/40krpg/ 40k Roleplay General

Why play DH if you can play RT?

Why play RT if you can play DH2e?

Cool ships and xeno sluts?

Transplanting characters kind of sucks. I tried it and I lost a lot, like none of my peers even exist

>implying the Inquisition can't get cool ships and xeno sluts if you go Radical

Rogue Trader's a fun concept, but you can easily adjust the mechanics as-needed to DH2e and lift the ship stuff. One of my friends threw it together in the span of maybe a couple days, and it worked great.

Up to this point they’d been dealing with large targets with dark coloration that were easily spotted on the flat terrain. Spotting out smaller more compatibly colored creatures in the dark of the night through was a different story. Lightly armored and armed with blades and explosives, they crept into the front lines and brought pain with them. Important looking guardmen were shanked right as firebombs were tossed into the tightest collections of troops and tents. Being unused to dealing with organized and efficient enemy forces in recent memory, the regiments fell into panic as the vastly lesser numbered attackers laid into them.

Unfortunately for the sergals attacking the NE corner the one thing the Hidralians are really good at is noticing things sneaking up on them, and they spotted the approaching xenos immediately and opened fire with the kind of fury you get when PCs are freshly dead. The Kasrkin got their hellhounds spread out thanks to the interception and the sergals were largely annihilated on that side of the camp, though this did result in one of two hiccups on the Fellouts end where Torch went crazy as the sight of all that fire and ran in screaming about the purifying power of the Emperor’s Will and accidently setting more of our tents on fire then the sergals did. Biter had to run in and punch him to his sense, and she got Righteous Fury and hit him so hard I ruled he was knocked silly for a round.

The other hiccup is Tassy decided to run off to “borrow” one of the Scintellian tanks to assist, but took so long doing it that they’d not only driven them off but left to reinforce the besieged artillery and tarantulas clinging to the side of a hellhound because our driver was nowhere to be seen.

After things calmed down we set about repairing the site and getting drunk, aside from Torch who was prostrating hard in his tent as repentance for losing control. A day later the commander arrived and congratulated them on the job well done, but also bringing the news that command was pissed that they’d A: Had to skip evening tea to direct the officers into directing the panicked troops and B: The dreg regiment had made everyone else look bad. They were being assigned to leave in the morning and babysit one of the few established human towns on the planet, one that hadn’t been bothered yet by the xenos. Boring field operations in the boondocks then. Least some Lesbian squads were coming too to be the face of the IG support so there’s something nice to look at while there at least.

Session ended with them heading out, after Tassy was ordered to leave her new leman russ behind and the other PCs took turns taking dumps on the engine block. Thank the emperor Numbers wasn’t still around.

Ah hell didn't notice I hadn't posted one part yet.

So the Fellouts set up basic camp alongside their advance group, with Torch going to the regiment commander (who’d been “accidentally” excluded from the command meetings that day) to get reinforcements and orders. Biter arrives and promptly boots the nearby Kasrkin further back into the campsite to make room so the Fellous aren’t pitching tents next to the artillery. Quite the sight probably seeing the 4’9 woman herding a bunch of big fully-carapaced and scarred up Cadians, dragging along their tents and tanks.

Most of the group through earsdropping and interactions with the regiments that would tolerate their presence throughout the evening finds out that imperial command has dropped the ball on the operation across the board. The currently fielded regiments on that planet, dubbed Talon III and mostly consisting of savanna and rocky hills, were the Riders, Lesbians, Scintillans, Praetorians, and a squad of Kasrkin… except that it was supposed to be that the Scintillans and Lesbians were being send to the more populated/less besieged Talon IV to look pretty and be morale boasters and the guys with the gas masks and flamers were supposed to be over here being useful. Not that the Fellouts were complaining about being overpowered for the job after that attack, but point is command wasn’t happy. Also the Praetorians’ arrival was late as was initial supply drops and the central camp was farther away from the landing sites then intended. A mess.

Then the sergals, which the other troops dubbed “mansharks”, attacked during the night.

Because megaguy still hasn't added the latest version.

