FAIR WARNING: I HAVE NO SKILL AT BREVITY
I have a game I'd like to be able to run, but first I would need to write the rules for it. I'm already decently familiar with the various RPGs in Fantasy Flight Games's now-defunct 40K RP line, but the specific focus I have in mind falls between the cracks of those games. And I'm hoping to enlist the aid of other 40K-GMs on the forum who would be willing to help me develop those rules.
For the game I want to run, the Player Characters would all be members of a Genestealer Cult, but I want to emphasize that I am NOT looking for a "villains game"...
While I find the setting material for WarHammer 40,000 fascinating, I utterly reject several of the assumptions of Games Workshop's writing staff. Most notably the assumption that the humans are by any measure the good guys; instead I see countless indications that the Imperium as a civilization is organized around the singular purpose of mass-producing human sacrifice to fuel their god's personal war against all four of the other major gods of the setting.
To quote from page 14 of the free quick start booklet for the 8th edition rules: "There can be no bystanders in the battle for survival. Anyone who will not fight by your side is an enemy you must crush."
Which means that non-combatants are required to be classified as enemies. That everyone who isn't actively working to "Kill for the Emperor" must "Die for the Emperor". Just the most recent small piece of evidence supporting the interpretation that their entire civilization is devoted to mandating human sacrifice in their god's name. Not remotely what I'd consider heroic.
And that's before you get into the backstory of the Horus Heresy and the Golden Throne, and the question of how the legendary Psyker whose personal symbol was the Eye didn't know how Divination visions worked...
I also utterly reject a big chunk of the writing for the Tyranids, which paints them as too evil to have any motivation beyond being bad guys for the good guys to heroically murder. Instead I believe that any alien too different from us for us to understand them is also too different from us for them to understand us.
As a life-system in which sentience is found in the gestalt of the hive mind, the Tyranids can't fathom how to communicate with any life-system in which sentience is found in an individual body. So the logical reason why they have indicated no motivation aside from "the us am hungry, the us need food" is not due to a lack of content on the subject, but rather due to the impossibility of direct communication between such different sorts of being.
Similarly, I reject the premise in the 7th edition Genestealer Cults Codex that the reason why Purestrain Genestealers sneak aboard refugee ships when a world falls to the Tyranids is because they're terrified of their reward for victory. Not only because they're infamous for being virtually fearless, but also because, as pure Tyranid bioforms, they're genetically hardwired for being part of the Synapse network, so they'd know that upon the death of each Tyranid body (within an area of Synapse coverage), the body's memories are explicitly uploaded for reprinting in all future clones of that bioform. Spiritual immortality, hardwired into their DNA.
Therefore, rather than blithely accept that virtually fearless killing machines flee for their lives because their overself is so evil that when it runs out of enemies to kill it'll turn on its own people just because that's the evil thing to do...
...I choose to believe that the "singular unfathomable consciousness" of the Tyranid hive mind, which is capable of genetically-engineering new breeds of living weapons on demand in the middle of a battle...
...Understands the most basic principle of agriculture; that holding back a little from this season's harvest is what allows you to plant next season's harvest. So those Genestealers sneaking aboard refugee ships aren't fleeing in terror. They're planting next season's crops of worlds to harvest.
Looking at it this way, if there's room for the observation that "understanding of agriculture must come before understanding of genetic engineering" to fly over the heads of GW's writing staff, there's plenty of room for subtler observations to elude them, and thus endless room for a game to show a different context which grants any motivation at all besides "go be evil" to the Tyranids and the Genestealer Cults.
So the Genestealer Hybrid PCs in this game shall have no reason to see themselves as the villains of the piece, because their goal is to bring about the arrival of the godlike being which will elevate them into immortality, albeit immortality of a form which those hybrids with any sense of human individuality could never hope to comprehend. Thus all the confusion and terror when the Purestrain Genestealers (who lack that sense of individual identity) turn to initiate the harvest of their uncomprehending brethren.
For the rules of the game I have in mind...
