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How do!

A chit chat topic with no right or wrong answers. As is my preference in a thread.

Much as I love Necromunda, I do appreciate the rules aren’t quite the full shilling. And I get why others are disgruntled by that. Yet, in all my years of playing Necromunda, not once have I participated in a campaign which wasn’t using house rules.

Examples range from home brew scenarios (not always successful, like when we did a Genestealer hunt, and my Gang got fabulously wealthy stupidly quickly), patching/cobbling together a rule set using the three editions, even tweaks to certain weapons (Autoguns being given rapid fire, to encourage their use over the Lasgun) etc.

So without knocking anyone else’s preference, when I see people discussing rule oddities, my stock reaction is always “just house rule it, my dude”.

For absolute clarity? This isn’t some apologist thing for the quality of the rules. Nor is it an attempt to belittle those who have entirely legitimate complaints. It’s just playing purely by the book is so odd to me (I’d do it even with a completely water tight rules set) I’m genuinely wondering how many folk do it that way?

There’s also the middle ground between “by the book” and “house rule heavy” - main one being just house ruling wonky and odd rules out of necessity.

But sound off. Speak your brains.

As far as I understand it Necromunda is more of a narrative game compared to the tournament based Kill Team. If thats the case then one shouldn't worry and adjust accordingly, so long as the other player is okay with it.

Not sure if Necromunda is the game for me or not, so I've ordered some BSF Cultists, Corpse Grinder dice and downloaded the "fan rules" and Ambot hunt. And I'll be using those to test the water, so to speak. While Kill Team is my favourite game its been left to rot for too long, and its always annoying when "that other game" keeps getting new expansions, models and WD articles released on an almost monthly basis.

But should I take a shine to Necromunda it will certainly be house ruled where it makes sense.

Nobody can play it strictly by the book, because the book itself is not clear enough. House ruling, even if it's just trying to interpret the text, is inevitable.

It's not really very well written in the sense of being a rigorous rules set, but what is present is a skeleton of a pretty fun game.

I like the rules and don't like the models/warbands that much, so I took the whole thing and converted it into a 40k skirmish game.

House Escher is somewhat appealling but would definitely go all-in if Harlequins were to poke their nose in once in a while.

Would that work if they are tolerated in the some parts of the Imperium? Not sure what the fluff allows for in that respect...

Come to think about, although Necromunda is set on an Imperial hive world, Commorragh has a bit of a gang thing going on too? I dunno, maybe thats stretching it...

Largely follow the books with a smattering of house rules for our campaigns. The books offer a huge toolset that allows you to pick and choose from a huge pile of options. Trying to stick to every rule from every book is a tricky prospect as there is so much to keep track of.

In games themselves, we usually tend to go with the most cinematic interpretation of the rules if there's ever a doubt and have occasionally ignored rules to have a particular amusing chain of events happen (having grenades fired blined in pitch black riquochet off of walls up to their maximum range until they explode).

Yes, I have played old school Necro strictly by the book many times. Granted, my memory maybe a bit shady as that was mostly some time ago.

Have not tried to new version though.

Definitely think, of all GW's rules stable, Necromunda is least suitable for playing completing straight (or certainly in a tournament setting). On the other hand, it is absolutely crying out for fun scenarios and a loose, almost 'rpg-lite' games master that runs and sets up games between players.
I would go as far as to say as it's the best game GW have ever made in this regard. But, it therefore relies on the players having the same expectation as you, not trying to exploit loopholes or play it an ultra-competitive way - it can ruin things if you do try and play it that way and not playing to the system's strengths at all.

I ran a campaign some years ago and had someone say to me that it was literally the most fun they had ever had while playing a wargame, which was definitely nice to hear (and this was after the guy had some of his gang members dissolved by an Ooze in the 'it came from the sump' scenario!) But I think it's because all of the players were in the same head-space, were just there to have fun, and happy to be lead along through the narrative and events.

Haven't played for a while now, but from memory the changes we made for the latest version (N18) were
- Use of WHFB-style hit chart for melee (as opposed to skill roll)
- Used Necromunda Classic edition post-game system rather than N18. Simply because there is a proper balancing mechanism in the original for campaigns and some of the equipment and injury charts etc. are better.
- Used randomised skill/stat advancement table (someone over on Yaktribe had made one for use with N18). A lot more fun and stopped maxed out stats, which further exacerbated the lack of balancing mechanisms.
- Used all of the latest weapons/wargear (simply so the new miniatures and kit could be used).
- Limited special characters/bounty hunters to ones that I put up for 'sale' on the campaign notice board. Sometimes subbed in a few of these for free with players that were really struggling etc.

Yeah, necromunda is hilariously bad if you go in by-the-book. I remember setting up a campaign at one point where someone came in with a setup of like, a goliath with a heavy boltgun, and a commander who just had the ability where he could make someone else shoot.

