Necromunda The Sump: General hobby venting thread (Beware:grumpy grognards)

[MusingWarboss]

as in Planetary Defense Force or Portable Document Format?

Document. Went looking for the reference. It was in a marketing email from GW.

Post in thread 'New models incoming'
https://yaktribe.games/community/threads/new-models-incoming.8526/post-272349

Now whether that was true or just a backroom lackey putting out an old idea from a Twitch stream as fact we’ll just have to find out!!

 

[TopsyKretts]

Haven't GW spoken about this mythical pdf for ages?

 

[MusingWarboss]

It was apparently mentioned on a Twitch stream (not sure in what context) but never officially mentioned anywhere until that email.

So it’s anyone’s guess. I suspect it won’t happen, not if they’ve just published one in a book.

 

[Ben_S]

So it’s anyone’s guess. I suspect it won’t happen, not if they’ve just published one in a book.

I don't know. The opportunity to near-simultaneously publish two subtly different versions - one in the book and one PDF - may be too good for them to pass up...

 

[MusingWarboss]

I don't know. The opportunity to near-simultaneously publish two subtly different versions - one in the book and one PDF - may be too good for them to pass up...

Two simulations publications with one invalidating the other??? What is this, 2017?

 

[TopsyKretts]

Next version of Blood Bowl will use measuring sticks instead of squares and will have no dice. You'll be able to just make up whatever you want for your guys to do and narrate how they act in game and the GM will determine the outcome. Its a co-operative RPG so its all ok and if you don't like it you can go elsewhere.

I reply to a post here because it belongs in the sump. What is jokingly described would certainly be a nightmare developpment. This made me think of something, a trend across multiple GW games. Particularly the "make up whatever you want for your guys to do".

The game defines a lot "boundaries". Your gang consists of fighters A, B and C. They have their own profiles, have a set of restrictions, can select certain skills and so forth. This is what a lot of the books are about. In an ever ongoing pursuit of moar content, we get a lot of additional optional/bonus content that purposfully breaks all those rules. Your fighter died and is now permanently removed from the game? Here are some rules that let you revive that fighter. Your fighter is limited by certain weapon options or skills? Here are some bonuses that break that. Gangs can only select skills from X, Y Z? Here is a gang where you choose any skills.

And this in particular applies to the next upcoming book, where you can create a gang (or at least parts of the gang) from basically anything. I'm not saying it's always a bad thing, but in total I would say this is becoming bloated and sooner or later we end up in a situation of the joking example.

Use any fighters, equip any weapons and choose your own skill sets.

 

[TopsyKretts]

Some examples:

• Only pistols have Sidearm and sidearm is never combined with Template/Blast because the rules don't handle that and it would become silly. Except those rare exceptions where any weapon can be sidearm and used in close combat (even some with template/blast).
• Gangs have clearly defined weapon/wargear restrictions. Except when they don't and can choose any weapons.
• A leader is clearly defined with a specific profile, except when you can choose any fighter as the leader.
• Alliances can never be a permanent part of the gang and gain advancements. Except when they can.
• When a fighter dies, it is permanently removed. Except when it isn't and can be revived.
• Your weapons have traits A, B and C. Except when you can remove C and add D And E.

Same is true for blood bowl.

Reminds me of Star Wars, when Luke Skywalker and the rest of the rebellion destroyed the death star, killed the emperor (well, darth vader did that) and stopped the empire. Except later, when the emperor wasn't dead and the empire is as strong as ever.

 

[Jayward]

It's an endemic problem with GW rules writing. Even going back 20 years in Fantasy you would have stuff like "Chargers strike first, but this character has a magic item that lets him always strike first! But the Skaven Assassin has an ability that lets him strike first even if the opponent has an ability that lets them strike first! But this Dwarf has a master rune that lets him strike first and overrides all other 'strike first' abilities!"

You see it in a lot of game systems, but I find it really inexcusable in a digital age where you can publish a universal rules update at any time for almost no cost. Necromunda has had, what, 5 books released since the last errata? (Iron, Artifice, Shadow, Faith, new rulebook, Outcast). And I think the last errata was mostly an errata for the errata they released the week before.

