Side Table Talk - general discussion and ideas thread

[Lord_Ikka]

This thread will be for general discussion of the RPG PBP club. Feel free to throw around specific ideas for new games, introduce yourself if you are new, or just talk about the 40k RPGs.

[Mazer Rackham]

I am wondering....just wondering mind you, if a Grey Knight Campaign was viable, and what that would look like.  Maybe the Mono-Chapter type DW game would be better played like that? Everyone's a Psyker, everyone has the same gear, do it as a one-shot so no sillies creep in, we lift the statblocks from the FFG rulebooks...

Edited August 9 by Mazer Rackham

[Trokair]

27 minutes ago, Mazer Rackham said:

I am wondering....just wondering mind you, if a Grey Knight Campaign was viable, and what that would look like.  Maybe the Mono-Chapter type DW game would be better played like that? Everyone's a Psyker, everyone has the same gear, do it as a one-shot so no sillies creep in, we lift the statblocks from the FFG rulebooks...

 

And there would still be ways to have different specialities/roles within a group of Grey Knights. The Asult Marine becomes the erm what are they called, the teleport back power armoured guyes, perhaps using warp spider jump pack rules or some deribative of those. the Devestaor goes round with a Psycannon or psylancer (if they have stats anywhere) and so on.

[Mazer Rackham]

3 minutes ago, Trokair said:

And there would still be ways to have different specialities/roles within a group of Grey Knights. The Asult Marine becomes the erm what are they called, the teleport back power armoured guyes, perhaps using warp spider jump pack rules or some deribative of those. the Devestaor goes round with a Psycannon or psylancer (if they have stats anywhere) and so on.

 

Yes, precisely. This would ensure if TDA was issued, the Players would not be discommoded.

 

Codex Squad Modes could remain. The Aegis could function similarly to Cohesion.

 

Edited August 9 by Mazer Rackham

[Lord_Ikka]

Well, they wouldn't have to have the exact same gear. You could mix it up a little by having a few separate Specialties with a defined set of gear (using 9th ed gear as a baseline, since 10th doesn't differentiate nemesis weapons) to give some variety- 

 

Strike Brother - storm bolter, nemesis force sword, option for nemesis force halberd/falchions

Interceptor - storm bolter, nemesis falchions, personal teleporter (jump pack rules?), option for nemesis daemon hammer

Purgator - nemesis force knife, option for psilencer, incinerator, psycannon

Purifier* - storm bolter, nemesis warding stave

1 max Terminator - storm bolter, nemesis daemon hammer

 

 

*Making Purifiers into mini-Librarians to represent their more potent psyker abilities might work best?

 

Edited August 9 by Lord_Ikka

[Mazer Rackham]

9 minutes ago, Lord_Ikka said:

*Making Purifiers into mini-Librarians to represent their more potent psyker abilities might work best?

 

This would certainly be helpful for Aegis boosting and Psyker nullification. What do other people think?

[Necronaut]

3 hours ago, Mazer Rackham said:

I am wondering....just wondering mind you, if a Grey Knight Campaign was viable, and what that would look like.  Maybe the Mono-Chapter type DW game would be better played like that? Everyone's a Psyker, everyone has the same gear, do it as a one-shot so no sillies creep in, we lift the statblocks from the FFG rulebooks...

 

IIRC rules for creating Grey Knights characters are spelled out in one of the Dark Heresy books (Daemon Hunter), along with all of the weapons and powers and whatnot. 

[Black Cohort]

1 hour ago, Necronaut said:

 

IIRC rules for creating Grey Knights characters are spelled out in one of the Dark Heresy books (Daemon Hunter), along with all of the weapons and powers and whatnot. 

 

Yeah, it is weird, their rules bolt onto Dark Heresy rather than deathwatch.  But I am sure a conversion could easily be done.

 

One option could be each player has two characters, a regular dark heresy character and a grey knight.

[Xin Ceithan]

1 hour ago, Black Cohort said:

One option could be each player has two characters, a regular dark heresy character and a grey knight.

