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I really need to find a local gaming group so I can run something like this 
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Jan 17, 2014 18:09
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Run it on the forums! Use IRC or whatever so there can still be tabletop shenanigans.
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Jan 17, 2014 18:11
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This is actually an endeavor in one of the published rogue trader scenarios, IIRC. Crew finds an occupied space hulk, tries to make peace between the remaining crew-factions (Or ally with one and wipe out the others, or just kill them all and loot the place) Except there's a risk the whole thing will vanish into the warp again before they're done.
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Jan 17, 2014 19:26
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SquadronROE posted:This is the best idea for a game ever. Maybe a Dark Heresy game where your team gets sent to a possible Space Hulk, only to find that it's actually an abandoned Mars class that crashed into an Asteroid. Then you get to add in the idea that the Asteroid might have been infested by a single lone purestrain Genestealer that has been slowly stalking the Security Enclave (maybe). It would be kind of cool to run this from the perspective of the inhabitants. Have it been floating so long that the natives are kind of confused about what their situation is, so that the players think that they're actually in some sort of underhive or maybe just a derelict hive. Then over the course of the sessions they can slowly reveal what is really going on, and discover that the ship is in danger (maybe it was abandoned in orbit and the orbit is slowly decaying, risking a crash). They have to unite the tribes and gather enough information and knowledge from tribal elders, work out which tribal relics are actually ignition keys, etc, to save the whole thing.
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Jan 17, 2014 19:43
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Ashcans posted:It would be kind of cool to run this from the perspective of the inhabitants. Have it been floating so long that the natives are kind of confused about what their situation is, so that the players think that they're actually in some sort of underhive or maybe just a derelict hive. Then over the course of the sessions they can slowly reveal what is really going on, and discover that the ship is in danger (maybe it was abandoned in orbit and the orbit is slowly decaying, risking a crash). They have to unite the tribes and gather enough information and knowledge from tribal elders, work out which tribal relics are actually ignition keys, etc, to save the whole thing. If this isn't already a Doctor Who story, it should be.
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Jan 17, 2014 20:03
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Fallout: Imperial Navy would be pretty cool.
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Jan 17, 2014 20:27
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Kai Tave posted:
I suppose because it took millennium to create the gene-seed to begin with, and making a lady version would've been equally a pain in the rear end? Because a Space Marine's physical traits are essentially all the traits you already assume to be superior in men to begin with such as aggression, strength, physical stamina, etc. I suppose you could make a lady Space Marine, but considering Space Marines are so removed from the daily lives and desires of mere mortals it just seems pointless. There are plenty of in-human killers in the Warhammer 40k realm that initially started off as women since really assigning gender seems pointless when we are talking about living weapons that live for centuries if not millennium. If it makes you feel any better there is a line from some of the stories where the Emperor's right hand mentions how he recommended to the Emperor that he use women as the starting template for his Space Marines, because he felt they would be more civilized, but was overruled because when you are ultimately trying to create killers to reconquer the galaxy you might as well start with the sex more commonly disposed to be violent. Run with it, run Black Crusade but as heretics who created a stable gene-seed for women, but are hunted by the Imperium for tampering with something so "holy", whilst still remaining loyal to mankind. This really works for any sort of tech-heresy angle...
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Jan 17, 2014 21:37
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Let's declare them vat-grown and genderless. Those feral worlders who compete and kill for the right to become an astartes? Yeah, they're all too old for any major alterations and re-sequencing work to be done, so they actually just get thrown in the liquifier and act as seed-material for the Finecast (tm) space-marine-o-matic. Space Marines don't like to talk about it because they're dicks.
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Jan 17, 2014 21:46
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Being all-male would sort of be thematic if the Space Marines were played up as being more akin to a monastic order. You know, like Sisters of Battle are space nuns. That element is sort of there, mostly in the Black Templar, but it isn't really something that is particularly stressed in their narrative or framing. Especially when you also have groups like Space Wolves which are totally not in that mold. And, of course, that element of their background came in later, I am pretty sure the original Space Marines were just roided up dudes with augments, and a lot of them were even penal troops? I think the main reason that there weren't any women involved is that it didn't occur to a bunch of nerds in the 80s and it got stuck as they re-wrote everything. It would certainly help if some of the most visible advocates for female marines weren't total weirdos that made the whole thing incredibly awkward. It's the same thing with female IG models - the people who demand this inevitably seem to want some sort of sexy noseart version instead of badass soldiers. There was a female sculptor (I think Victoria Lamb?) making some female guard conversion stuff and of course some jackass turns up talking about how they need to skinnier with bigger busts. On the other hand, I think he ended up getting shouted out of the thread for it so at least attitudes are maybe improving on this.
