Some idle thoughts on 40K, messing with the tech levels

[Grumdril]

I've shared this on the G+ community already, but would be interested in any thoughts from the forum folks.

I've been mulling over whether it's possible to make the tech levels in RT more diverse, while still ending up with a playable game. Basically making orcs less advanced, and Eldar more so - http://herebexp.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/ ... -head.html

Comments, suggestions, outright rejections?

Paul / Grumdril

 

[Niibl]

Re: AW: Some idle thoughts on 40K, messing with the tech lev

Not sure why you want to do this but if you want to have a setting on a medieval planet where you don't have knights getting shot to pieces by Ork bolters it is fine by me.
The basic setting allows for this anyway as Orks won't develope over night and will start off as wild boyz.
(You can always throw in a developement inhibiting radiation to keep this phase more stable).
The first Mekboy will surely be as much like a shaman to them as for their enemies.
And if you focus on the imperial perspective in this set up, your changes to Eldar make sense too.
So you don't have to throw the whole universe out of the window.
In principle you do what historical gamers do all the time by picking a certain battle or period and make specific rule adjustments for this specific purpose.
You just make up the period/location up.

 

[Grumdril]

I know, I should just dive into the game, but I can't, the suspension of disbelief which is required is just too great. Or in other words I don't want to do this - I have to do this - this is just how my brain works...

I think the Imperium background is brilliant - quite apart from the buckets of flavour it gives you a moderately plausible reason to have tens of thousands of worlds, Space Marines, Imperial Guard, Renegades and various pirates, Rogue Traders and so on all at the same technical level. But then it tries to add in other intelligent species. The idea that humanity, Orks, Eldar, Slann and Tyranids could all independently evolve (and devolve) to all be at a comparible level as to have a meaningful battle is just too much. And furthermore the fluff and the rules are in conflict.

To take Slann as an example - they're meant to be highly advanced and looking on with detatched amusement at the humans who think they're the dominant force in the galaxy. The adage about not bringing a knife to a gunfight should be doubly true when bringing a bolter to a Mxcrttryrth'c fight. The idea of a stand up battle between the two species is just wrong - it should go something like this:

"OK, Marine player, deploy your forces anywhere in this area here. Slann, deploy on that table over there. All set? Right, Marine player, roll a d6 - that's the phase of your first turn (1 = movement, 2 = shooting, etc.) when your last character dies."

Not much of a game, is it? Instead a confrontation with the Slann should read more like a Cthulhu scenario than a battle.

On the other hand with Orks, I can accept the odd spontaneous Mekboy who takes a primitive muzzle-loading firearm and through a spark of understanding creates a matchlock, or acquires some advanced tech from another civilisation and tinkers with it such that it some how still works afterwards. They might even take on an apprentice to do the fetching and carrying. But the idea that orkish society can support the recording and sharing of knowledge, the advances in manufacturing, etc., etc., to even get out of the gunpowder age? Orks as a spacefaring civilisation? Just no.

I'm not sure where I'm trying to go with this. Just that beyond a single planet, in a sci-fi (or even science-fantasy) setting, the intelligent species should be just as "other" as the plants and non-intelligent species.

And I'm still going to paint an Astropath

 

[Zhu Bajie]

The idea of a stand up battle between the two species is just wrong

I agree but for different reasons. It's the idea of homogenous racial monocultures which doesn't fit with Rogue Trader - I don't think there is intended to be an equivalence between race and technology. Instead Rogue Trader describes an infinite universe with multiple alien races who have different settlements, each encompassing different levels of advancement. An Eldar Agri-world might be positively medieval, or it might be run by a single wraithstone with automated psionic Wraithbone constructs to protect and manage its ecology. An Imperial colony might be a hugely mechanised, industrialised place, where thousand year old trading Houses war over who gets to send mineral wealth to a nearby Forge World or it could be a utopian world of garden city-states which hasn't seen another human for 30,000 years.

Orks are pretty dim and how some of them became spacefaring is a whole mythology in itself, and perhaps there is no single answer. Some might have been trained as mercenaries by more advanced cultures in some long distant space war, others may have developed their own technology. Maybe someone got orkoid mushroom spores on their spaceboots and accidently carried them to a hundred planets on a holiday cruise?

