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"The Robot fights were boring. There should have been more opportunities to hit things."

I trust you can realize who said that without any hints. I suppose the problem lay partly with me as well. I tried some new things with this game - an enemy who was not exactly evil and inter-game connectivity for some. Each went over poorly with the Brotherhood. They wished for someone who was black and white morality, an easily identifiiable 'us vs them,' and they substituted their own details in for my own to fit their own narrative. The one interlocked Dark Heresy game I ran (Immortal Dawn: Shut Up And Jam Gaiden), the original purpose to help them, made them furious. "We're not the stars anymore," they said, "We're supposed to be the heroes." They could not fathom the fact that the Universe did NOT revolve around them, unlike what they are used to.

I suppose this is the main thing. I did not consider what my group wanted when I ran this game. This clash of ideologies would grow to fester throughout the series, and no doubt many of you noticed it. There were some times I got greatly annoyed, some times they did. And now it's over, which I believe ALL of us are taking some relief over.

No doubt they will continue on their paths. Rectally devastated over the archeotech / xenotech 'gifts,' they are already making new tables for themselves that have no downsides. They are rewriting the universe for themselves so they can be the big heroes. They are making the game like Dungeons and Dragons. And I can tell, through their subtle inflections and actions, I am not welcome in their interpretation of things.

So be it. But I digress.

Because I wish to speak of my next project.

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I left a lot of threads open in Squat Crusade: The Musical, most notably what I called the Exelion Initiative. This was revealed in the final episode as the operating name for a number of independent projects, where the Inquisition was funding the construction of an incredibly powerful ship to protect the sector. The Squats were in charge of Project Nuclear Fusion, which turned out to be the Accelerator Cannon, a starship cannon that can shoot with the force of an atomic. To the Mechanicus of the sector went Project Skyward Sword, responsible for the frame of the ship, to rival the hulls available to the Grey Knights.

And Project Cave Scraps was stolen by a certain Tau. Well, note exactly stolen, more like "I'm going to finish it so I can sell it back to the Inquisition for mad dosh."

And that's where you all come in.

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I haven't even named this next campaign, I've kept it under the codename "Exelion OVA."

For those who enjoy hearing me talk of my games (all five of you), you will remember the House of Korst'la, the alliance between a family of Tau and the Archon of a Dark Eldar Kabal. Together, they hold Project Cave Scraps, without the Inquisition knowing.

Simply put, this is a mini-campaign. I expect it to run 8 episodes or so, with spots for 4-5 players (I haven't decided). It will be open to all of you, but here's the thing.

SHOT GUNZ!

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You'll be playing as Tau and Dark Eldar, members of a mercenary team who the most recent head of household, Shas'o Sio't Korst'la VI, is pawning off the job of assembling this thing.

So far, there are three Tau classes available (Fireblade, Pathfinder, and Combat Engineer) and two Dark Eldar classes (Kabalite, Wych). I've always liked the xenos aspect of 40k, and I am putting out the opportunity to play as Tau and Dark Eldar in this mini-campaign.

The Dark Eldar careers are more or less the same as Soul Reaver, while the Tau classes are heavily adjusted RT core classes with aspects from other 40k systems. You can consider them as so:

Fireblade: The Officer. Supports his team with Sweeping Orders.
Pathfinder: The Scout. Gets forward for flanking or uses his abilities to boost the team's accuracy and damage potential.
Combat Engineer: The Puppetmaster. Controlling multiple drones, the Combat Engineer can be multiple places at once and do multiple things.
Kabalite Warrior: The Heavy. With access to the most powerful weapons, the Kabalite can do the most damage of anyone.
Wych: The Melee. The only melee class in the lineup, the Wych provides a niche the other four lack.

The rough format is, as an independent deniable asset, you're given a single objective that must be completed - finish Project Cave Scraps. You will have your own ship, your own men under your command, and numerous vehicles and weapons at your disposal, and its up to you to figure out HOW to do this. You're given plenty of leeway to do your own thing, however. The important thing is that the mission gets completed. 'How' is your problem.

>>24965311
40k Shadowrun. Can the officer or combat engineer fight well?

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I'm attaching here my current notes on things.

The way the 'tier' system works is unique to this mini-campaign. You start as Tier 1, which represents being granted a number of assets and equipment relevant to the mission. As you make progress in your overall mission, your Tier will be updated and you will gain access to more powerful gear and tools. If an item is in your Tier list, you can grab it and use it to your heart's content - no need to requisition or anything. Due to space on your person, you're still only able to take a sidearm, main weapon, and possibly a heavy weapon, so you won't be carrying an armory on you. You CAN, however, switch your loadouts between missions based on how you feel is necessary.

Naturally, this document is incomplete - you'll note the ranks only extend to 5, for instance. I'm still working on it, but I'm releasing this early so people can look at it and give me notes on potential balance issues. I want each class to have its own role, and not step on any other class.

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>>24965350

The officer is the Tau fighter. He's good at combat, but not as good as the Kabalite. He's essentially a mix. His strength is boosting the shit out of everyone else with things like Supporting Fire and Covering Fire.

The Combat Engineer is designed to be not as good at combat. However, he can field loads of Drones, from Gun to Missile drones.

You are NOT limited to the armory in the sheet, however. Naturally, all books except Ascension and Deathwatch will be allowed as normal, though certain racial limitations if any will apply.

Note that the document is not everything. I have a SEPARATE document with Tau and Dark Eldar ships for you guys to pick from, but I'm not ready to release those yet.

I'm expecting to launch the official Call for Players this August, and start the new series in mid September. So you guys have plenty of time to consider things.

>>24965416
The extra attack order is amazing... Not sure there's value to focus fire in comparison most of the time; tis rare that +2 damage will compensate for bonus booms.

Ion Stealth suit sounds.... delicious....

>>24965517

That's already one of the things I'm considering. Should the Stealth Suit be able to equip handheld weapons? It can mount a Burst Cannon and a Fusion Blaster no issue, but there's no codex precedent for mounting things like Ion Rifles or Rail Rifles. The Personal Suit won't have such problems, but the Stealth Suit...

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>>24965350

>40k Shadowrun

>>24965517

In addition, I was considering making it +4 damage to match the Guard order. But I thought, since the Guard use Lasguns, they need it. The Tau and Dark Eldar use Splinter, Pulse, and Darklight, which really doesn't need +4.

>>24965517

It's the WAAAGH ability from Deffwotch / Rank 8 Ork Freeboota, just moved to Tau because of a new codex.

>>24965567
Well, I dunno about the 25s, but the 15s were definitely 'normal sized', with visible hands and all. They just carried heavier weapons because they could.

Little reason you shouldn't be able to handle, or bolt-on, a hand weapon, other than "that would be too good an option".

"may choose to use the structural analyzer", is this part of the attack, or an 'instead'? The wording starts as a "instead of attacking" style, but then shifts into saying it affects your upcoming attack.

>>24965697
*too good an option was referring to codex/army-building.

Kill teams likely take a few more liberties after all.

>>24965697

True.

The Structural Analyzer is part of the attack. You can choose to use it or not, though there's no real reason not to.

Ideally, you use the Structural Analyzer to apply the debuff, make your attack, and then your homeboys get to smite the poor fucker you debuffed.

>>24965739
>>24965697

Pathfinder confirmed for Best Career?

>>24965739
Pretty much sold on the idea already, but let's take a look at the other guys a bit:

The 41873's a powerhouse. With Accurate on there, we're looking at a mighty-shotted [and even nastier still if the weapon became 'legacy' or the like if that went in] 4d10+10E Pen 6 easily.

Rail Rifle's near forgettable. Shorter range than pulse, single shot, Devastating[1]'s no compensation for hitting two or more times. And that's all it's got. Unless its firing alongside something else, by tier 3 you've no reason to be using it; it was just a stopgap on the way.

>>24965108
>(all five of you)
Six!

>>24965926

Rail Rifle uses same stats more or less out of Mark of Xenos. Ion Rifle was result of fucking around with Rail Rifle stats.

>tier 3 you've no reason to be using it; it was just a stopgap on the way.

Exactly. I wanted each one to feel like an upgrade over the previous.

Note that (and this is just an example) while a Pathfinder can attempt to buy a Model 41873 off the market, he will never be ISSUED one via his Tier progression, even if another character was issued one. Issued gear is linked to the class, so a single Pathfinder cannot supply the entire team with ion rifles. Similarly, while a Fireblade can try to buy an Ion Rifle, he cannot ever be ISSUED one.

>>24965786
In terms of value-added and completion, at the moment yes. However, the multitracker won't have a use without an extra weapon to back it up, the drones could probably use the accuracy bonuses/characteristic-growth of their master [that might be a bit much for missile, but they need just a bit more accuracy than right now in general], and the Commander's bonus attack + 41873 sniping are the current top-level damage dealers.

On the Dark Eldar side, the Kabalist's true potential is from Eye for Pain, which, combined with Weapon Tech if they can find or get it, results in truly prodigious outputs. A real waste on a single dark-lance shot, but give the guy a multilaser and see what happens to your tanks

>>24965994

>the drones could probably use the accuracy bonuses/characteristic-growth of their master

The Drones already use the bearer's BS for shooting. So for example, if the bearer's BS is 15 (for whatever godawful reason), you can have the drones use their BS of 20. However, if the Engineer has a BS of 50 for instance, the drones are firing with BS of 50.

