Quote from: Spinachcat;550326There is no reason for Inquisitors to be hopping from system to system across the galaxy, especially at low levels where they are just acolytes.

Make up a low population planet with a few communities and drop the PCs with the knowledge they are on their own for 12 months before the next ship will arrive.

Remember that 40k isn't all about Man vs. Demon, but all sorts of other dangerous corruption to the souls of Man.

I plan to try Black Crusade for a few sessions, see how that goes. I have a feeling, given the attitudes of the players, they might take to it more than being the good guys (yet still unpleasant motherfuckers on tight leashes).

Now there is a significant issue I struggle with: two players really doesn't seem to be enough. I suspect even if they were more powerful (and BC heretics are way more powerful than newbie acolytes) this might still be an issue. I think the game really needs, or perhaps the setting really demands, a broader breadth of available skills and backgrounds.

I had a notion to try the False Prophets adventure in the back of the book, but again there is an issue of players. I think FFG write their adventures in the expectation there will be 'enough' players. Factor into this that they sort of presume there will be chaos marines present within the group, so they can make the combats more dangerous. This is an issue because I find it difficult unpicking these adventures to scale them accordingly; the main NPC the heretics will end up fighting seems pretty tough. Not to mention I'd have to learn his psychic powers correctly as he's a sorcerer. There's also a 'phase assassin' who's pretty tough. It's a lot to take in! No wonder they call it the Screaming Vortex.

41st Millennium.

Yet another reason not to listen to Ghost Whistler when he speaks about Warhammer.

Quote from: Blackhand;55034841st Millennium.

Total tangent here (of course you're right), but really, SF and fantasy writers have no sense of scale. 2,100 years in the future not in the future enough for you? Noooo, it's got to be 39,000 years!

Shit, give me 2,100 years in the future and I can build a badass Travelleresque hard SF setting with slower-than-light travel. Hell, Alastair Reynolds built a nice (if admittedly not as expansive as 40K) SF setting with STL travel, a "mere" 600 years into the future.

Another offender: George R. R. Martin. "The Wall has stood for 8,000 years!" Shit, 800 years of mountain-sized block of ice not "magical" enough for you?

Another reason to like M. A. R. Barker: Tékumel's history stretches some 10,000 years, but he makes them count. It's a wild 10,000-year-long ride. (and I still think he could "crunch" it into, say, 4,000 or 5,000 years)

Quote from: Blackhand;55034841st Millennium.

Yet another reason not to listen to Ghost Whistler when he speaks about Warhammer.

What's Warhammer?

Quote from: The Butcher;550353Total tangent here (of course you're right), but really, SF and fantasy writers have no sense of scale. 2,100 years in the future not in the future enough for you? Noooo, it's got to be 39,000 years!

Shit, give me 2,100 years in the future and I can build a badass Travelleresque hard SF setting with slower-than-light travel. Hell, Alastair Reynolds built a nice (if admittedly not as expansive as 40K) SF setting with STL travel, a "mere" 600 years into the future.

Another offender: George R. R. Martin. "The Wall has stood for 8,000 years!" Shit, 800 years of mountain-sized block of ice not "magical" enough for you?

Another reason to like M. A. R. Barker: Tékumel's history stretches some 10,000 years, but he makes them count. It's a wild 10,000-year-long ride. (and I still think he could "crunch" it into, say, 4,000 or 5,000 years)

It's a tangent, but it's one I absolutely agree with.

Quote from: The Butcher;550353Total tangent here (of course you're right), but really, SF and fantasy writers have no sense of scale. 2,100 years in the future not in the future enough for you? Noooo, it's got to be 39,000 years!

To the British, a few hundred years of history isn't that much...

I actually agree with what you're saying, but 40K just wouldn't be, well, 40K without everything being turned up to 11... ty thousand. The Imperium holding on to it's paranoia and decline for ten thousand years says something completely different to if it was only, say, a thousand; to us, the battle of Hastings was a long time ago and nobody really cares, but in the Imperium, the events of the Horus Heresy are still relevant today.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;549985This is not helped by FFG not really doing much in respect of an actual gazetteer, certainly not for DH (they sort of do in places) and not for Black Crusade (at least not yet). As someone trying to write adventures this is proving a big problem for me. I find that I don't want to skimp on setting elements - descriptions and details - but the scale and diversity do seem to force that. Is there a solution here?

Just read a whole bunch of 2000 AD-style comics.
Cause that's obviously what Games Workshop did.  

JG

Started to run False Prophets last night.

