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View Full Version : Grimdarkness is Grimdark: Warhammer RPG's



janusmaxwell
2014-03-11, 12:27 PM
Discussion for Dark Heresy, Only War, Black Crusade and Deathwatch tabletop games. Can be for questions or just to share "war stories" (:smallbiggrin:) I wasn't entire sure if this area should ONLY be for D&D style games, high fantasy or Low fantasy, but I figured if I'm wrong it's an issue that can be easily corrected.


Anyway, basic info: The Warhammer games are fought completely with 10-sided dies and percentile roles, which makes things a bit more fast-paced. HP=Wounds and all weapons do some variation of 1d10 and more damage, with almost all characters in the various systems having around 10-ish wounds. Death is likely and characters should not be too invested in, though the manner of death will be Fist of the North Star worth in terms of being bloody, explosive and awesome. Setting wise, it's the future with humans and aliens across thousands of planets, but there are also demons who come from the warp through the minds of untrained/corrupted Psykers and humanity mostly having gone to **** in terms of government bureaucracy and a fanatical state religion.

My stories: First instance playing these games was "Dark Heresy" where the group are the 'acolytes' to an inquisitor (Spanish inquisition IN SPAAACEE!!!, except the witchs, demons and traitors are real...) I choose to play a guardsman and among random rolls for backstory I end up with a feral world, which is a bass-ackwards planet that could be Caveman era, Conan the barbarian, medieval Europe. I look at the core rulebook picture of a guardsman (Cross between Matt Damon in Saving Private Ryan, and Rambo) and I think of a feral world in terms of the people being savages with pants-on-head stupid ideas and traditions and I just hear the sound of Dueling Banjo's...

Yeah, My Guardsman was Rambo by way of Larry the Cable guy in speech, mannerisms and diplomacy (Big ****-off machine gun named Martha which my character had gotten biblical with, and his warcry was "Come Give Martha A Kiss!") Shockingly despite the great lethality of this setting, Quarl "Shiv" Jarr ended up surviving several campaigns without once getting into Negative wounds (How you determine stunned/lost arm/face melted/exploded into a fine mist)

2nd Story: Very very quick one...only my second foray into the 40k RPG was with Black Crusade. Rather than playing a semi-ordinary shmuck, you're a Space Marine (Captain America wearing Ironman's armor) and you're an EVIL space Marine at that. I get kitted out, everything set up, and decide because a BFG worked well for me last time, I picked up another one for this campaign. Tech and attack rolls in 40k RPG is such that rolling a D100 under a characters "Ballistic Skill" results in a hit, while rolling above the skill is a miss or a Jam (Rolling 90-100) with more powerful weapons, replace "Jam" with "possibly/probably explode" My Evil spaceMarine had a Plasma Cannon which was holy-hell powerful but the most unstable type of Tech.

First mission...First battle...FIRST TURN, I have my character take aim at a swarm of Cybernetic cherubims and with all totals added up, I literally could not miss unless I rolled a Jam....So naturally I rolled a 91. The fluff is that the Gun was going to "Vent" and I'd take damage as though I had been shot by the 2d10+12 behemoth. I'm praying for snake eyes as with armor, toughness and armor penetration, taking 14 damage will drop me to 2 wounds...alive but unhappy and not permanently injured.

I Roll 2 10's...Full damage drops me to -13 wounds and for flavor reasons there's nothing but a mushroom cloud and the only thing of my character that's semi-intact is my left foot.

Sometimes the dice gods love to **** on people.

Final story will be an ongoing chronicle as I've just started this campaign last sunday, and if people are interested I might update as events warrant.

It's Dark Heresy again but now I'm a priest (Not healing in 40k, I'm basically the rich diplomancer...sort of) and I'm hoping to save up enough money to get a custom-made Best quality las weapon just for the warcry of "I Have a Message From the Emperor! **** YOU!" TSSZZAP!"
Over the course of this first session we discover our DM rolled randomly to determine if anyone was a "Nascent Psyker" which means our burgeoning power somehow slipped the net and if discovered means that character is gonna disappear like Jimmy Hoffa...on a percent roll needing 2 percent he succeeds, and rolling randomly to see who the Psyker is, it turns out to be me and is revealed when I randomly eye-beam a thug shmuck in the middle of a fire-fight.

So that's fun but for a following hilarity, the DM rolled to see if anyone was a "Blank" which is an Anti-psyker who actually hampers any psykers they come into contact with, and makes that roll as well (d100-1%) so one of the other acolytes causes my character to have a splitting headache.

Slylizard
2014-03-11, 03:51 PM
Already got a thread here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=317976&page=25), feel free to jump in!

janusmaxwell
2014-03-11, 04:19 PM
okay, noted. And thank you!