>>24965991
Here's the thing though; its a questionable stopgap.

No good vs regular pulse against a horde, of limited value vs pulse against light armor [sentinel levels], and neither's likely to do much to heavy armor.

Two-Shots vs a Terminator will probably down him with the Rail... but once you've mighty shot, you're probably doing the job faster with normal Pulse Rifles going full-auto, especially thanks to the structural analyzer there.

Personally, I'd up Ion range to 120 and do this for rail
Rail /Basic /140m, S/-/-, 2d10+8I Pen 8 / c16/Full, Devastating[2], Razor Sharp

At the extremes, to compensate, the ion could use an overcharge line about sweeping orders letting it fire again on recharge.

>>24966051
Ah. Hadn't seen it, it's down in the ability. Everything is fine there then. Brutal, actually. A missile drone is firing a full on krak-missile volley.

>>24964549
A bit off topic, but this anon was wondering if you still had a copy of Deffwotch: Super Ethical Climax Warp Edition as the depositfiles link is dead. I wanted to pitch a Deffwotch-esque game to my GM and I figured that having him read the collected edition would be the best way to convince him.

Looking forward to your next project though!

>>24966268
Actually; is gaining the drone controller stated anywhere for the other classes? Take the Commander, for example. He gets a drone slot, but tis not specified whether he actually obtained the controller, or if that's an implant to get or whatever.

>>24966286
At the very least there's this.
http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Deffwotch

I don't know what the Digga-IIs were wielding statwise with the wavebusters and Grav-Rifles come Squat Crusade, though I've certainly more than a few ideas on the matter eh?

>>24966268

Note that this only affects the Combat Engineer because he's the Drone Guy. The Pathfinder's Recon Drone will always fire at rokkin' base BS of 20 (with bonuses for full auto, range, etc). The Recon Drone's true power is its ability to call down Ordnance Drops.

>>24966193

I like the Razor Sharp idea, especially since they're AP1. Besides, these are customized guns so I can pass it off as special-issue.

---

I'm thinking of changing up the Dark Eldar loadouts, maybe granting them Shadowfields at Tier 3 and moving Clone Fields to Tier 2, to compensate for the Tau Pet Show.

>>24966318

The Drone Controller Wargear is the special ability of the Combat Engineer. You'll note that everyone else gets a single drone slot, and their drones fire at BS20 if they have a weapon-capable drone.

The Combat Engineer, thanks to his Drone Controller, gets multiple drones at a competent Ballistic Skill.

>>24966286

I will work on reuploading in a moment. Mediafire doesn't like 500MB, so I will use sendspace.

>>24966376

In a similar note, the Commander and Combat Engineer cannot get a Structural Analyzer, since that's a Pathfinder thing.

>>24965311
I can totally see this pic happening once or twice

I'm sorry that this wasn't as fun for you, Shas. I enjoyed reading it. I hope you have more fun in the next campaign.

>>24966418

We'll see come September. I'm thinking good things, though.

>>24966349
Yeah, while my experience with the Kabalite is limited to mathcrafting, "Dis Weapon Mew doz gud shooty" is worth its weight in gold.

A Dark Lance is good, but not drone-missile-volley-with-supporting-pulse-fire good. If anything, actually, the DEs could use a bit more support to offer the party.

The Commander has sweeping orders
The Pathfinder debuffs the target's defenses
The Combat Engineer provides all the skill-monkey bits and can also grant a little shield

But the kabalite and wych are kinda... just there?

>>24966376
It was a question specific to drones, as the equipment stated "the bearer of a drone controller can control as many drones as he has slots for". It wouldn't be the first time FFG RPG rules have that as their only source of how something normally works [Black Crusade can drive you nuts in that regard] after all, so, figured it best to get clarification since the others have slots but no controller..

>>24966460

My plan was to give the Kabalite the heaviest possible weapons for free. He's supposed to be the main damage dealer. Note that the drones cost XP.

The Wych, as the only melee, is supposed to fill a role that the other four can't do very well. After all, most of the abilities don't quite work in Melee.

Beyond that, I do need to give some thoughts on how the Kabalite and Wych can boost the party, while ensuring they're not Dark Eldar with Blue Facepaint.

>>24966460

But the Kabalite gets access to things like Incubus, Haemonculus and Reaver alternate ranks. They're really customizable. The Tau are really rigid.

>>24966585
>>24966620

Looking at the classes, each is the equivalent of a special character. The Fireblade is an HQ choice. The Pathfinder is a Darkstrider Lite. The Wych has Leilith's abilities.

Why not make the Kabalite an Archon Lite, and give him abilities like that?

>>24966585
If the wych can make sure that leaving or ignoring melee's punished a little better [free swings], that would probably be enough.

The Kabalite... I wonder if perhaps letting them toss drug effects into their 'toxic' could help there? Stick a dose of De-Tox in there, and sure you'll save them from dying from your splinter-cannons [kinda], but you've just stunned them for 1d10.

Alternatively, if they could distribute drugs to friendlies in a slightly less lethal manner...

>>24966690
>I wonder if perhaps letting them toss drug effects into their 'toxic' could help there?

They can already do that. Their Toxic armory says that the Toxic quality can be subbed with anything in that list.

>>24966745

Vect's special ability is Ancient Nemesis, which grants his homies Preferred Enemy (Your Guys). Perhaps the Kabalite can make an Intelligence / Fellowship test to grant his team extra DoS on an attack roll?

>>24966690

I believe I have a way to boost the Wych to awesome, but I'm not willing to reveal that just yet. Though for the Wych I think I'm gonna move some talents down earlier, like Crushing Blow and Delicate Lethality.

>>24966880
At higher ranks and better equip in Rogue Trader, we're probably full up on all the DoS we need. I mean, gotta be a limit somewhere; once you're capped on hits with 30% under the needed roll, an extra DoS ain't much.

On the other hand there IS the other end of the spectrum: Violating the receiving end. A dodge/parry penalty instead of extra DoS would be a bit more unique. Even a -10 is a palpable change that sticks around for the whole game.

Imagine what that would have meant in the fight against a certain Golden Wolf and his little plane, for example.

>>24967032

Hmm, true. It does make sense for a Dark Eldar to drop debuffs rather than buffs.

>>24967064
Turns them into an excellent companion for the Pathfinder. One fences them in, and the other makes sure they're hammered.

>>24967128

So then Love can Bloom on the battlefield?

>>24967162
In so far as love is knowing your target, placing them in your targeting reticle, and together, achieving a singular purpose against statistically long odds, yes.

But if its any consolation the age difference would be insurmountable.

>>24967260

Pathfinder X Kabalite will forever be OTP

>>24967295
Shas'O: Your game's just barely been announced and people are already pairing up not-yet-existing characters.

You should either feel very proud or very very scared.

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>>24967510

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fmo1Sjn7dg&t=1m20s

All publicity is good publicity.

76% on reupload of Deffwotch Collected Visions, incidentally.

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http://depositfiles.com/files/0gc86f922

Reuploaded Deffwotch Collected Visions

I am also putting up my updated notes for Exelion with the changes. Maybe in a week or so, I will be able to discuss starships and vehicles.

evening bump

Bump

Well it’s been a while since I’ve actually been able to post in one of these, so let’s address some of the complaints we had and why it went over so poorly, starting with what you wrote up.
While a stab at Steelbeard, the robot fights were, frankly, incredibly boring. They consisted of us simply rolling dice to hit, due to a series of events. Firstly, while there were upgrades available to purchase, these required us to participate in the mining minigame, which when we asked about initially, you said we could do it as we pleased. Several months in, I asked about playing it since I had been busy with work and unable to play up until this point, and you said “Okay, if you want to use your one play this early in the month”
Ragebeard: “Wait, we can only do it once per month?”
Shas: “Yeah.”
Ragebeard: “You never told any of us that, and it will hurt our ability to get upgrades, can we play the months we didn’t know about this rule at least?”
Shas: “Nope.”
Ragebeard: *sigh* “Wonderful. You really need to make sure you tell us the all rules for these”
Shas: “Not my problem”
It should have been taken as a sign of things to come, frankly.
Secondly, we also had other things we needed to upgrade as well, since you had missions planned for:
Traditional ground combat (Per rules)
Space combat with three vessels (with a severe population loss dilemma given our mandate)
Kirov missions (which ALSO required these minerals to upgrade at all)
You also made rules for fighter combat missions, that we never actually did, the upgrades probably also requiring minerals. You spread this gimmick way too thin, and we were all woefully underequipped to respond to your dozens of special homebrew mechanics as a result.