Too much messing around.

Oh well.

Quote from: The Butcher;550353Total tangent here (of course you're right), but really, SF and fantasy writers have no sense of scale. 2,100 years in the future not in the future enough for you? Noooo, it's got to be 39,000 years!

Shit, give me 2,100 years in the future and I can build a badass Travelleresque hard SF setting with slower-than-light travel. Hell, Alastair Reynolds built a nice (if admittedly not as expansive as 40K) SF setting with STL travel, a "mere" 600 years into the future.

Another offender: George R. R. Martin. "The Wall has stood for 8,000 years!" Shit, 800 years of mountain-sized block of ice not "magical" enough for you?

Another reason to like M. A. R. Barker: Tékumel's history stretches some 10,000 years, but he makes them count. It's a wild 10,000-year-long ride. (and I still think he could "crunch" it into, say, 4,000 or 5,000 years)

You're 100% right about the sense of scale, but in Martin's case, I think it does have purpose.  Most of what we've seen in the books is completely mundane and wouldn't look out of place in England.  However, the glimpses of things we see (like summers that last for decades and structures thousands of years old) is to lay the foundation that this is a fantasy world, and magic does exist, it just has lain dormant.  It's a foreshadowing of what is to come now that the dragons have been reborn into the world.  

800 year old wall?  Well, like Ladybird said, in England they probably have some structures that old.  Over 8000 years the Others have passed from Memory, to Legend, to Myth.

In a world where seasons last for years I have no issue with the age of an impossibly high wall of ice. It's like wondering where Bilbo Baggins goes to get his glasses.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;550868In a world where seasons last for years I have no issue with the age of an impossibly high wall of ice. It's like wondering where Bilbo Baggins goes to get his glasses.

Actually... there is this nice little shop in Bag End, just down the way abit.  You really should check it out. They also do pipes.

Quote from: CRKrueger;550864You're 100% right about the sense of scale, but in Martin's case, I think it does have purpose.  Most of what we've seen in the books is completely mundane and wouldn't look out of place in England.  However, the glimpses of things we see (like summers that last for decades and structures thousands of years old) is to lay the foundation that this is a fantasy world, and magic does exist, it just has lain dormant.  It's a foreshadowing of what is to come now that the dragons have been reborn into the world.  

800 year old wall?  Well, like Ladybird said, in England they probably have some structures that old.  Over 8000 years the Others have passed from Memory, to Legend, to Myth.

In the book of the New Sun it's like a million+ years in the future. Beyond that, I've personally dug up garbage that was likely over 30k years old. I've always like deep time in fact and fiction. Honestly given the age of the earth and even the age of Anatomically Modern Human, I think that the idea that 8000 years is somehow too much time is actually a scale problem.
P.S. I loathe GRRM.

Quote from: Aos;550887In the book of the New Sun it's like a million+ years in the future. Beyond that, I've personally dug up garbage that was likely over 30k years old. I've always like deep time in fact and fiction. Honestly given the age of the earth and even the age of Anatomically Modern Human, I think that the idea that 8000 years is somehow too much time is actually a scale problem.
P.S. I loathe GRRM.

OK, maybe GRRM isn't the worst offender. For some reason, I am not as annoyed at Gene Wolfe (or Jack Vance, or Clark Ashton Smith, or M. A. R. Barker) because the world they write about feels so alien that I (a regular geek who's not an archaeologist or a historian) can buy into the idea that a long, long time has passed between our day and the story. Also because they're brilliant, the three of them, and that goes a long way. They make the world feel ancient and hoary by dint of their writing, without entirely depending on inflated numbers.

And I still think that if you're setting your game 40,000 years into the future, you could make it a lot weirder than "Catholic Space Nazis rule everything." It does feel sort of AD2000-ish though.

Quote from: The Butcher;550893OK, maybe GRRM isn't the worst offender. For some reason, I am not as annoyed at Gene Wolfe (or Jack Vance, or Clark Ashton Smith, or M. A. R. Barker) because the world they write about feels so alien that I (a regular geek who's not an archaeologist or a historian) can buy into the idea that a long, long time has passed between our day and the story. Also because they're brilliant, the three of them, and that goes a long way. They make the world feel ancient and hoary by dint of their writing, without entirely depending on inflated numbers.

And I still think that if you're setting your game 40,000 years into the future, you could make it a lot weirder than "Catholic Space Nazis rule everything." It does feel sort of AD2000-ish though.

Fair enough. I really need to read some of Barker's fiction.