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Jan 17, 2014 22:21
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We always played it that with the armor on you couldn't tell the men from the women at all. With it off, you could make out some general differences in body structure, but under the armor Marines are pretty hosed up looking anyway, with all the ports for the Black Carapace, the inhuman musculature, etc. I kinda miss the penal trooper Space Marines, when they were just roided up psychos. It felt a lot more honest.
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Jan 17, 2014 22:26
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All this talk about Space Hulks is beautiful. I was planning on moving my group from a wartorn hellzone where chaos, orks, and traitors are all fighting them in a big open space with tanks and valkyries. To a giant space hulk, where battles are close and cramped. What should I have them fight though... hrm...
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Jan 17, 2014 22:31
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Night10194 posted:We always played it that with the armor on you couldn't tell the men from the women at all. With it off, you could make out some general differences in body structure, but under the armor Marines are pretty hosed up looking anyway, with all the ports for the Black Carapace, the inhuman musculature, etc. With Cadians, I was under the impression that you couldn't tell if someone was man or woman because all women have short hair and the carapace covers even the most endowed of bosoms. I mean, everyone on Cadia is a soldier and is in regs from the time they are born. It's stands to reason they are all the same.
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Jan 17, 2014 22:32
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Funktastic Dog posted:All this talk about Space Hulks is beautiful. I was planning on moving my group from a wartorn hellzone where chaos, orks, and traitors are all fighting them in a big open space with tanks and valkyries. To a giant space hulk, where battles are close and cramped. Just before they left/died, the Chief Enginseer turned on his just-restricted-enough-to-be-claimed-non-heretek automated security systems, to look after the place until he, or someone from his order, came back to claim it. Naturally his order was wiped out in time immemorial, and the place is now crawling with age-crazed skitaari who shoot anything without sufficient implants, suicide cherubim, a Machine Spirit on the verge of going full-on rogue AI, servitors that try to steal any corpses/helpless bodies so they can replace their failed biological parts, and a population of assorted animals that have mutated from the ship-board rats' repeated unprotected exposure to the warp. Then they can set off an old distress beacon that attracts the local pirates of whatever race you feel inclined. Go wild.
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Jan 17, 2014 22:46
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Uroboros posted:I suppose because it took millennium to create the gene-seed to begin with, and making a lady version would've been equally a pain in the rear end? Because a Space Marine's physical traits are essentially all the traits you already assume to be superior in men to begin with such as aggression, strength, physical stamina, etc. I suppose you could make a lady Space Marine, but considering Space Marines are so removed from the daily lives and desires of mere mortals it just seems pointless. No offense dude but this is exactly the sort of thing I was talking about. "No no, the fictional future science means that it would have been too hard for them to also use women, also men have better traits for being Space Marines anyway, so" None of this poo poo matters and it borders on the same sorts of justifications people toss out as a defense of things like gender-based attribute modifiers. Of course the other usual response is "why does it matter, they'd be so big and muscly anyway you wouldn't be able to tell the men from the women" but if it really didn't matter then people wouldn't be lining up to list all the reasons why female Space Marines are too tricky to make or break canon or whatever. Ashcans has the right of it that it might have stronger thematic justification at the very least if GW really played up the whole "monastic order, only with guns and power armor" thing the way they do with Sisters of Battle but, well, they don't really.
