I'd like a Morale mechanic. I'm not exactly sure how it would work, but with the Commissar confirmed as a specialty, it just seems to fit. I'd rather it not be a rehash of the Cohesion system in Deathwatch, either. Guardsmen are much less likely (in my mind) to 'go solo' than a Space Marine, so making it a more constant mechanic would be nice.

AluminiumWolf said:

I think I would do it a little differently. If we assume a DH power level; I would make the tree of Conscript, Loader, Driver, Gunner and finally Tank commander. This is (or at least was in the 80's) the progression of stations for a US soldier serving in a Tank. Further progression would probably follow the officer path as the character controls progressively more tanks. (BTW: In the 40k fluff I've read, I believe the sponson turrets on the Leman Russ are servitor controlled.) The reason I would do it this way is that crewing a tank on the battlefield has many similarities with operating a naval warship (Although on a much smaller scale!). It is not like the fast and furious of infantry CQB. (In fact: In WW I Tanks were conceived as "Land Battleships" and were designed to reflect this. The term tank was an intelligence deception used on the shipping container to prevent the enemy from intercepting them while enroute to the front lines. The Astartes "Land Raider" is acually a Sci-fi ed version of these exact same Tanks! [For those who didn't already know that])

 Thing is, I don't think being the loader in a tank is going to make for particularly edifying adventuring. Similarly gunner and driver.

AluminiumWolf said:

Loader is something of a misleading term. He is also the radio operator, fuel manager and general spare guy. My point is that crewing a Tank in combat is very much a "Team" (And thus VERY RPG like!) undertaking. If the power lvl is indeed the same as DH it is unlikely that a bunch of lvl 1 conscripts (Or equivalent) are going to be Tank commanders! Instead each character would have their own "role". (As the crewmembers do in real life.) The TC directs the rest of the crew and is responsible for finding targets and setting target priorities. The Gunner, Not surprisingly, Positions the main turret (A move action) and gets to Aim and fire the Main weapon (Always fun!), The driver is in charge of moving the vehicle and operates any forward facing hull-mounted weapons. The loader (In addition to the tasks mentioned above) Loads the main Gun (If required) and serves as crew medic and replacement if any of the others are incapacitated. He also is probably the character that would be commanding the sponson target servitors. As the characters advance; perhaps they stay with their current crew and becom an elite tank crew who are legends on the battlefield! If not, Then you could eventually end up with a situation where your group are all TC's (Because they've earned it!0 And your original TC is the Squadron commander!

+++++and gets to Aim and fire the Main weapon (Always fun!)+++++

Thing is, in a roleplaying game this basically amounts to saying 'I shoot the gun' and making a skill roll. The TC makes all the decisions, like what to shoot and where to drive which are the fun things in a TTRPG.

If this was a video game where shooting the gun or driving were, in and off themselves, fun activities to do that would be one thing. But at the resolution of a TTRPG they are just reduced to making skill checks for the tank commander, and may as well be NPC pets for him.

AluminiumWolf said:

This is also true of the crew of a Rogue trader Voidship! Yet that is exactly how it works in that game. Role playing in a tank had better be more than just operating the tank in combat! If that's what you're going to do you might as well just play 40k. My point was that this is how a tank operates in combat! If I was to run a 40k game that is how I would tranlate that. I also mentioned the idea that later on the players may have advanced to the point where they are all Tank commanders. To make the feel of Tanks different from infantry it must be treated differently.

Really, most combat is just a series of dice rolls; whether you are a tank crew or an infantry squad. Roleplaying comes from the storytelling. I like the idea of roleplaying a tank crew. It reminds me of the Haunted Tank stories in the old G.I.Combat comics. Of course, this requires a very specific kind of roleplaying group. Many players prefer to focus so intensely on their individual characters that they are not so much part of a team as they are a group of individuals who have agreed to cooperate for the time being. The players of a tank crew can't just do their own thing as everyone needs to be working together in order for the tank to function properly. For this reason, I suspect tank crews, or Valkyrie crews for that matter, are likely to be supplement material rather than included in the corebook. At least, I really hope that they intend to include them at some point.

Mine makes a few assumptions, but...

If this game is going to be like Ascension, wherein I mean you pick up the codex, and EVERYTHING they reference is in there (nothing more, put down that chair), if this is going to be full IG as an RP book, with any unit that the codex might have in it, I want weapons that work. I don't need Beta-level psykers who can crush a Hellhound like a beer can with the warp, but I would like them to finally hammer out the details with weapons, and make it so that meltas and plasmas work, both against men and women, AND against vehicles. Seeing Ogryns and Commissars would be nice, and if they remember the Valkyries, all power to them, but if they can just figure out how to make it so that vehicle-buster weapons, and/or certain psychic powers do their job, but aren't so uber that they flense any infantryman, while making both infantry and vehicles efficient, I'd consider it a win. In a game where vehicles could be so much more important, being able to consistently deal with them, without having a gun so killer everyone should just carry that, all the time, would be critical.