New in this version:
- Rules fixes and tweaks discovered in playtesting
- Super-heavy opponents chapter

On the drawing board for future versions:
- Battletech style critical system, with limb damage, armour degradation, sub-system destruction and reactor explosions [Currently being worked on]
- Knightly vehicle upgrades, Knightly gear (like Knight scale void-impellers, Drop-pods etc), customization guide/rules and a relic or two
- More unique Imperial Knight talents (I'm taking suggestions here)
- Mechanicus Knights

>last weekend
>Only War Vostroyan Firstborn party again
>finally go planetside on snowy death world after disastrous training excersizes
>their Valkyrie gets shot down mid-flight, pilot killed instantly but everyone in the troop bay manages to survive
>get out before it explodes, watch as the rest of the invasion force is shot down by anti-air
>fuck around until they spot a camp in the middle of the snow
>bunch of dead Cadians and cultists inside
>most go down pretty quick, one suppressed in a bunker
>Psyker and sergeant both have same initiative both attack the same cultist at the same time
>psyker cast Internal Combustion, turning cultist's leg into a grenade, which sets off all his ammo and explodes like a 500lb bomb
>sergeant throws grenade, misses really badly
>explodes in the air, everyone has to make a dodge check or get hit
>hits the entire party
>mfw the sergeant did more damage than the cultists
Good times.

Why sergals though?

Lore-relaed question.
What does an average Imperial Joe has to do to become the Lord/Imperial Commander of a world?

Sign the Dark Pact with mysterious stranger.

Find an STC fragment.

Depends on the planet. Depends on local circumstances. Depends on offworld influences occasionally. Depends on that Imperial Joe's favor with the Administratum (and other Imperial institutions and power groups). Depends on the Imperial Joe in question and his own will to power, intellect, and personal charisma. Depends on whether or not the average Imperial Joe is a local noble in his own right (however minor) or literally just a hab-worker or farmer or some shit like that. Depends on who among the population is willing or able to follow him.

So there's a few factors you need to consider here.

I took a break from 40k RP since early 2014 and just got back, finding that FFG has apparently stopped the line just after I stopped playing because of how badly edited their products had gotten.

What the fuck happened wtih FFG?

Can one person be the governor of multiple worlds? or is generally a one person, one planet system

>because of how badly edited their products had gotten

Actually it's literally every 40k product. Some falling out with GW cost them the license.

For the same unknown reasons they got big on the internet to begin with?

Really I just like the look of them, and wanted to have a more even footed opponent unestablished in lore that's capable of squad tactics while still being vicious and alien. Sergals are bigger and stronger and quicker then guardsmen and have the same level of armor, but aren't quite as numerous and otherwise have a lower level of equipment. Personal ranged weapons haven't advanced beyond lever action rifles.

One person, one planet.

There are subsector governors, but usually such authority is through the Administratum rather than a local matter (the Administratum doesn't appoint planetary governor except in niche cases - nine times outta ten the governor is locally appointed, and expected to serve as the mouthpiece of the planetary government to the Administratum officials sent to collect the Imperial tithe - details vary by planet), and subsector and sector authority is very hands-off as a general rule.

>Can one person be the governor of multiple worlds? or is generally a one person, one planet system
You can. One individual can rule all the worlds in a star system, rule a handful of star systems, etc. Due to the warp, it's remarkably hard to effectively sustain a domain larger than a local cluster of star systems (So about 20-30ish light years in radius or so), and that tends to be around the point that the Imperium starts to mutter about secessionists and empire builders and tries to break up your power bloc.

uhh

Only needed one more person and you could have quoted that guy talking about Eldar and their lies.

Welcome to 40k, where asking four people a question gets you five different answers, all true and terrifying.

I promise there's a way to reconcile these two rules of thumb.

Subsector governor is only the direct ruler of the subsector capital, buuut all the planetary governors in the subsector generally answer to him if he's the Administratum official responsible for keeping them all in line (and once you hit multiplanetary authority, it's an Administratum concern). That said, the Administratum has internal politics as much as any organization in the Imperium, so power blocs become a thing.

People like to give the Administratum a lot of shit, but they make everything run and generally have all the major subsector and sector-level authorities.

So if that person is rich as fuck, and with a minor coup takes power from someone who didn't payed his tithes forever, then immediately starts forwarding payments to the Administratum, maybe with interest then he should be okay, right?

... for the last two and a half years? what the fucknuggets

They shifted production to other 40k products like card and board games, and this news of the license being terminated just hit recently (at least, in an official capacity - there was obviously some scuffling behind the scenes going on we're not privy to).