So yes, some Slann could just warp-in, wipe everyone out and warp out again. Other slann can bearly rub two sticks together and make fire. And maybe that's how it works in your corner of the Rogue Trader universe, but in other corners there are Medieval Squats fighting Medieval Orks while a bunch of Space Elves look on waiting for them to wipe each other out, and sell the mineral wealth to the Empire of Humanity.

It's all good!

 

[Mr Papafakis]

There's a couple of assertions you've made that don't really compute,

Firstly, "The idea that humanity, Orks, Eldar, Slann and Tyranids could all independently evolve (and devolve) to all be at a comparible level as to have a meaningful battle is just too much."

Why not? Take our planet for example....look at how many animals of comparable intellect inhabit it at the moment. Consider how many different varieties of primates there are? They've been fighting, breeding & competing for resourses (coexisting) for eons. If you extrapolate that assumption out to the scale of the universe, then you can see how it's not only possible, but probably the most likely scenario to occur.

Regarding the Slann,

You assume that ALL the Slann are advanced beings & that ALL of them would partake in a battle. If you read the section on Slann in RT then you''ll see that the bulk of the Slann that do the fighting are the "Braves" -the lower castes of their society- & that they are equipped like most other warrior races i.e. bolters etc.


Thus, I bring my sermon to an end

What say you to that? You foul fiend of the night!!!!

 

[Grumdril]

@ Zhu Bajie - yes, agree with all of that. I'm over-generalising and not at all touching on the wild variations within species. All of which makes it even more of a pity that RT has become this codified thing which doesn't make room for any of your scenarios. Or maybe, just as historical wargamers only re-fight the interesting battles and don't touch on the interesting but stupidly one-sided ones, like some of these - http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-most- ... an-history - we only re-fight the ones where there's something going for both sides.

@ optimus - I don't agree. Firstly the analogy of a single planet doesn't really work, as here all species that come into contact have evolved in the same context and found their niche. Even so where isolated pockets exist (e.g. Australia) when non-native species were introduced to the isolated environment then one side or other has a clear advantage. Elsewhere species were and are out-competed and either move somewhere that no one else wants, or go extinct. But assume there were no humans, and one day we turned up and declared war on bears, or chimps for that matter, who do you think would win? And if we'd turned up from another planet we'd not care about preserving their environment for them or us (to an even worse extent than things are currently).

I'd agree that on a galactic scale some Slann might be primitive by their standards and hence present humanity with a fair fight. But my reading of the book is different to yours - if you imagine what the tech level might be like on the "closed worlds" then even their lowly braves would be equipped with gear way beyond that listed in the rulebook. And taking them and the primitives as a whole, at 99.9...% of any meeting between the two species (or any others you care to think of) then one side would have an "I win" button.

Dunno. I just feel like the breadth, diversity and richness of the background is poorly represented by the games that tend to be played with the rules that it comes with (or any sci-fi battle rules for that matter). Maybe we have to just fight the roughly equal battles, but it'd just be nice to think of how some of the others might work.

It certainly isn't going to work in a tournament format, and we're definitely going to need a GM

 

[Jonas]

I don't find it a problem to set up unbalanced games. You would need a GM for sure, but if set up in a good fashion the scenario could include objectives which might let the weaker force still "win" the battle on victory points instead of just letting one side wipe the other out.

Victory conditions would not have to be the same for each side. A Fantasy Orc army fighting Space Marines would probably not fight for the same reasons as the Marines at all.

If you look in the Warhammer Siege book there is lot of examples of fights between medieval worlds and more advanced space farers.

 

[Mr Papafakis]

@Grumdril,

Your assuming that there is a full scale war between the species. The different humanoid races are spread right throughout the galaxy at this stage in RT history. So they have evolved without contact until they were technically advanced enough to become space farers. The humans probably don't know much about them & it's stated in RT that the Slann prefer to live in isolation from rest of the races.......indifferent to the "goings on" of the galaxy. So the only contact they have with them -militarily- would probably be on a small scale.

Remember RT is a skirmish/roleplaying game, best suited for a small amount of minis. If you wanted to have a "battle to end all battles" pitting whole races against each other, then yeah, the Slann would probably wipe the floor with humanities best, but that's not the setting of RT.

