FFG's Rogue Trader. Where you can and are likely expected to acquire Ostentatious Displays of Wealth for the ship
I roll a 1 when trying to open a door, and I explode into guts and gore.
Well, it was meant to be the future of Warhammer Fantasy until they decided to disconnect them, write a ton of lore for 40K and eventually blow up the Old World. Which led to 40K turning viral like Pepe the Frog. The smug 40K fans I know try to argue with me about this for two decades. That I only hate it because I love being a contrarian. I don't hate it, I'm just not interested in it because sci-fi and space operas AKA fantasy settings in sci-fi skin suits are not really my jam. I'm just a casual fan of Aliens and Star Wars who just thinks that WFRP actually works as a TTRPG while 40K will always be a wargame at heart IMHO. And I find that less is more. The world of 40K is so large and extremely, unforgivingly brutal that it has no stakes. Nobody cares if Orbitus X-XXX are gobbled up by the 'nids since there are thousands of worlds left. Compare that to Imperials and Bretonnians collectively shitting their pantaloons upon receiving the ill news that Kislev fell.
It depends on how well written the 40k story is, the same issue you have with 40k is my issue with Age of Sigmar, where seemingly very few things matter because its all esoteric elemental realms with no real mapping. 40k atleast has mcguffins with some planets. Popular stories like Vraks have it be a huge armory world filled with its weight in ordinance meant to resupply planets close to super hell. Armageddon is the homeworld of the Orcs so they try to invade it out of a sort of cultural pride and it makes some amount of sense. Issue is that 99% of 40k stories are objectively shit and fall into the trappings you mentioned
What do you think Star Wars is?
Space wizards and such.
I was trying to say that I don't need more convoluted sci-fi and space opera in my life right now. Edited because I had to go afk.
Can't speak for DCC but OSE should be mostly fine. SWN has lower stat scaling than OSE but not enough on monsters for it to typically matter. They will be only slightly more difficult.
Like giving monsters with high stats +4 to hit and damage or something? Or do you mean for players? The entire point of what SWN tries to do is make high stats matter less to lessen impact from rolled stat rng on player characters. SWN has issues, but that is definitely not the way to handle them. Let players use the Adventurer class as written and don't arbitrate away the powerful effects of psionics if you want to give players the edge. Changing stats also has the rolling effect of fucking up the entire skill system since that is based on 2d6 and not a d20.
I mean for the players. I looking at the quick gen rules and the stats basically mean bugger all. All the different numbers and it amounts 0s across the board. I never saw the point of needless granularity that doesn't change the game. I considered taking arrays from other games, but it doesn't help as scaling is the issue.
That was my main concern. I thought a level 1 PC has d6 HP, but will have to go and check.
Aside from encumbrance, what springs to mind?
The Fantasy stories I read aren't much better. The Konrad and Orfeo books had me suffer like Jesus on the cross. And I had to put down the Gotrek and Felix books after they killed Skjalandir the Chaos Dragon because the pervy Slayer Bjorni Bjornisson was a ridiculous concept. A Dwarf who fucks everything that moves is a degenerate Slaanesh cultist not a warrior seeking a glorious death. I like Kim Newman's stories but they portray an ancient, outdated version of the Old World where Karl Franz is an aging wuss, some mutants are misunderstood, countries are vastly different and people are OK with vampires walking among them. I liked the Brunner the Bounty Hunter stories too but it's really weird to see a basic career character kick the asses of some of the top monsters found in the bestiary. Overall I would say that half of what I read wasn't worth it.
Slayers aren't seeking a glorious death for shits and giggles; it is because they seriously fucked up at some point, so dying is all they have left. A slayer being a hedonist is not strange, given that they are already outcasts from polite (dwarven) society.
That doesn't mean, however, there aren't personal stories and personal stakes that can be had. Yea, whoever comes out on top of an on-going turf war in a Hive's undercity doesn't mean a hill of beans to the big overall plot..but it damn sure can mean everything to the gangers fighting it and the people caught in the middle. Similar for a squad of guardsmen fighting their way out of a local rebellion in a city; sure, it's not going to be a death blow to Chaos or whatever, but it's life and death to those troops who just want to see another sunrise.
The character class description for them even says they're notorious for burning through money extremely quickly on booze. As said, they're already fuck-ups to the point where their names are erased and are officially considered to have no family (which is soul crushing to even think of to a dwarf).
I disagree somewhat. I know what they are, I like them and used/had them in my games. They're all Wattie Buchan. But we're still talking about a Dwarf who fucked a donkey and went to a Nuln brothel because he heard they offered Goblin shortstacks before that became a thing on the internet, was disappointed that they were just Human "lassies" (100% children) with filed teeth who were painted green but molested them anyway because he wanted to wet his dick. From Dragonslayer:
You don't have to put it in fantasy terms. People still cared about their individual, petty lives while WWII was raging. It's not like all personal conflicts came to a halt while everyone waited to see who would come out on top in Europe and the Pacific.
Necromunda is unironically something I would be interested in because you don't have to read a whole library to enjoy it.
One of 40k's weakness's, being so vast, is also one of it's strengths. There's countless stories to tell if you're willing to go on the ground for them, and they can range from the tragic to the outright hilarious in absurdity.
I'm not familiar with the Borg series. Are they always this Cruelty Squad coded?
hell yeah