 

[Jayward]

Also, separately, the Warhammer Community mouse cursor being a dragon this week is really irritating. Especially as the damn dragon doesn't actually line up with the cursor location

 

[Tiny]

Moved from new models thread...

But it is very similar to that other Rogue Trader @Tiny - i.e. the one a fair few of the writing team did write.

Was that Rogue Trader a poorly written mess with dozens of books full of contradictory rules too?

Jokes aside, was the Rogue Trader RPG actually anything similar to N17++? I've never looked at it tbh.

 

[TopsyKretts]

I don't understand this whole RPG-argument and why it must apply to Necromunda. I thought I had a fairly extensive background with skirmish games and particularly GW skirmish games. Maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but I never encountered these RPG elements in any GW game I played with my local gaming club in the past.

One could easily make the same argument for Blood Bowl. The rules repeatedly mentions the "league commissioner", someone "has" to take the role of a leader. Except the rules works perfectly fine without, so much so the whole game can be programmed and there are now 3 digital versions of the game. You can play in a league against anyone at any time. You can drop out at any time. You can play as many games you want.

 

[Troubled Child]

Was that Rogue Trader a poorly written mess with dozens of books full of contradictory rules too?

Jokes aside, was the Rogue Trader RPG actually anything similar to N17++? I've never looked at it tbh.

No, they literally have nothing in common. The FFG books are a collection of very solid rules for the most part. RT has some quirks because you literally have a ship with potentially tens of thousands of crew and as much mundane gear as you could possibly want. They were overpriced and there were a lot of books so there is that similarity. There are some other, simpler, RPGs that you could argue are similar to N20 but even then they are much better written and actually play tested. N20 was really just someone saying 'this is how I cobbled together a game with my friends and you can too, for the low, low price of £600.

Now if anyone wants to sell me their Only War core book, it is the only one I'm missing and I'm prepared to pay above retail but not ridiculous eBay for it.

 

[Heart of Storm]

Use any fighters, equip any weapons and choose your own skill sets.

So basically oldmunda?

Put down your pitchforks, I was being facetious

I'm not sure i see the problem per se with GW taking a "these rules are optional, use them or don't dependent on how complex you want the game" approach, its certainly the spirit with which I've taken all the new books and has always been the design intent.

I think its interesting how their are people on this forum who are really against GW overwriting everything, and creating a ruleset for every scenario, and yet other people (or sometimes the same) who take issue when GW afford players creative freedom to play the game their way - GW have made plenty of missteps with this game, but it seems that they also can't win with the 'fans'

 

[NoOneII.]

My issue is not so much the concept, but the often sloppy execution.
If I can read a scenario before having played even a single game of 'Munda in about 20 Years and immediately see that it's just not workable, that's a problem. Not "yeah, it favours one side a bit too much," but "doing it as written does not even allow for play".

I'd prefer the game/gangs a bit more downtrodden and scarcity-plagued than they are, but the Lost-Zone-Ruleset by the Goonhammer Guys seems to fix that. And it's personal taste, ofc.

 

[Tiny]

Use any fighters, equip any weapons and choose your own skill sets.

So basically oldmunda?

Put down your pitchforks, I was being facetious

I think you were actually correct... for non-outlanders ORB Necromunda anyway. That was why it was great. If N17++ was like that it'd be a lot better IMO. If (when) I get around to finishing writing my own system it will definitely be a complete free for all in terms of the fighters you can take.

For an NCE analogy, imagine taking any house gang, with no HWL, starting access to a few rare items and all the outlanders stuff is also available to you. I'd play that in a heartbeat. It'd probably make playing INQ28 a lot easier too.

I don't think I've ever heard anyone complain that N17++ has too much freedom though. That just isn't a problem people seem to have. More that the books are a mess of rules contradictions, too many weapon profiles, Van-Saar being a bit broken if playing to win and that there are odd loadout and xp rules for different fighters.

 

[TopsyKretts]

I think its interesting how their are people on this forum who are really against GW overwriting everything, and creating a ruleset for every scenario, and yet other people (or sometimes the same) who take issue when GW afford players creative freedom to play the game their way - GW have made plenty of missteps with this game, but it seems that they also can't win with the 'fans'

Don't know about others, but my counter-argument would be Blood Bowl. It has loads of bloat too, crazy amount of optional/experimental weather tables, kick-off tables, league rewards, inducements, star players, custom mercenaries, wizards, you name it! The difference there is that at least it works.