There was one mission where the attacker had to destroy some crate or something. Any time he won the roll-off to pick the mission, he'd choose that mission as Attacker and destroy the crate with his first activation (shoot with the heavy bolter, activate the commander with the heavy bolter champ, have the order guy command the heavy bolter to shoot again.) Any time he lost that roll-off, he would instantly concede and give his opponent the win.

at the end of the first session, when everyone else had played 2 games he'd played 8 and won 5. We declared him the winner of the campaign, and just decided that we'd all just...keep playing to see who got second place . Congrats though, dude, I hope you really got something out of that! come on back when we start up a new campaign!

I did that once. It was relatively entertaining. Doing it more that once seems like not so much fun...

the_scotsman wrote:
...

That seems like such a shockingly pointless way to play any wargame. Especially with the conceding if he didn't have the ability to instantly win.

My group(s) started playing essentially as-is, just ruling on ambiguities, but slowly added more and more significant houserules.

Then, as lockdowns and restrictions made playing regular games with a large group of people impractical to impossible, we've played a few ultra narrative skirmish games. Like three gangs running through a bunch of zombies to retrieve an artifact and return (only one gang would win).
We pretty much just winged it in terms of scenario and rules. It was some of the most fun I've had in a long time, and we didn't have to worry about someone being too crippled to ever put up a fight in a subsequent game or whatever. We hope to do that sort of thing more, perhaps runnnig a short campaign of these sorts of scenarios. But lockdown continues.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 kirotheavenger wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
...

That seems like such a shockingly pointless way to play any wargame. Especially with the conceding if he didn't have the ability to instantly win.

My group(s) started playing essentially as-is, just ruling on ambiguities, but slowly added more and more significant houserules.

Then, as lockdowns and restrictions made playing regular games with a large group of people impractical to impossible, we've played a few ultra narrative skirmish games. Like three gangs running through a bunch of zombies to retrieve an artifact and return (only one gang would win).
We pretty much just winged it in terms of scenario and rules. It was some of the most fun I've had in a long time, and we didn't have to worry about someone being too crippled to ever put up a fight in a subsequent game or whatever. We hope to do that sort of thing more, perhaps runnnig a short campaign of these sorts of scenarios. But lockdown continues.

That sounds super cool! Zombie miniatures are one of the best investments you can make in wargaming I think, as long as the miniatures themselves are neutral they can be used in so many different games for that kind of scenario.

LeperColony wrote:
Nobody can play it strictly by the book, because the book itself is not clear enough. House ruling, even if it's just trying to interpret the text, is inevitable.

It's not really very well written in the sense of being a rigorous rules set, but what is present is a skeleton of a pretty fun game.

This is the truth. No 2 battles anywhere in the world plays using exactly the same rules. You could most likely find a game where each individual player is playing by different rules (without even knowing)!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

So without knocking anyone else’s preference, when I see people discussing rule oddities, my stock reaction is always “just house rule it, my dude”.

Keep this in mind:
- House ruling should be optional for added fun, not mandatory for avoiding a total disaster.
- When GW require money for their rules, I demand quality for the money I spend on said rules.
- Sure you can fix everything with house rules, but do you know how long a list of such house rules are? For me, it would be a pamphlet of rules, in addition to the 300 page official rules (compressed into a single document). Every time we played a new scenario, more house rules were added. All those nonsense details, so much work to fix. Or, you could ignore keeping track and endlessly house rule the same stuff again and again? Possibly with different house rules each time?

Necromunda used to be a low-mini low-book count game. Whether it requires low amount of minis today is arguable, but 18 books in 4 years? Insane!

I really don’t mind patching up the rules, but I do get and agree it would be nice for my efforts to be on creating a cool campaign, rather than just getting the game to work.

Yeah I never got around to get a proper 'nice' campaign because the game change all the time, and every change needs house ruling to work.

You play with the same group all the time? I mostly do, and we've collectively discussed and agreed on several key house rules to make the game & campaign work. But what do you do if you play with new friends or a different group? My local community doesn't really grow, particularly not for Necromunda, so I try to branch out and play with new people as much as possible. But what you do then? There are at least 4 outcomes:

1) The other players are new and wants to play vanilla. That's a bummer, cause vanilla is broken and sucks.
2) The other group gladly adopts your house rules and use them (best case).
3) The other group rejects your house rules and insists on keep using their own (better hope they are good!).
4) You merge your house rules with the other house rules into a big stew of house rules.

Never had this problem with old munda :(

Over on Yaktribe there's a community project to create a new set of rules, tightening up and generally improving upon what GW's done.
Once complete, it'll make a great resource groups can use to have a universal way to play Necromunda.

Not sure if I want to play anymore until that community project is finished, or maybe just revert to older editions for now (NCE).

