Thinking about Warhammer?

[pawsplay]

Do people like Dark Hersey or Olde World better?

I prefer Old World. Dark Heresy is almost too metal opera for me, which is saying a lot. WFRP spends some time explaining how ordinary people manage to function, whereas 40K is flamboyantly unconcerned with plausibility. Also, the Old World does a nice job of blending Jabberwocky with Lankhmar, as told by Alan Moore. WFRP has a grim humor to it, Dark Heresy is a little too Nihilism in Spaaaace for me.

Admittedly, the line is thin on both plausability and tone, but that's my preference. But I definitely prefer the High Medieval, rat-on-a-stick aesthetic.

 

[frankthedm]

My problem with 40K was that the elegant carrier system was ditched for locked in Class system that assumed PCs were ][nquisitors. That and the XP system moved away from 100xp per advance.

Most of my group likes fantasy much more than sci fi. Our Host for example prefers to bring swords to gunfights whenever it is an option in RPG's and videogames as a matter of principal. He has gone so far as to use a paint pellet for a melee kill in real life paintball.

 

[Sanzuo]

I love everything about the 40k setting. I love the Gothic style, the hostility of space, the scale, the scope and the desperation. I even don't mind that the game starts you off as acolytes of the Inquisition. That sets the stage for many adventures and gives the players good reason to go traipsing across the galaxy. You can even ignore the whole Inquisition thing and just leave the players on their own.

That being said, in some ways I do like a few things about the WFRP rules that seem a bit more streamlined and easier to handle. It could be that fantasy as a whole is just an easier setting to deal with. I also like the unique class system in Fantasy and kind of wish there was something similar in 40k.

 

[arcanaman]

Can you give me the basics of careers and races for dark hersey

 

[Iron Sky]

This is all off the top of my head since my roommate has the Dark Heresy book atm:

Races (all varieties of human, based off of where they are born):
Voidborn - Born on spacecraft. Fragile, make good psychers/smart characters
Feral - Born on primative and/or dangerous worlds. Tough, unsocial, make great physical characters, awful technical/social.
Imperial - Born on generic worlds. Ok all around, like humans in Fantasy
Hive Worlder - Born on a Hive World(think Alderaan from Star Wars, all city). Good social, physically weaker.

I don't know if I remember all the classes, but I can give it a stab:

Adept - The loremasters of the group. Most access to forbidden and scholarly lore of any class. Can become slightly psychic
Assassin - Good at combat and sneaky type of things, pretty much as the name suggests.
Arbitrator - Decent all-around characters. Good at melee.
Cleric - Decent all-around characters. Get loads of cash.
Guardsman - The heavy-weapons, heavy-hitters. Very combat specialized.
Psyker - The main psychic class. Amazingly powerful, but your party might hate them (channelling the Warp isn't just hazerdous for them, in our group our scum to the brunt of every mis-channelled psychic power and was about to blow our psyker's brain out).
Scum - Jack-of-all trades, make good social "face" characters. Make horrible money(rediculously bad, especially at higher levels).
Tech Priest - The best technical class, as would be expected since they're all cyborgs themselves.

There might be one or two I'm missing, but I think that's most of them.

 

[arcanaman]

The only two races beside imperial I had heard of were the eldars and the orks I know they're are sci fi counterparts of elves and orcs how are they different

 

[the Jester]

Actually, on a related note, are the eldar of 40K the same as the elves of Fantasy? They seem analogous, and I have always been under the impression that 40K was the future of the Fantasy universe...

 

[Derren]

Can you give me the basics of careers and races for dark hersey

Considering that everything which is not a human would get shot on sight the list of races is a bit limited.

You can only play normal humans.

I wrote a long text about the different races in WH40K, but ENworld ate that edit, so you have to look for it yourself.
This might help: http://www.lexicanum.com/

 

[Iron Sky]

Actually, on a related note, are the eldar of 40K the same as the elves of Fantasy? They seem analogous, and I have always been under the impression that 40K was the future of the Fantasy universe...

Eldar are kind of "space elves," yes. I think the 40K universe is the future of our world though, not the WH Fantasy one.


There's actually alot of different races in the Warhammer universe. However, the Imperium is (mostly justifiably) xenophobic, killing any and all non-humans (and mutant humans) on sight.

Other races that exist:
Eldar - An ancient and dwindling race with a long, sad past. They pretty much have no hope at all and are dying out.

Dark Eldar - A sect of the Eldar. I don't know much about them, but I think they worship the Demon God Slaanesh, god of pleasure. Maybe regular Eldar do too.

Orks - Actually a kind of fungal infection (I'm not kidding, they grow from spores). Orks are almost impossible to eliminate from a world once they infest it (usually by crashing stolen/abandoned space hulks onto a world) for this reason. If they infest enough worlds, their growth will become exponential and the Imperium is pretty much doomed.

Tyranids - A giant insect-like race that travel about in huge hive fleets. Supposedly their "invasions" that take out whole sectors are actually just probing raids for the main fleet on its way from the last galaxy they conquered. If their main fleet arrives, the Imperium is pretty much doomed.

Necrons - Undead machines built by some ancient malevolent machine gods that sleep in their tomb worlds. If the machine gods awaken, the Imperium is pretty much doomed.

Chaos - Led by some defected/mutated Space Marines (the strongest, most elite forces in the Imperium) chaos comes through rifts in to the warp (the alternate dimension of madness, chaos, and evil). Only the might of the undead Emperor and the thousands of psykers they sacrifice to him each day keep the main rift to the Warp from openning further and the Demon Gods and Chaos from overrunning our universe. If the Emperor ever dies, the Warp tear will come completely open and the Imperium is pretty much doomed.

Tau - the one bright light in the WH40K universe. A race of rapidly advancing humanoids (like, apes to space travel in 10,000 years) that are actually willing to work with other races. Their main downside is they don't use Warp Travel (WH40K's FTL travel, dangerous since it is pretty much space hell) so it takes them hundreds of years to travel from star to star. The Imperium, of course, shoots them on sight.

I think that's all of them.

 

[arcanaman]

Thanks for the site Derren so you can only play as a human in dark hersey or are the other races avaible because even thought it has been stated several times I still don't get it