Generally yes, but in order to do that you'd need to ensure that the means of providing the tithe to the Administratum isn't disrupted in the course of the coup.

This is extremely difficult and any kind of dissent or populist uprising against the planetary government has the potential to snowball into an uprising against the Imperium if the guy running the show isn't careful. And the instant that calls of dissent against Imperial authority come onto the playing field, that's it, the Administratum brings in the Imperial Guard and Navy and shuts this party down.

Veeky Forums, which 40k system would you suggest running for a group that has little to no knowledge of the meta or lore? I am very much intrigued by Rogue Trader.

Then there is still doing the colonization yourself, or marrying into the ruling family, and mysteriously becoming the sole heir of the position.

Don't do Rogue Trader.

Do Dark Heresy 2nd Edition, or Only War. Much better introduction to the 'ground level' of the setting. Then you step it up to Rogue Trader later on.

Only War. You don't need to know the lore to die for the Emperor.

I see. Well, thanks for the help, user.

Viable, but potentially open to dissent from the rest of the ruling class.

Basically, you gotta git gud and play the Game of Thrones to take and hold power on most worlds.

This is easier said than done, and the exact technicalities will vary from world to world. Some Hive Worlds might be a corporatocracy rather than a regular feudal system, for instance.

How about taking power from someone who openly, and willingly segregated from the Imperium? Aside from "just" doing the war part of things, then ruling legally shouldn't be a problem.

Or renovating a freshly conquered world that was mostly rendered useless by the attack from Guard/Navy. Then it's "only" the rebuilding the planet.

...

Alternately, the planetary governor might be the CEO of a megacorp or Trade House, a Rogue Trader, or someone else with interplanetary pull. Or the cluster was some independent micro empire of humans that got folded into the Imperium peacefully. Whatever. The point to reconcile is that while ruling all the worlds in a single solar system is relatively easy, it gets exponentially harder and more expensive the more you expand, and thus less common. The Imperium is also strongly against people building micro-empires within itself, and will bust up any that become too large/powerful/inconvenient for its tastes. More isolated sectors might host such fiefdoms for thousands of years. Or you might get a Badab type situation relatively quickly. The Imperium is nothing if not bueracratic and unpredictable.

>How about taking power from someone who openly, and willingly segregated from the Imperium? Aside from "just" doing the war part of things, then ruling legally shouldn't be a problem.

Pay up the tithe owed to the Administratum, apologize for the retardation of the last guy in charge, make the sign of the Aquila across your chest, and promise from the bottom of your heart this shit won't happen again under your rule. They'll probably roll with it.

>Or renovating a freshly conquered world that was mostly rendered useless by the attack from Guard/Navy. Then it's "only" the rebuilding the planet.

Pay up the tithe owed to the Administratum, apologize for the retardation of the last guy in charge, make the sign of the Aquila across your chest, and promise from the bottom of your heart this shit won't happen again under your rule. They'll probably roll with it.

Thing with the wider Imperium is it isn't REALLY super-oppressive like everyone thinks.

It just doesn't give a fuck what you want, and has a galaxy-spanning war to fight.

>"Hey Administratum guys, we-"
>"Don't care. Tithe."
>"But-"
>"Up the shut fuck. TITHE."
>"BUT WE'RE STARVING-"
>"Personal problems! You're a factory planet! TITHE."

...

It is good to see that the retirement plan of my lowborn Arch-Militant is no just a distant dream.

How do Logistics tests work? I can't figure out how their rules work.

Also, where are the rules for Righteous Fury?

I just GM'ed for the first time yesterday, we all had fun, but I feel like I could have done a lot better.

>How about taking power from someone who openly, and willingly segregated from the Imperium?
Secessionist worlds tend to be blasted into rubble, and the rubble blasted into dust, and then the dust gets covered in water and turned into clay, and the clay gets turned into Munitorium Standardized Building Bricks Type 3, which are used to build outhoses across the Imperium, and then the Imperium composes a song about the inevitable glorious victory and writes biased history books about the war. There's not much left to resettle, is the general thrust.

And if a personal army does the conquering instead of waiting a century for a vacancy in both the Navy AND the Guard's schedule?

