games out there are better.

As for size, I believe 40k's scle could be quite any, because the game is about epic battles and badass dudes all at once. Dehumanised taus, guardsmen and nids are not that enjoyable compared to the "close up".

I understand that maybe in gameplay temrs it ends up wierd, but narration and roleplay wise, the double focus works fine to me.

Probably unpopular opinion and mostly due to me considering GW unfit to make good rules anyway lol.

 PenitentJake wrote:
I'd totally play a 40k RPG (and I have).

I think 28mm IS the best scale for a 40k game, because vehicles are in important part of 40k, and if you scale infantry up to 50mm, you have very few viable vehicles- bikes and dreads are about the limit.

If Inquisitor had been released as a rulebook for use with 40k miniatures, it would still be alive and well today. The scale was literally a license to fail. Building terrain for 54mm scale was also a nightmare.

Oh, yeah, I was meaning going from a mini game with 28mm models to a wargame where each inch equals 50m in range on a hex gridded map. I remember Inquisitor and although I LOVED the game book, I never bought the minis, I just scaled it all down to use regular 40k minis (all ranges divided by 2 was close enough). It make a better skirmish game than Kill Team IMO.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

The_Real_Chris wrote:
You didn't play Heroes of black reach then?

Um, no? Never heard of it... will look at it now.
Hmm, interesting. Looks like fireteam size? Will research more.
Thanks.

-STS

slade the sniper wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

The_Real_Chris wrote:
You didn't play Heroes of black reach then?

Um, no? Never heard of it... will look at it now.
Hmm, interesting. Looks like fireteam size? Will research more.
Thanks.

-STS

I have seen people play it with 15mm prints. It plays like a 15mm wargame in that their is a lot of rules bouncing around. The scale is pretty much hero plus support - 1-2 squads, heroes, vehicle.

I think the market would be a lot smaller and we wouldn't be on this forum today.

If Rogue Trader had gone down the pure RPG route, I think it would've been eventually absorbed into Steve Jackson games or another company.

You would stop by the local comic shop and there would be an old abused copy of the Rogue Trader RPG sitting next to an unread Traveler expansion, and you would go, "I remember this game." And when you left the shop, it would still be on the shelf.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
I think the market would be a lot smaller and we wouldn't be on this forum today.

If Rogue Trader had gone down the pure RPG route, I think it would've been eventually absorbed into Steve Jackson games or another company.

You would stop by the local comic shop and there would be an old abused copy of the Rogue Trader RPG sitting next to an unread Traveler expansion, and you would go, "I remember this game." And when you left the shop, it would still be on the shelf.

ew, the idea of SJG owning 40k is so repulsive

Dawn of War, Mechanicus and Gladius is fun, Battle Sector looks fun.

I'd probably give it a try no matter what. But I think 40k's size is probably perfect for me, not the current ruleset but I want a game where every model matters but the battles aren't just a single squad vs a single squad and 40k straddles that line of being almost too large for the level of detail it provides and that's right where I want it. In my Total War Warhammer campaigns I stop caring about whether I have magic items on all my lords and heroes past a certain point in a campaign, because I just have so many, I want to care whether my hero has a ranged weapon or not.

Controlling thousands of troops would be neat. A tactical battle map with highlights of AI-generated cut-scenes of the action. Dawn of War 1 does get pretty close, although I think it'd be a lot better if I got the Apocalypse mod to work.

Likely wouldn't give a poop for 40k if it weren't a miniatures game.

I know folks who say that Heroes of Black Reach is amazing and maybe I'd have it, but wargaming has always been about the toys for me. I don't even play 40k but the figures and universe still have a hold on me via fiction and gaming with Grimdark future.

I mean, 10th already feels like a TCG that grudgingly uses miniatures.

 vipoid wrote:
I mean, 10th already feels like a TCG that grudgingly uses miniatures.

I can agree with that. That stratagem spam is brutally unfun, at least IMO. For me, 7th or 8th Edition was the high point for rules, and 3rd for fun, and RT for just sheer gonzo weirdness.

-STS

I do dislike the card game bolted onto the core game. I have played card based wargames, but they are a very different beast.

Well, I played the first dawn of war videogames series, space marine 1 (unfortunatly not the 2) and some of the others, does It count?

I probably wouldn't care about 40k if it wasn't for the tabletop game. The in-person social interaction is key for me. Otherwise I'd have kept building other sci-fi models, or just painted other things. Actually, I would have kept playing Battletech, most likely. 40k dragged me and my friend group off of that game.

And while I play/ed various videogames, none of them really took hold like 40k did. I played a lot of Starcraft, for example, but I don't really care about Starcraft.

slade the sniper wrote:
1. Would you still play it?

Kinda a tricky question to play a game that isn't a miniatures game without defining what else it would be to play. Cause what other kind of game it is would have a huge impact on who might pick it up and specifically if I would pick it up

Eg if it were a boardgame I'd likely not pick it up
If it were a video game sure I'd likely end up playing it
A sports game - not sure how you'd do that but if quiddich can do it I'm sure 40K could somehow?

