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seeking critique on a notion: adapting Only War to model GSC protagonists  [RSS] Share on facebook Share on Twitter Submit to Reddit
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Made in us
Fresh-Faced New User




Luzerne Cty, PA

First off, let me just say that I know I'm crazy...

When I look at the setting material for 40K, I don't see what we're supposed to. I look at the Emperor of Mankind, and instead of a heroic or tragic figure, I see a franchise-defining villain of an necromancer; a flesh-sculpting and soul-forging archmage who's been cheating death for untold ages, who's created armies of superhuman eunuch warriors to spread his banner across all creation, and who's transformed his own civilization into nothing more than an institution to provide a continuous stream of human sacrifices ("Die for the Emperor! Kill for the Emperor!") to fuel his own bid for godhood. That's right, I see the Emperor as Nagash, with the many flavors of Space Marines being directly equivalent to the many flavors of Vampire Counts, the Adeptus Mechanicus as a looser parallel to the origin of the Tomb Kings, and the Imperial Guard as a galaxy-spanning mechanism for orchestrating constant human sacrifices in the Emperor's name (which actually explains why it's a treason to admit that the Imperial Guard's training manuals have it wrong about Orks easily being killed by bashing their heads in with a lasgun's shoulder stock).

And in a similar vein of insanity, when I look at the Tyranids, I don't accept the assumption that they're just too evil to have any motivation beyond being the bad guys so that the good guys can kill them. I look at how fundamentally alien they are, not just in physical structure but in how they think. And I realize that for any life-system in which a telepathic hive mind is the natural form of sentience, they wouldn't have the slightest idea how to communicate with a life-system where sentience is housed in individual bodies rather than in the gestalt. And since they logically lack the capacity to communicate with the humans who narrate the setting, there's no way to even guess what their motivation is except by the results of their actions.

The obvious and simplistic answer is "the us am hungry; the us need food". But that assumption gets heavily redirected when you consider the established fluff for Hive Tyrants recently being expanded to Tyranid Warriors (and thus on a very small leap of assumption, all Synapse Creatures) that when a given Tyranid body dies within Synapse coverage, it's memories are retained within the overself of the synaptic resonance network, and then those memories are included the next time that body's genetic template is cloned for re-deployment.

From their own incredibly alien point of view, the Tyranids have destroyed zero sentient life-systems. Lictors ate enough brains, memories were uploaded, knowledge was retained. From the Tyranid point of view, every inhabited world they've harvested is now a life-system whose memories have been rendered immortal by becoming part of the Tyranid overself. They don't have any reason to see themselves as a ravenous horde of space-locusts; rather they're doing their level best to save us from the perils of a mortal existence trapped within the confines of a single body's lifetime. But they just don't have the capacity to understand why we're so monstrously ungrateful for their efforts.

Seen this admittedly-crazy way, the reward which a Genestealer Cult gains for delivering their world to the Hive Fleet is spiritual-immortality, the same as so many wacko religious nutbar cults in the real world tell themselves about the purportedly-imminent end of the world. It's just that the shape of their promised immortality is something which only the Patriarch and the Purestrains are prepared to understand; thus the canon confusion for the rest of the cult over what happens next when the Hive Fleet moves from the Predation phase to the Consumption phase of a planetary harvest. The Hybrids see their Purestrain brethren turning on them and killing them; but they don't see the purpose in those murders, to gift them with immortality and perfect understanding of one another.

Similarly, I strongly object to the statement in the GSC codex that the reason WHY some Purestrains join the refugees fleeing the harvest is because they're afraid (Ld 10) of being digested for their own fanatical cause. Because I cannot believe that although the "single unfathomable consciousness" of the Tyranid Hive Mind is explicitly capable of super-intelligent feats of genetic engineering on demand, they'd somehow get befuddled by the single most basic principle of agriculture; that holding back a portion of this season's harvest is what allows to you plant next season's crop to be harvested. Failing to recognize that fact is just stupid writing.

...So, seen that way, it should be clear why my imagination leans away from RPGs focused on presenting Nagash-cultists in a heroic light, and instead focuses on those who are actively trying to liberate their world from the chains of mortal drudgery. And that is why I've been pondering how to adapt the Only War RPG to focus on a squad of Genestealer Cult hybrids, rather than on a squad of Guardsmen proper. And I don't mean Guardsmen with wrinkly foreheads waiting for the chance to stand up and shout that they're bad guys so that the good guys wearing the same uniform can turn on them and kill them. I'm talking about a paramilitary wing within one of the more-or-less-legitimate fronts for their Cult's agenda, with much less expansive resources available for requisitioning, but far less corruption or incompetence in the supply officers, who are just as loyal to their Patriarch as the PCs are.