Genestealer Hybrid models in the wargame most closely parallel Imperial Guard models, so my starting point shall be the Only War RPG. But their innate duality between the human sense of individual prowess and the Tyranid sense of telepathic interconnectedness seems best served by adapting the "Solo Mode vs Squad Mode" mechanics from the Deathwatch game, and their history of random mutations to be a little more-genestealer (an extra arm on some models), or a little more-human (some Acolyte Hybrids lack Rending Claws), or even a little more-Tyranid (feeder tendrils and Metamorph bioweapons) feels like it might be best served by adapting the mutation rules from either Rogue Trader's Navigators or Black Crusade's daemonic transformation rules (although I've not actually read the latter, to say for sure).
There should also be a special Talent to model the impact of the Genestealer Kiss being applied to a properly-human character (be they NPC or a PC built out of another game's corebook), but I do not intend Purestrain Genestealers (let alone the Patriarch) to be available as PCs, due to the fact that their purely-Tyranid minds are even more alien than an Eldar or Kroot or Ork explorer in Rogue Trader.
I have written a narrative backdrop for the Genestealer Cult in question, and I plan to use the Regimental Creation rules in Only War to provide all the PCs with the trait allotments to model that backdrop. Details available upon request.
I'm am however uncertain whether to have all the Guardsmen classes be Neophyte Hybrids by default with a Support Specialist class to model an Acolyte Hybrid PC (like the Ogryn and Ratling classes), or if I should borrow the principle of "Ogryn World" as a Homeworld option which allows for Ogryn characters to have a normal Guardsman-type class while still being an Ogryn. If the latter structure, then it would make sense to start character creation with a choice between the four generations of hybrids, retooling the classes as necessary to fit the Aptitudes and Talents inherent to the chosen generation.
Example: Acolyte Hybrids in the wargame have the option to replace their Rending Claw + Cultist Knife with a heavy demolition tool that gives them basically Power Fist effectiveness in melee. If being an Acolyte Hybrid is a Support Specialist class, then Acolyte Demolitionist would be a Talent which must be taken at character creation (since it changes what body parts they were born with); but if Hybrid Generation is a race-feature separate from character class, then the Demolitionist would be a variant of the Heavy Gunner class specific to the 1st- and 2nd-generation Hybrids.
These are the issues I'm working on as I tackle this project. Would anyone like to contribute their thoughts?
I have a game I'd like to be able to run, but first I would need to write the rules for it. I'm already decently familiar with the various RPGs in Fantasy Flight Games's now-defunct 40K RP line, but the specific focus I have in mind falls between the cracks of those games. And I'm hoping to enlist the aid of other 40K-GMs on the forum who would be willing to help me develop those rules.
For the game I want to run, the Player Characters would all be members of a Genestealer Cult, but I want to emphasize that I am NOT looking for a "villains game"...
While I find the setting material for WarHammer 40,000 fascinating, I utterly reject several of the assumptions of Games Workshop's writing staff. Most notably the assumption that the humans are by any measure the good guys; instead I see countless indications that the Imperium as a civilization is organized around the singular purpose of mass-producing human sacrifice to fuel their god's personal war against all four of the other major gods of the setting.
To quote from page 14 of the free quick start booklet for the 8th edition rules: "There can be no bystanders in the battle for survival. Anyone who will not fight by your side is an enemy you must crush."
Which means that non-combatants are required to be classified as enemies. That everyone who isn't actively working to "Kill for the Emperor" must "Die for the Emperor". Just the most recent small piece of evidence supporting the interpretation that their entire civilization is devoted to mandating human sacrifice in their god's name. Not remotely what I'd consider heroic.
And that's before you get into the backstory of the Horus Heresy and the Golden Throne, and the question of how the legendary Psyker whose personal symbol was the Eye didn't know how Divination visions worked...
I also utterly reject a big chunk of the writing for the Tyranids, which paints them as too evil to have any motivation beyond being bad guys for the good guys to heroically murder. Instead I believe that any alien too different from us for us to understand them is also too different from us for them to understand us.
As a life-system in which sentience is found in the gestalt of the hive mind, the Tyranids can't fathom how to communicate with any life-system in which sentience is found in an individual body. So the logical reason why they have indicated no motivation aside from "the us am hungry, the us need food" is not due to a lack of content on the subject, but rather due to the impossibility of direct communication between such different sorts of being.
