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Sheep can't get AIDS.
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Mar 19, 2014 14:19
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That's the true power of Nurgle.
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Mar 19, 2014 14:19
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John Dyne posted:Black Crusade is the Thousand Sons sorcerer riding his magic bird and raining hell on a group of Khornates, and periling so hard a bloodletter drop kicks him off of his mount because it manifests right in front of him, and then proceeds to eat his bird in flight. Quoting this one because it is a five star post and needs to be the one people are quoting, really.
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Mar 19, 2014 14:24
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I've had them games, but it's more to do with new players not understanding chaos, and unless you for some reason really want to indulge in sheep pedo play, feel free to instruct your players that they've gone off the wrong end and suggest some other things to do - it is your prerogative as a GM, after all.
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Mar 19, 2014 14:45
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Kai Tave posted:Yeah, confession time, I don't actually know much about how Black Crusade handles things (especially sheep, heyo), so it could very well have better non-combat support than the other 40K games so far, my point is just that Only War is no worse in that respect than the games that came before it. Rogue Trader isn't going to give you a ton of support for cunning duals of mercantile wit and high-society politics, if you want any of that stuff you're also going to have to go outside of RAW in order to do that. There are two sets of (slightly) more advanced rules for social encounters in the 40k RPGs, they're just not exactly in the most obvious places. Black Crusade has them in Tome of Excess, which is almost a sensible place to put them, and Dark heresy has them in Lathe Worlds buried somewhere in the new skills section, because obviously if you're going to introduce rules for carrying out lengthier negotiations, they will be in some unmarked section of the tech-priest splatbook.
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Mar 19, 2014 15:21
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Waci posted:There are two sets of (slightly) more advanced rules for social encounters in the 40k RPGs, they're just not exactly in the most obvious places. Black Crusade has them in Tome of Excess, which is almost a sensible place to put them, and Dark heresy has them in Lathe Worlds buried somewhere in the new skills section, because obviously if you're going to introduce rules for carrying out lengthier negotiations, they will be in some unmarked section of the tech-priest splatbook.
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Mar 19, 2014 16:42
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Soooo I've run two sessions of RT by now. I did the thing where the first session was stealing the ship (a Sword frigate) they'll use. The RT and his Navigator buddy hooked up with a Seneschal who was working for a crime syndicate that had somehow got its hands on an Imperial Navy frigate thought long lost. They stole it from its asteroid dock near Port Wander and blew up the whole asteroid with a promethium stockpile to cover their tracks. Then they travelled via warp to Footfall. The frigate, it turns out, has a temperamental warp engine. Roll some dice and... they end up in Footfall the day before they left Port Wander. That's a solid alibi if I ever saw one.
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Mar 19, 2014 18:12
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I love those warp engines. Rogue Trader really is the sweet spot of awesome RP opportunity and awesomely powerful dudes. I just wish it had more books describing infinite variations of goods. The variant creation system from OW would be perfect for RT.
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Mar 19, 2014 18:21
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FireSight posted:I love those warp engines. Rogue Trader really is the sweet spot of awesome RP opportunity and awesomely powerful dudes. I just wish it had more books describing infinite variations of goods. The variant creation system from OW would be perfect for RT. Isn't there something like this in Stars of Inequity? I'm pretty sure I saw a Treasure Generator buried somewhere in that mess. I recall it could spit out some fun stuff, or at least I thought so at the time.
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Mar 19, 2014 19:39
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The treasure generator is just a d10 list that sends you to a list of 8-10 stock items that you also make a d10 roll on. No customization of the items at all, just a flat statline for each one.
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Mar 19, 2014 19:44
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MaliciousOnion posted:The alternative is to give them array of scores to add to their base (ie. 5, 5, 8, 10, 10, 13, 15, 15, 18). Nice. Might bump that 8 up to a 9 since that makes it an even 100 and also forces the player to decide which stat to drop the dreaded 29 into.
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Mar 19, 2014 22:42
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Emerald Rogue posted:Isn't there something like this in Stars of Inequity? I'm pretty sure I saw a Treasure Generator buried somewhere in that mess. I recall it could spit out some fun stuff, or at least I thought so at the time.
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Mar 20, 2014 00:06
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Asehujiko posted:It also produces some absurdly overpowered crap compared to Variant Patterns. A Potent Rifle has a statline of 90m, 1d10+9, S/3/5, Pen 4, Clip 20, Reload Full, 7kg, RF's on a 9-10 and may have quirks like "+2 DoS or +1 DoF depending on situation" and "+1 DoS -3 Initiative" basically guaranteeing 4 hits on a successful Full Auto roll. An Indestructible Ship Component is just that, it treats any damage resulting from critical hits(including things like "plasma drive explodes, every component gets the "Destroyed" status effect") as "become unpowered for 1d5 turns".  Man, why I am messing around with a heavy bolter?
