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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