Warhammer & 40K RPGs Thread III: With Friends Like These, Who Needs Heresies?

[LCP]

You say that, but I'm in a WFRP game where a small group of them killed several NPCs and took a Fate point off our Priest.

Good times.

In fact for anyone who's interested, a spot has just opened up in that group...

[thorr-kan]

...David Hasselhoff AGAIN??

Play in Germany.

You can make this work!

[Malak'ai]

...David Hasselhoff AGAIN??

I was going to change things up and make it Tom Salleck, but since you mentioned the Hoff...

Play in Germany.

You can make this work!

Too bad AI is banned in the Imperium, having an Autocarrage like Kit would fit perfectly in DH.

[comicshorse]

I was going to change things up and make it Tom Salleck, but since you mentioned the Hoff...



Too bad AI is banned in the Imperium, having an Autocarrage like Kit would fit perfectly in DH.

Just make it a servitor

[Malak'ai]

Just make it a servitor

Combat servitor with a human head hood ornament?

[Marlowe]

If we get Rick Astley springing from ambush with a vox-caster* I'm just gonna shoot first this time.

*Again.

[Malak'ai]

If we get Rick Astley springing from ambush with a vox-caster* I'm just gonna shoot first this time.

*Again.

It was actually Ricky Martin backed up by Peter Andre, you just weren't listening properly.

[Marlowe]

Of course I wasn't listening properly! I was holding my ears and singing Sisters of Mercy numbers to cheer myself up and drown out the madness! Like a normal person!

[Wraith]

I'd like to request an enemy dual-wielding a hot-shot laspistol and stub automatic, no armour, no ambidextrous or two-weapon wielder, and a Toughness and Ballistic skill of 22 each, thanks.

"He leaps out of the shadows, both guns blazing wildly in all directions. He rolls a... *rattle*rattle* 0...1... so that hits you right in the forehead with two degrees of success. For damage he rolls.... *rattle*... Hmm... On an unrelated note of curiosity, approximately how many Fate points did you say you have left?"

If that's not an actual quote from a game that I once played in, it's pretty damn near it.

[Malak'ai]

I think we've all had that sort of thing happen to us in our gaming lives. Enemies that get a lucky crit, or happen to roll just the right target number to set the barrel of fuel off.

[shadow_archmagi]

Hello yes!

I've got the skeleton of my Dead Space ripoff. Core beats:

Spoiler: I don't think any of my party are on GITP but spoilered anyway

Show

PART ONE: False Start:

1A. Inquisitor greets the PCs, who he is meeting for the first time. They're also all meeting each other for the first time. Chitchat. Probably some kind of small fight breaks out when the techpriest insults the mutant, the priest insults the psyker... they sort of casually all made characters who hate each other.
1B. Party is told they're inspecting a ship suspected of smuggling warp-tainted drugs. They're dropped off in an old mining ship on the outer rim of the system and told to hail for help when the ship translates out of warp, claim a damaged life support, and hitch a ride back to port. While aboard, they should keep an eye out for anything suspicious, and see if they can get a sample of this rogue trader's products for analysis.
1C. Ship doesn't respond to hails, flies directly through an asteroid. Airlocks unresponsive, but the party is in a mining ship, so they drill their way in. (This is a little silly but 40k is nothing if not van art and if I give the party a mining ship they have to drill SOMETHING)

PART TWO: Real Start:

2A. Party finds blood, corpses with frothy mouths and angry faces. Some of the bodies look eerily calm, and have jaundiced skin. It's curious.

2B. Party encounters spider-men wrapping up corpses in fuzzy yellow webbing and spraying something into their mouths. If the party investigates, the webbing is actually a fungus.

2C. Party finds hookah lounge, also full of corpses. One surviving occupant sitting there with a chest wound smoking Obscura. He'll try to get the party to smoke it. The spiderfungus is a pyrophytic and it looooves lungs! If the party refuses, he'll take it well, but be a spider when they get back to let them know they made the right choice. If the PCs accept drugs on a ship full of dead people that they were told might have tainted drugs, they've accepted death and will be consumed in the epilogue.

2D. Ship hits another asteroid. Party should head to navigation and see what can be done.

PART THREE: Middle:

3A. Party gets to the bridge and discovers that the ship is heading towards the port at full speed and the controls aren't responding.

