Quote from: jgants;452339The core book for DW sucks ass for antagonists.  You are either lying, or the 40K fan is clueless.  There are a whopping 3 enemies listed in the DW book.  How the hell can you run more than an adventure or two based on that?

*flips to Chapter Thirteen* Three enemies? Are you talking about the three tiers of enemies? Or the three categories of enemies (excluding hordes) that are given and then subdivided into four types each? Because when I hear "three enemies" I expect to find three specifically statted enemies. Not twelve statted opponents from three distinct categories. That's not even including the Vespid and whatever else is in the GM's kit. So... who's lying or clueless?

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;452345Quite a large caveat.

It is, admittedly, a caveat. One that will hopefully be corrected when and if a DW adversaries book is released.

QuoteDH is probably the most complete of the three corebooks, from what I can see. But DW is the one most about combat and has relatively little.

But it has enough to get started with, certainly. DH didn't have much for quite a while, if I remember correctly. It wasn't like the line appeared fully formed.

QuoteAgain it's not really acceptable to say 'use antagonists from across the DH books'. I shouldn't really have to buy DH books, scale them up accordingly (and i bet the DW book gives no advice on how to do this), and edit them into what I want, when what I want is fairly basic stuff. It's a very odd setup.

I think they didn't include orks etc in the DW core book because of the setting and the fact that the focus for the DW squads is distinct and more specialized than the squads in regular 40K. That'll probably change over time as the line becomes less focused on the Reach, but as it stands I think saying we should use books from DH is an acceptable fix. Just not an optimum one.

QuoteI have no problem with secondary books, so long as the primary source is enough. By all means expand on that, but first lets have something to work with.

As I've said, though, I think the core book is enough to work with. It's certainly enough for my buddy to be building his campaign (admittedly I think he has other books in the DW line, but he's only talked to me about the core rules).

Quote from: Géza Echs;452350*flips to Chapter Thirteen* Three enemies? Are you talking about the three tiers of enemies? Or the three categories of enemies (excluding hordes) that are given and then subdivided into four types each? Because when I hear "three enemies" I expect to find three specifically statted enemies. Not twelve statted opponents from three distinct categories. That's not even including the Vespid and whatever else is in the GM's kit. So... who's lying or clueless?

There are three enemy facitons in the book: tyranid, tau, and chaos. That's it. And what's given is very thin on the ground. Tyranid tbf seem a bit more complete, but they aren't the sort of monster you want to fight atll the time given they are just teeth and claws. Tau are an odd choice IMO, but even then there's only a couple of units: no kroot or vespid. And if the Vespid are in the GM kit then again, wtf? Finally there's chaos which, of all the possible antagonists, deserve way more depth: only one daemon, with some minor custominsation, some bog standard chaos marines, and some heretic types. No info on chaos magic/sorcery/psykers or gear/vehicles.

That's not a lot!

Chaos shouldn't even be in the Deathwatch book. DW are Ordo Xenos.

Grey Knights are the anti-daemon chapter.

Quote from: Géza Echs;452352I think they didn't include orks etc in the DW core book because of the setting and the fact that the focus for the DW squads is distinct and more specialized than the squads in regular 40K. That'll probably change over time as the line becomes less focused on the Reach, but as it stands I think saying we should use books from DH is an acceptable fix. Just not an optimum one.



As I've said, though, I think the core book is enough to work with. It's certainly enough for my buddy to be building his campaign (admittedly I think he has other books in the DW line, but he's only talked to me about the core rules).

Except it's not though, since you've already stated that the DH material was used as well.

And the reason there are no orks? Because FFG said so! Isn't that a bit rich? FFG decide that one of the major players in the setting aren't yet in the Reach so noone can use orks without kludging it themselves? HOw is that logical? Personally i'd rather use chaos, but even they get short shrift.

I've no complaints with the quality of their ideas, but FFG feel more like babysitters than game developers and that makes me uncomfortable.

Quote from: Géza Echs;452350*flips to Chapter Thirteen* Three enemies? Are you talking about the three tiers of enemies? Or the three categories of enemies (excluding hordes) that are given and then subdivided into four types each? Because when I hear "three enemies" I expect to find three specifically statted enemies. Not twelve statted opponents from three distinct categories. That's not even including the Vespid and whatever else is in the GM's kit. So... who's lying or clueless?

You are correct, it's three enemies with four types each - I should have been clearer.  