>>24970079
The Dark Heresy game you ran completely invalidated the entire premise of your game, which is why it was so infuriating. The Inquisition was fully prepared to deal with us via exterminatus, the only thing saving us being the information we had on the enemy threats and were thusly best equipped to deal with them. Since they had all the information, and realized it was the best option, and given that the ratlings and ogryns were gone already, what did they stand to lose? NOTHING. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. You literally just made it so we were on an even tighter leash than we were, which is impressive since you gave all 3 starting ships “Finances in Arrears” just to make sure we would HAVE to follow your missions.
The other point of frustration the joy of discovery and actually running the ship and fleet is half the fun of the game, and you let everyone else do all the work. I started the first dozen sessions with things like
>“Allright, we need to find a homeworld, Kim, Velm, check the databanks to find suitable options, Morty, do a crew check and account for survivors and losses, let’s find out what needs to be done.”
>“These things must be done warlord”
>“Great, we’ll find a solution to…”
>“Already done warlord”
>“Okay, so I guess we’ll just go then…”

>>24970107
The ENTIRE process of rebuilding our race, which could have been fantastically fun if you had allowed exploring, was taken away by your Squat NPC characters, it was NOT fun. Even better was when unexpected problems came up on the fly:
>“Allright, we have this problem, Velm, you see if there’s anything in the records to suggest a tech solution, Kim, check the star charts to find possible planetary based solutions, Morty…is gone, I’ll make sure the crew doesn’t panic and…”
>“Warlord, we have found the only solution, and you must embark on it immediately!”
>“But we were hoping for the chance to actually try and solve a…
>“NOW OR ALL SQUAT DIE HARBLFLARBL”
>“Fine, lay in a course Kim.” *sigh*
The Dark Heresy stuff coming in was just the last straw in a long line of lack of character options for a lot of us, and was pretty much the nail in the coffin for anyone caring about their characters.

>>24970115
Next: ‘We’re not the stars’ was NOT the complaint, the complaint was “You do realize that every, and I mean EVERY single NPC you have outshines us on their worst day by a significant margin, to the point where it feels like we’re playing Elminster’s bitch in Forgotten Realms?” You literally had it set up so that it was MORE beneficial for your NPCs to do everything, but it would be boring so they just dictated all our decisions outside of combat for us by various mechanics you instituted, which does NOT make for happy players.
You also just trolled us as you saw fit, breaking the rule of ‘we must kill orks, and automatically know all orks on sight’ that you established when your previous PC’s showed up, and promptly outshined us (no surprise at that point). Your homebrewed rule of -40 fellowship to determine them was moderately annoying, especially since it should have been an opposed disguise vs scrutiny check, but regardless, you made it clear that the rules apply to us, not any super special NPC you make. You made it a special point to troll everyone with Uzgob and the Deffwotch team, to the point where everyone just stopped caring and just grinned and bore it, since bringing it up with you bore no fruit. You wouldn’t even let us, even though we were well and unequivocally familiar with orks so that we could kill them, get more rerolls the Orkier they acted. When pointed out that it was illogical, your advice was quote ‘deal with it, you mad bro?’. Not the best way to respond to players with an issue, but non-hostile responses were absent from day one.

>>24970245
This applies doubly for Studio 69, the ship that literally CANNOT be killed unless you fuck up horribly. Its homebrewed weapons destroy any semblance of balance in space combat, as you readily proved by letting us take control of it. We wiped out a half dozen craft not taking but 5 damage, and we were THOUSANDS of experience behind your precious NPC crew at that point. All of our ships put together couldn’t have fared that well, even if the hostiles had only focused on the Bearded Fury. When this was pointed out, you just troll grinned and gave a ‘deal with it look’, again, very helpful.
Every NPC that you made was just there to outdo us, and you took GREAT amount of pleasure both in person and in your write-ups of the missions making sure to give them double to triple the descriptions, just to make them look better. If you don’t believe that, go back and reread them. We get a couple of lines to their paragraph each time on average.

The Collected Squats link isn't working for me, I keep getting some sort of 'May only be avaliable via Amazon!' error. Could somebody upload it somewhere else?

>>24970079
Pretty interesting to hear all this, Ragebeard.

>>24970355
Thanks. I wanted to be present for the threads themselves, but five texts and three requests in person yielded no fruit.

>>24970256
The most frustrating thing about your game, however, was your own viewing of “USE ALL THE 40k SYSTEMS!” without properly transferring mechanics. You have no appreciation for game balance whatsoever, nor any skill remembering your own adjudications. There are multiple instances where this just got mind bogglingly awful, starting quite early on.
Point 1) We all made characters we would have fun playing, but all hopes of that died in the second session. For those who don’t remember, his second session he threw us up against black crusade necrons, armed with the 1d10+28 weapons, and had swift attack on a charge. This was well and freely demonstrated as it felled two players in one round. When asked about the damage, he freely told us to his credit, which caused me to ask an important question.
>Ragebeard: Shas, you DO realize that we AREN’T rank 7 orks, right?
>Shas: Yeah, of course…(he immediately averts his eyes and has a string of “bad luck” to justify his error.)
>Me: You do also realize that if I hadn’t rolled that small chance to get those Thunder Hammers that we couldn’t really have hurt them, right?
>Shas: Not my problem
Eventually you do start realizing that his incompetence is, in fact, our problem.

>>24970384
Point 2) A few sessions in, we had finally managed to get Shas to pick and choose his favorite rules from all 5 systems so that we could have SOME semblance of order to work under. We decided on:

Combat: Rogue Trader
Space Combat: Rogue Trader
Skills: Only War (-20 default, modified medicae rules and the like)
Horde Rules: Black Crusade
Unnatural Attributes: Deathwatch
Crafting: Black Crusade
Trade In Rules: Black Crusade
Gear: Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader, Black Crusade, Only War
Customization Rules: Only War

Now this can be seen as either a good or bad thing, since it does require learning five systems to appreciate these decisions, however, if one intends to make these choices, he needs to be able to REMEMBER THEM. I said ‘we’ above because Shas, for weeks, would not remember how he told us the game would work, and would change frequently until I actually started keeping notes of what rules we were using. There are probably more but this is just what I recall off the top of my head. This is important, because when we weren’t keeping track of it, Shas would switch to whatever system rules would screw us over the most by default, so we had, to say the least, a vested interest. This infuriated all of his players, but he could not be bothered to listen, nor respond with anything but a traditional 4chan response so once more any resolution was impossible.

>>24970256
>This applies doubly for Studio 69, the ship that literally CANNOT be killed unless you fuck up horribly. Its homebrewed weapons destroy any semblance of balance in space combat
This has always seemed like a problem with Rogue Trader. Left to themselves, players will design ships that are essentially unkillable.

>>24970384

>black crusade necrons, armed with the 1d10+28 weapons

For anyone who wants to use Necrons in their 40k RPGs, it's helpful to know that one of the guys that statted them up actually considers them to be overkill, and has more reasonable stats provided.

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=272&efcid=46&efidt=716936

I do have to admit that my enthusiasm to throw Necrons at my PCs has been tempered by the knowledge that they aren't (solely) intended to be a cue to run away.

sage for off-topic, etc.

>>24970480
Quite doable, or nearly so. A poorly designed vessel is barely spaceworthy, but take an hour to pick and choose your systems and you'll have something quite magnificent.

>>24970384
Regarding the Necrons, why didn't you just run?
Or are squats slow enough that Necrons could keep up?

>>24970480
Bear in mind, this is an entirely different subset of issues: homebrewed stuff. That's going to be in a bit though!

It also uses literally no fair rules, because the mighty Shas'O Korst'la cannot be dethroned or killed! If it had used actual rules it would have been tolerable, because we could have somehow one day maybe caught up to that power and gone after him. As it stands, homebrew stuff that just wrecked it completely.

>>24970502
It's honestly why I stopped running RT.

>>24970495
We brought that up as well, we were not regarded with anything more than a 'deal with it'

>>24970513
We were locked in at the start of the tomb, so we literally HAD to kill our way through. There was no way to avoid it, believe me, I scoured that map for quite a few.

>>24970409
Point 3) The new codices are, without a doubt, the WORST thing that ever happened to this game. Shas is, and always will be, an elitist. He un-ironically calls people plebes when they don’t know obscure lore, and he actually mocks you for making decisions without reading it, never informing you even if your character would know it. This came up in two instances in my memory. The first was just after the new Chaos codex had come out, and we had to crash land the Kirov and fight some new helldrakes. We asked for a description and he refused to give one until we pressed a bit, the reason shall be revealed further down. He had already ported over the new helldrakes, who when attacked gets a dodge, then a move and attack. So the more we try to hit it, the more it hops around and bites us, on top of a “choose template origin” flame weapon. Myself, Kim, and Morty all said,
>‘that’s horseshit’,
>‘that’s horseshit’
and >‘you’re gonna have to explain that one’ respectively.
Shas gets this bigass grin on his face and says
>Didn’t you read the new codex?
Shas then got mad that we hadn’t read the new codex, and treated us with hostility for the rest of the session. Bear in mind that at that time, I was the ONLY other person in the group that actually HAD a 40k army, and mine was the Black Reach box with some additional marines purchased over time, so Orks and Space Marines. He was mad because we hadn’t read a book that didn’t pertain to a single one of us, and actually had to give descriptions of the enemy. Why he was so infuriated he had to do the job that the GM is SUPPOSED to do is beyond me, but I digress.

>>24970555
I gotta say that sounds nothing like the games I've sat in on with him and the ork players.

Then again one or two of them were always pulling out the rules for everyone.

>>24970692
Like I said, the new codices, and his penchant for homebrew. This coupled with the fact that shas just doesn't care about the rules that much, and I was the only one even trying to make it somewhat fair to us by the end, and getting penalized in character for it.