3B. Party discovers the chief enginseer has made an executive decision to clean out the entire infection at once by ramming the infected ship into the space station where they'd been selling the infected drugs.

3C. Party finds some clues about what happened on this ship, whose fault it was, and what the possible solutions are. Notes:
-Spider-fungus is warp-based.
-As an unbound warp entity, it's pretty rough on its hosts, and can't actually survive particularly long without a fuel source.
-Spiders are here looking for something?
-The astropath became corrupted, and invited the first mate in on a "kill the captain via a tragic life-support accident" plot that was doublecrossed into "I put spider-eggs in the air supply for everyone"
-The navigator exists? I feel like navigators are cool and fun enough that he should definitely get a scene or a setpiece of some kind, but I don't know how.

PART FOUR: Possible Endings:
4A. Party goes and confronts the Queen in a climactic boss battle, then brings her head to the enginseer to convince him it's safe to not kill everyone.
4B. Party murders the enginseer in a less climactic boss battle, parks the ship a safe distance from port, and leaves.
4C. Party dithers too long and the ship crashes into the port and or their infections mature.
4D. Party unravels the full mystery of what happened here, and finds the Daemonic Macguffin that the spider-fungus is searching for. Best ending!

I'm a little concerned about how to trim this down into something manageable in a five-hour timeslot, or even two five-hour timeslots, especially if there are multiple combats. It also is very untidy and unclean conceptually, and I'd appreciate any advice on how to give this story a really good coherent shape.

[Marlowe]

"He leaps out of the shadows, both guns blazing wildly in all directions. He rolls a... *rattle*rattle* 0...1... so that hits you right in the forehead with two degrees of success. For damage he rolls.... *rattle*... Hmm... On an unrelated note of curiosity, approximately how many Fate points did you say you have left?"

If that's not an actual quote from a game that I once played in, it's pretty damn near it.

Rotton the Wizard has to get lucky sometime.

Hello? Have you SEEN those two he hangs out with? I'd say he gets lucky every- SLAP!

[Wraith]

I think we've all had that sort of thing happen to us in our gaming lives. Enemies that get a lucky crit, or happen to roll just the right target number to set the barrel of fuel off.

Unfortunately I always seem to be on the inverse end of such an encounter.
Two PCs wander down a blind corridor, don't check the doorways and alcoves as they pass, then a heavily armed gang enforcer steps out behind them with a heavy stubber at point blank range; if he's BS35 with +30 to hit, he'll inevitably roll 90+ fives times in a row and cut an outline around my oblivious players.

[Marlowe]

"Vincent! I believe in God!"

[Peat]

There's a little bit more to it; Nothing that GW does is ever so simple.

For 1st Edition, Games Workshop hired Hogshead Publishing to make their RP game and various supplements through the early-to-mods 90's.

Hogshead closed in 2003, and the rights reverted back to GW. They opened Black Industries as the RPG sales/promotion arm of BL Publishing, their publishing division which also includes Black Library. Second Edition WFRP was actually produced by Green Ronen Publishing on their behest.

Black Industries produced Dark Heresy and was promptly shut down 2 days later for being unprofitable. FFG produced everything since, including WFRP 3rd Edition and DH 2nd edition, until this time last year when Cubicle 7 were commissioned to produce 4th Edition WFRP.

All in all, it's been a long and hard journey for the WFRP/DH games to get where they are now - that's why near-pristine copies of WFRP 2nd edition occasionally go on eBay for about three times their RRP.
Long may the new era reign, hopefully.

My understanding of it - backed up by wikipedia fwiw - is that WFRP was a GW original by Priestley and others back in the 80s. Hogshead only got it after GW lost interest in publishing.

[druid91]

Is it possible to play a Psyker in Only War, aside from the Sanctioned Psyker Support Specialty?

[Destro_Yersul]

As part of the guard? Probably not. All of the guard's psykers are sanctioned specialists. You might be able to swing Nascent Psyker by borrowing it from DH1, but be prepared for that to go bad. Otherwise, you could just direct lift the psyker stuff from DH2 and use that, since it's the same system.

[Marlowe]

Hey, Malak'ai, it's been a while. We kill nobody except the Tech-Priest; right?

[Incorrect]

Is it possible to play a Psyker in Only War, aside from the Sanctioned Psyker Support Specialty?

The psyker career is the one option.
Are you pondering something other than playing a sanctioned psyker?

