If I had a dick, Rogue Trader could suck it

[Koumei]

Koumei, I think you need to start another thread.

I was under the impression that Rogue Trader and such were GOOD.

Sure thing. Let's start at the beginning:

Warhams, and all variants, and all things related to them, are shit. I doubt there are arguments here.

Next up, WHFRP. In this game of vampire knights on undead dragons that kill entire armies on their own, giant daemons that rise up and need valiant heroic knights and sorcerers to slay them and the exotic lands of the lizardmen where some of them are 15' tall and go around punting hordes of rat-men... oh, and the dark elfs are extremely hot... you get to play as a peasant. Kudos.

Seriously, I know some things like to start you off as "An apprentice knight who is still a youth but is expected to grow into a knight", but this starts you off as the knight's squire's boot-polisher's apprentice's junior vice sub-assistant. If you're lucky, you could be a shit-shoveller.

Now the system isn't that good, but that's the real biting point: you have to take everything you know and like about the setting, the whole thing that lets them put "Warhammer" in the motherfucking title, and then forget that and play something else, something so small it's never seen on the battlefield.

So they start by lying to you. Luckily, PC mortality is like 90% so it should be a TPK really early on and then you can go play something fun.

But for all those whiny bitches who complain that D&D doesn't cater to their Tolkien fetishes, they should just play this. DONE.

Next up, the descent into madness, that I have a lot more (negative) experience with: Derp Herpesy (plus Ass-scension), and then Rogue Trader.

[Psychic Robot]

And don't forget about how retardedly slow PC progression is.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Well, like someone mentioned in a thread way back when, I do think that it could be kinda cool to play as a team of redshirts who need to perform some sort of redshirt-capable task like delivering documents to the king but unfortunately the town is being sieged by death orcs--your job is to infiltrate the city, find the king's hiding location, and deliver the documents that will help you FREE THE CITY.

Granted, from what I know about Warhammer that setting is a poor fit for this kind of game, but I don't think that it's automatically bad.

[Koumei]

Well yes, you could play low-tier comedy Black Adder stuff. But then you're not playing in the Warhams setting. They should have just fucking called it "The Black Adder RPG", it could have sold pretty well actually.

Now let's talk about Derp Herpesy.

First-up, not only could I write a better RPG set in 40k world, I have. With my impressive resume of no fucking history in the field whatsoever.

But let's go into specifics. Firstly, it's more of the same with the WHFRP. I like to call it "Black Adder in Space". Because that's seriously what it feels like. 40k is even MORE of the "giant epic things and it's all going to hell and holy shit, a man in power armour inside a tank inside a mecha inside a space ship, and the power armour, the tank, the mecha and the space ship are all firing guns at us. AT THE SAME TIME! Woah, daemons that spit daemons out, cannons that fire small meteors at planets! Now I'm on a horse!" than Fantasy Battle is.

And yet again you get to play "unimportant nobody". Now, your actions can't "matter" on the big scale, in-setting. I mean, look at the size of the universe. If you destroyed an entire solar system nobody would know or care - with the exception of our one, and even then, only because the death of the Emperor would herald in the Final Destination as the Nids come pouring in, the four Chaos Gods decide to advance their plans, and God-Emperor returns in full force and then everybody dies.

But still, that doesn't mean you can't do important things on a local scale. Except in this game you can't. Your job is to run out there and investigate something too small to be considered part of 40k, then get killed, while the Inquisitor goes and does something worth telling a story about. Remember how in most good games, the players just assume that "some NPC" is doing their laundry and checking their ID when they enter places and so on? Well the Inquisitor is that group of players, and the PCs are actually those little NPCs.

So, let's ignore the massive lie. Let's pretend it's Paranoia or something, so you're supposed to bumble about hilariously and all die. How does it fare in that context?

Badly. I mean, the PCs will fail most of their actions, don't you worry about that. That is practically guaranteed. And they will all die. No problems there. The problem is you're supposed to make characters as though you'll have them for a hundred years.

Note: a hundred years is in fact how long it would take, assuming a 6 hour session every week, in order to gain rank and get halfway through your career. And then you still won't have anything good.