>>24970555
Point 4a) Homebrew everything is NOT advisable when you do not understand balance. Shas is, and always shall be, an optimizer. He literally cannot operate on any other level, to the point where he does not understand people who do not do the same. We knew after a couple of sessions that we’d be focused on combat almost exclusively, so went for the best weapons, like meltas and thunder hammers, but those pale in comparison compared to, you guessed it, his own super special weapons! The two archeotech weapons he gave us each did 3d10+10 damage pen 10 and had a ROF S/3/- standard. In what world is that not invalidating every other ranged weapon in the book? Not to mention the fact that his special thunder hammer was 2d10+9 pen 12 BEFORE 2xstrength mod. The only armor that even stood up to anything at the end was his special custom armor! WHICH MADE THE WEAPONS MORE POWERFUL! “But Phillip,” you say, “You didn’t have to use them” ah, gentile readers, but we did! Because you see, certain enemies had a weakness that could ONLY BE OVERCOME BY HIS WEAPONS! These things are exceedingly powerful, and only caused us to start steamrolling. This caused him to up wounds and damage to us, so combat (like in all of his games) becomes “you hit, you kill, you get hit, you get dead”, to the point where only the guys with 30 wounds can survive more than one hit in best quality light power armor. While the system is quite lethal, not every single fight should be 1 hit kos from halfway through rank 3 onwards.

>>24970743
Point 4b) Psychic powers are potentially fun for people who have the proper mindset and want to play one. Their powers have their downsides, but due to the cheap willpower advance, they can likely fetter fairly reliably from rank 2-3 onwards. Now what if you don’t want to play a psyker? Well in Shas’s game, you get no say in the matter, you’re going to take his homebrew not psyker powers and like it. He tailor made powers for each one of us, which was cool, but the downside was that mechanically we were all unable to progress them easily. They would cost 1500-2500 experience, so half a rank for most of the game. This is on top of the fact that the classes we were playing could not easily advance Willpower, so if we did NOT roll well on creation, we couldn’t use them reliably. This wouldn’t be an issue if they weren’t, like all of these homebrew mechanics, integral to the game. We HAD to use our powers on some things, there was literally NO other way to think around them, and no amount of logical convincing could talk him into letting us have that freedom, yet more resounding choruses of ‘deal with it’ and ‘you mad bro’ rang in our ears. This is just another mechanic in the long list of homebrew requirements (Like the not gundams and kirov) that we had to spend resources on instead of basic character skills. It was at this point that everyone’s character had their primary skills, a high Weapon Skill or Ballistic Skill, and all of Shas homebrew stuff, and nothing else. We literally HAD to have it or we lose, no questions asked. Moderately frustrating when you try to add flavor stuff to your character and instead have to buy not psyker powers.

>>24970743
So too much escalation then.
Though, enemy wounds does not necessarily mean more enemy damage all the time, that would be an error after all. As for special weapon effects, the orks seemed to just attach whatever the fuck they found to whatever the hell they wanted, so could it be he expected you would hand the light and dark effects to your, uh, mechanical dwarves, for custom installation or mass production?

Fuck those necron weapons though. The worst part about them in Black Crusade is the whole set of power source or burn-out rules. Not worth the hassle when that brand new Unique is about ten attack rolls from total meltdown.

>>24970832
Unfortunately they do in Shas's game, one thing gets bigger, EVERYTHING gets bigger.

And we couldn't hand them off, they became 'ancestral weapons' that the bearers could never let out of the family line, even though I was able to give my hammer to Kim before I left...Retcons! Retcons for everyone!

>>24970817
The worst part of these powers was that nobody was allowed to even play an astropath or navigator as a result, because they interfered with them. The reason was ‘because warp magicks’ initially, but then as I started inquiring around about finding another navigator and was told initially “sure, if you look hard enough” and then later “nope, lied to your face” via one of his write ups. The reason this was annoying is because it was purely there to make it so our rolls on the warp encounters table would forever be unmodified. We weren’t even allowed to use our ‘warp maps’ to try and navigate safely as per the navigation rules doing so, because…we were never given a good reason other than quote: ‘nope, fuck you guys’. I personally asked if potentially we could do battlefleet missions for one, could we get his super special time traveling inquisitor to get one, could we get Korst’la to get one, could we kidnap one, all answered the same way: ‘sure’ with troll grin. It could have been a fun mechanic, but it seems to have incredibly hostile undertones as well. This entire issue is in reality the first consideration when doing homebrew: possible effects on the system. This was either planned to cause us harm intentionally, or when we brought it up just plain ignored because it hurt us.

>>24970871
Well, the family line includes brothers, cousins, sons and daughters? One could easily see how to pass that thing on down.

Oddly enough, for non-orks, low rank PC Navigators doing the navigating is the worst thing that could happen to a vessel short of an emergency jump without a functional Gellar Field.

Rogue Trader's numbers got slightly better with Navis Primer, but before that, leaving it to the gm was grandly preferable to what was bound to happen within one or two jumps after some critical failure of your rather shitty chance to get there.

Although the maps can help a lot and outside the actual navigation job, the Navigator is an awesome career and set of powers.

>>24970884
Point 4c) Shas found the mass combat system in Battlefleet Koronus, and read through the rules. Rather than get people together to test the rules and see how they went, he went ahead and made his own. This happens a lot in his games, because he can’t even be bothered to test before he makes his own. The mass combat was pretty boring honestly, because we only got a few rolls before the majority of them were made by Shas and Morty. I was hoping it would go by quick, but oft times were that we were sitting there for 15 minutes while Shas rolled and counted up dice. This mechanic, too, was yet more homebrew that wound up being a bit of a drag. It also required the mining minigame and requisitions to upgrade units. We did, with this one at least, have the OPTION to upgrade via missions. I don’t have as much to say about this because since I haven’t done the BFK mass combat I can’t attest to the differences, maybe it’s better, maybe it’s worse. The problem that arose here was the players who weren’t Morty (due to him doing bookkeeping) and Shas did a LOT of sitting around these sessions, and it became a bit of a drag by the end.

>>24970931
Don't forget that we had crew skill, relevant parts, and I could give a +20 bonus, so he would have been rolling under a roughly 70-80 by the end of things, possibly 80-90, as Kim might have had it too. So the option was there IF we had been allowed to have one in the first place. The lying to my face about it aspect aside.

>>24965416
Do we use the origin paths and all that too, or do these rules replace everything?

>>24970932
Point 4d (Summary) There are some more homebrewed rules that have their own separate issues, but the simple summary of them is this: If you’re going to implement homebrewed rules, have an understanding of the implications they will have on the balance of the system. Shas implemented six different sets of homebrewed rules that were vital to the success of the game, and took away any semblance of player choice in our characters. We barely had any real choice beyond the names and starting gear of our characters, due to the sheer volume of random stuff we HAD to be good at. Homebrew should be an interesting addition that is a good option for the game, but not so good as to omit other options should players desire, and Shas completely ignored this in favor of “biggest special gun is best special gun”, really hurting us and his game in the long run. The worst part about it is that any one or two of these could have made the game a blast. The ‘special missions’ that we had in Pimps in Space were Titan Battles and racing, which was really just shooting whist driving, so all of our ground combat stuff was the gear required. This smaller scope minimized the burden on resources, allowing us freedom to develop our empire and characters whilst also giving us some truly epic moments. The sheer volume of special stuff that he wanted to do is where it all just fell apart, and when I brought this up to him I was met with a frank and brief ‘I don’t care, deal with it’ despite these points that I brought up.

>>24970932
To be fair, the mass combat system in BFK isn't much better.

>>24970932
You'll have to excuse my heavily neutral, hopefully objective stance here; I ain't getting into whatever happened with ten foot poles eh?

The BFK combat is best left abstracted.
Ideally you get your hands on BFG instead, put players in charge of a handful of ships each, and do things this way, as otherwise the system's not particularly adept at handling large battles without bogging down. Ships have a lot of bookkeeping, and the system's best used with a pair of light cruisers facing off.

Homebrew is often your best bet as a result, but even then "will that be enough to save it" remains a question.

Star Wars SAGA has a similar issue once combat scales to multi-capitals, by the way. We're probably about to trip into that one hard at my table, despite my best attempts to get the gm up to speed.

>>24970943
The listed ones in the PDF replace the whole origin path.

Similar to how Orks and DE do it.

>>24970979
>>24970996
He was using ground mass combat, not ship mas combat, I don't remember if the rules are there as well or not, it's early here and I'll have to double check. That really was the diet coke of issues frankly, but it did exist and I'm kind of doing full disclosure here, so in the interest of.

>>24970996
The neutral stance is cool, it was a touchy game for everyone involved, and his write ups aren't even remotely close to objective or accurate.

And yeah, SWSaga ship combat with capitals can get messy. Need to reread those rules, that was a fun system but I don't remember as much as I should about their space combat.

By the Emprah, Ragebeard. You bring forth an impressive list of grievances that I can't help but think are quite real.

The worst offender seems to be Shas's attitude.

>>24970970
The biggest problem for me personally was when Shas started changing the rules and not telling me about it. He maintained that he had told me everything and that I was incompetent, but note that in the last few sessions of the game, he realized he might have fucked up pretty bad. I was hoping that this would inspire him to try harder to inform his players and become a better GM, but his response was “It’s not my job to tell the players vital campaign information”. No seriously. That actually was said. We had multiple conversations about it initially, but frankly, it got more and more heated, culminating in me bringing actual notes to talk to him about so I wouldn’t deviate. This was when we thought we had worked out our differences, the big issue being that he changed the scope of the totally not warrant of trade over the winter break, leading to the inquisition fiasco. Here are some conversations from before that:
>Me: Okay, so how will the Writ of Trade work now?
NOTE: it did change once from its initial actually being a writ, this was the clarification before we started.
>Shas: Well it’s a totally NOT writ of trade, it will have all the same status and rights among imperial citizens, but not so much in regards to Xenos, you’ll have to be more traditionally imperial.
>Me: Okay, let me know when you have a new name.
First session, where Kim opened up on the potentially loyal citizens:
>Me: Okay, can I at least attempt a charm or command to resolve this?
>Shas: Sure, at a -60 *troll grin*
>Me: Well I’m just shy. Wait, I DID take renowned warrant, and if these guys are imperials or former imperials, they’d understand the meaning, would that +10 apply?
>Shas: Hmm, I suppose so.
>Me: Woohoo! 3% chance! Well I predictably fucked up so let’s get to the combat.
Note: Check the write up of the first session, this happened and is documented, though in a sarcastic and kind of dick way.