Also this overlooks the other question of what TYPE of game within those mediums.
Wargame; skirmish; grand campaign; FPS; RPG. Each ones has its own charms and interests aside from the IP and setting.

slade the sniper wrote:

2. What scale do you think would be appropriate to capture the feel of the setting and more of the lore accurate stuff without having to put everything on a 48" table with 25mm+ minis? -STS

I'd argue there isn't a scale that's perfect.
You can do a game with 1 character roleplay style
You can do a tactical squad game with only a handful of units per side
You can do a large battle game in 28-32mm
You can do 6mm mass battles with loads of tanks and troops and such
You can do the same with huge titanic war machines
You can set it in SPACE and again run through all those same criteria for scale - a dogfighting; battleship commanding; fleet scale



Honestly there isn't one "it does it all" setting or focus. The IP and Lore is big enough to copy with a huge variety, whch is reflected honestly in the variety of games that GW has produced over the years.

On the scale front, I think 2nd - 4th edition is pretty ideal. Army sizes were reasonably big to get the "parade" effect, but before larger vehicles started getting put into squadrons. The focus was still primarily around infantry, and the level of detail in the rules interactions and army customization brought a lot of character from the universe through. I like the quicker pace of the rules of 3-4th, but have a soft spot for the detailed grit of 2nd.

Once Leman Russes began deploying in squadrons, and Special Weapons were given out like candy, the focus of the game drifted away from my ideal. That happened in 5th. Then Flyers and Superheavies took the focus even further away from your basic infantry later on.

Epic is great, but is so pulled back from the details that it doesn't convey the setting in quite the same way. The 40k weapons themselves have a rich character, but Epic necessarily flattens them.

RPGs or skirmish games have more detail, but lack the "army parade" which is clutch 40k, imo.

 Insectum7 wrote:

Epic is great, but is so pulled back from the details that it doesn't convey the setting in quite the same way. The 40k weapons themselves have a rich character, but Epic necessarily flattens them.

It's a question of scale

It might flatten the bolter, but it makes the quake cannon and volcano cannon and TITANs become a thing. Furthermore it really helps show the vast scale of armies far better - you can have multiple tanks; rank and file infantry; huge swarms of Tyranids etc... In many ways it shows the WAR side of things far better. Heck you can even have aircraft and artillery and have them feel like they work and fit the scale; whilst 28mm both feel rather oddly shoehorned in. Aircraft move way too slow or behave more like helicopters whilst artillery is firing over distances infantry can get into close combat over.

 Overread wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

Epic is great, but is so pulled back from the details that it doesn't convey the setting in quite the same way. The 40k weapons themselves have a rich character, but Epic necessarily flattens them.

It's a question of scale

It might flatten the bolter, but it makes the quake cannon and volcano cannon and TITANs become a thing. Furthermore it really helps show the vast scale of armies far better - you can have multiple tanks; rank and file infantry; huge swarms of Tyranids etc... In many ways it shows the WAR side of things far better. Heck you can even have aircraft and artillery and have them feel like they work and fit the scale; whilst 28mm both feel rather oddly shoehorned in. Aircraft move way too slow or behave more like helicopters whilst artillery is firing over distances infantry can get into close combat over.

^Spectacle-wise, I agree that Epic conveys the setting and armies nicely. The rules (while great) are sorta generic-ified though. Plus it lacks the "your dudes" customization dimension, and I think that's important.

I really didn't play much of pre Epic Armageddon, but I do remember units had more fiddly details that brought more character to them. Hit locations to Titans and detailed damage tables added to the character of the setting in a nice way, if sometimes unweildy.

Looking at the different scales out there, do you think there is an intrinsic value to the ~30mm 'scale' that no amount of superior rules design can get around?

I see games like EA as vastly superior gameplay, but still just don't draw the crowd and I wonder if the 40k scale is just the psychologically sweetest spot for people. The RP aspect is still visible, the models are large enough to have individual character, but small enough to feel like a small army.

Inquisitor's 54mm amps up the RP, but reduces the scope and grandeur.


I seriously wonder if the scale 40k uses is just serendipitously at the overlap of the most venn diagrams hobby wargaming has to offer and you just won't get the customer numbers at any other.

^I think there's a lot of value in the "your dude" part of it, and "your dude" in epic is just too small to detail, and too insignificant on the table.

 Insectum7 wrote:
I probably wouldn't care about 40k if it wasn't for the tabletop game. The in-person social interaction is key for me. Otherwise I'd have kept building other sci-fi models, or just painted other things.

100 percent. Without other people around a table with toys I just can't be bothered.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Hellebore wrote:
Looking at the different scales out there, do you think there is an intrinsic value to the ~30mm 'scale' that no amount of superior rules design can get around?...


....I seriously wonder if the scale 40k uses is just serendipitously at the overlap of the most venn diagrams hobby wargaming has to offer and you just won't get the customer numbers at any other.

Intellectually, I know that 40k should be 15mm. Makes more sense for scope maneuver, practicality, etc, and detail can still be great, but I don't care. 28mm is it for me.

Like many other aspects, of sci-fi and fantasy gaming, I relate 40k miniature size to a comic book. 25-30mm is about the smallest scale where you're really capturing the heroic character and look of each mini. The size at which they "pop" off the page/table/shelf. Going smaller and you often lose that connection and going bigger is unwieldy.