It's still not nearly enough to properly play a campaign IMO.  You are missing over half the xenos races (including all of the most popular ones) and the races you do have give you a couple of enemies that fill a couple of specific roles.

Quote from: J Arcane;452354Chaos shouldn't even be in the Deathwatch book. DW are Ordo Xenos.

Grey Knights are the anti-daemon chapter.

Fail.

A Space marine rpg without Chaos would be the most ridiculous thing ever.

And it's not as if the ruelbook has rules for creating xeno enemies. You get tyranids and tau (if at all). So why not argue for including Eldar or even Necrons?

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;452353There are three enemy facitons in the book: tyranid, tau, and chaos. That's it. And what's given is very thin on the ground. Tyranid tbf seem a bit more complete, but they aren't the sort of monster you want to fight atll the time given they are just teeth and claws. Tau are an odd choice IMO, but even then there's only a couple of units: no kroot or vespid. And if the Vespid are in the GM kit then again, wtf? Finally there's chaos which, of all the possible antagonists, deserve way more depth: only one daemon, with some minor custominsation, some bog standard chaos marines, and some heretic types. No info on chaos magic/sorcery/psykers or gear/vehicles.

That's not a lot!

At the very least, I think the DW game should have included a basic trooper, elite, and leader type along with a vehicle for every major faction in the 40K universe.

Then they should have followed it up with a Codex book of each.  At least then everything would have been in one place.

Quote from: jgants;452339There are a whopping 3 enemies listed in the DW book.  How the hell can you run more than an adventure or two based on that?

This is simply factually incorrect. I don't know what partial pirate-scan you're reading, but it's missing a whole bunch of stuff.

QuoteAnd no, porting over antagonists from Dark Heresy, where the power level is about half the level of DW, doesn't really work.  At least not without messing with the stats.

Actually, it works pretty well. I know because I've done it. Enemies have to be played smart, and they have to either be hordes or well equipped, but it's actually pretty easy to port them over.

Quote from: jgants;452356You are correct, it's three enemies with four types each - I should have been clearer.  

It's still not nearly enough to properly play a campaign IMO.  You are missing over half the xenos races (including all of the most popular ones) and the races you do have give you a couple of enemies that fill a couple of specific roles.

"I KNOW ITS NOT ENOUGH TO PLAY THE GAME BECAUSE I DONT PLAY THE GAME BECAUSE ITS NOT ENOUGH AND IF YOU HAVE PLAYED THE GAME WITH THEM YOU ARE UNABLE TO"

Cool bro. It's neat that you've got an "opinion" and everything, but it's also pretty clear you haven't been paying attention to descriptions of how people play the game, and don't play it yourself and are therefore kind of prone to saying dumb, untrue things about play.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;452357Fail.

A Space marine rpg without Chaos would be the most ridiculous thing ever.

And it's not as if the ruelbook has rules for creating xeno enemies. You get tyranids and tau (if at all). So why not argue for including Eldar or even Necrons?

It's not a space marine RPG. It's a Deathwatch RPG. Deathwatch fight for Ordo Xenos, it's what they are for.

Daemons and chaos are already covered in other books, reprinting it would be redundant.

Quote from: J Arcane;452364It's not a space marine RPG. It's a Deathwatch RPG. Deathwatch fight for Ordo Xenos, it's what they are for.

Daemons and chaos are already covered in other books, reprinting it would be redundant.

Deathwatch is sold as a Space Marine game. Presenting a space marine game with such a limitation would be (and maybe it is) a very poor decision. Telling players they can't fight the arch enemies of the marines because it's not in their job descripotion (because that's what the designers chose) would have been catastrophically bad.

Those other books are not Deathwatch and you are missing the point every time. Deathwatch doesn't say what books you might want to use, nor are those books set up for Deathwatch play.

There is clearly an organisational problem here. It wouldn't be so bad if there was a dedicated Chaos sourcebook designed for each game, but there isn't. Creatures Anathema was written well before Deathwatch was designed. Even then it doesn't cover Chaos; it merely contains a couple of specific entities. There is no info on Chaos space marine forces, units, gear, magic or anything beyond that.

Deathwatch, afaict, also doesn't include rules for creating your own Xenos of any kind. Yes you can make your own shit up, but if the game is intended to be Space Marines vs Evil Aliens, then you would think that they'd give you more to work with in that area. Instead you have Tau and Tyranid with very little of the former (no kroot or vespid, none of their magical stuff/ethereals or whatever).

