In the grim and dark future, there is only war. After the Great Rift tore the Imperium in two, every solar system struggles against the crushing weight of humanity’s enemies. Servants of the Imperium from disparate services are flung together as warbands, sent to complete the most dangerous missions. One warband travels to the world of Enoch in the Gilead system to retrieve a wounded comrade. However, a new threat looms over the planet. Can the warband discover the source of corruption and stop it?
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:08:27 — 59.0MB)
Subscribe: RSS
I look forward to Caleb’s commentary throught this entire thing.
I got a copy of this as well and was unsure about it until I listened to this game. I’ll definitely work on something for this system.
I got a copy of this as well and wasn’t to sure about it until after I listened to this game. I’m definitely going to run a game using this system.
Heresy.
I’m intrigued by the system, but boy was that a stinker of a scenario. On top of being linear and poorly paced, it didn’t really explore any of the interesting things in the 40K setting. A Nurgle cult can be a serious story about the apathy and resignation of the oppressed synergizing with the decay of their world. Instead they do…zombies and McEvilman.
I think that, exept for the candles*, the answer to all of Caleb’s questions is “bad scenario writing”.
*for the candles, the answer is “Space Dark Ages”. There’s a whole lot of verbiage in the setting fluff about how technology more complex than water wheels can only be produced by “tech-priests” running “autofacs” using “templates” left over from the “age of technology”; but the main thing to remember is that this is a society where technolgy is the pervue of a religious order that belives that all tech is a gift of the machine-god, that maintenance manuals are religious texts, and that oiling the moving parts of a machine is a religious ritual to appease the spirits that live in the machine.
They’re votive candles, not candles for illumination. They have electric lighting, but they’re really big into rituals of all kinds and lighting candles is part of those rituals, as it is in many real-world cultures. Since it’s 40K, they take everything to an extreme and put candles on everything.
Although I guess we’d have missed out on some entertaining rants if Ross had just explained that.
If previous comments here are any indication I’ll probably spare myself listening tobCaleb rant about 40k.
The sad thing is that good 40k Roleplaying plays out like something like a weird mix of Delta Green, Cyberpunk and Dune.
It is great fun, actually filled with existential dread and moral horror at how awful humans are.
I think you guys would genuinely love it, not get a laugh out of it.
But this new game, and this quick start particularly run full tilt at the table top war game sillyness.
40k is silly, oft times very silly. If a group can get past the silly and buy into the grim-dark nature of it, and the DM running it chooses to focus on certain themes, it can indeed be, essentially, Delta Green in space. Or Call of Cuthulu WW1, or etc etc. A lot of room to explore different themes RPPR have enjoyed exploring in the past.
The issue with this game it feels like is, because your playing characters from the entire fiction and not ‘just grunts on the ground of an endless meat-grinder war on a planet you don’t care about” or “just paranoid inquisitor agents trying to track down evil while dealing with inter-faith politics and faulty info/conspiracy” or etc.. it devolves into, well, silly.
Of course if more then a few people at the table come too the game just for the silly, then this is the kinda game you get. Nothing wrong with that, if everyone is having fun. But its hard (maybe impossible) to mix comedy and horror. At least, I’ve never been able to keep up a tense atmosphere if the players were all joking and laughing.
That still makes for a good game? Its just a differnt tone. This was much more like those 0-level “steal draculas gold’ style APs then, like, Know Evil. 40k can be a setting in which both such games can happen but er..I think this shows us where this group stands.
Like by all means guys. Try out one of the specific books this seems based on. Be a Inquisitor team, be grunts in the army. That ‘might’ produce a more interesting (and Caleb and etc able to enjoy it without eye-rolling) . Or..just avoid it. Either works. There are plenty of other games coming out/out right now that invoke the “Delta Green in space’ vibe for sure.
Calebs utter disdain and dissapointment while playing this game made this episode the best thing. 🙂
Tallyman:
In the AP, Ross clearly states that the hospital is bing lit by stained glass windows and candlelight.
@Benjamin & Daniel: However, this is only one of the possibilities supported by the game. You can very well do your “Imperial grunts in the mud” or “Inquisitorial retinue horror show” and focus on those elements, and it’ll be serious and scary and gritty. On the other hand, it will be broad enough to also allow the full-on wacky approach of an all-Ork party lookin’ for a foight. Or go all-ethereal and play an all-Aeldari group fighting for the survival of their race. So, everything that’s been there before is still there… plus lots of additional stuff you can but won’t have to use if you don’t want to. But the choices are there – *because* 40k is all that and people can choose what facet of the setting they want to focus on.
Made it ten minutes into the podcast. It’s great you’re all friends and have a sense of humor, but the could not follow what was going on. =/
Those of you who skipped this one missed the line, “I rev my chainsword to cheer up the children.” Just saying.
Personally I listened to it *for* the rants about 40k and wasn’t disappointed.
The idea of spreading a plague just to crack some passwords is kind of neat, but the utility of it was unclear to me.
If the head surgeon was a cultist of Nurgle (Nermal), then he could infect other people into poxwalkers. Couldn’t he just infect some of the workers at the planetary food station (??) when they went home from work or came in for a check-up?
After that, he could claim he was tracking the infection to the food station (and get official access) without messing with the abacus plague. Or he could just wait until the infected workers got sick enough and started infecting the food through regular contact.
I’m not sure how either of those would play as a scenario, but they seem simpler for the cultists. It would tie in more with the apathy and sloth that go with Nergal, too.
I did like the over the top “I think this is what a 40K guy with a book on a stick and a chainsword would do.” I’m not well-versed on the setting, but enjoy some of the PC games set in the 40K universe. I appreciated the fun.
It really was great hearing Caleb trying to wrap his head around the absurdity of the setting
@Erik I chose to avoid this one too because I could tell there was no interest, so why bother listening to someone suffer through a game?
@Zero, Shaun and Jay were really into it and seemed reasonably familiar with the lore – they’ve clearly played the tabletop before.
I kind of wonder if the previous, Fantasy Flight published, 40K RPG might be a better fit for this group, should 40K be involved at all. Probably specifically Rogue Trader given Ross’ expressed leanings, but Dark Heresy could be very space Delta Green. I say this because from what I’ve seen of the system it seems a lot more CoC/Delta Green-like in its mechanics, with percentile skill rolls and a separate sanity meter (which I thought maybe shock was supposed to be in this but I guess not? IDK.), as well as a corruption meter. Granted, that was also pretty crunch-intensive, but perhaps a more familiar type?
Anyway. I’d love to hear a more serious approach to the setting but I acknowledge that it’s pretty over the top and this was entertaining in its own right.
A scene from this game has been illustrated for our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/21160096