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Mar 20, 2014 03:23
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Asehujiko posted:It also produces some absurdly overpowered crap compared to Variant Patterns. A Potent Rifle has a statline of 90m, 1d10+9, S/3/5, Pen 4, Clip 20, Reload Full, 7kg, RF's on a 9-10 and may have quirks like "+2 DoS or +1 DoF depending on situation" and "+1 DoS -3 Initiative" basically guaranteeing 4 hits on a successful Full Auto roll. An Indestructible Ship Component is just that, it treats any damage resulting from critical hits(including things like "plasma drive explodes, every component gets the "Destroyed" status effect") as "become unpowered for 1d5 turns". Oh, so it produces a standard Astartes weapon.
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Mar 20, 2014 04:03
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So, I may have conned myself into some rogue trader GM'ing.. Are there any places one can get "clean" starmaps? Like, charts over a sub-sector, in which one can overlay planets and astronomical phenomena of ones own design?
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Mar 20, 2014 12:47
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What, a generic white hexgrid on a black background? I know Traveller has a few.
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Mar 20, 2014 16:14
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No, I was thinking something more space-like, like the Koronus Expanse map, but less cluttered.
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Mar 20, 2014 16:54
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I know this isn't quite what you wanted but I just took this map of the Expanse and will add stars to it as needed. Canonwise the names are mostly planets, not stars, because it's based on the book maps which are named in a similarly dumb fashion, so I've retconned the names to be the names of stars to spare the effort.
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Mar 20, 2014 17:10
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I thought actually mapping space in 40k was mostly meaningless since Warp travel doesn't really correspond to physical direction and that's the only way anyone goes through space. I could be wrong, though.
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Mar 20, 2014 18:46
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Things in real space are going to be in real space so you're going to want a map of it, if only to keep track of places in a convenient and intuitive way. I suppose you could just have a list of star systems and simply roll dice whenever you want to go from A to B. RT leaves a lot of space for the GM anyway.
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Mar 20, 2014 18:58
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I imagine that when the Tyranids come rocking, you want to know the exact layout of things in realspace. It's all going to be a loving huge approximation anyway. The galaxy is thin, but only on the scale of the galaxy.
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Mar 20, 2014 19:11
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I thought warp travel still corresponded to real space though, in which case it would be important to know. Like, warping to an adjacent system would still be faster than trekking to the other side of the galaxy, barring any crazy warp stuff.
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Mar 20, 2014 19:59
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Pharmaskittle posted:I thought warp travel still corresponded to real space though, in which case it would be important to know. Like, warping to an adjacent system would still be faster than trekking to the other side of the galaxy, barring any crazy warp stuff. The Rogue Trader books kind of make it sound like that's not necessarily the case, albeit when talking about travel within the Expanse as opposed to the entire galaxy. Warp turbulence or complex currents could make going to the adjacent system take much longer than one much farther away in real terms. Additionally, warp travel at its best is still "crazy warp stuff" by defintion! It's just crazy warp stuff that humanity has more or less figured out. It's presented as much more of an art than a science - not surprising, given the state of the Imperium in general.
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Mar 20, 2014 20:41
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I use the map grid as a rough estimate, but I fudge it this or that way or roll a die to make the trip longer or shorter. But most of the time, travelling from one end of the Expanse to the other will take more time than travelling from Footfall to Port Wander.
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Mar 20, 2014 20:56
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Warp travel is more like a boat sailing on an ocean without a map of the currents or navigational hazards. Going straight from Point A to Point B may be the shortest physical path, but it's not necessarily the fastest or safest path.
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Mar 20, 2014 21:42
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So a thought came to mind; I was wondering if anyone knew. So with hypnoconditioning that marines go through, did that exist pre heresy? I understand the conditioning including a lot of "the emperor is god, worship and die for him" whereas the whole great crusade was space-renaissance with "no gods, only (super) men". So was the conditioning different pre heresy, or did it not exist at all ? I think the black crusade roleplay implications would be interesting.
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Mar 21, 2014 14:48
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Werix posted:So a thought came to mind; I was wondering if anyone knew. So with hypnoconditioning that marines go through, did that exist pre heresy? I understand the conditioning including a lot of "the emperor is god, worship and die for him" whereas the whole great crusade was space-renaissance with "no gods, only (super) men". I don't think it did. The main point of the hypnoconditioning is to try and ensure that a Space Marine will never waver in his duty and in so doing risk becoming a traitor. Before the heresy though it there was any hypnoconditioning it was focussed on making the Space Marines even more brutal warriors as the loyalty issue did not even exist as how could Space Marines turn on each other?