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Jan 18, 2014 01:16
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goatface posted:Let's declare them vat-grown and genderless. Those feral worlders who compete and kill for the right to become an astartes? Yeah, they're all too old for any major alterations and re-sequencing work to be done, so they actually just get thrown in the liquifier and act as seed-material for the Finecast (tm) space-marine-o-matic. If you go that route you do kind of remove a rather important element, while most Marines barely remember their lives prior to joining their Chapters most of the books do put a certain amount of emphasis on the conflict that most Marines have with their humanity and being essentially a living weapon. If you get a chance you should read either Brotherhood of the Snake or The Emperor's Gift if you already haven't. In the later the main character states something along the lines of "Space Marines are in fact weapons with a human soul" and at one point he longs to find out who he was before he became a Grey Knight, which is something almost all of them deal with at some point. There is a lot more depth to Space Marine characters when in the hands of capable authors, just most of it occurs via internal monologue. I guess if you had female Space Marines that would mean legions of young women are dying for right to become a Space Marine, or dying during the gene-seed implantation phase that kills so many neophytes...that kind of adds to all the grim-dark.
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Jan 18, 2014 01:20
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Nah, that's all inserted via hypno-indoctrination along with all the other poo poo they know. They believe that they are the human used as seed-material, but it's really just their poor understanding of the process (which is deliberately hidden from them) mixed with one of the core control mechanisms designed to make them connect with humanity. The increasingly brutal and destructive chapters are the ones who've lost the ability to make the hypo-indoctrinating stick, and Marines who slip to chaos often do so because they resisted the brainwashing and can see the rest of humanity as the insignificant insects to be crushed that they are. Every chapter is led by a chapter master and a bunch of captains, but behind the scenes there's a whole horde of serfs, adepts and tech-priests who are desperately making sure that the super-human god-warriors that they keep producing don't learn the true nature of their being and turn against humanity and destroy them all.
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Jan 18, 2014 01:37
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That's interesting, I can totally respect that, and I think I'm going to have to pick up Brotherhood of the Snake. I'd kind of been playing with more of I guess an Ork-style interpretation (in Werix's Deathwatch game), in that in a horrifying and grimdark galaxy, you are among the most fortunate and happy people in the Imperium. Fighting and smiting, being a Space Marine, is totally what you live to do. You wake up every morning with great big smile on your face, because holy poo poo you're surrounded by foes on all sides and it's time to attack! There's targets everywhere  It's like the fantasy depiction of intelligent magic swords, "I'm a sword, I live to sword things, I love slicing poo poo up." Even taking into account that I'm exaggerating, I realize this is more or less completely insane  , full of terrible pitfalls, contradictions, completely horrible in its own way upon closer inspection and all that, but I like to think it's a spin on Space Marines' alien psychology.Besides, it sometimes helps me deal with how utterly gloomy and depressing most 40k canon is EFB Referring to Kai Tave and Uroboros Goatface...haha, the Horus Heresy happened because Horus figured "Holy poo poo, what are we going to do after we conquer the galaxy and it's all peaceful and poo poo? Be Space Police? gently caress that, LET THE GALAXY BURN!" Rockopolis fucked around with this message at 01:48 on Jan 18, 2014 |
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Jan 18, 2014 01:44
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Exactly! The Emperor looked out upon the galaxy and he saw that the only way to fight the monsters who lived there would be to create his own monsters and hide their true nature from them. A Marine that learns its true nature will either turn to chaos, off itself, or be sent to the Temples of Morrissey, where they write alternately morose and self-aggrandising poetry until they die due to being too mopey to eat.
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Jan 18, 2014 01:58
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Rockopolis posted:You wake up every morning with great big smile on your face, because holy poo poo you're surrounded by foes on all sides and it's time to attack! There's targets everywhere This isn't a wrong way to do it, and honestly I am sure there are some Space Marines who wake up with a skip in their step, but it isn't how they are usually portrayed. Some Space Marines are more "business" than others, and it is perfectly reasonable for a Space Wolf for instance to be all "who do we get to kill today Brain?!?!" about it. I just assume as the insanity/corruption points build-up his attitude might go from happy-go-killy to murderous.
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Jan 18, 2014 02:00
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B.B. Rodriguez posted:With Cadians, I was under the impression that you couldn't tell if someone was man or woman because all women have short hair and the carapace covers even the most endowed of bosoms. I mean, everyone on Cadia is a soldier and is in regs from the time they are born. It's stands to reason they are all the same. Well the Space Marine game did show that isn't the case all the time but it's probably done in some regiments.
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Jan 18, 2014 02:04
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Cooked Auto posted:Well the Space Marine game did show that isn't the case all the time but it's probably done in some regiments.