>>24971139
The second time it came up was when we got to take command of the high and mighty studio 69. A similar discussion occurred as I wanted to make sure no rioting or fires would decimate and cause more debt.
>Me: Okay, so while this isn’t an imperial crew per-se, since we are currently employed/in debt to Korst’la and his house, would they recognize the renowned warrant for the purposes of the battle since we’re all brothers in arms presently? Additionally they do have the exposure to the imperium and the inquisitorial ties to understand the importance and power within even this limited (by comparison) scope warrant.
>Shas: That’s a good point, you can have the bonus.
I’m unsure if this is documented, it might not be due to the fact that Studio 69 had so many bonuses to boarding actions that I never needed to worry about that particular +10, and we never lost enough hull integrity for it to become an issue.

>>24971068
That did seem to be the biggest problem, I started out quite nice, but the more I was met with attitude it grated more and more. I tried so hard to make the game work, but my fellow players knew that if they helped me they were in trouble, and they were willing to just sit back and take it. It just really sucked that in spite of all that I tried and compromised I couldn't last to the end or convince him of problems.

It sucked even more how much I was characterized in his write ups due to the fact that we were butting heads over what were from my end legitimate concerns. To be fair to him, I got pretty dickish myself at the end, but that doesn't mean I don't wish it happened differently

It is nice to finally be able to air them, however.

>>24971063
The Shield system is where things bog down heavily. They act as DR and don't deplete unless you deal more than they can take. Fine at fighter levels, but many capital vessels literally cannot harm each-other for a long, long time;until someone crits AND rolls high on damage at the very least... dropping the target's SR by 5 with no further effect.

Alternatively you get five b-wings to somehow survive all the way, and always always always pick that maneuver that lets them dip under shields to fire [otherwise there's really no point in using a fucking bomber against capitals], at which point they're impacting torpedoes against some DR 20ish, and will wipe the ship out then and there.

Without that maneuver? You're looking at DnD4e back in the days of the first monster manual.

I have to admit surprise as well that there were apparently so many problems with Shas' game. I understand that Squat Crusade was an IRL game and Deffwotch was done over IRC, so is it possible such a medium change caused this extreme difference between campaigns?

>>24971147
All right everyone, here’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for:
The Inquisitor fiasco occurred upon the return at spring, I was under the impression that when we met them, we were meeting as equals, as though I were a Rogue Trader or Planetary Governor. As such I spoke as an equal, and apparently didn’t show the proper respect starting off by not fully prostrating myself and offering sexual favors. Then the following dialogue occurred, and I’m not sure which Inquisitor it was so I’ll utilize a close enough moniker:
>Inquisitor MCDJ Krunkalunkus: So whatc’all know bout this darkling shit?
>Me: Everything there is to know as fa…(‘r as we know’ was the ending of the sentence, but we are dealing with rappers and can’t get a word in edgewise)
>Inquisitor MCDJ Krunkalunkus: EVERYTHIN? You know bout dis nigga? *explanation of new darkling*
>Me: We did not know that.
>Inquisitor MCDJ Krunkalunkus: Y’all niggas know bout DIS? *extrapolates another darkling’s info*
>Me: It seems we know much less than we thought
>Shas: Well now you fucked up. Good job.
>Me: Excuse me?
>Shas: You pissed him off.
>Me: How?
>Shas: You were condescending.
>Me: EXCUSE me?
>Shas: Nothing you can do. Deal with it.
>Me: Shas, you KNOW I can roleplay my way out of this out of character, and have a good enough charm roll that I have the mechanics to back it up. Are you literally telling me to STOP roleplaying?
>Shas: Yep.
>Me: There’s literally nothing I can do?
>Shas: Nope. Deal with it.

And that’s the real story behind how I ‘pissed off the inquisition’. I explained that I thought we were equals, he brought up the ‘Mandate of Heaven” (he DID remember to tell me the name change, one thing right!) and how it only gave me colonization rights, no official imperial ones. I brought up the two examples mentioned above, and he didn’t care.

>>24971251
I can say this in regards to Deffwotch:

Rules were kept fairly consistent [to the best that five people with too much stuff to manage at 1am on work-days can do it anyways], and discussions seemed to be rather civil on all fronts when we'd address rules in Deffwotch.

This includes not getting cockblocked or fucked with even after going full-blast on being Deathskull Mek [we even looted human grots], and us getting about as much talking as we could done.

>>24971291
Several weeks later, after several more really bad experiences, I actually called the entire party together. I showed him the latest write up, and inquired as to whether or not it seemed as though he was being intentionally hostile. They all agreed, and I then asked if they, like myself, thought that his previous ‘Trial’ session was utter bull and the worse example of DMing they had ever seen. They agreed unanimously again. We all wanted to confront him about it , and I admitted I was planning to anyway, but only on the condition that they get more involved in the game. Bear in mind, at this point, the sessions are as follows:
>Show up at my apartment (I host the game)
>Everyone gets on minecraft, I review notes for the game
>Shas eats whilst on minecraft, then starts the game
>I attempt to get other players involved, they do not look up from minecraft except to roll attacks/damage
>I do most of the talking, manage to some days get them in after minutes of extrapolation about their task and why they should be interested (though it was usually Kim, who was still being shit on a bit)
>We succeed, good session, we say, check the write up: Ragebeard is a fuckup again guys!
>Time to do deep breaths and prepare for next week, contemplate alcoholism, week passes, repeat.
I confront him about a bunch of things, the mandate of heaven inconsistency being the big personal thing.
>Shas: It’s your word against mine, and yours doesn’t matter.
>Me: It’s in the write-ups in a couple of places
>Shas: If you find it, it still won’t matter, what’s done is done

I've been lurking for a while now, but I must say I'm impressed, and interested in joining. Some questions though-
1) What 'level' of players are you guys thinking of? Would a technical newbie to Dark Heresy/Rogue Trader/Only War be accepted, or should they have experience first?
2)How crazy are we allowed to go with our characters? Barring mary-sue or obvious that-guy characters.

>>24971479
...ahahahaha, oh wow. No wonder everything was going to shit if everyone was more involved in their Minecraft than in the game.

>>24971221
Yep, I remember the shields being a problem even for mid capital battles sometimes, I think one of my old buddies came up with a decent system, might have it lying around here still...scavenger hunt time later.

>>24971251
It was a bunch of different things that came together, other players not interested, him being a bit of a control freak, and even possibly the medium. He does seem much more articulate and confident online, perhaps that anonymity helps.

It's honestly could be a mix of all these things, it just didn't jive well together, that's all I know for sure.

>>24971479
NOTE: This mentality is what drove me truly crazy. If he didn’t give you crucial information, and you made a decision, he would just mock the decision, even if the character had no reason to say it given the unknown information. His own incompetence became a weapon against us, because he could reshape reality as he saw fit without chat logs, and even if he did write it, he hid behind ‘already happened’ and ‘not my responsibility to be a GM’. In my games I have forgotten stuff players have done, and when they remind me I check my notes and try to remember, If I don’t, I say: I can’t find or remember it, but we’ll operate under the assumption you have done what you say for now. And if someone says something problematic because I didn’t inform them, I do inform them that their character would know this, and I’ll let them redo the interaction because it was my fault, I didn’t tell them crucial information. When I work really hard at being a fair DM, and especially when I’ve done it FOR HIM on multiple occasions, it was just a huge slap in the face. Continuing original story.
>Me: Okay fine, do you at least understand where I was coming from?
>Shas: Yes
>Me: Can we deal with it appropriately?
>Shas: Yes.
>Me: Thank you.
The next session comes around, and Velm is on her way to the inquisitorial ship. I told her that she should record the interaction for records, she says she won’t. I operate under the assumption that the imperial sensors they have will be unable to discern the one recording mechadendrite energy from the other 900 pounds of magic fusion powered metal squat. Apparently the rules that we are under in regards to sensor limitations do not apply to his NPCs, and I am hastily mocked for thinking a modicum of fairness exists.

