Current events

This page is for discussion of stuff related to the game coming up this week, no matter when that actually is. For instance, we can all assume Nate isnt coming for some lame reason and that Ed is sick of pizza and is bringing teriyaki or some other crap. They can post something here if that happens to be untrue.

Schedule

Date...........game................Location..........(Advanced attendance)
1/4/08.......WFRP............BnD...............(Ben Gone, Ed present)
1/11/08......WFRP............BnD...............
1/18/08......totally cancelled
1/25/08......W-Wolf..........BnD...............
2/1/08.......W-Wolf..........BnD...............
2/8/08.......W-Wolf .........BnD............... ben probably not gone
2/15/08......WFRP............BnD............... ed likely gone
2/16/08......bday one shot..BnD...............
2/22/08......???.............BnD............... Matt at GDC
2/29/08......???.............BnD............... ed 50% chance; LEAP YEAR, bitches!!
3/07/08......W-Wolf
3/14/08......W-Wolf..........BnD............... ben gone
3/21/08......W-Wolf..........BnD............... .ben gone
3/28/08......WFRP............BnD...............

GABE: Soooo, would anyone be interested in some Heroscape? Not this week of course. But would anyone be down? I got a nice big table we can use. Weekdays are fine too. I was also thinking maybe a Sunday.

Attendance and Food Preference

2/1/08

--Edmiao 18:24, 28 January 2008 (MST) same old same old, present, no pizza and 6pm magic.

--Gdaze 21:22, 28 January 2008 (MST) You guys wanna hold it at my place then since Ben is gone? I have a spiffy table for gaming!

BEN: ben is NOT gone.

--Gdaze-- Oh dur, I read the 1/4/08 date, heh heh. No pizza for me this time but yes magic.

Brandon 10:30, 29 January 2008 (MST) Pizza & Magic!! Do you want to try and order pizza from that place Dieter found? I could pick it up again, but there is a job talk this Friday which would slow me down a bit.

--Matts 12:22, 29 January 2008 (MST)Definitely there. Pizza is good. Is our pack's totem Bear after all?

--Edmiao 13:54, 29 January 2008 (MST) yes it is, we decided to make our totem in the image of Gabe's mom. I thought that the most appropriate totem thus would be boar, but ben was adamant that cockroach fit the bill while Brandon's experience pulled for Rat. Deiter abstained from the Gabe's mom debate and was voting to make the totem Starbuck (vintage). So we had to settle on bear.

btw, bsg is coming back in march or something.

Ranting and raving or other random comments

--Edmiao 13:29, 27 January 2008 (MST)Today we heard a thump on the house which we later presumed to be a bird hitting a window. a short time later cheryl saw a squirrel running with a bird in it's mouth. apparently squirrels are carnivorous when given the chance.

Gabe: Sweet! So regarding the 40k rpg that was suppose to come out... check this out. [1]

Yup, they won't be making ANY more rpg material for 40k after Sept, no word on the fantasy aspect yet. What the fuck man?

--Matts 17:44, 29 January 2008 (MST)Cool, now I don't need to buy their really expensive 40k book and can continue to cook up my own wacky 40k RP systems!

--24.16.98.34 18:58, 29 January 2008 (MST) You mean some system you go off on a tangent for for like... 20 minutes but comes down to rolling D 8's? MWUHAHA! Well I for one think it sucks. I imagen fantasy may be next. I guess Warhammer isn't doing so hot... concentrate on novels? Fucking fantasy novels based on a game? I'm sorry but those usually blow.

Gabe: Aaaaand I didn't make it into the Jet Program... fuck.

--Jason 22:03, 29 January 2008 (MST)I just read something on this. They are certainly discontinuing the fantasy as well, and neither are because of lack of performance. In fact, the 40k rp sold out in presale and was back ordered heavily, but those got canceled. The dirt is they dont want to take away from their miniatures and related games sales. Those greedy bastards dont care one lick about consumers and what they want, they just want the skrilla.

--Gdaze 22:24, 29 January 2008 (MST) Thats what a lot of people were saying. They were all shocked because like you said, the main book sells out everywhere in like a day. Its a shame too because I really do find the WHFRP books to be of quality. Granted the skaven book and monster book had low content they were still written very well. Fucking English.

--Gdaze -- So yeah... everyone is sold out and there is no word if more copies are going to be made... what the heck man? This really sucks. I hate games workshop, I hate their money grubbing ways.

--Matts 10:47, 30 January 2008 (MST)They can go ahead and do whatever they want. As cool as the 40k universe can be, I think it needs heavy modification to be suitable for anything other than a combat game, and there's shit like Inquisitor or regular 40k for that.

FRP is something of a shame. The creative guys at GW obviously have a soft spot for it, but the bean-counters don't see any margin in it - the books take a fair amount of work to make, are relatively expensive to print, and don't encourage the purchase of way-overpriced miniatures, so the niche product goes out the window and they keep selling books to 12-year olds.

--Gdaze-- I beileve there is enough source material out there to make RPG games out of the 40k universe. Heck I did it with the hero system and while it needed more polishing it was a lot of fun. I honestly believe they are axing it for the reason you said and that it is taking away from their figure line, it is a whole heck-a-lot cheaper then their over priced figures.

Overall I think its insane to cancel something so quickly.

Of course I never had any desire to play as a Marine, which is why I see it as a viable playing world.

--Matts 11:52, 30 January 2008 (MST)Not to fuel what promises to be a silly debate, but the 40k world is ABOUT marines. Everyone else is an accessory, and a really pathetic, fucked up, or fanatical accessory at that. The aliens are all crazy, the bad guys are beyond redemption, and the good guys would rather kill a planet of their own than allow the bad guys an inch. It's a world without any moral wiggle-room. Unless you radically depart from established fiction and work to make the average person's life a little more than a bad dream and death, then any players' story would be a few brutal fights and a death.