Planning a tribal feral world pc and would like to homebrew a blowgun for one of his weapons. What stats should it have? It should be useable at fairly close range against most people in clothing, so maybe

7m range
1d4 impact damage
Toxic (2), primitive, felling (1), silent

Is there a trait for not being able to crit? Because there is no way a blowgun is shooting off arms or exploding heads

Righteous Fury is on page 250.

Logistics tests come into effect when one of the players wants to order or find a new piece of equipment. You roll a 1d100 and compare it to your logistics rating like a regular skill check, modifying it by the availability of the item and other factors. If it's a success you get the item.

There's extra stuff, but that's the basic gist. Full Logistics rules on page 162.

Let's say it's not a galaxy- or sector-wide problem tough, like Black Crusade, or a Waaagh

There's one in Faith and Coin I think

Just use the one in OW Hammer of the Emperor.

Black Crusade.

No need to know fluff, just say there's four dark gods that represent different aspects that'll reward you for your devotion and deeds with power and then dump them in the Screaming Vortex or another chaos system where you can do any kind of setting you want with characters that don't know (or in the case of CSMs don't remember) shit about the outside. Then you can have an Imperium or some other race/faction influx into the setting and have the players be introduced to it naturally over time.

Plus it has the least rigid and complicated class/leveling system and the best starting power level that's good for tossing simple enemies at them for experimental combats that don't feel like basement rats.

Dark Heresy honestly. The characters know nothing and so do you.

Only War. Our paratroopers debrief with an Inquisitor tonight. Field modifications to weapons, narrowly avoid falling to an Ork horde, and our Sergeant ripped-and-tore one of our own guys in half by "accident".

As someone holding a field-modified weapon on my medevac stretcher, should I be panicking? I feel like I should be panicking.

Tech-heresy is a Mechanicus concern. Try not to worry too much.

As for the Ork horde - battlefield casualties happen.

The Sergeant ripping one of your guys a new one is honestly a matter for the Commissariat, and concerning. Panic about this, if anything.

All interactions with the Inquisition are cause for panic. If you're unlucky, he'll take issue. If you're /very/ unlucky, he'll be in the market for some new meat shields.

>I feel like I should be panicking.
You should. Inquisitors are a notoriously testy lot and might have you shot, flogged or burned at the stake for looking at them funny. Or worse, they might also recruit you for special missions as Acolytes.

>The Sergeant ripping one of your guys a new one is honestly a matter for the Commissariat, and concerning. Panic about this, if anything.

This. Steer clear of anything in a peaked cap and black coat.

So... I just read Dogs in the Vineyard today, and couldn't help noticing the similarities in the premise between it and Dark Heresy even if the setting is completely different. Has anyone tried using DitV to run Dark Heresy-style game? How did it go?

you couldn't do something less chaotic, like, idk, reading animal entrails or whatever?

Actually not. Rogue Trader allows your group to be dilettantes with no idea about how the galaxy runs with a bunch of aides telling them why spitting on the Emperor's Image is a bad idea, specially infront of the Bishop. Just tell them it is Mirror Universe Star Trek and that their ship is a cathedral with rockets.

IMO Dark Heresy needs to much previous exposition about how things run, why do you work for the Big I, what was their past, why everything sucks...

New to Veeky Forums and warhammer (playing dh 2) are characters supposed to be able to gain any skill if they meet the requirements? Like does it make sense for my tech priest, who has only gotten xp for combat be able to buy a rank of forbidden lore (daemons) or a trade skill like armorer?

Discuss it with your GM to see if they feel like your purchases are valid, or work with them to come up with a reason that the purchases make sense. Trade (Armorer) is easy: You've been maintaining everyone's gear. Forbidden Lore, maybe you found a secret cult tome or got a special briefing on the daemonic threat. Shit like that.

I did it, /40krpg/. I'm allowing a player to play a Dark Eldar in Rogue Trader.

I've had a shit-ton of problems with folks wanting to play xenos characters in the past: invariably, they end up frustrated by the interaction penalties and the fact that most humans are repulsed, horrified, or driven to violence by their characters' very presence (despite multiple warnings to this effect and numerous provisions of relevant fluff before the fact). This player, though, is a good friend, and made a kind of awesome observation last night during character creation when we were both pretty drunk:

> Games Workshop spent so much time beating the Dark Eldar with the angsty stick that they missed out on how brilliantly simple the concept is. While every sci-fi universe has an empathic race of touchy-feely space hippies, not as many have an empathic race of hedonists who hurt people to get high. Their cruelty is ancillary to their need for a fix, and the ever-increasing elaborateness of the torments they inflict are little more than a means to an end.

