Quote from: BlackhandIt's like bitching the new D&D 4e won't have laserguns or giant robot assault suits.  It's irrelevant and silly.

It might. D20 did.

Quote from: The Good AssyrianIt is a real shame that we will probably never know if the follow on games would have given you everything for your ULTRAVIOLENCE needs.  I just find it strange that some people are so attached to their version of 40K that there is no room for any others.


TGA

I don't play ultraviolence, I'm talking about what I think would be more successful and popular, not what I personally would be interested in.

Quote from: Erik BoielleYes, well, I fucking called it.

What hacks me off is that I've been going on about this for years, and the dumb fuckers wouldn't listen.

Well good work geniuses - you wasted the 40k licence.

At times like this I recommend gloating, it doesn't improve the game, but one doesn't get enough opportunities in life to gloat so grab them while you can.

So it's more important that Erik like Dark Heresy than the actual fans of Warhammer 40,000 that it's targeted at?

Say what you like, I don't think it's targeted at either the D&D crowd or the players of 'indy' games a lot of you guys seem to think are just THA SHAT.

Everyone I know, in my entire gaming clique, loves Dark Heresy.  Just don't make every encounter a combat encounter if you want your players to actually investigate anything.

Oh, and Erik knows absolutely DICK about the subject matter by claiming BI have wasted the 40k license.  I'm glad it wasn't wasted pandering to people like you, but I'll bet you're one of those people who liked Inquisitor.  I mean, I bought it of course, but I can see you liking it - of course never playing it.

Quote from: BalbinusI don't play ultraviolence, I'm talking about what I think would be more successful and popular, not what I personally would be interested in.

I suppose that my point is that with two other games in the series, one of which was specifically to be focussed on Space Marines, it seems a reasonable strategy to publish the low-power, gritty version as the first one and then crank the power level to 11 with the later games.  It wouldn't make much sense to me to publish the over the top spattergore stuff first.

If anyone wasted the 40K license for RPGs, it was the ones who killed the project after only one game, IMO.


TGA

Quote from: The Good AssyrianI suppose that my point is that with two other games in the series, one of which was specifically to be focussed on Space Marines, it seems a reasonable strategy to publish the low-power, gritty version as the first one and then crank the power level to 11 with the later games.  It wouldn't make much sense to me to publish the over the top spattergore stuff first.

If anyone wasted the 40K license for RPGs, it was the ones who killed the project after only one game, IMO.


TGA

Indeed. It's mentioned a few times that once characters in DH reach a certain power level they are more properly dealt with in "other" W40K RPGs - presumably Deathwatch and Rogue Trader.

Quote from: The Good AssyrianIf anyone wasted the 40K license for RPGs, it was the ones who killed the project after only one game, IMO.

GW wasted their own license?  Wait, no.  Is that possible?

No.

They own Black Industries, Black Library and Black Flame.  It belongs to GW.  Same as Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 and everything ever made with those licenses.  They even own Dawn of War and the upcoming Warhammer Online, and can terminate either project at will and without any kind of notice or explanation.

Oh wait, they don't make RPG's.  So we should count ourselves lucky we got what we did.

The only thing they don't own is Lord of the Rings.  They have a license for that.

Quote from: BlackhandGW wasted their own license?  Wait, no.  Is that possible?

*shrug* I've seen plenty of companies make bad decisions and damage their own properties.  I think that GW did waste the potential for the 40K license for RPGs when they canceled the follow-on games.


TGA

They canned Marc Gascoigne.  That killed Black Industries and pulled it back into Black Library, where Marc worked for years and years before Black Industries was even conceived.

However, it might or might not kill the 40k RPG.  I wouldn't worry about it either way, as Warhammer is still around.

Quote from: BlackhandLets be honest, Inquisitor is the lamest and most overly complex of all GW games, and I am a die-hard supporter of GW.  It's just that it sucks, not the concept.  The books are great products.  However, the game wasn't streamlined enough to be playable by a large club, which is presumably what GW games are for.  Also, there was no balancing system other than the arbitrary 'ready reckoner'.  I believe it would have had more success if the system wasn't as complex, because it really didn't need to be.  The large models was the draw for that, but you could play it with regular Warhammer 40,000 minis.

Nonsense, if you lack the capacity to use it as it was intended the fault is yours not the designers.  It is what it is.  A very specific type of wargame that predates roleplaying by at least twenty years.  An open and flexible game about finding out what would happen in various circumstances rather than a rigid and dull point system.  It is very outside the current vogue of game design thinking.  But it is a very good and entertaining game which a fair number of people actually enjoy.

It wasn't a good background book.  Nor was it intended to be.  It didn't have rules for trade and commerce in the 40k universe, nor should it have.  It didn't have a detailed set of character creation rules that prevented people from playing whatever they want to either.

Quote from: David JohansenNonsense, if you lack the capacity to use it as it was intended the fault is yours not the designers.  It is what it is.  A very specific type of wargame that predates roleplaying by at least twenty years.  An open and flexible game about finding out what would happen in various circumstances rather than a rigid and dull point system.  It is very outside the current vogue of game design thinking.  But it is a very good and entertaining game which a fair number of people actually enjoy.

It wasn't a good background book.  Nor was it intended to be.  It didn't have rules for trade and commerce in the 40k universe, nor should it have.  It didn't have a detailed set of character creation rules that prevented people from playing whatever they want to either.

Your description of the game makes it very clear you have no idea what you're talking about.

For the record, Wargames predate Roleplaying games by about 400 years, give or take a few (but only just).

This game was made by GW to try something NEW.  If you had kept up with it rather than just heard about it or bought it and read it you'd know something more about it.

