Hmm. In a perfect world, the employees of the producing company would be perusing posts, looking for good ideas and cogent discussions that could be used in the upcoming product. Yes, it would be a lot of work, but the benefit would be tapping the ideas, freely given, of a lot of players.

But, as has been said before, this is the internet, and there seem to be a lot of people who think it works very differently than being a useful feedback tool.

Warboss Krag said:

There's also the fact that the book is probably close to being printed already.  Most likely in final playtesting and editing/layout.  Especially to have the books by Gen Con.  So it wouldn't matter if they liked our ideas if it wasn't close to the existing reality already.

Honestly, I liked Deathwatch a lot (my favorite game) and was well pleased with its leveling system. Dark Heresey was pretty good too, as was Rogue Trader. Haven't played Black Crusade so I can't comment there. And theories/hopes/ideas aside, I will likely buy Only War as well,  I like all from the 40KRP line that I have played and will probably like it as well.

Discussion/theorizing is one thing, whining is another, lol. I think FFG does a good job overall with their product in the most important way (for me at least which is immersion and fun).

I belong to the school of gaming thought that prizes custom character design over level-based systems. Level systems are a serious archaism, left over from original D&D; they are designed to make character design and development easy for people who are uncomfortable plotting out character design and development. This is a surprising amount of people, who have real problems making decisions, particularly those that require that you know something of the rules of the game before being able to make an informed decision. It seems like a lot of work for them.

Me, I prefer to be able to make choices to develop a character the way I would like to. This allows me more control, and in the case of the RPG line we're discussing, allows me to avoid crap levels - there are levels in all of the games (except Black Crusade) where there's often no skills or talents I want to buy, and the only good reason to spend XP is raising stats. My players have trouble with this. In addition, there are some very odd skill choices we found just playing Dark Heresy for the first campaign - why is Awareness practically forbidden to Arbitrators, with said upgrades are given to every other class at much lower level?

I personally was happy to see the 'choose your own path' in Black Crusade. To view these forums, it seems I was in the minority.

Warboss Krag said:

Crying shame, that. Such things are easy to avoid by a disclaimer at the Home page or some such, having people sign away their claims to any material put on the site. A little legal boiler-plate goes a long way.

Refusing to even admit that the player base might be right smacks of two attitudes: 1) A lazy lawyer whose single response to almost any question is "Nope, can't do it, we might be sued," and/or 2) "How dare those upstart players act like our work is anything but perfect!!!" (The Games Workshop attitude.)

It's not about refusing to admit that the "player base might be right". Stop treating this as an adversarial 'us vs them' thing - it isn't. It is often done simply to avoid the spectre of plagiarism ever coming up. It's not a quagmire that any company wants to get involved in.

BYE

Interesting. Back in 1992, I believe, I put together the 'Uncle Al's Auto Stop and Gunnery Shop' compilation for Car Wars. We solicited player input and a lot of the gadgets (it was a gadget book) came from players. Now, I don't know if you know anything about Steve Jackson, and I can tell you a lot, but if there's one person who's going to be careful about his legalities, it was Evil Stevie. Not that I blame him; having the Secret Service - no kidding; look it up! - raid his offices in connection with the production of GURPS Cyberpunk (because there was a tenuous connection with a person said to belong to a hacking community), made him cross his t's and dot his i's. We never had any problem with a 'quagmire,' as you put it.

You want to check it? My actual name is Craig Sheeley. And I'm honestly surprised how many addresses on the internet list me as having games I wrote still being for sale…

and yet another thread has been derailed by bitching and moaning, so in an atempt to get things back on track id like to see a sniper specialist. Also to all those who say its easy to change specialties in military i will tell you that is BULLSHIT, i am currently serving in uk forces and i can get promoted and be a supervisor for my job or go commision and become an officer my role is a weapons technicin in the RAF

I'm torn on the Ogryn idea.  Part of me would love to play an Ogryn, but another part of me is certainly hesitant due mostly to how GW has far more often than not portrayed them as stupid to the point of being nearly handicapped and the comedy relief. 

I would like to see a Sniper career and also a Scout career.  I'm not sure they need to be the same career with options for branching into one specialty or the other or two seperate careers. 

Drake56 said:

Thats the probleam with Crab air no promotion.  Must be course you can go on to widen your skills?  In the Infantry you may start off as a pravate but then you can move to learn to use the mortars Anti tank misslies gunner recce platoon Helicopter handler inteligance sniper etc I am sure there are many more (Army 87-91 so my info is out of date)  of course the most important career in the game must be Band

Hee, hee! Moglwi does have a good point ('Crab air'); the specialty switching I've heard of all comes from modern military, emphasis on 'modern.' And specifically wartime modern military. Dunno how it would work with the Guard…but a big part of the Guard is that it's a galaxy-spanning force, made up of units from disparate worlds and cultures, all tenuously linked by Imperial service and a basic manual. Relatively unsupported, each Guard unit maintains a lot of its own logistical tail, and reinforcements? Unless you're serving on a War World, you have to drum those up yourself. Resupply? Ditto. And so on.

My point is this: I believe the Guard would be a much more nebulous thing, in specific organization, practice, doctrine, personality, and culture, varying from unit to unit, than any number of Space Marines, in particular the Codex Chapters (those following the Codex Astartes).

tuco said:

My biggest issue with Abhumans is they aren't typically in mixed units.  they are kept quite separate.  Maybe an Ogryn bodyguard here and there.  But you don't see a random Ratline sniper in with any given Guard regiment.  Let alone Ogryns.  They're their own thing.

Dulahan said:

The logistical problems involved in maintaining and supplying mixed troops would keep these rare and avoided.

Then again, with army bureaucracy and clerical errors being what they are, this could be used as adventure hookings: How to keep your Ogryns fed, armed and supplied through it all, battling the inevitable paper errors, red tape and bureaucracy during wartime action. Heck, same could be used for regular troops too. Would even fit in the grimdark dystopia feel.

Though players would probably try to solve this through gun-to-clerks-head intimidation.  Which would still fail, when the cargo pallet supposedly containing ogryn-sized combat boots turns out to be filled with SPF-1000 sunblocking lotion. On an ice world. During winter.

IIRC, the germans had a similar problem in Stalingrad: The food supplies failed to reach the troops supplied via planes, due to russian AAA. The one cargo which made it, contained their supply of prophylactics (condoms).

Ive Heard Ogryns mentioned as a possibility, Ive been waiting on the for a while. But what about the Lowly Ratling? Does no one want to be Frodo in 40k? dissapointing.

Also, wasnt there supposed t be a guard speciffic book for DH, what happened to that?