>>24971634
>Inquisitor MCDJ Krunkalunkus: Least they sent tha bitch this time, you wanna git dis info?
(This is just how he talks to women by the way, it’s not the character.)
>Velm: Indeed we do!
>Inquisitor MCDJ Krunkalunkus: Well shit, you gotta work for it.
>Velm: I apologize for any offense we may have committed.
>Inquisitor MCDJ Krunkalunkus: Well sheeeeeeeeeeit! Looks like you smarter than that otha mothafucka!
Shas leans back on my couch, troll grinning, glancing at me out of the corner of his eyes as he does so. I take a deep breath, at least he’s letting us try to get the info.
>Velm: I don’t know about that, but I know the captain meant no offense.
>Inquisitor MCDJ Krunkalunkus: Sweet emprah!
Shas puts his hands behind his head, turns up the troll grin, glances even longer, the ‘you mad bro’ message now ABUNDANTLY clear. I take a swig of soda and clench my fist in the couch cushion, it…will…be…worth…it…
>Inquisitor MCDJ Krunkalunkus: So nice not ta be CONDESCENDED to!
On ‘condescended’, he looks dead at me, and raised his eyebrows, not even TRYING to hide it anymore. I fucking lost it. He SAID he understood, and we were going to work it out. He lied straight to my fucking face, and turned UP the asshole while doing it. That’s where this conversation took place:
>Me: If you keep that shit up, I will throw you out of my apartment. You are a guest in my home, and I do NOT have to take that from you, especially not here.
>Shas: Oh you wanna start something?
>Me: Not particularly, but if you don’t turn down that douche, I’m going to throw you out.
>Shas: Not my fault, you were condescending!
>Me: We both know…
I took a deep breath because there is literally NO winning at this point
>Me: Nevermind, it’s not fucking worth it. Tone it down or I’ll throw you out.
>Shas: So you DO wanna start something.
>Me: After you.
>Shas: I’ll let you throw the first punch.
>Me: Go ahead.

>>24971510
Can't speak for others but I'm always willing to help get a newbie up to speed. Easy to do on IRC since the pace tends to be a little slower anyways. Plenty of time to alt-tab, and less of a table-stop/distraction if one's reading the rules out or explaining them to another, given it's just text and can be done in pm.

>>24971534
I'm pushing for 75% of max SR [round up to nearest 5] to be the trigger point for loss on vehicle shield systems. In other words, once shields drop to or below 75% there no longer is any effect: Generators can more easily hold steady at such a 'cruise' level.

This lets caps get whittled down with torpedo or good turbolaser barrages without affecting fighters much or allowing death-spirals on cap shields: you still need to deal significant damage into it to drop it.

% of current would mean recalculations which gets annoying, and could be too much of a bust against an SSD.

>>24971645
Son of a bitch, Ragebeard. This is not how things should be handled. You took it waaay too personally.

>>24971688
I'm on Ragebeards side, this Shas guy seems to have been out of control for too long now.

>>24971668
Well, hopefully when the time comes for the call, I'll be available. Timezones and whatnot.

>>24971645
This motherfucker had NO sense of decency, and this was one of the last sessions I was there. This shit caused me to just write him off as a person, he literally was an asshole for the sole sake of being an asshole, and it only got worse as the game progressed. Thankfully, there was a positive side to leaving: without me to focus it all on, he alienated the other players, and nearly got kicked out of Morty’s apartment, where the game moved to. Steelbeard (Morty’s roommate) had to BEG Steelbeard to let the game stay, otherwise it would have died, and it damn near did. I applaud the players for putting up with that shit as long as I did, and I can only say ‘good job killing stuff’. No seriously, read every session, no matter what you do it comes down to killing stuff. And he complains that D&D is only about murder hoboing.

I can honestly say without any exaggeration that I lasted as long as I could, and I have no regrets because I won his little game. Before I left, we had an incredibly high profit factor, we had our debt paid off (though he did retcon that like a little bitch), and we had enough squats spread around that we could max populate any colonies founded after that point. He bitched around with his horseshit disappearing act in spite of the fact that I asked him to let me go off with the mechanicus to rebuild their planet somewhere and in spite of the fact that that couldn’t happen either based on a previous conversation. (I established that we had seen shady work his belt enough to take it off of him and use it ourselves in case he turned on us. He said yes.)

>>24971705
What episode did you leave around? If I can ever get a working download I'd like to see how things changed.

>>24971688
Did you miss the previous like four pages of text where I tried? I asked nicely, logically, then begged to be treated fairly, and that is what I got in return. That is simply an unacceptable way to act to another human being.

I wish him luck in his future games, I really do, but I really hope he doesn't make the same mistakes, because he basically made every single mistake a GM could make in Squat Crusade, then edited out the story to make himself look better. He can't do that with an IRC game, so maybe he'll shape up.

>>24971733
The last episode I was in was 19, Steelbeard joined in episode 21. He starts shitting on steelbeard and eventually all of them at the end.

It's the last nine where he starts admitting that he doesn't care about telling players vital information, and it's not his job to do so. Keep an eye out for that, then go back and see if where he makes fun of me for claiming the same. It's quite telling how much he screwed up.

>>24971733
Also, there is a Squat Crusade page on 1d4chan, it has links to all of the archived threads:

http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Squat_Crusade:_The_Musical

Thank you to all who took the time to read, I know it turned out to be a huge wall of text, but it's the other side of the story and needed to be told. Here's hoping this gets added to it eventually. Good...morning all, I'm off to grab a couple of hours of sleep. I'll check on the thread then and answer any questions people might have about the campaign itself or my story.

>>24971890

Question: Why did you go into an entirely homebrewed game by someone who apparently had no clue what balance was, was a terrible GM and apparently a terrible person and expect something different?

SHAS SUCKS DONKEY BALLS

By the numbers, the weapons are all odd. If we follow off the base of the pulse rifle for damage but the standard "lasguns have 100m" for range and fire rates, this is what Tau weapons in FFG should look like:

Pulse: 2d10+2E Pen 4 Gyrostablized
Pistol 30m S/2/-, Carbine 75m S/-/3, Rifle 130m S/3/-, Longshot 200m S/-/- Accurate, and Burst Cannon 75m -/-/8

Rail Rifle 130m S/2/- 2d10+6I Pen 8 Razor Sharp
Ion Rifle 120m S/2/- 2d10+8E Pen 6 Basic: Overcharge
>>> 120m S/-/- 3d10+6E Pen 6 Heavy: Blast[3] Overheat

Mis.Pod 150m S/2/-
Markerlight 150m S/-/-

>>24974321
By what you've gone with the missiles should be S/-/2, or would that make them too powerful?

>>24974321
Give the missiles blast 2 or something.
Problem however is that they should not be stronger than the Ion Rifle: The missiles are no good against heavy vehicle armor facings as they are also just S7 AP4.

With FFG rules however, vehicle armor is a problem in and of itself.

There is much to read, and much to say.

>>24970079
The main issue with communication I suppose, similar to shieldhammer, was that nobody told each other anything. I do not have much time as a Grad student, and I tell some people things over steam / in person, and expect them to share. They did not.

The MASSIVE upgrade system was planned that way. You could not POSSIBLY upgrade everything. From what people ugraded, I could pull appropriate missions. Things that people chose not to upgrade could be phased out.

>>24970107

The Finances In Arrears missions came up 4 out of 29 times. Each time, I made sure the Brotherhood profited more than they lost. Besides, given that everyone tended to glaze over their ship roles, I felt a little simplification would be...helpful.

>>24970115

Many times, you all simply asked what needed to be done, not asked for exploring. As a result, I was put on the spot, and had to suggest something to which everyone simply lemming'd.

>>24970245

I was keeping consistency. I saw no reason to change things mid way. While you were the 'stars' of Squat Crusade, you were trying to act like you were the most important thing in the sector. You COULD have been, but your outbursts saw an end to that.

>>24970256

They could be killed. You saw that when you were given full command of it.

>>24970384

Those Necrons were supposed to be a challenge. People DIE when facing necrons. They are Armor 8, TB8. One does not need thunder hammers to face them, but the thunder hammers let you two-shot them.

Con't.

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>Squat Crusade: The Musical
>Immortal Dawn: Shut Up And Jam Gaiden
>Exelion OVA

Oh Shas, you're something else.

>>24970555

This much, is true. I AM full of myself, and I expect people to keep up with the newest codexes, and I do find it funny when they do not. However, I expect people to keep up ONLY if I have it as well. Since I can give it out, there is no excuse not to have it. If someone has the new Eldar codex, and I do not, I do not expect people t be familiar with lore changes. However, if I have acquired the Tau codex, and offered to pass it around, it is not my fault nobody chooses to accept it.

>>24970743

This is true as well. I am an optimizer. Not a very good one, however, which is why I come to /tg/. But that is beside the point. Everything in here is true. Most 40k systems ARE "you're hit, you're dead." And I DID up everything to the result of everyone's defense / dps. After all, when three of the players refuse to drop their relic weapons (which is perfectly fine), it allows me to run larger, more cinematic battles.

>>24970817

That was planned. I did not want people to easily get into each others' schools, otherwise everyone would walk all over each other. It's similar to what Kim did towards the end - he bought all WP and two other schools of Sigma Harmonics, so most of the powers, people left to him.

>>24970884

This is true, except for the lied part. I said that most likely you would not be able to get one, since Squats do not have them. It was only when the issue was pressed that I said flat out no.

>>24970932

Perhaps you should read the rules as well? I changed nothing about mass combat other than army assembly. That was purely from the book. and after you left we changed it so everyone gets command of more guys. It went a lot better.

Remember, you left midway through, and a lot of your problems were addressed or (according to at least one other player) exaggerated.

con't

>>24970970

You called me over to address this long list of grievances on the Activity Fair, and everyone else left partway through that, since they believed that these things were already sorted out. You were attempting to change things I was not willing to change, and it was angering you.

>>24971139

I was clear on this, the others agreed. You simply did not...remember.