It may take a little while.
Currently a small 'council' of people is going through the suggestions that the community raised to select them in order to then begin writing the first complete draft.
There's now well over 400 messages and barely a dent has been made :/

Please do keep an ear out for it though, either on the Yaktribe forum itself or for when surveys/stuff is occasionally posted out wider. More input is always better and you can help shape the game to what you want.

I’ll welcome their efforts. Even if there are calls I don’t necessarily agree with, having a single, accessible ‘fan edit’ saves much pain in the balls!

 kirotheavenger wrote:
It may take a little while.
Currently a small 'council' of people is going through the suggestions that the community raised to select them in order to then begin writing the first complete draft.
There's now well over 400 messages and barely a dent has been made :/

Please do keep an ear out for it though, either on the Yaktribe forum itself or for when surveys/stuff is occasionally posted out wider. More input is always better and you can help shape the game to what you want.

First time poster, looooong time lurker. Had to register after reading this.

I'm only just starting to get into Newcromunda over the past few months. Bought House of Iron and the old 'member berries love that book. But going over the new rules, and some of the inconsistencies to be found (e.g. - Boning Sword, History of Violence) just blows me away. I know GW is renouned for its copy-paste-doh! moments, but it seems Newcromunda and its piecemeal development has been hit hard by it. I've been checking out Yaktribe, random house rules lists, and sites like Goonhammer - Necromunday, as well as here, on patches to make the game work. About to give it an old school Orlock (me) v Goliaths skirmish, and thought I'd check out any issues first - wow. You shouldn't need an arbitrator to play a game.

I think the big issue is toning down the Trading Post and Black Market, from what Ive read. I like the fact Gangers seem to be limited to house weapon lists in the new books, as well as needing to become a specialist to get a special weapon, but I do think some kind of penalty "in game" should exist for Black Market gear. Maybe in the pre battle sequence, a gang could draw from the underdog deck, one card for each 400 credits (whole) spent on illegal items by their opponent.

Thanks to Yaktribe for the resources they have up, very very welcome. Look foward to what you're doing with the rules too. Hopefully its seen by GW well before December 2021 (in case thats a re-relaunch).

I've always had a love hate relationship with the necromunda rules.

The current ones are no different. My biggest bugbear is that they use the current 40k to hit mechanics, which is really limiting in an RPG heavy game.

I think for playability my favourite was 2nd ed, released from specialist games in the mid 2000s.

Although I do love the current depth of options for the houses and the new stuff they've added. the new gangs certainly seem very different, rather than being almost identical.

If only GW would move away from dice values as WS and BS we'd be golden...

I don't have any issues with the current to-hit rules.
Mechanically I don't see any difference between "BS4" (3+ to hit) and "BS3+".

No, other than limiting the possibility chance that can be imposed by the 'to hit' entry. Although the BS value 1-10 gave you more scope, as you can go beyond 6+ with very low BS and above with very high BS (leading to everyone's 'most hated' ganger in the classic edition that could hit your guy in hard cover across the board on a 2+!)

I think it has had more of an impact though on WS. I can understand wanting to simplify and not use tables, but the 'to hit' roll means your crap Juve has the same chance of hitting another Juve as they do Death Lord of the Underhive. One of the adaptations I've used with my own homebrew is to use the classic WHFB WS table, which is pretty much seared into everyone's brain anyway.

Yeah you could get up to 3 advances or even 4 if you had crappy stats in the original. More room for differentiation.

As for BS, well the 2nd ed version was better than the current but still not great as it had that same inherent issue.

So i homebrew using Initiative against BS and the WS table to hit. All modifiers are to BS or I, rather than flat modifiers to your roll.

 Hellebore wrote:

I think for playability my favourite was 2nd ed, released from specialist games in the mid 2000s.

We dabbled with the revised rules briefly, but went back to first edition because sustained fire dice.

Can't speak to Newcromunda because it just didn't appeal, but back in the day we played with the following house rules -
- Starter gangs and new gang members received advances on creation, as they would have if they had actually progressed from 0 exp to their starting value. This eliminated those first couple of dull games where gangs are all incredibly useless, and meant that starting gangers were no longer quickly eclipsed by faster-progressing juves.
- Models were limited to two pistols/CCWs and one basic weapon. Heavies and Leaders could take up to two two-handed weapons. This was largely just because it seemed impactical to have gang members toting around multiple rifles.
- Models could however take however many knives they wanted, and could throw them using grenade rules, at S3.
- Instead of being automatically available if you had a ganger captured during the post-game resolution, the 'Rescue' mission required you to send gangers searching in the trading post for word on the opposing gang's hideout instead of working a territory.

And not used back in the day, but planned for the campaign that I'm hopefully starting up with a couple of friends soonish - models have a 180 degree arc of sight, instead of 90, just because it's easier to apply on the table.