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Jan 18, 2014 02:34
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Ashcans posted:It would be kind of cool to run this from the perspective of the inhabitants. Have it been floating so long that the natives are kind of confused about what their situation is, so that the players think that they're actually in some sort of underhive or maybe just a derelict hive. Then over the course of the sessions they can slowly reveal what is really going on, and discover that the ship is in danger (maybe it was abandoned in orbit and the orbit is slowly decaying, risking a crash). They have to unite the tribes and gather enough information and knowledge from tribal elders, work out which tribal relics are actually ignition keys, etc, to save the whole thing. You could try bolting this to a regular campaign (where the PCs are Imperials from the Imperium at large) by having them become marooned in space. They're on their ship, it crashes or the oxygen runs out or whatever, and they wake up to find themselves in this bizarre underhive where nothing seems to make sense and people have no idea what the party are talking about. Someone from the ship rescued them, and why they did and just dropped them in the habitation section would be a part of the mystery.
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Jan 18, 2014 02:38
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Asehujiko posted:Lt. Mira was a bigger hero than Titus in that game. "You guys go and use your superhuman powers and equipment to repeatedly fail to attach a bomb to another bomb in a room full of bombs, I'll be out here with my lasgun and handle the rest of the war until you get back". As for her appearance, given how eccentric some higher ups look, I think you get more stylistic freedom every time you get promoted. So it's a ponytail at Lieutenant, heraldic overcoat at major and a flying dead baby following you with a book of your favourite It wasn't so much that they failed to attach a bomb to another bomb in a room full of bombs, it's that they attached a bomb to another bomb and had to transport that bomb-on-a-bomb to another room full of bombs. Instead of attaching a bomb to one of the bombs already in the other room full of bombs.
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Jan 18, 2014 02:41
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Ashcans posted:It would be kind of cool to run this from the perspective of the inhabitants. Have it been floating so long that the natives are kind of confused about what their situation is, so that the players think that they're actually in some sort of underhive or maybe just a derelict hive. Then over the course of the sessions they can slowly reveal what is really going on, and discover that the ship is in danger (maybe it was abandoned in orbit and the orbit is slowly decaying, risking a crash). They have to unite the tribes and gather enough information and knowledge from tribal elders, work out which tribal relics are actually ignition keys, etc, to save the whole thing. We did something similar to this in a BC game, but from the "informed" side. We got into a space hulk and had to kill/cajole all the daemons in it to take it over, then got it running. There were also a bunch of feral dudes in it like you describe, who had no idea what was going on and just assumed we were the good guys. It helped that everyone looked normalish aside from me, and I kept all my horrifying Nurgle mutations hidden with a sealed carapace suit.
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Jan 18, 2014 02:48
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I'm sorry, all I really remember about that game was that Titus was surprisingly likeable, headbutting a demon prince to death, and finding a wicked sick exploit sniper nest in horde mode to troll Chaos Marines with a lascannon. Oh wait, no, I also remember being elated then disappointed by the best objective in the game "Board the Titan" There totally needs to be a Titan video game or RPG. I'm not sure if DW or RT would be better; probably RT, if you treat them like spaceships.
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Jan 18, 2014 02:54
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Final Liberation was a pretty fun computerized Space Marine 2nd Edition. It had Titans in it, and could handle enough tanks and infantry to make a force with a couple of Titans. And given that these guys exist, do the women even want to be Space Marines ? 
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Jan 18, 2014 06:03
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I played Final Liberation ages ago; choose your next words with exceptional care! All I can think of when I look at that pic is how teeny tiny those guns are.
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Jan 18, 2014 06:07
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Kai Tave posted:Why? Because canon! Why is it so important that this one element of canon be preserved, exactly? Shut up! There's never any reason that's more compelling than "because it's very important to me that this particular bit of made-up setting for my toy soldiers game remains a constant." It's not the end of the world but it's more awkward than "Oh yeah, this Centurion armour? We've already had it". Like I said, it depends how it's done. If it's retconned as being a thing forever then the Primarchs all being men seems silly as well. Like I said, I don't have a problem against it if it was done in one of the ways I listed. I think it'd be neat if it was part of the Cursed Founding stuff, maybe even one of the ways of altering geneseed that actually worked. Or perhaps a successful side-effect of Corax' experimentation post-Heresy. As long as it isn't just a blanket "It's always been this way" I think it'd be neat. Except I have zero-faith that GW wouldn't just slap in two or three boob-plate torsos in every tac marine box.