Of course, I'd also like Commissars, Abhumans, IG vehicles, new Human Battle Psykers that work (like RT system, but not their psykers, okay with DW system and psykers, maybe like theirs), and maybe some more uses for the Command Skill (something that gives bonuses for the Officer's skill at coordinating and tactical acumen), but if the guns work, and do so in the way they are supposed to, I'll be pleased. Kind of wish one of the FFG rulesets had made a pointless ability that allowed for them to train to kill vehicles, and target them, to do more damage against them, without obliterating all infantry, too, but I suppose DW did that in little bits.

i wish for the ability to regain fate points by nailing hookers and taking copious drugs in run down cities just behind the front line. I may have been watching too many Vietnam movies, or playing too much GTA.

Failing that some good rules for whipping up mobs of freindly npc's into a useful and not instantly wasted asset.

There’s no ONE thing I’d like to see from Only War – there are about 20! Here’s a list of a few thoughts…

1. I’d like to see an interesting setting. As a 40k background and setting addict, whenever I get a new Core Book, I leap straight to the setting section. Logically, the setting is going to be a major warzone, perhaps another Crusade. I’ve loved the Achillus Assault and Jericho Reach sourcebooks for Deathwatch, so I’d like more of that!

2. Interesting opponents for the Imperial Guard. Each 40k RPG setting has had different opponents. Dark Heresy covered chaos cults and unique xenos, Rogue Trader has Orks, Eldar, some Dark Eldar (possibly), and a couple of unique xenos, Deathwatch has Tau, Tyranids and chaos, and Black Crusade has Necrons, the Imperium and Chaos in its various permutations.

I’m not one of those who works myself into a frenzy over any alleged failure to publish rules for every aspect of the TT game. I remember various rants on these boards over the years about a failure to cover marines/orks/tau/elder etc. I’ve always taken the view that FFG will get round to those things eventually.

As a 40k fan since it was first published, what I really crave is novelty. Much as I admire and respect the quality of sections in Rogue Trader supplements that cover Ork society, or sections of the Jericho Reach book that cover every variation of Tyranid beastie, this is stuff (well, background) we have seen before. It’s skilled adaptation rather than innovation. If I have a choice between learning about Orks or learning about Rak’Gol marauders, I’ll pick the Rak’Gol, because I know less about them.

(That’s not intended as criticism, by the way. In fact I know I’m in a minority here; I reckon 90% of the fans probably don’t agree with me on this.)

So what I’m saying here is that I want to see NEW opponents. New races, new interpretations. I love the Deathwatch setting material, but it only really sets out 3 major opponents, all of who are very familiar to 40k fans. The Tyranids, the Tau and the Stigmatus (who are portrayed as very very similar to the Blood Pact.)

So maybe new xenos opponents…non Imperial, non chaotic human empires…chaos forces that are markedly different to the Blood Pact…all this kind of stuff. Perhaps even weirder things like non-necron machine intelligences, non-chaotic warp creatures like enslavers, that sort of thing.

I imagine that FFG will go for a mix of opponents, and if I had to put money down I’d imagine they’d be seeking to cover opponents not dealt with in detail in the 40k setting so far. This could include things like the Dark Eldar, or Orks (I know there’s DH and RT stuff on them, but it’s not as detailed as, say, the Tau stuff in DW.) I just hope that they also add some new stuff, like they did with the Slaugth in DH and the Stryxis and Rak’Gol in Rogue Trader.

3. Some interesting new regiments. This links to the above: as I own every Imperial Guard book and supplement published (apart from some of the more obscure BL stuff,) I might glaze over a bit if the Only War book covers in detail how well regarded the Cadians are, or how rough life is back home for the Catachans. I know many many things about the Cadians, Catachans, Praetorians, Valhallans, Attilans, Elysians, Drookian Fen Guard etc etc.

Instead, I’d like to see stuff about new regiments: their recruitment, training, homeworlds etc. One imagines that in due course there’ll be a book of regiments – that’s going to be interesting.

4. More stuff about the Imperial Guard Ranking system – OK, it may well be intentionally a convoluted mess, but I’d like to know stuff about the ranks above colonel – how the Munitorum governs the various regiments at the General Staff level. I’m a sucker for that kind of tedious detail…(though I recognise not everyone will be, so perhaps this might not happen!)