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Mar 21, 2014 15:07
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I imagine at least some of it is responsible for their fearlessness and a few implants (like the  There's probably stuff related to or inserted by the Ultramarines, which is why the books always refer to them in glowing terms and why in Deathwatch Ultramarines Tactical Marines can pull off such batshit insane leadership feats. They're activating the Sons of the Primarchs system. 
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Mar 21, 2014 15:21
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I imagine the hypno-doctrination is also tailored by each chapter to try to impart their Chapter Culture, and is probably partially set by the parent chapter. I honestly think that Guilleman was intending to take over from the Emperor after the Heresy. His Legion was mostly intact, the Ultramarines were in a position to dominate the founding of new Chapters and easily bring them back together under his command, he was the guy who got to set the standing orders for training and organization, and he always struck me as a bit of a political climber who was better at garnering credit and glory than anything else. I like to think his intention was to let the new Codex Astartes and Chapter organization run for a couple centuries, then when no-one had the cohesion to oppose him directly, declare himself Imperator or something of the sort, and that his cunning plan just got derailed via venomous talon to the neck.
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Mar 21, 2014 18:51
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Night10194 posted:Guilleman hypothesis I wonder if this wasn't why he and Dorn butted heads. Maybe they both had designs on taking over for Daddy, and the agreement of splitting the Legions into Chapters was also an agreement to not fight over who got to sit on the Golden Throne.
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Mar 21, 2014 19:35
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I would think the Thunder Warriors didn't have it, because a number of them rebelled. By the time he built the actual legions, he might have built a few more "make them not want to kill me" steps into the process.
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Mar 21, 2014 19:40
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In retrospect, giving my Rogue Trader players a Tachyon Arrow was always going to have amusing consequences. On the other hand, Trazyn the Infinite makes for a fun benefactor/manipulator for a Rogue Trader game. Setting up next week's game, he's called in the favor the PCs owe him from last week's game: he's finally tracked down a unique, utterly priceless artifact he wants the PCs to retrieve for him. What did he find that he wants for his collection? The polished skull of Ferrus Manus.
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Mar 22, 2014 11:32
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Cythereal posted:In retrospect, giving my Rogue Trader players a Tachyon Arrow was always going to have amusing consequences. On the other hand, Trazyn the Infinite makes for a fun benefactor/manipulator for a Rogue Trader game. Setting up next week's game, he's called in the favor the PCs owe him from last week's game: he's finally tracked down a unique, utterly priceless artifact he wants the PCs to retrieve for him. What did he find that he wants for his collection? The polished skull of Ferrus Manus. I guess at least he is going to take good care of it once you give it to him? Like, at least he is unlikely to care all that much about the Imperium enough to try all that much active sabotage.
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Mar 22, 2014 12:03
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SpiritOfLenin posted:I guess at least he is going to take good care of it once you give it to him? Like, at least he is unlikely to care all that much about the Imperium enough to try all that much active sabotage. Fortunately (?) Trazyn gave the PCs a choice of two priceless artifacts he'd located. One is owned by a chapter of loyal Adeptus Astartes, the other is currently held by an arch-magos of the Dark Mechanicum. By this point in the story my group has been following, the Iron Hands have made themselves a serious nuisance to the Necrons and PCs, so Trazyn would like to mess with them some. He didn't tell them what either option entailed, just who currently owns it. Option one was Ferrus Manus' skeleton minus the skull, notably including his titular iron hands. It's the holiest relic of the Iron Hands themselves, held in their central fortress-monastery on Medusa. Option two, which the PCs took mainly because they're oddly puritanical in some regards, is Ferrus Manus' skull. Trazyn would like both, eventually - I'm debating starting a theme of him wanting to collect the whole set of primarchs or at least relics thereof. I've already established that he currently owns Mercy and Forgiveness, Konrad Kurze's lightning claws, and The Draken Scale, Vulkan's armor. Could be an amusing direction to take the game if the players like the adventure. A grimdark version of The Monument Men, only the PCs are working for an undead robot archivist. Cythereal fucked around with this message at 15:04 on Mar 22, 2014 |
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Mar 22, 2014 14:57
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Cythereal posted:Fortunately (?) Trazyn gave the PCs a choice of two priceless artifacts he'd located. One is owned by a chapter of loyal Adeptus Astartes, the other is currently held by an arch-magos of the Dark Mechanicum. By this point in the story my group has been following, the Iron Hands have made themselves a serious nuisance to the Necrons and PCs, so Trazyn would like to mess with them some. He didn't tell them what either option entailed, just who currently owns it. Option one was Ferrus Manus' skeleton minus the skull, notably including his titular iron hands. It's the holiest relic of the Iron Hands themselves, held in their central fortress-monastery on Medusa. Option two, which the PCs took mainly because they're oddly puritanical in some regards, is Ferrus Manus' skull. Trazyn would like both, eventually - I'm debating starting a theme of him wanting to collect the whole set of primarchs or at least relics thereof. I've already established that he currently owns Mercy and Forgiveness, Konrad Kurze's lightning claws, and The Draken Scale, Vulkan's armor. Rogue Trader groups often have some small puritan bent no matter what they do - even our group of horrible people will generally speaking do the Right Thing sometimes, like when our Missionary saved a corrupted Saint's soul. Of course, just a few hours before that the group's Genetor talked with a Tyranid brood/hive ship/something psychically separated from the Hive Mind and got 'upgrades' from it, but nobody's perfect. But it is good to have some stable source of missions if the players aren't too proactive, and an undead robot is not the worst thing you could be getting missions from.