 

[NoOneII.]

Bloodbowl does work remarkably well. It's been groomed by a large commitee for a decade or so, that probably helped with that.
I can remember setting up series of Dark Elf Teams in the 90ies, scrapping them rightaway till all of them survived to play a second game. No Rookies back then.

Also, to be fair: The setting of BB makes it very easy to set any silly rule up for the sake of balance/fun. You only got 7 Player's who are able to walk? Here, take those 4 Free Players, because, you know, Fans want to prove themselve, and Cabalvision earns better with proper games!

Within Necromunda, handing out free Gangers to fill up the Roster doesn't feel as organic. Why would a famous bountyhunter even want to be seen with the most downtrodden lot in the campaign?

 

[Jayward]

The optional extras in Blood Bowl also don't change the core rules or the teams; no matter how much or how little of the DeathZone supplement I choose to use, Dwarves will still be the same cost and stats, moves and blocks will still work in the same way...

Compare that to House of Blades, which changed every Escher fighter profile in terms of stats and/or cost, changed their equipment, contained stealth erratas to things like Blaze and Bottling Out... At that point it's not optional extras, it's conflicting rules. They're more like updated codexes.

 

[Ardavion]

Was that Rogue Trader a poorly written mess with dozens of books full of contradictory rules too?

From what I recall, it wasn't. It built on improvements made to the Dark Heresy RPG that came before it, so it could be somewhat used with other Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay settings (there was a little issue with power balance between the books, but nothing you couldn't scale between them).

Had a good bit of fun playing RT (RPG), as well as DH (both 1st and 2nd editions).

Jokes aside, was the Rogue Trader RPG actually anything similar to N17++? I've never looked at it tbh.

It isn't anything really similar to N17++, thankfully; the parts that are similar are so few and far between you wouldn't notice anything to really suggest it (different classes of actions taking up different amounts of a player's turn, i.e. free actions, quick actions etc is the only similarity I can really recall; the mechanics are almost all D5/D10/D100 based iirc). Fundamentally RT (RPG) wasn't built for tabletop, but could be adapted with some extra rules for facing and translating distances into tabletop inches.

You do get more books added to any RPG over time, but they usually don't rehash/repeat rules ad infinitum to muddy the waters without explanation; a weapon profile, for instance, usually would only be printed once, and wouldn't get changed outside of an official errata - instead of being printed in almost every book in the system differently each time, and each time having no statement to say "this supersedes profiles for this weapon found in the following books...".

 

[Thorgor]

RT came out in the 80s so I'm willing to cut it a lot more slack than I would for more recent games.

Tbh, Neomunda would be the most appropriate of contemporary GW games to re-introduce the need of a gamemaster, as it's the closest in spirit to Inquisitor, the only GW game (that I know of) to explicitely require one. And, if memory serves, Oldmunda has been used as a test-bed for Inquisitor to an extent (in the post-Outlanders era). But that's not what they did.

I think its interesting how their are people on this forum who are really against GW overwriting everything, and creating a ruleset for every scenario, and yet other people (or sometimes the same) who take issue when GW afford players creative freedom to play the game their way - GW have made plenty of missteps with this game, but it seems that they also can't win with the 'fans'

They'd have to seriously ramp up their game, yes.
It's not GW's place to 'afford <me> creative freedom'. I don't need their blessing to come up with house-rules and what-nots. Any statement to that effect sounds empty at best. What they could do is actually come up with ways to enable said freedom (i.e. a genuinely modular game).
Them churning out specific rules for everything actively reduces the design space left to the players. The more <official stuff> there is, the less <your stuff> you can have. Which wouldn't be so bad if the <official stuff> was actually well designed.

Imagine an elseworld where their bricks being able to actually stick together was such a secondary concern for LEGO that it would be impossible to assemble any of their kits, even when following the instruction to the letter. And when confronted with the issue, they would simply point out that people are free to ignore the instructions, carve their bricks with a knife and glue them together to build whatever they want. And then they would resume making even more bricks in even more weird shapes and colours. That's exactly how it feels GW is behaving to me.