5. Some new Guard vehicles. Now I recognise this might not happen, for various reasons.

One of the few irrational bugbears I have about the Imperial Guard is the lack of a jeep/Humvee equivalent. I know about the Tauros Venator, but that’s described as pretty much a drop-regiment specific vehicle.

It’s just always seemed ridiculous to me that an army the size of the Guard is reliant entirely upon tracked vehicles. Where are the trucks? The jeeps? Is water really always transported to the front in vats dragged by Trojan tractors? I know 40k is dystopian, and Guard high command ruthless, but I didn’t think they were wasteful of fuel. Lives, yes. Fuel, no. Tracked vehicles eat up huge amounts of fuel. Wheeled vehicles don’t. They’re faster, more economical and easier to produce en masse.

I have always been, and remain, baffled as to why GW have never produced a plastic wheeled jeep, truck or armoured car. I’d buy 6 of them immediately, and most guard players would too. I note that a lot of “parasite” companies that make unlicensed and unauthorised miniature parts for GW games make wheeled conversion kits allowing players to turn their Chimeras into armoured cars. This is money GW could be raking in!

But I recognise FFG work within the canon. And the canon has little information (beyond the work of BL writers) about wheeled vehicles in the guard. The only way around this would be for FFG to invent a theatre specific wheeled vehicle, perhaps of controversial provenance that can be used locally. That allows FFG to let players use a jeep equivalent without stepping outside the canon. It’ll be interesting to see how they handle it.

6. Playable Abhuman troops. Especially the Afriel Strain. I wrote up some rules for them in Dark Heresy a while ago – I’d like to see them in Only War. Perhaps even a setting-specific variation on the Afriel Strain?

Nathan “No1 h3r3” Dowdell wrote some excellent rules for abhumans in DH, so I’d love to see him do the same for abhumans in Only War.

Lightbringer you cheater..

You make some good points though and I hope someone from FFG is reading because:

4. Pressumably what ever crusade they have could detail all of the important officers in the chain of command and still leave space for GM's own created officers.

5. The Guard is specifically the most varied force in the Galaxy, which is why forge world brought out the Malcador and Macharius tanks patterns. And this is by no means all they have. So Angevin or Drusus pattern tanks?

I hear what you are saying about wheeled vehicles, personally I think they are avoiding as the want IG character to be tracked vehicles but aren't restricted by this in the RPG, we need to ferry the pure infantry around the place as well as the supplies and artillery. I was toying the name Clydsdale for a truck but it's one of those things where every hive world might make a different pattern so no worries about stepping on GW toes.

6. Yes, yes, yes, a local gene-trooper devision would be sweet, but that's not all abhumans could be anything, there's plenty of reasons for envormental adaption and you could have at least one local representative. What about a dark skinned, animal glowing eyed people from a dark planet i'm sure there's any number of sci-fi examples.

I would like the RPG I have wonted to play since I was 16 in a very indepth, cool setting.

Something else that would make me happy, I really hope that they hammer out a decent psyker system, between making them work well (like the RT/DW systems, while keeping a decent assortment of offensive and utilitarian powers (DH and Ascension). I'm not going to whine for a PR 6+ uber-psyker, like Ascension would give me; the IG, on average, don't sport such powerful psykers, but the Guard does sport several varieties of offensive, combat-psykers, and I hope that they do a good job of representing that, but without the glaring flaws in it that DH and Ascension had. I liked RT for their system, but the powers, overall, sucked to me, and there was no spot for a battle-psyker, with only the Astropath Transcendent class, and their power was for communication. DW had a good system, AND some good powers, but they were so limited, based on your heritage, of sorts, so that wouldn't really work for me, either. Giving me some decent, damaging powers, with a stable, balanced activating system, that doesn't either slap you with a daemon, or have no chance of Perils, would rock.

Well, here's hoping...

 My thread so I can make a second post in it!

I'm really hoping for extensive vehicle stats. Maybe even an entire splat book ala BFK wouldn't be amiss. Even just decent rules to translate the vehicle stats from the TT would be enough.

I'll freely admit this comes from my being a fan of the series of RPGs, but I'd like some vehicle stats in this.....Nothing crazy as I'm perfectly willing to buy a supplement for the heavy and super-heavy stuff, but Chimeras, scout walkers, that sorta light stuff would be loved.

Beyond that.....A new sector....I'd love Cadia but I think that's shooting a little high...so something related to the Margin Crusade or any ongiong conflict in the Ixniad Sector would be awesome.