I thoroughly trust this player to not fuck this character up. I think he gets it more than other Muh Special Alien players, and I'm looking forward to where he goes with his junkie space fey.

Crush my optimism with a fucking hammer, guys.

>Dark Eldar

Absolutely haram, familamadingdong.

Here's the deal.

Dark Eldar are Fucked Up.

Prepare for Magical Realm levels of sick fuckery. Potentially enough for other players to become THOROUGHLY disgusted with the player in question, and by extension, you for allowing it.

>page 250
Thanks, user!

I still can't figure out the logistics rules though.

>Fucked Up
Well if all their RPG experience is with generic D&D I guess it can be magicalrealmy. Nothing VtM veterans cannot endure however.

The player WILL show up naked.

> Magical Realm
Yes, user, because the setting didn't have plenty of room for that already.

Just because it's there doesn't mean you actively encourage it, and that's all Dark Eldar are. Sadistic magical realm evil space elves.

40K is not about hugs and good feelings neither.

> No opportunities for intrigue
> No Tony Hawk's pro skyboard dogfighting
> No drug-fuelled arena fights
> No fun allowed

The one time I saw a Kabalite Trueborn played, it was done so flawlessly that it just clicked in my head as the way things were supposed to be.

He looked at the bigger picture, and prioritized emotional and mental damage over mere physical attacks. He KNEW he was better than everyone else, in true Trueborn fashion, and he was merely waiting for them to realize it. He approached combat like an ascetic, as a way to improve himself further AND leave his competitors in the dust. He would put himself in the center of combat, be it the biggest dudes he could find, or a horde of enemies, JUST so he could show off his superiority and watch their pitiful attempts at combat fail hilariously. He turned fights into an art form, and created numerous techniques that are still spoken of and studied, all the while never revealing his face from beneath the perfectly reflective helmet he always wore. Everyone else in the detachment found him amusing, but damn lethal if he put his mind to something.

You were a cool dude, Zaill Kralic. Keep being cool wherever you are.

If your player is even half as good as he was, then you got nothing to worry about, broseidon.

>Least some Lesbian squads were coming too to be the face of the IG support so there’s something nice to look at while there at least.

What?

Expanded on a bit in the previous thread. All-women regiment from the planet Lesbos, because 40k and subtlety mix like peanut butter and dogshit.

>Expanded on a bit in the previous thread. All-women regiment from the planet Lesbos, because 40k and subtlety mix like peanut butter and dogshit.

Are they all lesbians?

Not sure if blaming 40k in general for magical realm fancruft would be my response here.

Okay, I'll break this down as well as I can, since I want to make sure I have it right too.
>All squads start with a Logistics rating of 10, barring any regimental drawbacks.
>Roll to acquire an item against said Logistics rating, adjusted for rarity and front modifiers (in a table in the book).
>Logistics Rating can be permanently raised by investing in Munitorum Influence, or situationally raised by the GM for objectives completed.
>Logistics Rating can be temporarily raised through the Persuasive Charm talent (+5 per Degree of Success up to +30) and through use of Commerce (+10) for a single test at a time.

Only War's availability tests are intentionally quite hard, keep that in mind.

10m, 1d5+2 I, Half reload, Toxic (0) is the official statline, for what it's worth.

Oh. I knew I messed them up then!

Well, I accidently good refractor fields for everyone!

>good refractor fields
>Guardsmen
>New Guard conscripts
>good
>refractor
>Fields

Oh shit nigger, what are you doing?

I dunno. The player that rolled for the logistics test rolled a natural one, and going with what I could figure out on the logistics test, I counted it as two degrees of success, so rolled on the bonus gear table and ended up on the jeweled chest with Inquisitorial Seal.

They fell off the back of a cargo servitor.

Wow, that should never have happened. If it were my game I would have failed the roll anyway, because green conscripts should never get such things.

In-setting, you can hand waive it as misdirected or misappropriated supplies.