Anywho, I find the background fluff in Rogue Trader to be adequately explained. I'll agree to disagree with your assessment.

Thanks for this interesting debate

 

[Mr Tough Guy]

I really don't have much of an opinion in general about the techlevels of the various races, apart from the orks that is, and I completly disagree with everything said so far. if anything the tech level of the orks in RT (and 2nd edition) is far superior than any of the other races. In RT orks are probably the most technologically advanced race, it's also the race with the most brain surgeons and rocketscientist among their numbers. the only differnce and why many would say they're level of tech is low is that their priority is differnt, while most races would only use tech in combat that is proven and at least works like they expect it to, Orks really don't give a crap about health and safety. Orks do however have an innate superior ability to use tech, although the way they use it isn't as refined as other races, obviously a lot of the stuff they use is highly experimental and some of it doesn't work at all, but a lot of stuff is way ahead of other races, certainly the imperium.

Plus I think Orks have a bad reputation, from 3rd edition onwards (or probably from Gorka morka onwards) orks have been painted as bloodthirtsy idiots, with speech impediments. 3rd ed orks and onwards are more like the imperial propganda version of the race they were in RT (and 2nd edition).

 

[dieselmonkey]

It certainly isn't going to work in a tournament format, and we're definitely going to need a GM

Ew, you used the 'T' word.

 

[Asslessman]

In RT orks are probably the most technologically advanced race, it's also the race with the most brain surgeons and rocketscientist among their numbers.

That's pretty much the problem with orks, every god damn of them is an actual rocket scientist or/and brain surgeon or/and artist.

I really agree with your vision of ork psyche as it is the one described in Waargh the orks.

The tech leve of a given race has to be considered in terms of effect AND manner, a bolter works basically the same for every race except that a Jokaero bolter will fit in a ring, a Slann one will be partly magical whereas an orkish version will be the result of many trials and injuries...

 

[smiler]

I applaud your willingness and dedication to twisting the game to suit yourself, even if I don't entirely agree with your changes everyone's 40k is different, that's part of it's beauty.

The idea of Eldar being highly advanced in comparison to the Imperium is definitely something worth exploring, rules-wise. Equipment like holofields seems like it would be standard military equipment in a post-manufacture and low birthrate civilisation.

 

[Zhu Bajie]

I'd agree that on a galactic scale some Slann might be primitive by their standards and hence present humanity with a fair fight. But my reading of the book is different to yours - if you imagine what the tech level might be like on the "closed worlds" then even their lowly braves would be equipped with gear way beyond that listed in the rulebook. And taking them and the primitives as a whole, at 99.9...% of any meeting between the two species (or any others you care to think of) then one side would have an "I win" button.

Dunno. I just feel like the breadth, diversity and richness of the background is poorly represented by the games that tend to be played with the rules that it comes with (or any sci-fi battle rules for that matter). Maybe we have to just fight the roughly equal battles, but it'd just be nice to think of how some of the others might work.

Definately agree that the breadth, diversity and richness needs to come to the fore - and I like the sound of your campaign.

As for the reading of the book, I don't think we're quite at the point of quoting bits at each other to clarify our understandings - but with the Slann it does make the point that overall they tend towards being pacifistic philosophisers - and have little interest in tech. But game it what does an expeditionary force of three level 2. psionic Eldar vs a roughly equilivant points force band of primitive Slann pan out like (i.e. is advanced technology useless in the wake of massively superior numbers)?

I've always maintained that space marine captains don't wear helmets because in the grim dark future of the 41st millenium there's always a chance that a gobbo with a broken bottle can poke you in the brain.

 

[Grumdril]

I'm thinking more of a set of scenarios / vignettes than a campaign - I'm struggling to think of how the disparity I have in mind could be sustained across a campaign in a meaningful way. And I'm trying to avoid the horde vs the well-geared few option, not least because of the painting involved

I particularly like Jonas's point about conflicting but not directly opposed objectives. I have a few ideas in mind, when there's a bit more shape to them I'll be sure to air them here.

Space marine captains are all Uncle Enzo, and don't want their hearing impaired...