Anyway. Character creation takes ages, which is not acceptable for throwaway-character games. And there isn't even that much variety within a class. Seriously most of it is spent writing down all the things you have to have (and probably don't want), then fiddling with the numbers. At least let a computer program randomly make your throwaway character if you play this. Then look forward to a fast TPK and go do something fun.

So if you want to play a dumb "lol we're idiots and everyone dies" game, I hear Paranoia works. If you want to roleplay in 40k, play Dungeon Crusade and love me for it.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Well yes, you could play low-tier comedy Black Adder stuff. But then you're not playing in the Warhams setting. They should have just fucking called it "The Black Adder RPG", it could have sold pretty well actually.

I now have a new signature.

[Lago PARANOIA]

You know, this crap sort of reminds of that damn Dragon Age: Origins RPG shat out by Green Ronin a few months back; but the saving grace of THAT game (if you want to call it that) was that everyone else was supposed to be shit-covered peasants in the snow, too.

[FatR]

The problem is, say, in Abnett's books which allegedly serve as the main inspiration for Dark Heresy, the most weaksauce protagonists (save for those with totally non-combat specializations) are Rambo-level badasses. They still theoretically can be shot to death by random mooks, but plow right through dozens of them in practice. As about the main characters, one of them is a Jedi-like swordsman and has badass magical abilities, another has even better magical abilities (even the best unenhanced mortals around can only lie down and die before him) and is a floating tank. They also are Inquisitors, who have more contacts, servants, money and authority than some planetary governments in the verse.

[souran]

Koumei;

That doesn't even begin to cover the terribad that is warhammer fantasy roleplay.

At one time I had a FLGS store owner tell me that he like WFRP more than any other rpg and he had a game that he was still playing that had lasted more than 10 years.

I now understand why.

Koumei doesn't even begin to get at how bad character system is.

Most of the classes are horrible on purpose, and when I say terrible I mean like harper prestige class terrible.

Granted in the most current edition you don't actually have to roll your starting class if you don't want, but to most people that would take away the "fun" of WFRP. I mean, if you don't start out as a lice licker or starving orphan whats the fun!

However, the worst part of having a million dumb ass classes that you literally have to progress through to get to something even worth being for 10 minutes is that all the classes are totally pointless except for those that can cast magic.

Seriously, the game has two god damn classes. Magic casters and Meat Bags.

Magic is D&D levels of whoop-ass good but if you don't have magic you are stuck playing a 1e D&D fighter.

Now the most recent version of the games adds TALENTS. Talents are the way green ronin publishing copted D&D feats and stuck them into this shit sack game. However, because this roleplaying game caters exclusively to neckbears and 1st order grognards all the feats had to be nuetered to complete irrelavance. So imagine playing a D&D fighter only all the feats are eiher of the "iron will" variety or the "+2 to two skills you will never use" variety. Only in thsi game those +2 only apply under some dumb ass condition like it being wet.

Getting anywhere as a characer takes forever because the game master is supposed to award between 10 and 100 experience points a session. Now what they actually say is the game master should give out 10 xp a session and maybe a bit more if it was a good session but never more than 100. It takes 100 experience points to buy an advancement within your current class or to switch classses.

However, many times in order to leave a class for a class that doesn't suck requires you to have ALL the advancements from SEVERAL classes.

Lets note all the fucking bullshit here. 1st at the "standard" pace of the game it takes 10 sessions (2 and a half months if you play once a week) to get a single advancement. Second EVERYTHING ELSE I SAID.

Not only that, but in the previous edition of the game the gamemasters section gave wonderful fuckloads of gygaxian advice like

"Players should probably not be allowed to play non human characters until they encounter them in the game, once they have encountered them they can reroll a new character of the race that they encountered and begin again with the party."

and "Newer players should probably not be allowed to play characters who can wield magic until they come to understand how magic is viewed in the old world"

Basically, "newbs can't have anything cool and humans suck so everybody should be forced to be one"

Note that WFRP has never had an edition war becuase its player base just mixes and matches shit from all editions so you never can know what the rules might actually be!