I quite like this as a campaign set up idea

- the DH chars doing  the  investigative stuff and the GK handling  the heavy hitting ? ( Bonus points / complications if / when the Inquisition chars drift into radicals and the GK have to sort out the mess )

[Black Cohort]

8 minutes ago, Xin Ceithan said:

I quite like this as a campaign set up idea

- the DH chars doing  the  investigative stuff and the GK handling  the heavy hitting ? ( Bonus points / complications if / when the Inquisition chars drift into radicals and the GK have to sort out the mess )

 

I have had a similar idea simmering for a while using dark heresy and deathwatch.  An Imperial system is invaded by Tau, a deathwatch team happens to be on planet but has to go underground, since a handful of astartes can't save a planet from a full invasion.  The dark heresy characters are a motley resistance cell and the deathwatch occasionally come out of the shadows to hit particularly key targets.

[Black Cohort]

Are their things we can/should be doing to promote this club/ play-by-post gaming on the B&C?  It has always been odd to me how few people get involved with this.

[Mazer Rackham]

We've kind've tried a few things, and thrown ideas around but nothing really stuck. One of our successes was down to Commisar Molotov actually beating the reddit and warseer/dakka forums IIRC and directing people to Blackthorn. It helped to retain a few new faces, who stray by - but I was looking at the numbers joined and thinking, we're a good few light.

 

All I can think of is when we're on the cusp of a new game, we throw out an NRBA statement and invite, but the problem with that is our slots fill up quickly with the folks already here, and unless we've got GM's to support those games, it falters.

 

One of our real problems is exactly that: we don't have enough GM's willing to take on games. To triage this, we've been working on games like Tro's Eldar game, where progression is not a burden, and it's more of a lightweight choose your own adventure type, attracting new talent and making the crunch easy for everyone to handle and be an onboarding device that's fun.

 

Another problem we have is that this is a marine heavy board.

 

More trouble is we're niche - and on top of that we don't do modern stuff. What we could really do with is running a W&G game with Primaris kicking about, and that might net a few more bites. However, when the Heresy Game comes out, we should be all over that like a rash. Market forces need to be harnessed to try and drive up footfall - but again - this was one of the concerns (only going to speak for myself here) that Clubbing has - we're now shoved a little more to the side.

 

Bro T talked about possibilities, but how we functionally operate, the possibilities extend merely to marketing and visibility. I personally have some marketing training, but I am also aware of the general sympathis of the forum and how loads of the denizens DNGAD about any of the 'sidebar' stuff that isn't the new shiny, or D6 Mortal Wounds meta.

 

EDIT:

 

A while ago (many years) I tried to get a game going which tied into a painting challenge. That could be something we could look at again - or even some kind of event. I remember there was a worldwide campaign a couple of times - I think one on Armageddon, which left a lot of people miffed because GW just did a GW and maintained the status quo, even after the results were in, and for some reason they blew up a planet and thought this was somehow a Grand Idea.

 

The opportunity to stage an event could be a possibility, but there are real problems with this: one of them is our GM's are alreayd busy up thier eyeballs, and it's a hell of a lot of work, and secondly one of the pitfalls of PBP is that it doesn't give that dopamine hit that live play does. Now don't get me wrong, PBP is one of, if not the best, mediums for RP Games, IMHO, but we still lack that - BOOM, a 6! WooP WoOP - moments.

 

Edited Friday at 09:38 PM by Mazer Rackham

[Black Cohort]

Our old location wasn't exactly drawing in foot traffic.

not running the latest system and modern stuff as least for me is not what I want to run.  I dislike most of the updates GW has made to the setting in recent editions and the few things I think they have mostly done right (like Votan) are very much side projects.  Cawl is obviously a heritech of the highest severity and Primaris an affront to the emperor and the Omnissiah.  

[Mazer Rackham]

I can't really disagree* with any of that. 

 

I was just throwing around ideas on what we could try, nothing else really.

 

* = I still think that we got more footfall in the forum - I saw the odd occasional name browsing, but again, you're not wrong.

[Lysimachus]

I think the new set up might be better for drawing attention to PBP. The link to Clubs is almost at the top of the front page, and - as long as we are posting regularly - our Club will typically be at (or at least near) the top of that Clubs page. So I thInk the change could be an improvement to our visibility?

 

[Black Cohort]

it helps that at least right now, there aren't many super active clubs.

[Mazer Rackham]

Well worry ye not lads, last night I had a dream Henry Cavill joined the club secretly and then shouted us out on international TV.

 

Any day now...

 

Any day....