Similarly, I reject the premise in the 7th edition Genestealer Cults Codex that the reason why Purestrain Genestealers sneak aboard refugee ships when a world falls to the Tyranids is because they're terrified of their reward for victory. Not only because they're infamous for being virtually fearless, but also because, as pure Tyranid bioforms, they're genetically hardwired for being part of the Synapse network, so they'd know that upon the death of each Tyranid body (within an area of Synapse coverage), the body's memories are explicitly uploaded for reprinting in all future clones of that bioform. Spiritual immortality, hardwired into their DNA.
Therefore, rather than blithely accept that virtually fearless killing machines flee for their lives because their overself is so evil that when it runs out of enemies to kill it'll turn on its own people just because that's the evil thing to do...
...I choose to believe that the "singular unfathomable consciousness" of the Tyranid hive mind, which is capable of genetically-engineering new breeds of living weapons on demand in the middle of a battle...
...Understands the most basic principle of agriculture; that holding back a little from this season's harvest is what allows you to plant next season's harvest. So those Genestealers sneaking aboard refugee ships aren't fleeing in terror. They're planting next season's crops of worlds to harvest.
Looking at it this way, if there's room for the observation that "understanding of agriculture must come before understanding of genetic engineering" to fly over the heads of GW's writing staff, there's plenty of room for subtler observations to elude them, and thus endless room for a game to show a different context which grants any motivation at all besides "go be evil" to the Tyranids and the Genestealer Cults.
So the Genestealer Hybrid PCs in this game shall have no reason to see themselves as the villains of the piece, because their goal is to bring about the arrival of the godlike being which will elevate them into immortality, albeit immortality of a form which those hybrids with any sense of human individuality could never hope to comprehend. Thus all the confusion and terror when the Purestrain Genestealers (who lack that sense of individual identity) turn to initiate the harvest of their uncomprehending brethren.
For the rules of the game I have in mind...
Genestealer Hybrid models in the wargame most closely parallel Imperial Guard models, so my starting point shall be the Only War RPG. But their innate duality between the human sense of individual prowess and the Tyranid sense of telepathic interconnectedness seems best served by adapting the "Solo Mode vs Squad Mode" mechanics from the Deathwatch game, and their history of random mutations to be a little more-genestealer (an extra arm on some models), or a little more-human (some Acolyte Hybrids lack Rending Claws), or even a little more-Tyranid (feeder tendrils and Metamorph bioweapons) feels like it might be best served by adapting the mutation rules from either Rogue Trader's Navigators or Black Crusade's daemonic transformation rules (although I've not actually read the latter, to say for sure).
There should also be a special Talent to model the impact of the Genestealer Kiss being applied to a properly-human character (be they NPC or a PC built out of another game's corebook), but I do not intend Purestrain Genestealers (let alone the Patriarch) to be available as PCs, due to the fact that their purely-Tyranid minds are even more alien than an Eldar or Kroot or Ork explorer in Rogue Trader.
I have written a narrative backdrop for the Genestealer Cult in question, and I plan to use the Regimental Creation rules in Only War to provide all the PCs with the trait allotments to model that backdrop. Details available upon request.
I'm am however uncertain whether to have all the Guardsmen classes be Neophyte Hybrids by default with a Support Specialist class to model an Acolyte Hybrid PC (like the Ogryn and Ratling classes), or if I should borrow the principle of "Ogryn World" as a Homeworld option which allows for Ogryn characters to have a normal Guardsman-type class while still being an Ogryn. If the latter structure, then it would make sense to start character creation with a choice between the four generations of hybrids, retooling the classes as necessary to fit the Aptitudes and Talents inherent to the chosen generation.
Example: Acolyte Hybrids in the wargame have the option to replace their Rending Claw + Cultist Knife with a heavy demolition tool that gives them basically Power Fist effectiveness in melee. If being an Acolyte Hybrid is a Support Specialist class, then Acolyte Demolitionist would be a Talent which must be taken at character creation (since it changes what body parts they were born with); but if Hybrid Generation is a race-feature separate from character class, then the Demolitionist would be a variant of the Heavy Gunner class specific to the 1st- and 2nd-generation Hybrids.
These are the issues I'm working on as I tackle this project. Would anyone like to contribute their thoughts?