The eras of Rogue Trader.

[AranaszarSzuur]

From what I have observed, Wh40k 1st edition can be divided into eras like this:

-1st era - when it was intended to be a game with GM and initially players were supposed to scratch build stuff and before Chaos were introduced. It was until Whit Dwarf 100 and Book of Astronomican/Warhammer siege.
In White Dwarf 96-99 there was exploration of different chapters of Space Marines which was quickly discontinued.

Perhaps even Rulebook and WD93-95 could be considered a separate era altogether as that's where articles about converting Space Marines and how to kitbash vehicles. Perhaps Starting era. This kind of encouragement of creativity has ended after these initial issues as they started producing more and more vehicles, starting with bikes.

-2nd era - when they added chaos and second vehicle rules and started releasing plastic vehicles and moved towards competitive format based on army list. That's when Imperial Guard was high tech and vehicles were super high tech. Like Rhinos (WD103), Land Raiders (WD105) and Predators (WD112) had power fields and also Imperial Guard fielded them (WD109). Imperial Guard at that time was more like Space Marines without boltguns and power armour than later Cold War style Imperial Guard.

-3rd era - when Epic Space marine came out and armies became less advanced and Imperial Guard and Space Marines became increasingly distinct and they released third vehicle rules and vehicles became less high tech and the game started morphing into 2nd edition. Around WD124, Epic Imperial Guard list has introduced Leman Russ tanks, superheavies, basilisks, etc.
Epic Imperial Guard Army list in WD125 removed Land Raiders and Predators from Imperial Guard.
WD128 had new vehicle rules with location-based armour and power fields disappeared from Space Marine vehicles.
Epic Space Marine 1st edition (around WD117) had the Scarface Marine cover with Dark Angels in MkVII armour.

 

[symphonicpoet]

You could possibly just use the major book releases as divisions. RT, obviously, is your MK I vanilla first "able" edition. It's fast and loose and pretty bare bones. The Book of the Astronomicon and red Compendium expand on this, but they don't really fundamentally change anything that I recall. After that they started making some significant changes: T4 marines. dramatically altered genestealers, the army got a new name . . . maybe that should be the MK II or "baker" first edition. And then everything really begins to change when they roll out new larger miniatures with dramatically enlarged weapons along with the Battle Manual and Vehicle Manual. I'd call that the Mk III or "charlie" first edition. And we all know the second edition is just a "dog."

Honestly, it's a challenging exercise. I wanted to end Ia with terminators and T4 marines, but they happened at different times. And the genestealer cult is so cemented in my memory as an important part of Rogue Trader, but it was honestly pretty late. And I thoroughly disliked the Eldar Aspect Warriors when they first came out, so I really want them not to be the one true Rogue Trader. (I was such an opinionated little git at the time.) I can see the idea of going by White Dwarf, but it's not intuitive to me since I never really bought it. It makes sense in hindsight, but it was expensive and had a lot of stuff of little interest to me personally at the time so . . . yeah, I might have two. I feel like you're probably right that there's three fairly distinct eras to it, but it's surprisingly hard to draw the lines.

 

[AranaszarSzuur]

You could possibly just use the major book releases as divisions. RT, obviously, is your MK I vanilla first "able" edition. It's fast and loose and pretty bare bones. The Book of the Astronomicon and red Compendium expand on this, but they don't really fundamentally change anything that I recall. After that they started making some significant changes: T4 marines. dramatically altered genestealers, the army got a new name . . . maybe that should be the MK II or "baker" first edition. And then everything really begins to change when they roll out new larger miniatures with dramatically enlarged weapons along with the Battle Manual and Vehicle Manual. I'd call that the Mk III or "charlie" first edition. And we all know the second edition is just a "dog."

Realm of Chaos was released around WD106.
https://web.archive.org/web/20090227012 ... story.html
Though I'd still consider stuff past WD100 different to previous stuff because of the second vehicle rules which seemed to change the general concept of Imperial vehicles. Though ironically the concept of vehicles with power fields goes back to Laserburn.

Toughness increase was in WD129, so around the same time as the third vehicle rules.
https://web.archive.org/web/20090227084 ... ition.html

I consider II era to be covered by Slaves to Darkness and Compendium and III era to be dawning with WD117. Weird thing is that Battle Manual and Vehicle Manual came about two years after the game-changing rules in White Dwarf 128 and 129.

 

[Zhu Bajie]

RT, obviously, is your MK I vanilla first "able" edition.

Well, there's always the 1st Citadel Compendium article for WFB1E that has Bolt Guns, Vortex Grenades, squads in skirmish formations, ancient aliens building a system of extradimensional warpgates, and orcs with laser guns.