>>24971479

It was for this reason that I started recording sessions with voice-capture software. It allowed full accuracy, and when I had the recording for the session, the words in the recordings could be the be-all end-all.

>>24971519

I was quite annoyed at that, and told them.

>>24971645

According to at least two other players, you were getting angry out of character over the tings you said in-character. Remember, you had your interpretation of things, and I had theirs. One's words can be taken multiple ways.

>>24971705

Everybody lies, I've known that since I was young. If they wanted to kick me out, they never told me. They simply let me keep my books, my gear, my army, and half my things at Morty's apartment.

We were planning the move to his place early December, since, according to them, Ragebeard was becoming 'unstable.'

----

With that said, I can only say this. I know only what people tell me. If people tell me things with a veneer of superiority (above my own), I get annoyed. I will not lie, I am an egotistic asshole who believes in my own infallibility, but if someone points things out to me respectfully, then I make changes (as what happened during Deffwotch and the latter part of Squat Crusade). If they whine and complain, I glaze over.

I had tried out a number of new subsystems that I had hoped everyone would enjoy. They were raw, prototype, and I will not lie - I was using the Brotherhood as a testbed. I determined what worked, and what didn't. Simply because you did not enjoy something does not mean it is flawed.

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In addition, I want to make three more notes.
-I had a lot of NPCs because I was trying to get them to interact. Unfortunately, some of the players said, "well we're not the captain so we shouldn't be talking." It was after Ragebeard left that the Brotherhood all began talking and sharing points, rather than "Ragebeard has 50 fel and I have 29, I shouldn't talk."
-Reiteration: The reason I use the Merchant and the Armory is because I want everyone to be powerful. However, power is useless unless you have some equal foes to test it on.
-Look at the relics. Then look at some of the Deathwatch relic equipment. Then look at the relics again.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/y6awi7

For those who had trouble with the above link, I have reuploaded the Squat Crusade Collected Visions.

I tried not to do anything different as I did in Deffwotch and Pimps in Space, but some things did not click to Ragebeard, and all of our experiences suffered.

>>24970518

Honestly, it's kind of like the Core books have Calligos Winterscale Dynasty. They've been doing their thing for hundreds of years, and appear to be this monolithic organization with their own subsector. The players, if using the Koronus expanse, are new and not as his level starting out. Maybe there's a parallel to be drawn between Winterscale and Korst'la.

>>24970871

They became Ancestral Weapons ONLY when the bearer died. The Phoenix Bolt and Photon Driver were never ancestral, because their bearers never died. Since the bearer of the Megaton died, and it was ritually passed to next of kin, it became Ancestral, according to the Squat army books.

I will admit, the fact that nobody gave you the folder, when three different people PROMISED they would, was aggravating, and I am willing to apologize for that at least.

>>24974321
>>24974375

Recall that some weapons were errata'd, and that further complicates things. There was a shift in Tau weapons between Core and Mark of Xenos.

>>24974695

I will see about the missiles, whether or not it's wise to use post or pre errata stats.

>>24975168
40k in general has a strong theme of "there's always bigger than you, until bigger-than is you".

Rogue Traders are always larger-than-life, and indeed should certainly act that way, but they don't actually start off anywhere near as huge as their egos would suggest.

With time, effort and a bit of luck though, they might end up even larger.

>>24975218
Will take a look at the weapons as soon as I get home. Recalling how they changed the RF system a few times and eventually unnatural stats as well, its possible that errata was cancelled, forgotten about or any other number of little issues here and there.

Suggested ranges and relatively identical power across the pulse class are pretty appropriate however.

>>24971510

I welcome new players as well as experienced ones. You can make your character however. Want to make a relatively straight-laced tau who focuses on the mission above all else? Want to make a Dark Eldar who absent-mindedly prattles off about the best way to flay a kidney? Want to roll on the Metal Gear Name Generator? It's all up to you.

>>24975168

The House of Korst'la did have a hundred-year head start, but I have always tried to portray his house as relatively chill and supportive.

Remember, what you are reading is simply Ragebeard's word against mine, and I believe he's not completely innocent as well.

>>24975415
The Deathwatch Errata suggested ranges are still off compared to what they oughta be [Rifle 150, carbine 60; meaning the rifle has more than twice the base range of the carbine, rather than 1 and 2/3]. I do support the adjusted ranges.

The rest, I've taken a look at the errata and Xenos.

Pulse output has a big change worth exploring. At S/3/- this puts the 'rapid fire' rifle on par, volley-wise, as the lasgun and bolter. A standard infantry basic assault rifle's fire rate under the system. The Carbine suffers from its old "assault 1" in deathwatch though, being S/-/- at a mere 60m.

Damage-wise we see a buff given for two apparent reasons given the numbers: Less Righteous Fury, but a higher rate of dealing at least low damage to Astartes. The average damage of 1d10+12E Pen 4 [standardized to all pulse] is slightly higher than 2d10+3 [roughly 18 vs 15 with RF chances accounted for].

The increase in damage, though is something I find a little much. This is the same base damage as a Legion Plasmagun; an S7 weapon to Pulse' S5.

So, while we're visibly looking at the Rogue Trader xp system, the level of updates on combat itself is what needs to be known in order to be sure. If we're porting aiming, firing and Righteous Fury rules all the way through to Only War, for example, the results are going to have to be bit different.

>>24974725
You expected them to, but never made sure they would tell. You never even asked if they had passed on vital information, and in fact never admitted it was happening until Shieldhammer went through the same thing. You called it 'whining' (your own words, check the write-ups) and laughed at me for trying to get all the relevant information for the game. You still have the responsibility as a GM to MAKE SURE we all know the information, not be obtuse and then be smug when someone makes a decision without all the information. I never even got so much as an apology for that incidentally. That is ineffably frustrating for a player, and you just kept avoiding resolution of this complaint for many sessions.

The massive upgrade system started getting phased out when you threw us a Kirov mission and we got pasted in nearly one round. The following discussion occurred:
>Me: Damn, those things hit hard.
>Shas: Not my problem, you didn't upgrade the Kirov.
>Me: a) You didn't fully inform us of the rules for the minigame so we didn't have enough, and b) we decided on the starship upgrades first based on the amount of losses from space combat so far (It's almost like we were trying to deal with problems appropriate to our situation!)
>Shas: Deal with it

Finances in arrears and your abuse of the how squats 'had to act' were how you got many missions done, to the point where you did actually interrupt my exploration planning on multiple occasions with a mandatory quest. I can compile a full list if you'd like. After the fifth or sixth time (as mentioned above) we stopped trying and powered through it.

*sigh* we were, once again, operating on the assumption that we were equals see the evidenced points above. And we were absolutely not trying to be the 'most important thing in the sector' we were trying to survive, which you interpreted as 'infringing on super-special tau's territory' and reacted like a petulant child, promptly smacking us back down.

>>24974725
Keeping consistency is a fine claim, but when you were confronted by the fact that these particular old characters do not fit with your current ones, you said, as you often did, 'deal with it' in spite of concerns. You'll note that these 'outbursts' were already explained as you changing the rules of the universe and showing more favor to your NPCs without response, so again, justify yourself beyond a 'deal with it' please.

And realistically they could NOT be killed. A fully upgraded grand cruiser could only barely keep up, and it would die because your homebrewed railgun rules let them fire front and side arcs with MORE damage. It can be HURT, not killed, by any single ship constructed within the rules, look at the numbers again. It takes a fleet of fully optimized vessels to take down ONE special homebrewed ship.

A challenge is well and good. Their default weapons could indeed in fact nearly kill us in one hit, but those are not the 1d10+28 weapons which COULD kill everyone in the party on a minimum roll, and they got two attacks per turn. This was the SECOND SESSION mind you, so if we hadn't had those thunder hammers, odds dictate that they would have pasted us long we nickle and dimed them to death with our starting weapons. And while people will indeed eventually run into combat of 'you hit you die' SECOND SESSION is a bit soon for that, especially since we were still establishing characters.

>>24975728

I did call it whining, and I still do.

Every time I tried to give you the information, you said, "Oh I don't have a flash drive / computer, I can get it later from everyone else."

The Kirov System was phased out only when I spoke with the one player who did the minigames, because we were both concerned that nobody else was doing them. I ended up giving the player in question a small bonus to their acquisitions to compensate for a failed prototype system.

>how squats 'had to act'
Yes. I had all the NPCS react based on how the army books stated they should. It did not help that, despite me stating it being a poor idea, you were attempting to change things to your system, and the only reason the other players did not interfere was because they were following the Squat Process of 'let the Warlord do the talking." They were doing things by the book.

However, I do question some of their actions. For example, when an NPC says "Hey, I know you were looking for X, here's one for consideration," and the message turning into "Hey, NPC said we had to go to X right now" when it finally made its way up to you.

>>24975970
Hey Shas, *despite* all of the bad rep that is trying to be spread in this thread, I'm still interested in playing this above game.
Can I get a little detail on how to contact you, or where the game will be played, etc.?

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>>24975854
>your homebrewed railgun rules let them fire front and side arcs with MORE damage

You act as if I pulled these out of nowhere.

In addition, recall that only two had the 1d10+28 blades, and most of you guys could parry / shield anyway. There were four guys - two with weapons that hit relative to your strengths, and two Deathmarks that stayed back and shot. Two melee, two ranged.

The way I saw it was, if those guys are in Black Crusade and can face off against humans there, I can do it here. Was it too early for them? Perhaps. But I expected some deaths. For the record, I thought you guys performed FANTASTICALLY against them.