Edited 17 hours ago by Mazer Rackham

[Trokair]

Ironically (considering the enforced move) the PBP section is now more visible than before as the link to it can be seen on the main page due to RPG no longer being a subforum itself.

[Xin Ceithan]

I think using the momentum once the new HH game hits might be a good way to promote a bit of cross-pollution boardwise, especially if it ( supposedly ) allows for different scales of gaming. If we could tie  that into the upcoming BL Scouring series , that might also work.

 

The idea of having  sort of narrative and painting event to go along with the RP campaign is still on my bucket list. One off the reasons I tried to get my regular group  into 40K was to expand into something like Killteam or combat patrol so I‘d get of my lazy back and get something painted.

 

Maybe tying something like the ideas above might work - people building up crusade style armies and the games / progress tying into the narrative of the PBP game comes to mind.

 

It‘s a shame that GW doesn‘t have scale able campaign games to go along with each other. We ran a few games of Battletech back at the day where the overall campaigns of several groups were linked to large scale developments in Interstellar Players or Battleforce on the regimental level by PBP to set up the actual miniature games of BT  once a month or so and the fall out who feature in our Mechwarrior RP campaign.

 

That‘s hell of a lot of effort and not something you run over the weekend but it allows for interactions and gaming on several scales  of player commitment.

 

Running something akin ( or in concert with ) e.g.  @apologist‘s War of the False Primarch  ( or Battle for Armageddon)  - which conveniently already have Clubs btw- could offer a starting point and framework for the events  /  campaigns involved?

[Mazer Rackham]

The one problem (on top of all the other problems) is that this conversation has been going for years.

 

We never get round to doing anything about it. 

 

The reason for that is simple: Folk don't got the time to support it, and that right there is Brass Tacks, lads.

[Xin Ceithan]

12 minutes ago, Mazer Rackham said:

The one problem (on top of all the other problems) is that this conversation has been going for years.

 

We never get round to doing anything about it. 

 

The reason for that is simple: Folk don't got the time to support it, and that right there is Brass Tacks, lads.

Sadly, that’s very true 

 

Edit: After thinking about this I‘d say that on my part I have no idea or experience on how to integrate something like painting progression or crusade battles into an narrative rp campaign frame. In the example above I could literally look up the rules for at least a general hunch and what might it mean on the broader scale or character levels. Here, I‘d literally start from scratch 

Edited 12 hours ago by Xin Ceithan

[Black Cohort]

I have been debating trying to actually write out my ideas for a better advancement of the setting past the long stagnation at 999.M41 sans Primaris. It could make for a cool rogue trader or inquisition game but as others have said, lack of time to do it right. 

[Mazer Rackham]

Many many moons ago, I wrote (not on this forum) a fanfic intro piece called M.42.

 

It basically had the Emperor die, the Great Rift explodes, but recedes after a bit, and the galaxy turned into pocket empires...so there's every reason to write something up.

 

One of the benefits of an RPG system is the ability to vary the setting a little and still make it work/be attractive to some degree. Black Crusade in fact leans into that, where a crew of crazies could actually wreck face all the way to Terra and rip out Ol' Boney in the biggest 'you're in my seat' flex of all time. Unfortunately that also straddles the line of how far people want to go, since it's never going to be 'canon'.

 

I think doing it as an RT/INQ game makes a lot of sense, since you could hand wave the timeline and bury all the nonsense you don't want in the chaos of the Great Rift (if you wanted that in there), or simply being too far from the action out in the outer reaches in some crazy, edge-of-the-galaxy system....

 

TL;DR, Why not?

[Xin Ceithan]

Before we started moving I was drafting  for  a game trying out Imperium Maledictus ( DH3 ) set in Imperium Nihilus post Rift but in the time before anything from Terra reaches them. Just small islands lost in warp, without the bulk of the Imperium to back them up.

 

I’d still like to run  a narrative / game set during the Legion Wars in the Eye - a few Warbands  among the Dreamlands, packs of feral Aeldari, things who hold power since the Age of Darkness as sort of InQ28 / RP thing - if anyone has some interest it ideas, I’d come  back to that once we wrap things up  in RL but given the scope of something like that it would some pre release idea bouncing anyway..

[Black Cohort]

If I was to do it, a separate club would probably get set up; since it would probably be as much an alternate timeline/setting as much as an rpg campaign(s)