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Mar 22, 2014 15:27
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Cythereal posted:In retrospect, giving my Rogue Trader players a Tachyon Arrow was always going to have amusing consequences. On the other hand, Trazyn the Infinite makes for a fun benefactor/manipulator for a Rogue Trader game. Setting up next week's game, he's called in the favor the PCs owe him from last week's game: he's finally tracked down a unique, utterly priceless artifact he wants the PCs to retrieve for him. What did he find that he wants for his collection? The polished skull of Ferrus Manus. Before giving it to him, wave it in front of the Iron Hands and yell 'He dead, you fools! He dead!' Then run. Run very fast.
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Mar 22, 2014 15:28
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SpiritOfLenin posted:But it is good to have some stable source of missions if the players aren't too proactive, and an undead robot is not the worst thing you could be getting missions from. That is a bit of an issue with this group, yes. They can be very creative when given an objective, but like it when I give them a general goal. Here are a few other ideas I have for this, Trazyn starting serious work on his primarch collection: The Spite Furnace, Angron's plasma pistol cast aside when he ascended to daemon prince status. It's still where he dropped it, on a world no Imperial has set eyes on for ten thousand years. Illuminarium, Lorgar's staff. He occasionally hands this out to promising rising leaders of the Word Bearers as an object lesson in the weight of power. Lorgar's very good at getting this back when his lesson has served its purpose, but Trazyn's galleries might well be beyond Lorgar's reach... The original Scrolls of Magnus, a condensed version of the Book of Magnus given to Ahriman. Currently hidden and guarded by Eldar Harlequins, but Trazyn has a solid lead on it. The Spear of Russ, hidden away on Fenris. The Space Wolves made a legend on the planet that anyone who follows mythic clues and finds the Spear will join their ranks... Conquest, Jaghatai Khan's horse, preserved in stasis in a remote shrine on Chogoris. Sanguinius' death mask. The real death mask. It's on Terra. Happily, the Necrons have demonstrated before that they have no trouble penetrating deep into Sol. Ideally, Trazyn would love to grab Guilliman and El'Jonson themselves, and the corpses of Sanguinius and Rogal Dorn (if the latter is indeed dead), but those are all a bit out of reach for the game for the foreseeable future.
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Mar 22, 2014 16:04
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Stealing a primarch sounds like the best rogue trader campaign idea.
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Mar 22, 2014 16:13
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Waci posted:Stealing a primarch sounds like the best rogue trader campaign idea. The thing is that by the time the Rogue Trader group is powerful enough to do that, they are also powerful enough to beat up whoever wants them to steal that. They'd still probably be strong enough to do it on high levels, especially if the group includes an Ork; they do absolutely absurd amounts of damage at high levels.
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Mar 22, 2014 16:21
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SpiritOfLenin posted:The thing is that by the time the Rogue Trader group is powerful enough to do that, they are also powerful enough to beat up whoever wants them to steal that. They'd still probably be strong enough to do it on high levels, especially if the group includes an Ork; they do absolutely absurd amounts of damage at high levels. I also don't think this group would actually do that. The Iron Hands, they're fine messing with because the Iron Hands have been dicks to the group, and they're fully on board with punching Chaos in the face, but I doubt they'd accept a job to steal one of the loyal primarchs. Going after, say Night Haunter's body, on the other hand, sounds like an excellent long-term campaign goal.
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Mar 22, 2014 16:29
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