For my GSC army on the tabletop (before I lost all interest due to the reasons discussed in another thread), I did a lot of worldbuilding-design, to come up with a third option beyond "mine workers who never ever see the light of day, so people don't notice how obviously evil they are" and "Guardsmen with wrinkly foreheads, waiting for the moment to stand up and get shot for announcing how evil they are". And the Cult I came up with, The Maw Which Feeds, is situated on a Frontier World (where mutants tend not to get murdered by flamers so much as allowed to do insanely hazardous work in the wilderness where they inevitably get mauled and eaten by the local equivalent of bears), and the Cult's more-presentable members (late-generation hybrids and kissed humans alike) go out of their way to engage in charitable work benefitting the least fortunate, giving them a plausible reason to be seen interacting with the "unsightly" in public. Meanwhile, since there's no actual restriction against the Patriarch giving his Genestealer Kiss to non-human lifeforms, he's spent a lot of time out in the wilderness, forcing his Kiss on the aforementioned bears, creating generations of highly aggressive and not at all territorial indigenous predators which he can use as weapons against any rival firms attempting to extract profit from the wilderness, while carefully controlling how much his beast-born children are allowed to harm his human-born children. So that the Cult's business front, Metraxinaar Outland Infrastructure Limited, can develop all the paramilitary resources he will eventually need, without actually infiltrating the Planetary Defense Force and risking exposure of their hybrid-physiology to the Imperial-loyalist authorities.

So what I'm looking for from this forum is suggestions for how to adapt the rules of Only War to model Genestealer Cultists instead of Imperial Guardsmen. For the purposes of the Regiment Creation Rules, and setting aside the points limits because there are numerous logistical weaknesses (such as the lack of access to differently trained/equipped Regiments to also be fighting alongside them) which I have no guess of point-values for, here's what I have in mind for a basic framework:
...Home World: Frontier World (Metraxinaar Secundus, a world of my own invention)
...Commanding Officer: either Sanguine or Choleric (the personality of my Patriarch, The Silent Conductor)
...Regiment Type: Guerilla (because the GSC pretty much are analogous to the Viet Cong)
...Training Doctrines: possibly Anti-Armor, Hardened Fighters, and/or Iron Discipline (flavor adjustable to make the players happy)
...Special Equipment Doctrines: definitely Combat Drugs (because MOI Ltd builds processing centers for medicinal resources derived from the flora and fauna which their Patriarch has tasted and determined to have useful biochemical properties) and Vanguard (because the PCs quite simply should be deserving of the largest share of their story's spotlight); possibly Demolitions and/or Scavengers (flavor adjustable to make the players happy)
...Regimental Drawbacks: Dishonored (to model the results of their lifelong indoctrination to faithful service for their Patriarch)

I am also planning on the PCs being armed with Autoguns rather than Lascarbines (due to their paramilitary status); however they will still have access to decommissioned and retrofitted IG vehicles sold at legitimate auction, due to the obvious dangers faced by MOI Ltd's workforce when they go out into the wilderness (and the fact that the planet's legitimate authorities have no idea that their beast-born brethren are far more capable of protecting them from the other predatory animals than any tank could be). On the other hand, since they answer to other faithful servants of their Patriarch rather than the incompetence and corruption of the Departmento Munitorum, they'd never be under any obligation to return any of their Mission Assignment Gear (planned or random) upon the resolution of any given operation.

For the Specialties of the individual PCs, I'm working from the GSC Codex for inspiration...
...Hard limit of 1x Sargeant to be the Neophyte Leader holding field command over the squad.
...Hard limit of 1x Operator to pilot the squad's singular Chimera (per the Vanguard doctrine).
...Ostensibly 1x Medic to be the expert in utilizing their various Combat Drugs.
...Ostensibly 2x Heavy Gunner to wield the various Heavy Weapons available (and I'll need to figure out statblocks for the Seismic Cannon and Mining Laser)
...No limit on Weapon Specialists to be the rank-and-file "security forces" for MOI Ltd's works.

...I'm also figuring that the Ratling and Tech-Priest Enginseer would be available options as recipients of the Patriarch's Genestealer Kiss (and thus considering themselves part of the Cult regardless of their origins), while the Ogryn could be retooled to model an Acolyte Hybrid with advanced demolitions training seconded to the squad. The Sanctioned Psyker could similarly be retooled into an "understudy" character for the Cult's Magus, while presumably elements from the Commissar, Ministorum Priest, and Storm Trooper could get shuffled around to build "understudy" characters for the Primus and the Acolyte Iconward (although the latter would be an Advanced Specialty option for the Acolyte Hybrid, which would also have a separate option for further mutation into a Hybrid Metamorph instead).

That's what I have in mind so far. What I'm looking for is feedback from the community as to whether or not any of this is feasible, and any suggestions you might have for other ways to tweak Only War to have a more GSC feel to it.

Thank you for your consideration.

This message was edited 4 times. Last update was at 2017/04/18 23:39:33


Tongue-tied and twisted; just an earthbound misfit, I. 
   
 
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