Hell, why say anything? No, Mr. Inquisitor, we don't have any refractor fields!

Entrails sounds even more chaotic to me, like I made my intent known that I wasn't actually going to touch the blood (giving the reason that blood provided an easier surface to read), and that animal blood would be fine, and that eased my Inquisitor. The King was still freaked out though and the other psyker was just so confused as to why I didn't want to use any of the more popular, sanctioned methods. I mean it wasn't BLAM-worthy, just another niggling thing in the party's eyes of me. I mean I deserve it, for the character I made.

>same unknown reasons they got big on the internet
>unkown
No, it's totally known, Sergals are furry bait and including them in your campaign is as bad as using the cat-folk. Good job bringing magical realm to 40K, you sick fuck.

Because the Inquisitor will just read your mind and find what he needs anyway.

It doesn't matter. That's too powerful for conscripts and doesn't match the theme of the game.

I run a DH2e game for people with no prior knowledge, and that exposition just required one night of talking at a pub. It's not that hard, especially if your players then go away and actually read the book whilst they're making characters. It's a great system actually, because No metagaming gets in the way. Like I followed one of the predone campaigns and laid a body in front of them with the Mark of Nurgle, and they were still completely shocked when it snapped back "alive" and started to assault them. Whereas if my DH DM did that to me, sure I'm good enough with avoiding metagaming that my character still would have triggered it, but I as a player wouldn't be surprised in the slightest. Some other players might have greater trouble not metagaming in such a situation, too.

This is like when our SW GM gave us a box of Disruptor Rifles like a couple sessions in. Jesus christ user, I hope you've learned from your mistake.

The shit gained from those bonus gear rolls doesn't (and really shouldn't IMO) be specific, good gear. Rather it should be a narrative item that alludes to the attainment of something better. For example, our old OW group rolled twice on that table. The first time, they found an Inquisitor's spare rosette, managing to meet up with the Inquisitor and give it back netted them with some XP and/or medal reward (I can't remember exactly what, I wasn't in the group at the time). The second time we'd been stuck in an Ork siege, and the chest our Techpriest stumbled upon contained a formal missive saying that First squad of First platoon would be handed over to the Inquisitor in charge of our regiment, and the planet was to be nuked from orbit with the rest of the regiment still on it (regarding this as acceptable casualties). Long story short, under the deceptive direction of our entirely selfish Techpriest we got the documents altered to our squad, our platoon, and on D-Day rocked up to the Inquisitor ourselves. We were rewarded (after fighting First squad to the death, as they'd also turned up of course) with a change to DH, the transferal of our characters as we studied to become Acolytes brought many new features and skills.

Point is, that bonus gear has the potential to be something so much more than just mundane gear, even if that gear is refractor fields.

I think it's a loot based mindset like you see in D&D. I'm usually the only person in my party who doesn't go all in on new armor and weapons when the chance comes, I prefer utility things like lore books or favors with NPCs

Creator here. Quick crash course on the ladies of planet Lesbos. I tried to keep things simple with them.

The hive/agri world Lesbos, known in nearby systems especially for its fine textile production, was cut off from the rest of the Imperium by a warp storm for a relatively short time, estimated 50-60 years. During and afterward the resident population developed an odd quirk where 80% of births were female and all of them having striking natural beauty. After contact was reestablished and the population was deemed clear of corruption by investigating inquisitors, the Munitorum decided to arrange a new purpose for the tilthed IG from Lesbos. Geared in the best most decorated armor that can be mass produced, their intent is to be a shining symbol of the Imperium’s glory wherever they go that can easily be used as propaganda icons and public faces for deployed IG on Imperial Worlds. As such they tend to be deployed on urban battlefields in populated worlds.

The Lesbians are drilled to be proud and disciplined fast response soldiers of the Human Imperium. And as such they tend to chafe when generals often keep them in the middle/back lines out of the action and only roll them out for parades so they can smile and wave at the cheering crowds and look pretty riding atop their chimeras, not to mention the condescension and mockery they often get from other regiments despite being often on par with them in actual combat. Some break ranks “accidently” and go into action they haven’t been ordered into, others exploit their image for cheap thrills and personal gain.

And no they’re not more prone to being gay than normal. Many a busted nose was created by the assumption being voiced. But again some of them like to play up the image for laughs and free drinks.