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Jan 18, 2014 07:25
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The one good thing about marines all being dudes is that you really get to play up their mommy issues due to the lack of any sort of feminine influence in their life.
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Jan 18, 2014 16:56
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Ashcans posted:It would be kind of cool to run this from the perspective of the inhabitants. Have it been floating so long that the natives are kind of confused about what their situation is, so that the players think that they're actually in some sort of underhive or maybe just a derelict hive. Then over the course of the sessions they can slowly reveal what is really going on, and discover that the ship is in danger (maybe it was abandoned in orbit and the orbit is slowly decaying, risking a crash). They have to unite the tribes and gather enough information and knowledge from tribal elders, work out which tribal relics are actually ignition keys, etc, to save the whole thing. One idea I've had for a campaign is to do run a Warhammer Fantasy RPG "using a custom setting," where the PCs are all young boys embarking on a sacred, global tournament across a hostile land, and then conclude the campaign with "Suddenly, Space Marines arrive. Congratulations: you're now Neophytes!" SirPhoebos fucked around with this message at 18:00 on Jan 18, 2014 |
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Jan 18, 2014 17:56
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SirPhoebos posted:One idea I've had for a campaign is to do run a Warhammer Fantasy RPG "using a custom setting," where the PCs are all young boys embarking on a sacred, global tournament across a hostile land, and then conclude the campaign with "Suddenly, Space Marines arrive. Congratulations: you're now Neophytes!" Two hundred years later you pick up the same characters for a Deathwatch game.
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Jan 18, 2014 18:56
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Kinda reminds me of something that was done in an RT campaign, here's story from /tg/.
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Jan 18, 2014 19:31
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The Gate posted:The whole Mechanicus/Tech-Priest thing is probably my favorite bit of 40k fluff. For a long time I thought it was just some nonsense thing where they don't know how things work, so they "pray" to objects and that works, because it's always worked, etc. Very Dark Ages feeling. And for most people in the Warhammer 40k world, that's pretty much all it is. The Machine Spirit is exactly that: the soul of the machine. Without proper respect it will refuse to serve, because while it understands that it is a tool with a purpose, it's soul requires the devotion of it's operator.
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Jan 19, 2014 03:30
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I haven't done any paper rpgs for a while now, but recently I've got a group who seems interested in me DMing this Black Crusade game. Should I get the main book and the GM handbook, or is there any other supplementals I should buy? PS: They don't really know about warhammer 
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Jan 19, 2014 13:34
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With most of the 40k RPGs, there's a single supplement that greatly expands on the core rules. Unfortunately with BC, there's three, with an expected fourth, so it could get expensive if you're not looking at running a particular god-themed scenario. Not sure how the adventure book stands up but the sample scenario in the core book is pretty bad.
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Jan 19, 2014 14:08
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Get the Tome of Blood if there's a psyker among them, Black Crusade suffers a bit from Exponential Wizard syndrome and the Tome of Blood seeks to rectify that with giving everybody else Legacy Weapons.
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Jan 19, 2014 14:08
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How would you stat up Kharn for Deathwatch? As an enemy, I mean.
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Jan 19, 2014 23:28
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Refluffed bloodthirster?
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Jan 20, 2014 00:01
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Narratively. He's not something that a Deathwatch team should be fighting. He's something that Grey Knights would only want to be fighting if they were prepared in advance and massively outnumbered him. Otherwise, he's Khorne's favourite mortal, so he's immune to psychic powers, and probably any effects they can cause. He'd probably count as berserk all the time with every relevant talent, and have WS high enough that he just doesn't miss. Gorechild is a legendary, probably daemon-weapon chainaxe that would need its own insane stats. He probably has toughness in the triple digits and X parry actions a turn, where X is the number of times you try to hit him. He might be literally unkillable. He should also need a willpower test every turn to do anything other than kill the nearest thing.
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Jan 20, 2014 00:02
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I was thinking he'd be best as a nasty surprise to desperately flee from, more than anything else.
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Jan 20, 2014 00:09
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