The game uses percentile dice for pretty much everything except hit points and damage. Sadly, the combat system was built so that people with 50 ~70 percent weapon skills would do most of the fighting which means that the poor ass fucker you are required to play can't hit anything because your skill will be half that much and you will stop playing this game before it gets better.

Fortunatly, all the monsters are built to face these non existant hero types so combat is mostly consists of the party getting TPKed by sewer rats or a lone bandit armed with a pistol and sitting in a tree.

Most things have a fairly small number of wounds. When your wounds are gone you start getting crictical hits. Only these critical hits can actually kill you. They get worse the more you are hit without wounds.

Sadly the system is actually much worse than that.

See, whenever you are hit without wounds you suffer a huge penalty and get seriously injured. Many of these injuries are permanent and the game does not have magic to repair them.

So, when you run out of wounds you actually HOPE that your pointless peasant character dies instead of losing an eye or a hand or getting movement permantly reduced by 1.

If you die you get to roll up another pointless peasant character. If you suffer a wound but don't die you get to hobble around without hands or some bullshit till your game master finally finishes off your amazingly even less effective character.

And as everybody here knows, a system like this is DESIGNED to work against the PCs because they will get critically hit hundreds of times and the badguys will get critical hits till they die then go offscreen.

So most "elder" WFRP characters are physically maimed.

The game includes almost no discussion of magic items, so what level of power they should have, how often they are dispensed, and even their mechanical function is basically up to the game master. This means that games swingly between 1e gyaxian cryfests where getting a magic sword causes the party to kill each other (and thus have to reroll characters with nobody having the sword) to total monty haul christmas tree fests.

So....
Anybody else got anythign to add?

[Psychic Robot]

Magic is D&D levels of whoop-ass good

It's good, but it's not that good.

Getting anywhere as a characer takes forever because the game master is supposed to award between 10 and 100 experience points a session. Now what they actually say is the game master should give out 10 xp a session and maybe a bit more if it was a good session but never more than 100. It takes 100 experience points to buy an advancement within your current class or to switch classses.

However, many times in order to leave a class for a class that doesn't suck requires you to have ALL the advancements from SEVERAL classes.

Lets note all the fucking bullshit here. 1st at the "standard" pace of the game it takes 10 sessions (2 and a half months if you play once a week) to get a single advancement. Second EVERYTHING ELSE I SAID.

Not even true. Character advancement is ridiculously slow, but the sample adventure that they have in the book awards like 120 XP.

[JigokuBosatsu]

Not to mention the great system of trappings. You can now become an assassin, because you have a dagger and a hat! Or whatever. It's been years since I played, and I ran a game where everyone started as necromancers or chaos warriors.

[Koumei]

That doesn't even begin to cover the terribad that is warhammer fantasy roleplay.

Luckily my experience with WHFRP is limited. But it does mean I couldn't cover the intricacies of how bad it is. But I should have mentioned the awful Wounds and critical hits system.

Except neckbeards fucking LOVE the critical hits. The kind of person who likes Warhammer gets off on brutal bloody injuries and dismemberment. It's almost disgusting the way they enjoy it so much, and that's coming from a proper pervert!

Getting anywhere as a characer takes forever because the game master is supposed to award between 10 and 100 experience points a session.

They're more generous in DH. But not THAT much.

Anybody else got anythign to add?

Tomorrow I might go on about my hatred of their treatment of the Bolter Bitches, or Ass-scension. Maybe a brief mention of Rogue Trader, which fixes some of the flaws but claims the starting characters are as good as people ending their DH careers.

[souran]

[Not even true. Character advancement is ridiculously slow, but the sample adventure that they have in the book awards like 120 XP.

Again, what is said and what is done is totaly different.

I will admit that my feelings about WFRP are a conflation of 2nd ed and 3rd ed rules because the person who liked to run used them interchangably which was kind of ass.

However, that 120 xp as I rememer is for COMPLETEING the adventure. And I think that they say that if you somehow don't manage to complete in one sitting you are supposed to prorate the xp based on how far the group got.