Other than that it's a bit like nailing jelly to the wall. There are strands of development that are very different in approach to the RT book, such as the use of proscriptive Ravening Hordes (WD88) shopping-list style army lists, rather than just using the open-ended points system and having descriptive example armies, and the use of overly-detailed setting info (Chaos, Waargh the Orks and Eldar, then the revamped Space Marines) to promote the game rather than scenario-led approach of the rulebook and Astronomicon, which for 40k starts in WD105 with the Space Marine Army List, but in WFB was more the transition from 2E (WD63) to 3E (WD95)- but it's the exact same shift in direction, just slightly lagging behind, probably due to publication schedules. Terminator and Harlequin releases are more like a hold-over of the Regiments of Renown concept from WFB1E a box set of minis with a bit of background and some special rules.

Then there's the Datafax Vehicle Template rules in WD128 which are completely different to what went before. Certainly by the end the looser, more open nature of the game has been replaced with a "this model = this faction = these rules" attitude. Other than that the most of the published material is just more like optional house-rules, Robots, Craters, alternate vehicle / dread rules, and new units etc.

 

[symphonicpoet]

^I was just saying Rogue Trader is the obvious Mark I since that's the first published anything in 40K. (Save maybe for a few previews in White Dwarf.) But your "nailing jelly to the wall" seems spot on. It's hard to do because there's a lot of fluidity and organicness and maybe you used the new rules (I think my circle of friends more or less always did) or maybe you didn't. Once you start seeing tournaments, which probably happened around when the battle manual came out, thing cease to work like optional house rules, becoming the official house rules of the official house. But I found the tournament thing a turn off from the word go, so . . . meh. I'd much rather have orc dreadnoughts hurling orcs across a bottomless chasm because they forget their jump packs at home and the cheaky beakies blew up the bridge than play in any kind of tournament. Give me my jelly! (You keep the wall.)

 

[Zhu Bajie]

^I was just saying Rogue Trader is the obvious Mark I since that's the first published anything in 40K.

Yeah, for sure, Rogue Trader book is the first "40k" branded rules-set, but IIRC the branding was added quite late in the games development, and only because of the Rogue Trooper / Trader confusion. Citadel had been intermittently publishing playable, Warhammer Sci-Fi rules before the RT book, the Compendium 1 rules for WFB1, and the Warhammer Dredd rules for WFB2 in CJS86 are part of that as well, with vehicle rules and city gangs that fed into RT and the the 40k elements of Citi-Block, and on to Necromunda. The publication of RT is certainly a hugely important milestone, but it's not really the beginning of the development or publication history of those rules - which according to Rick (WD94), he already had much of designed before joining citadel, and then converted to the Warhammer system - so this unpublished ur-document may well have formed much of the basis for the earlier Warhammer Sci-fi rules and RT.

Looking at the development of 40k in isolation from WFB distorts the story as well, as the big picture is missing. The RT books Army Lists are much more like WFB1 Forces of Fantasy in form and structure - random, percentage based, rather than the shopping-list format that was introduced in WFB2 RH, and stayed through WFB3 Armies, and the codex-led editions. This suggests the RT lists were composed at an earlier date, or at least come from the same game design-ethos as WFB1 rather than integrating the later developments. Similarly the Astronomicons "Example Armies" are more akin to WFB1e FoF Book of Batallions - there to provide loose inspiration for the kind of thing a player might do, not a straight-jacket of conformity.

And that's just one or two blobs of 'rules' flavour of jelly! Haven't even begun to look at how the art direction, model design, background setting and Zoatibix flavoured jelly blobs mutated over time.

 

[twisted moon]

there's definitely a continuity from the earliest days of wfb, and before considering the influence of laserburn. the 2nd edition background was basically a post-cataclysmic science fantasy, thanks to the input of richard halliwell.
thanks for reminding me about the article in the first citadel compendium. i should make use of some of that in my games.

 

[AranaszarSzuur]

Apparently C100 and LE2 Marines were released in 1985. I guess they could be considered era 0 and the First Compendium article era -1.

 

[ManicMan]

Limited Edition (LE) 2 Imperial Space Marine was probly 85, but the early C100 Imperial Space Marines were 86.

However, they were PRE Rogue trader.. while could be used for the later games and some kept in production, they weren't rogue trader..

and when the first 'offiical' rogue trader (as warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader) came out, a number of them were dropped pretty quickly or greatly renamed..

Wouldn't it be better to just say:
Pre-Trader
W40K-RT
W40K-2nd

as a way to define them? else your gonna have alot of problems as it was kinda a short run with alot of stuff changing each year.. Space Elves becaming Eldar, Space Dwarfs becoming Squats, Piscean Warriors.. just being dropped, Imperial Troops becoming Imperial Guard etc..

 

[Zhu Bajie]

WH40K:RT should just be called WFB:SF 3rd edition really.

Even Warhammer Siege and Realms of Chaos treated both 40K and WFB as the same game just focusing on different tech-levels. After that it's just branding.

 

[ManicMan]

different between gun and bow & arrow is just strength, astropath and magic is just names, Imperiam and empire are... well, Empire was much nicer people.