It was broken, didnt work smoothly and no one liked it.  That's why even today, it languishes in a forgotten part of Specialist Games.  It's THE MOST reviled thing in the GW family and only noted for it's background contributions.

I thought the Bolt Thrower albums were the most reviled thing GW ever did.

Oh well.  I have both and disagree with you.  This comforts me, though sharing a hobby with you is still disturbing.

I'm talking about the narrative skirmish wargames in 54mm pioneered by Charles Grant and Bruce McQuarrie incidentally.  Not wargames in general.

Quote from: BlackhandSo it's more important that Erik like Dark Heresy than the actual fans of Warhammer 40,000 that it's targeted at?

While I don't think that Dark Heresy should have tried to duplicate D&D or appeal to the "indy" game crowd, I do think that targeting it to just the WH40K fan base is silly, too.  What happens when you market anything to a narrow existing fan base is that an even smaller number of people buy and use it.

The goal for a game like Dark Heresy should be to reach out to traditional role-players, not only so that they buy the role-playing books but also to interest them in GW products, in general.

If GW wanted to draw me into buying their stuff (I'm speaking for myself here, as an example, though I think this addresses many of the things that keep other people from buying and playing GW games), they could release:

• A Necromunda RPG playable in one book like the classic WFRP RPG.  Make sure that the combat system is similar enough to the war game rules that it can act as a gateway system to the war games.
• A Necromunda boxed game like the original, with plastic bulkheads and cardboard building components but with pre-painted plastic gangs.  Include a pamphlet on repainting part or all of the miniatures using Citadel paints to customize them.  This would essentially be the same as the original boxed game except with pre-painted miniatures.
  
• Pre-painted Necromunda expansion gangs with customizable weaponry and accessory sprues and, again, a guide to repainting the miniatures.  This requires a small mount of hobbyist skill to attach the weapons to the miniatures.  Maybe a small bottle of appropriate glue would be included and the weapons could be molded out of black plastic so they don't necessarily have to be painted.  To boost sales of the boxes, they could include a random collection of, say, 12 out of 24 in a box, to encourage people to buy multiple boxes even if they don't have different rarity levels.  This would correspond to the boxed gang sets that GW sold/sells for the game.
• Specialty plastic or metal unpainted Necromunda miniatures for those who want special figures in their gang.  These would require the player to go that level and actually assemble and paint the miniature like they currently have to, but they could focus their attention on those specialty miniatures instead of having to paint an entire gang just to play.  Maybe make some of the unusual character types like Spyrers only available in this form.  This would correspond to similar blister packs that they sell now and appeal to the traditionalist.
• Sell plastic, probably pre-painted, scenery components that work like what's included in the original game but are a little classier than the cardboard components.  This could also be used by the WH40K players.

This suggestion is meant to draw in that segment of the role-playing hobby (but also people outside of the hobby) for whom small unit skirmish games are more appealing (because of their more limited scope) while addressing the main reason why they don't play, that it takes a lot of time that a lot of people don't have to paint the miniatures in order to play the game.  But it also would turn the small unit skirmish games into gateway games that would allow people to get into the modeling component of the hobby, too.  

There is nothing stopping a person from repainting a pre-painted miniature and, in fact, there are people who do repaint their own miniatures.  If you don't want the default paint scheme, treat it like primer but having the miniatures being pre-painted would be key for drawing in people with limited time.  Keeping some miniatures in the line that require assembly and painting would help keep the game appealing to the modeling players who want to feel elite, because it would give them access to miniatures that those who just want to use the pre-painted miniatures don't have access to.  And it leaves the main battle wargames alone.  What it does it turn the skirmish games into gateway games for beginners and casual gamers and so long as they can keep the margins high, it shouldn't matter to GW whether a player is buying a $40 box of unpainted Orlocks or a $40 box of pre-painted Orlocks.  And with a collectable angle, people might buy even more.

If that works with Necromunda, they could do the same thing with Mordheim and the Warhammer FRP.  It's no mistake that the role-players here keep talking about Necromunda and Mordheim as their favorite games.  Those games are essentially the middle ground between war game and RPG.  And the scope of both of those games is small enough that they could be handled in a single RPG book (though not excluding the possibility of expansion books).

Yes, maybe you don't want people who don't even have time to assemble and prime their miniatures playing at your table but I bet GW would like to be able to sell to them.  If their goal is to sell more miniatures, then introducing pre-painted miniatures is the way to do it.  Because I don't know about anyone else but the reason why I stopped buying miniatures is that I never have the time to paint them.  I might however, have the time to spend some time repainting some faces or bandanas or shirts or whatever to customize a pre-painted gang.  I might also have time to paint a single Spyrer, gang leader, or small custom gang over time.  So making the pre-painted miniatures re-paintable would be key here.

Quote from: John MorrowThis suggestion is meant to draw in that segment of the role-playing hobby (but also people outside of the hobby) for whom small unit skirmish games are more appealing (because of their more limited scope) while addressing the main reason why they don't play, that it takes a lot of time that a lot of people don't have to paint the miniatures in order to play the game.  But it also would turn the small unit skirmish games into gateway games that would allow people to get into the modeling component of the hobby, too.

Uh... you do realise that you can just play with unpainted minis, right?

Quote from: David JohansenI thought the Bolt Thrower albums were the most reviled thing GW ever did.

Three points:

1: Games Workshop never officially endorsed Bolt Thrower, so far as I am aware.

2: I'm not aware of GW fans being especially hostile towards Bolt Thrower.

3: Bolt Thrower are awesome.

EDIT TO CORRECT: Apparently GW struck a deal with Bolt Thrower to allow them to use GW's artwork on an album cover, and were interested in a closer collaboration, but not much came for it.

I would still like answers to points 2 and 3 though.