[souran]

Not to mention the great system of trappings. You can now become an assassin, because you have a dagger and a hat! Or whatever. It's been years since I played, and I ran a game where everyone started as necromancers or chaos warriors.

If thats the case it has to be 3rd edition where you can chose to play something.

I had just totally forgotten about the trappings. That was a system designed to make it not suck trying to move to a totally different career ladder but once you were in a ladder I didn't think the traping helped other than to reduce the cost to advance?

[Psychic Robot]

You need all the trappings of a career to enter that particular career. Good luck in playing a master wizard with only the main book.

EDIT: Apparently, they're releasing a supplement called Deathwatch in which you can play an actual Space Marine. Ascension is also significantly higher-powered than RT/DH.

[TheFlatline]

Badly. I mean, the PCs will fail most of their actions, don't you worry about that. That is practically guaranteed. And they will all die. No problems there. The problem is you're supposed to make characters as though you'll have them for a hundred years.

Note: a hundred years is in fact how long it would take, assuming a 6 hour session every week, in order to gain rank and get halfway through your career. And then you still won't have anything good.

Actually the math works out to about a year or so of playing weekly in order to level cap your character in Dark Heresy, 2 years if you halve the xp awards. In 3 months of playing my PC group hit level 4, out of 9 levels I want to say. Plus, leveling up just means you have new skills open to you. You buy a new skill or ability every session or two, and only level up when you've spent enough xp to hit the next level.

I have a lot of issues with Dark Heresy. I have zero interest in Rogue Trader, since it's star trek in 40k's setting. The math systems are overly-complicated and annoying, the combat breaks down at an elementary level, and the general feeling of frustration from failing so often (an ordinary difficulty gives you a +10 to your die roll, which is bullshit) makes keeping players interested in the game difficult.

Somewhere around level 5 or 6 that all breaks down and your players start becoming unstoppable bad asses. Yeah, there are bad guys that will rip them to shreds, but unless you're throwing them up at daemonhosts and top-tier 'nids, you can assume that they won't be in dire danger. Hell, with a good psyker, they probably won't even take too much damage.

Dark Heresy is a serviceable setting. It shies away from all the tabletop shit generally (Deathwatch is coming out in a few months, and that's all space marine shit), and tries to go into the setting. Sadly, the setting isn't really there, you just have a collection of themes and moods that assemble into a background tapestry against the tabletop games. It's up to the DM to breathe life into that background.

I'm frankly happy that they didn't start the game series out with dumping you in a dreadnought and having you roll piles of dice in endless combat. That's what the wargame is for.

Still, focusing on the Imperium is kind of boring. I wouldn't mind an Eldar game.

PS: Am I the only one almost had a brain hemorrhage from how scattered and incoherent Koumei's rants were? It took me two reads to realize that you were talking about multiple games.

[souran]

I have a lot of issues with Dark Heresy. I have zero interest in Rogue Trader, since it's star trek in 40k's setting. The math systems are overly-complicated and annoying, the combat breaks down at an elementary level, and the general feeling of frustration from failing so often (an ordinary difficulty gives you a +10 to your die roll, which is bullshit) makes keeping players interested in the game difficult.

This happens in WFRP as well. Either you suck or you win. Once you get to win the game has little if any challenge. When you suck you get so tired of sucking that you don't want to play till you win.

Dark Heresy is a serviceable setting. It shies away from all the tabletop shit generally (Deathwatch is coming out in a few months, and that's all space marine shit), and tries to go into the setting. Sadly, the setting isn't really there, you just have a collection of themes and moods that assemble into a background tapestry against the tabletop games. It's up to the DM to breathe life into that background.

Its a serviceable wargame setting. Just like Warhammer is a serviceable wargame setting. The factions all HATE each other enough that there is a concievable reason for ANY two groups to be fighting.

Still, focusing on the Imperium is kind of boring. I wouldn't mind an Eldar game.

While I agree that an Eldar game where everybody was required to be a different aspect warrior could be cool, I also tend to think that the game would be emo elves in space do emo shit becuase emo.

