Wrath and Glory: Anyone Tried It?

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Now that Wrath and Glory has been out for a little while (and Cubicle7 has taken over publishing it at least here in the States), I was wondering what people thought of it and how it feels to play compared to its Fantasy Flight predecessors (Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader, etc.).

I haven't had an opportunity to directly play it myself, but on the whole it DOES look more streamlined than the older games, but I can't help bit feel like it's much more "generic" than they were, having to cram a bunch of different 40k archetypes in that don't necessarily cohere as a group/theme. In the older games you had a lot more granularity, and a stronger focus on different KINDS of stories depending on which game you were playing: Dark Heresy for horror and mystery, Rogue Trader for exploration and crazy shenanigans, Deathwatch and Only War for the experience of being a Space Marine or an Imperial Guard. In Wrath and Glory, on the other hand, you can have a Rogue Trader, a Commissar, a Space Marine and different xenos as part of the same party, and while there IS in-story justification for this, the Imperium being desperate and reorganizing after the Indomitus Crusade, it feels a tad flimsy and as a result makes it unclear what KINDS of stories Wrath and Glory is trying to tell.

Am I reading this right? Is it just because we really only have the Corebook to go off of and supplemental books will put some storytelling-meat on the game's proverbial bones? If you've actually played it, what were your impressions of it? Is it fun?

[Morty]

I have run a game in it. Your impression isn't wrong; the game does spread itself rather thin. All kinds of characters are sort of flattened into a generic model. That said, the re-release by Cubicle 7 goes into more detail about the setting and the possible stories to tell in it, which helps. Then again, while the game supposedly covers Eldar and Orks, the focus on the Imperium is still pretty heavy, to the point where I feel like maybe they should have gone all the way and saved the Xeno species for a splatbook.

Still, it's a decent system. The rules are better than the FFG games, old and clunky as they are. My game was a Tier 2 one using the original rulebook. The re-release is a considerable improvement in terms of editing, clarity and cleaning up of some rules - but it still needs some serious errata. The wargear section is a mess, in particular. If you're coming to it from a FFG system, there are some assumptions that you need to shake, since things don't line up exactly. All in all I'd rather run it again than try to work with a FFG system.

[Anonymouswizard]

Yeah, now Cubicle 7 have added it to their list of licenced games ((I swear, they end up with every game licenced from a UK property) I expect there to be actual releases that begin to flesh the game out to the level of the previous RPGs.

I think I mentioned it in another thread, but my feeling is that the game should have focused entirely on Imperial humans and left Space Marines, Orks, and Eldar for a splatbook, or at the very least humans and Astartes classic (leaving these new Primaris Astartes out so they could easily fit in Devastators and Assault Marines as well), with rules for twisting the characters to be chaos worshippers. Sure I can see how there's a lot of focus on 'play your favourite unit from the game', but the result is that the only way to pick a utility focused archetype (of which there's what, four? Eight if we count Cultists, Hive Gangers, Rogue Traders, and Sanctioned Psykers). Honestly I'm very saddened to see the lack of Arbiters or Pilots in the corebook, as well as other Archetypes who could really help with adventuring work.

The rules are fine, and you get just enough to play an Inquisition or Chaos game, but trying to focus on any other area in particular cuts out a lot of options.

Although I'm sure if C7 had been writing this from the start we'd have seen something more like their WFRP4e, with it's 8 Careers by type each with four levels each it really managed to find the line between playability and variety.

[Morty]

The re-release book does allow you to forgo taking an archetype and just create a character from scratch, which helps a lot, given the indeed haphazard distribution of archetypes. I do hope we get more content that will cover more archetypes.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

The re-release book does allow you to forgo taking an archetype and just create a character from scratch, which helps a lot, given the indeed haphazard distribution of archetypes. I do hope we get more content that will cover more archetypes.

I saw that when I downloaded it (originally got it from DriveThruRPG) the other day.

How did that switch-up happen anyhow? Did GW just want all the Warhammer licensed RPGs under one company rather than split between 2?

[Delta]

From what I gather (from second hand sources and stuff I got to hear from the german parent company of Ulisses NA mostly) there were some hiccups with a lot of their english projects, beginning with a big delay on the release of the original core and then not being able to deliver follow up books in a reasonable timeframe.

So this is all speculation, but to me most of it sounds like Ulisses trying to do too much, too quickly with their NA brand and they simply couldn't handle W&G in the way GW wanted, but it's quite possible that what you say is also true, GW wanting to streamline their RPG series under one roof sounds just as reasonable, probably a combination of reasons.

Still haven't gotten a chance to run it yet but I can echo the sentiments, while the overall mechanisms sound a lot more enticing than the clunky old 40k games, I miss the focus especially of Dark Heresy, as far as I'm concerned, an Imperial focused core book with more splatbooks later would have been better, but in the end, it still looks like it delivers all the tools I need to run an Inquisition based group, so it's not that big a problem.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

The old games ARE really clunky, you're right about that!

Something I've honestly been thinking about with both the old and new Warhammer 40k ttrpgs is that other factions really don't play well with each other, and I'm not just talking about Eldar/Aeldari, and Tau and Humans in the same thing, but even just groups of different human factions. While there WERE rules to combine the different FF games so you could have Inquisitors and Rogue Traders palling around and stuff, it took a lot of work and the later games like Deathwatch REALLY push it because of power levels and stuff.

It kind of makes it seem like a unified RPG with Warhammer's various factions working together kind of runs counter to Warhammer proper's style, where players usually build armies from a single faction. That paradigm of focusing on individial factions is so ingrained it even pervades the fiction: you don't have novels about The Imperium so much as you have novels about The Imperial Guard, novels about the Inquisition, and when it comes to the Space Marines, you don't have novels about them as a whole but novels about individual Chapters of Marines.

The worldbuilding of 40K lends itself very handily to the format of a wargame, but it seems to struggle when you try to get more granular and start trying to focus on individuals within these factions and how they might interact. At least, that's the vibe I get from the various RPG games.

[Delta]

Yeah, that's the one thing I really like about Dark Heresy (and also Rogue Trader, though I'll always prefer DH), that has just about the perfect focus within the lore, giving you the freedom to play quite individualistic characters that still have a clearly defined focus and the freedom to do actually stuff in a setting that's more or less based on the idea that nothing ever really gets done inside the Imperium (and if you go a bit more radical, gives you the freedom of limited cooperation with Eldar or other "lesser evil" factions in the right situation)

[Delta]

Btw, while we're at this: Since I already own the original Ulisses core, are there any significant mechanical changes in the new one? I'm a bit hesitant on buying a new version of a book I bought just a year or so ago if it's not really necessary

[Morty]

Btw, while we're at this: Since I already own the original Ulisses core, are there any significant mechanical changes in the new one? I'm a bit hesitant on buying a new version of a book I bought just a year or so ago if it's not really necessary

I received the new PDF for free when it came out. There's no changes that make mechanics considerably different, but there's a lot of cleanup. For instance, the weird and fiddly cap on bonus dice based on tier is gone. Archetypes are easier to parse. Combat has received a few new options.

[Delta]

Well I own the dead tree version of the old core, so no free updates for me on that one :( Thanks for the info!