With a little work I think you can make it an interesting place, but as it stands, especially in later revisions of 40k, non-military people are an afterthought, and military people are all essentially unsympathetic.

--Gdaze -- Well that seems to be just a personal view though. If you look at books like Inquistor, it even says some use Chaos as a weapon against Chaos, thats a fair amount of wiggling room I beleive. Just because the marines are presented as always being unsympathetic doesn't mean all are. 40k may have started out about marines, but I believe it has grown a fair amount since then. For example what about the hive gangs? What about the fact that the main force of the Empire is made up of ex-gang members and ex-cons?

Also you have to remember that many of the "accounts" presented are as they are written by the Empire, so of course they are one sided and full of "We are the best and everyone must serve the Emperor!" I'm not really sure why the game can't be about many other aspects about the 40k world. There is so much stuff out there about it. Marines are nothing more then brainwashed supermen for the most part, so of course they don't lend themselves well to RP. But aspects like rogue traders, inquestion (there are many different fractions and each has different views on just what Chaos is), or hive gangs do exist, their is material out there for them, and lend themselves quite well to RP.

BEN: I think "inquestion" as a branch of the imperial administratum pretty much takes the Jumbles prize of the week. I'd like to add that in "rogue trader" marines aren't brainwashed supermen...they are essentially the knightly orders of feudal europe. I don't think 40K is all about marines...the eldar story, for instance, is really interesting and makes a great RP setting. But honestly, I think that in early versions of 40K (ie, pre 2nd edition) the Marines were far away the coolest and most interesting part of it. Like I say, the next time I'm up to GM I'll be running a marine central game, heavy on combat (probably would run a set # of sessions, right now I'm thinking 3 interconnected stories running 6-7 sessions each...)

--Gdaze--I think Ben makes a good point, the way the groups are depicted has changes and continues to change. I read somewhere that they like to keep things kinda vague. Makes sense with planets so cut off from each other I guess. Yeah yeah I don't bother checking for typos or spelling errors, so blow it out yer arse! Kekekeke~!

Marines are cool, they look cool to boot. But I find the feel of the universe overall to be the real pull.

I think Matt is right on this one. Ben makes a good point about Rogue Trader too. That game was about space pirates and all sorts of dudes in space. It was a fusion of RP and tabletop that they eventually used their skirmish games to accomplish. The 40k fluff is pretty much silliness most of the time, and its rarely consistent from version to version, heck not even from one book to the next in the same version. I was trying to explain Space Hulk to Rumi the other day and I realized how completely ridiculous the story is.

I have been a big supporter of GW since the 80's, even through all sorts of iterations of games I cant stand. A lot of me holding on is because they tend to have good ideas at their core, even when they are poorly implemented. Back when they actually made games, they made (really) good ones.

But they dont make games anymore, and thats the crux of why they canceled 40k and whfrp. They realize that 40k and the warhammer fantasy battles 'games' are vehicles to sell miniatures and paints. Without the hobby these games would have been forgotten 5 years after they were printed. They arent going to win any awards for innovative mechanics or anything, but they do dazzle us all with constantly evolving figure lines and excellent art books. Eventually one of the bean counters realized that a lot of the people who are the target audience have a limited budget, and why should those people be choosing to buy a licensed product that they are getting a portion of the proceeds, when they could instead be buying GW branded material, so they can have it all.

GW was greedy in the 80's when they charged 49.95 for Blood Bowl and 23.95 for a Star Players book that is little more than a pamphlet in size. Now they are being fiscally shrewd at the expense of the customer. They know what the market will bear, and now they are crafting the market to maximize their profits. Its hard to fault them for it, but as long as there are all sorts of people out there who are willing to spend thousands each year on models they already have 3 iterations of, just so they can be chapter approved, what reason do they have to innovate or care about the customer?

--63.228.97.171 22:00, 30 January 2008 (MST) holy mary mother of god, i ain't never seen so much angst. y'all need to spend more time with Gabe's mom to learn the true meaning of "bottom line".

--Gdaze--Hmm very good points there Jason. I mean I know, if they can make more bang for their buck off their figures, of course they will. Its just so surprising to cancel it stright out after announcing they will release things over the next 3 years. I may just go pick me up that tomb of corruption then, cause that is one great book. Course I'm angsty! Freaking game I've been looking forward to is already canceled! FUCK!

The Next Step in WHFRP Reboot

WHFRP Reboot Recap

The Next Step in Werewolf

Werewolf Recap

WEREWOLF PITCH

GABE: Hey guys. Tonight I'm going to be making up some combat summary sheets, because that book flipping stuff last time was really hindering to the action. I plan on making one sheet be just all the different attacks you can do, so thats all good there.

On the other one I will have the following items:
1. Regen roll - what you have to roll, what it does.
2. Shifting Form rolls - what you have to roll, the ruling on it.
3. Actions - How many can you do, rules for multiple actions, what counts as a free action.
4. Movement - Just how far can you move, jumping chart.

Is there anything else I left out that you may think is useful? Please let me know here so I can make it up tonight, thanks!

--Matts 13:37, 31 January 2008 (MST)How much damage Garou claws, Garou bites, and Gurahl claws and Gurahl bites do, along with all the maneuvers and difficulties for them.

GABE:Yeah... I said I'd make that one already, kekekeke. I just summed it up with "all the different attacks can do". So yes, there will be one with all the moves, damages, etc.

Brandon 15:25, 31 January 2008 (MST) Did you figure out the "splitting the dice pool" vs. spending rage to get an extra action thing? Also, I got the Gurahl book off of Ebay, and should be getting it today or tomorrow. So, I may (or may not) want to make some character changes depending on what the book has to say.