[TheFlatline]

While I agree that an Eldar game where everybody was required to be a different aspect warrior could be cool, I also tend to think that the game would be emo elves in space do emo shit becuase emo.

Depends on the writers. They *could* take it in the oWoD Werewolf direction where you're dying out, you're screwed, but goddamn it you're going to massacre everything you can on your way out.

Yeah no on second thought you're right... the Eldar are emo. They shouldn't be, but they are.

[Josh_Kablack]

In this game of vampire knights on undead dragons that kill entire armies on their own, giant daemons that rise up and need valiant heroic knights and sorcerers to slay them and the exotic lands of the lizardmen where some of them are 15' tall and go around punting hordes of rat-men... oh, and the dark elfs are extremely hot... you get to play as a peasant. Kudos.

I have never been into warhammer at all, but this attitude is surprisingly prevalent in licensed (ie derived-from-other-media) RPGs and it pisses me the hell off.

Games based on other media should have protagonists that resemble those found in the original media.

[Caliban]

I've played WHFRP in several editions and it sucked cock for most of the reasons above. You don't feel like you can do anything without massive fail.

However I was pleasantly surprised by rogue trader, I actually felt like I could do stuff with the character and not fail every role. Might be due to good group and ref, but was much more fun than WHFRP.

[Hieronymous Rex]

Next up, WHFRP. In this game of vampire knights on undead dragons that kill entire armies on their own, giant daemons that rise up and need valiant heroic knights and sorcerers to slay them and the exotic lands of the lizardmen where some of them are 15' tall and go around punting hordes of rat-men... oh, and the dark elfs are extremely hot... you get to play as a peasant. Kudos.

The world does not need yet another D&D clone, which is was Warhammer Fantasy is. There are already so many that there's a name for them.

But for all those whiny bitches who complain that D&D doesn't cater to their Tolkien fetishes, they should just play this. DONE.

Why would they play a game whose setting has more in common with World of Warcraft than is does with Tolkien?

[Koumei]

Flatline: seriously, the "tabletop shit" is what the setting is. The players SHOULD be a group of Space Marines/Sistaz/Assassins, happily curb-stomping anything that isn't big enough to be fielded in the wargame. It needn't be a killfest, if your party is a Chaplain, a Seraphim, a Culexus Assassin and a Tech Marine you can totally do investigation stuff as well as infiltrating the enemy Titan, killing the people in control of the crew, bullying the remaining crew into being on your side and sending it off in the right direction.

And then as it goes off that way, taking on a large army, you make your way into the city, discover who is leading the rebellion, then go and kill him and the demon he summoned.

And after that you start making the forces realise they've been had, and get them to like you (and the Emperor) again, maybe rooting out troublemakers to kill, and then you have the city again. Except it turns out that Pink Horrors went loose in the power plant, so you need to hunt through it to banish them (with fire) before doing the repairs. Only then can the city defend itself against the invading forces, and you can get your ship out of there.

Every single part of that is beyond the scope of DH.

The world does not need yet another D&D clone, which is was Warhammer Fantasy is. There are already so many that there's a name for them.

There aren't many games that do what 3E D&D does, with its power level. All those shitty games were made based on people's house rules of the games they played of 2E, and their games of that capped out at like level 5 or something. So those games are all set in shit-tier. Current WHFRP is basically another one of them, except a different (and worse) system and even lower in power level.

Seriously. It's in every way inferior to an Indie Fantasy Heartbreaker.

We could live with another "MASSIVE POWER LEVEL" game. Or hell, simply making it an actual 3E d20 thing. Even a setting book that basically changes as little as is needed to make it that setting. You could just do that - decide that the Empire Troops are all level 1-3 Warriors and shit, then say "Okay, you're a Brettonian Knight, you start at level 5+ with the Knight class" and have the final boss actually be a Vampire Knight 10/Blood-Wizard 10, mounted on a Zombie Dragon.

Why would they play a game whose setting has more in common with World of Warcraft than is does with Tolkien?

It's totally Tolkien: it's really low level shit that nobody cares about. Although I admit it's actually a bit too low in power level for that, but still. Rather than neuter D&D, Tolkien fans can just go play high-XP WHFRP instead and they should be happy.