[Malak'ai]

Hey, Malak'ai, it's been a while. We kill nobody except the Tech-Priest; right?

No. You were to try to aviod killing anyone, but if it came to it, you were to only kill the Tech-Priests if it was the absolute last option. Gotta keep the Mechanicum happy.

[Marlowe]

Today we learned a valuable lesson. It's called "Gank the Flamer-dude first!"

[comicshorse]

Today we learned a valuable lesson. It's called "Gank the Flamer-dude first!"

But did you learn the addendum to this rule : " But always do it from a distance "

[Malak'ai]

But did you learn the addendum to this rule : " But always do it from a distance "

Yes... Yes they did .

[Marlowe]

Also, we did Disengaging wrong. Disengaging just requires the Acrobatics test to turn a full action into a half-action.

Presumably, the Desperado's "move and shoot" thing applies even if the test is failed and they have to Disengage as a full action.

EDIT: Oh, right. For those of you that aren't Malak'ai (So, that's all of you, except Malak'ai.), half the group didn't turn up owing to having work or meeting the new girlfriend's parents and sloppy excuses like that so we had a little practice combat to get to grips with the "killing people" part of the game.

Alpha Strider the Forgeworlder Skitarii Desperado and Szofiya Maklaren the Voidborn Outcast Desperado verse 4 traitor guardsmen; one lasgun, 2 laspistol and sword, and one flamer.

Alpha Strider was using a long-las. He hit lots, but the opposition kept dodging. Szofiya kept getting shot at by the enemy lasgun, but also kept dodging. She was initially using her lasgun ("The Xeno") and kept trying to bring down the flamer specialist, but couldn't do critical damage to the guy before he turned his flamer on Alpha.

Alpha got nicely toasted and set on fire. Szofiya shouted "Something Witty!" and turned the exterminator on The Xeno onto the already wounded Flamer guy, who cooked nicely.

Alpha managed to put out his flames, and then both acolytes got charged by the sword-and-pistol traitors. Both drew laspistols to fight back.

After some excitement, Szofiya managed to headshot her opponent via the cunning Desperado stratagem of "Disengaging and firing her laspistol ("The Mutant") at point-blank". Alpha employed a more chancy "neck to their swordblade" tactic. It didn't go so well.

With the lasgun Traitor having a bad time getting shots on Szofiya 'cause she kept moving behind cover, this lead to a fight between Alpha's killer and her. The traitor got a good sword-blow in, but then Szofiya got a couple of good laspistol shots that put the traitor in a bad way.

Both sides hid behind cover for a few rounds while Szofiya drew her Chainsword "The Emperor", then changed her mind and drew a frag grenade. The lasgun traitor skedaddled, and the wounded sword and pistol guy sort of schlumped from one piece of cover to another in a sort of "I'm still here, you know. Not beaten yet" way. Szofiya shouted something about "What's the matter, boys? Scared of a bit of dyin'?" and threw her grenade. She missed completely, but managed to pin the guy anyway. Whereupon, with a question-begging shout of "Death to the French!" Szofiya blew his face off; and of course, finished with a shout of "Sieg Zeon". Which made perfect sense.

I think if Alpha's player had started knowing just how dangerous Flamers are, we'd have done a lot better.

[Destro_Yersul]

Yeah, being on fire is one of the worst things that can happen to you, and in a system with brain-melting horrors from beyond the stars, that's saying something.

[The Glyphstone]

Even Space Marines hate being set on fire; a flat WP test every turn to get any actions at all is vicious even if you dont take damage.

[Destro_Yersul]

Personally, I always change that rule to be 'any actions that don't somehow involve putting out the fire'

[Sinewmire]

Alpha Strider was using a long-las. He hit lots, but the opposition kept dodging. Szofiya kept getting shot at by the enemy lasgun, but also kept dodging.

Yeah, you gotta stay hidden as a Sniper. Move, hide, fire, reposition!

And yes, being set on fire is bad. Who knew?!

[Wraith]

Just wait until you're on fire, try to extinguish it and crit-fail the roll so that now the FIRE is also on fire.

....We didn't always take our games absolutely seriously, but in our defence; Plasma is definitely an in-universe thing, and pretty much anything else can be justified undr the heading of "weird warp phenomenon".

[Celticbear]

Hey, so I just started building a Skitarii army, and I was wondering if anyone in the Houston,Texas area could point out a place where I could possibly get into a show-you-the-ropes kind of game?