It is strange that people defend this, wouldn't you want a 40k game to give you all this stuff, or at least explicit tools to DIY? Neither of those preclude you from creating your own ideas do they.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;452361"I KNOW ITS NOT ENOUGH TO PLAY THE GAME BECAUSE I DONT PLAY THE GAME BECAUSE ITS NOT ENOUGH AND IF YOU HAVE PLAYED THE GAME WITH THEM YOU ARE UNABLE TO"

Cool bro. It's neat that you've got an "opinion" and everything, but it's also pretty clear you haven't been paying attention to descriptions of how people play the game, and don't play it yourself and are therefore kind of prone to saying dumb, untrue things about play.

But this makes no sense. You've already alluded to the fact the game doesn't give you enough as you've resorted to creating your own (or using other user created) content which presumably you did to fill in the blanks as it were.

And why would it be necessary to have plauyed the game to see what's lacking in the book? Anyone can look at the book, the adversaries section isn't that big.

I own a lot of the 40K RPG books.  They all look quite nice and I wanted to like the games.  I was even willing to put up with the shitty system and its high whiff factor (I don't care what people say, having to always give out modifiers = crap design IMO)

I was dumb and kept buying the damn things because they looked good and I kept thinking, "surely the next book will finally have the content I want".  But they never did.  And I finally gave up after the travesty that was the Deathwatch core book.  It was the last straw for me.

"You don't need official stats, you can just make shit up yourself" = complete failure to properly design the game.  Even if it was easy to create proper stat blocks for adversaries (it isn't), I'd still have the argument of: if I have to do all the work myself, what the fuck am I paying for?

Again, most of us buy books that other people design so we don't have to do it ourselves.  If we just did everything ourselves, there would be no industry.

Frankly, I'm not nearly as annoyed with the lack of material as I am with the attitude that I should be content with the lack of material.  There is not only one right way to play a RPG in the 40K universe!  The books should be written to accomodate more than just "CoC-like Investigations in Space".

If I want to play a campaign about the Battle for Armageddon, I should be able to.  If I want to play a campaign about Eldar pirates, I should be able to.  If I want to play a campaign about Ork clans Gorkamorka style, I should be able to.  If I want to play a campaign about a Rogue Trader ship filled with all different xenos crewmembers, I should be able to.  The 40K universe supports a lot of different things, why make the games so limited in scope?

The really dumb part is that if they were going to make a 40K game that only played one way, why not make that one way fit the actual popular stuff like the computer games and wargame?!?

Quote from: jgants;452425I own a lot of the 40K RPG books.  They all look quite nice and I wanted to like the games.  I was even willing to put up with the shitty system and its high whiff factor (I don't care what people say, having to always give out modifiers = crap design IMO)

I was dumb and kept buying the damn things because they looked good and I kept thinking, "surely the next book will finally have the content I want".  But they never did.  And I finally gave up after the travesty that was the Deathwatch core book.  It was the last straw for me.

"You don't need official stats, you can just make shit up yourself" = complete failure to properly design the game.  Even if it was easy to create proper stat blocks for adversaries (it isn't), I'd still have the argument of: if I have to do all the work myself, what the fuck am I paying for?

Again, most of us buy books that other people design so we don't have to do it ourselves.  If we just did everything ourselves, there would be no industry.

Frankly, I'm not nearly as annoyed with the lack of material as I am with the attitude that I should be content with the lack of material.  There is not only one right way to play a RPG in the 40K universe!  The books should be written to accomodate more than just "CoC-like Investigations in Space".

If I want to play a campaign about the Battle for Armageddon, I should be able to.  If I want to play a campaign about Eldar pirates, I should be able to.  If I want to play a campaign about Ork clans Gorkamorka style, I should be able to.  If I want to play a campaign about a Rogue Trader ship filled with all different xenos crewmembers, I should be able to.  The 40K universe supports a lot of different things, why make the games so limited in scope?

The really dumb part is that if they were going to make a 40K game that only played one way, why not make that one way fit the actual popular stuff like the computer games and wargame?!?

Why would you buy an RPG about Deathwatch members of the Imperial Space Marines and then complain that it doesn't allow you to play Eldar? Sounds like you wanted a generic 40K RPG. Deathwatch etc are clearly, obviously, upfrontedly not generic 40K RPGs. Why would you buy cupcakes and then complain that they're not cookies when they're obviously, upfrontedly not cookies?