[Saxony]

Koumei, you have a great vocabulary.

Lol @ subject

[Username17]

One thing I will say about WHFRP is that getting a high BS is easy if you are a Halfling or an Elf, and getting a high T is easy if you are a Dwarf. If you do the first, you can basically shred anything that shows up kind of far away - even giant monsters. If you do the second, you can bounce normal sword blows off your manly chest pretty much indefinitely.

The to-hit is rolled on percentile dice and most people don't remember or bother with the modifiers. But damage is basically the attacker's Strength plus a d6 minus the target's Toughness plus Armor. Strength has a tendency to be like 3 or so and so does Toughness. But the big dealio is that you have like 2 fucking hit points. Even lion sized chaos monsters only get like 6. A couple of well thrown rocks can bring down a wyvern before it even gets an action. On the flip side, as a Dwarf you can seriously get a Toughness of 5 and wear 3 points of Armor - meaning that enemies have to roll a natural 6 to even cause you a point of damage with normal weaponry. With the right shit at your back, you can get more still, and then you're basically just immune to normal weaponry altogether.

The RNG is so small, and the "Wounds" values so low, that the combat system is totally gameable. You seriously can just murderate monsters that are supposedly like fifty million times better than you if you game the system. Because the system is seriously that bad.

-Username17

[souran]

One thing I will say about WHFRP is that getting a high BS is easy if you are a Halfling or an Elf, and getting a high T is easy if you are a Dwarf. If you do the first, you can basically shred anything that shows up kind of far away - even giant monsters. If you do the second, you can bounce normal sword blows off your manly chest pretty much indefinitely.

The to-hit is rolled on percentile dice and most people don't remember or bother with the modifiers. But damage is basically the attacker's Strength plus a d6 minus the target's Toughness plus Armor. Strength has a tendency to be like 3 or so and so does Toughness. But the big dealio is that you have like 2 fucking hit points. Even lion sized chaos monsters only get like 6. A couple of well thrown rocks can bring down a wyvern before it even gets an action. On the flip side, as a Dwarf you can seriously get a Toughness of 5 and wear 3 points of Armor - meaning that enemies have to roll a natural 6 to even cause you a point of damage with normal weaponry. With the right shit at your back, you can get more still, and then you're basically just immune to normal weaponry altogether.

The RNG is so small, and the "Wounds" values so low, that the combat system is totally gameable. You seriously can just murderate monsters that are supposedly like fifty million times better than you if you game the system. Because the system is seriously that bad.

-Username17

The game has a conversion for converting the characters to "wargame" statistics. Basically divide weapon skill or BS by 10 and discard the remainder.

Your toughness and strength, however, translate directly.

As long as you begin as an elf or a halfling who can actually afford a bow or armor (weapons and armor are stupidly expensive because that makes it the realz or something) an early elf or hafling can indeed actually be sort of functional. However, they also have plenty of rules about shooting into combat and through cover and what not to fuck those characters up as well.

The thing about the strength and toughness values is that while you are correct that you can make a dwarf with stupid levels of armor, the problem is that each "faction" has a guy who in the wargame is strength 5/toughness 5 or so so that they can actually kill the uber crap that the other person puts on the board.

Trolls and Chaos trolls, Ogres, Rat Ogres, Skavin Assassins, Dark Elf Assassins, Lizardman champions, Black Orc Nobs, and Chaos Champions are all enemies that could appear in starting adventures and would be able to inflict 3 wounds on the 5 toughness 3 armor dwarf. So maybe you wouldn't be 1 shotted but you would/could easily be two shotted by these guys and these are not even really "monstrous" things like chaos demons, vampires, dragons, or anything.

[Koumei]

Oddly enough, I think the 4E chassis could work for Warhams Fantasy: almost everything you meet is a Minion, except their little leaders which are real enemies, and then the Army Lords are the usual solos with over nine thousand hit points, and PCs are just that hardcore that they never lie down. Also, races would be locked into small selections of classes and stuff, with the power sets basically made just for them.

Except with interesting powers and shit, obviously.