RT combined rules?

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Vassal
Having started gaming with 2nd edition 40k I missed out on ever playing RT. I love what I've seen of RT including the aesthetic of the minis and have finally got round to buying a copy of the rulebook.

The rules seem to be spread over a lot of different books (many of which seem to cost a small fortune) which makes it hard for a newcomer to know what they need, where to find stuff etc.

Has anyone ever created an equivalent to the 2nd edition Battle Bible? I.e a fan created clean up and reshuffle of the rules. As far as I'm aware GW has never taken steps to kill off the Battle Bible so I'm assuming it's legally sound.

Obviously I'd love copies of all the old books for the pictures and fluff but a clean up of the rules would be useful as a reference during play as well as a way of accessing the rules for those without the books.
 
I'm going to guess that there isn't anything do to the lack of responses :( Maybe this would've been better placed in General Discussion.

Is there no combined document because people pick and choose the rules and books they use on a more individual basis? I know with old school d&d crowd everyone has a different take on what works best and does a lot of homebrew fixes to the parts they don't like.

What does everyone think the legal ramifications would be of typing up the rules? Do GW care about the actual rulesets or just the fluff/IP stuff?
 
To answer your legal questions, you can't copyright the rules themselves, but you can copyright the expression of them. Thus retyping the rules would be illegal. Retrocloning them probably would be legal (but would depend on the exact implementation).

Also, just because they haven't stopped others yet, doesn't mean they won't or can't.
 
What's the difference between retyping and retrocloning, just the sentence structure and wording?

I'm aware they could lay down the law at any time, I'm wondering if it's worth doing myself. I don't want to spend ages doing it if it's just going to be shut down :/
 
smiler":2hkaa0qs said:
What's the difference between retyping and retrocloning, just the sentence structure and wording?

I'm aware they could lay down the law at any time, I'm wondering if it's worth doing myself. I don't want to spend ages doing it if it's just going to be shut down :/
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Generally, if you're going to do a retro clone, you'll want to leave out all the setting material or create your own. Specific troops and powers might want be avoided too.

And you have to do more than just change the sentence structure, but it's a fine line between conveying rules and creating a derivative work (which would be protected). Further that line is generally only set by a judge and may vary depending on the jurisdiction. A lot of this kind of stuff is "best guess" until someone actually gets sued.

Sorry I can't provide more details!
 
Thanks for the response, it's much appreciated! I'm wondering where the 2nd ed Battle Bible sits as it's clearly a straight copy of the rules, names and points costs intact. A retroclone would be a lot more work and, I would guess, not that useful to people as everyone interested probably owns a copy of the RT rulebook already.

I'm quite keen that there is an "old school revolution" for narrative warhammer as we've seen with d&d and think that with the recent behaviour of GW more people are looking for alternatives to 6th edition. It'd be great if the alternative was the more narrative focused great grandad of the game they already own loads of models for. Being able to say "here's some play reports, see how fun it is then check out the free rules" seems like a good recruitment technique.
 
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