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>>24976029

May your opinion be made yourself. I cannot say I am fully objective, but neither can Ragebeard.

In a few months, I will put out the Call to Players here. I will provide my email, and you can send in your times that work best for you so that a game can be established. In a pregame meetup, everyone will finalize their mans, select a ship for assignment, and so on.

>>24974827
At least you admit it, bonus points. But that is a HUGE double standard you present, and makes the point even more valid. You claim to 'keep up on the latest lore' for the purpose of the universe, but really only do it to be an elitist and mock people for not keeping up with the latest in contradictory lore and retcons. You do enjoy being superior, and enjoy mocking people for not knowing what you do, which was not a healthy GM/Player dynamic.

*Sigh* my point was that they CAN become 'one hit and dead' depending on player actions and foes, while in yours it literally HAD to be one hit one dead, no way to avoid. When you gave us overpowered weapons, you changed the game mechanics and that's what it was by default as a result. (Also, 3 relic weapons, 4 players, that really should have been looked at).

Sigma harmonics was, like I said, an interesting gimmick, but yet another mandatory thing that we HAD to have to progress. Because one player optimized and could do nothing else does NOT change the fact that the meshing of it into the system was ham fisted and costed player development and freedoms. Your argument is literally 'because someone optimized to the point where the problem is gone, there was no problem', so check again.

You literally just admitted TO lying in that post. You said initially, sure it's unlikely you'll get one but if you go through the right channels I'll let you have one. Then, after going through all the channels, you said "Nope, you were never going to get one anyway, deal with it." How is that NOT lying exactly?

I did admit it was the diet coke, and I DID say I couldn't remember them off the top of my head. And it was Tim who was in charge of ground combat, and I had asked him at that meeting so long ago to consider restructuring how we did it. So bonus points for again not understanding how much work I put in to try and make this game function.

>>24976089
Awesome, I'll be looking out for it.

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>>24976091

Then it is a question of wording, and that much as well I can apologize for. To me, "Probably not" and "Definitely not" are the same thing, similar to "I'll see what I can do" and I'll do it later" are the same thing. If you interpreted it one way to your detriment, then that fault lies on me.

>3 relic weapons, 4 players, that really should have been looked at

Four if you count the armor. And the third was a last-minute addition a day before the session. There was originally only two weapons, one armor. I suppose I could have made a fourth relic weapon, but I didn't see how at the time.

Regarding the restructuring of mass combat, believe it or not, he never came to me. That retooling of "Everybody commands multiple squads" actually came from somebody's advice here, when I asked for tips. I had no idea you told him to change it because he never told me he was looking into changing things.

If you did not have fun, then it is unfortunate. I think mutual misunderstandings killed the manner of the game to the point where we can't even call each other friends anymore. I still remember nearly six years ago how it was you who called me over from the high table to everyone else, and got me into playing these cooperative games, and it is heavily unfortunate that we cannot speak as friends anymore without this coming up. If you do not wish to speak anymore, so be it.

What the absolute FUCK is going on in this shithole of a thread?

Am I right in the understanding that you guys have finished an IRL or pseudo-irl campaign (with pcs in an apartment) and then Shas has gone and done story-time dump along with announcing a new game. The only people participating in talking about the new game are the old players? And one guy from his old game have shown up and shat all over the thread calling Shas out on being a douche?

1) This is not how you do a storytime at all.
2) This is not your fucking personal blog.
3) This is not a chat forum for you and your buddies to hang out on post game.

>>24976301
One old player's looking to join in and seems to be doing maths.
One or two other people seem to be new and want in.
And yes there's that one 'blog guy'.

Failure of it being storytime? Pretty sure storytime was long over given that's just the collected archive of storytimes. I would more call it "tossing ideas about next campaign abo~ andthenraaaaagebeard"

Regardless, this is no worse than people arguing over which forgotten realms realm is more forgettable.

>>24974827
And I know that by the end of it, a lot of my problems were addressed, but frankly it was literally impossible to tolerate your GMing style and uncompromising attitude. And my problems (according to all 4 other players) were indeed legitimate, but they knew bringing it up would cause you start being more hostile, which is what happened with me.

The list of grievances I presented was actually much shorter after we talked about the trial, since even though Morty and Kim agreed with me, you literally said 'my interpretation of the recording says you're wrong.' even though your ENTIRE PARTY was telling you that you did a poor job that session.

You were not clear on that at all, see the reference points to when it was not true included above.

You started then claiming that your INTERPRETATION of the records was the only one truth, and any grievances we had were complaints from the peasantry because of your own interpretation of the recordings. Again, that trial mess is the best example, I'll type that up once I'm done.

And while you were quite annoyed, it wasn't until after that grievance discussion where I told you that I had asked them to stop, but you might want to bring it up that you did. Interesting, no?

*sigh* the issue here was you always, without fail, interpreting words in the most 'fuck-overable' way, and it was this reason that I was the only one talking for multiple sessions. You were, frankly, a colossal douche in this regard for MOST of the game, and it looked like it permeated beyond my stint in it. I also have their interpretations of grievances, and you done screwed up quite good, as is evidence by their cutting you out of future games.

>>24976301

This isn't an individual "Storytime" thread as much as it was the Shas'o releasing ALL his stories from multiple storytimes in one archive.

Although it did go to hell when the previous player did show up.

>>24975660
With some suggested alt formats for the lower strength stuff, this could be something of a set of strength levels to work from when fixing or building new weapon options. Everything predictably breaks down at or above S8, launchers first, then things like S9 direct weaponry [lascannon] but that's more to do with how they've gone and done vehicle armor and then tried to compensate than anything.

Or is that the other way around? Was trying to compensate for the Lascannon when they got around to vehicles what brought the snowball on?

base or Suggested minor upgrades other than Accurate
S3 1d+3 -- S/3/- 1d+2 S/2/5 or 1d+2 Tearing
S4 1d+5 -- S/3/- 1d+3 S/3/6 or 2d+0 or 1d+6 P+1 S/2/-
S5 1d+7 2d S/3/- 1d+6 S/2/5 or 1d+4 Pen+2 Tearing

S6 1d+9 2d+2 S/2/-
S7 1d+12 2d+5 S/2/-
S8 1d+15 2d+8 S/-/-

>>24974965
I did start off respectful. I pointed out the flaws with evidence, and you said that that didn't matter. And when it happened like predicted, you said, without fail, 'deal with it' every time. You, never tried to work with our complaints and adjust. You had in previous games, but for the majority of this one, nothing. If we had had IRC logs to reference, that might have helped, but you did leave a lot of things that happened out of the write-ups, and because of that we did lose a good bit of stuff.

As a counterpoint to that mentality, just because you made a homebrew system doesn't mean it's functional. Just because you enjoy something doesn't mean that the players do or it is not flawed. You really did just try to bite off more than you could chew in that regard, and the game suffered for it.

>>24975101
The talking was, to be fair, a problem for both of us. We both tried to get them to talk to the point where I actually begged, but even then it only helped a little. But if it was really a 'not the warlord' mentality, how come it didn't continue over to Morty's reign? It literally makes NO sense, though I was glad to see much more involvement, even if it did take longer than I was around to do so.

And do bear in mind that you, for multiple games, didn't usually allow deathwatch stuff because "it's too powerful and normal humans can't use it anyway", and when you did exactly that did happen.

>>24975218
That was a huge mutually frustrating point, no argument there. And I'll be honest, there were some times where I didn't get info because I did forget. There were far more times, however, that I simply wasn't given stuff. I actually did by the end of it make SURE to have an external on hand, because I literally could not trust to get the information otherwise.

My biggest issue here was when you would give people information at lunch, and tell them to pass it on, then not tell me because they were supposed to.

>>24975218
Thank you for that apology, this one was definitely not on you though, you did do your best to make sure I got the info that time.

It's just that it did keep happening, and when it did and I brought it up it was my fault for not being present, not their fault for not passing it on. It got incredibly frustrating after a while, even more so when I would ask about stuff and they had forgotten about it.

>>24975498
I will be the first to admit, after several months of being civil and being met with a wall of 'deal with it' it did get frustrating to the point where I did start ramping up the anger starting point as a result. And I'll also be the first to admit that I'm definitely not innocent in this, it's a textbook example of 'when keeping it real goes wrong' really.

>>24975970
I know, and that was, as was established, a character move. My CHARACTER never wanted command on this scale and wasn't prepared for it. I made multiple decisions based on that fact that could have, frankly, been done better, but I was also relying on the rest of the crew to help with input. I fully expected everyone to stand up and say 'don't even push it forward' to which I would have revealed my reluctance and had character development. I was met with silence and 'Warlord knows best, which was frustrating in and of itself.

And that going up the chain thing was rather obnoxious, but I always remembered your initial messages out of character, so those weren't terribly frustrating since the actual context was there and had been heard.

>>24976235
The wording was really the issue, and because of how it was presented, it was literally, every time from my perspective, 'sure you can' that lead into 'NOPE YOU NEVER COULD' which DEFINITELY added to the stress and anger.

Realistically the thunder hammers and their glorious huge do do the job, but no ranged weapons save the lascannon or multilaser could keep up with the artifact weapons, that is where the balance issues arose.

>>24976235
Oh yeah, I forgot the dark bolt was a last minute thing.

I will be honest, with some of the clarifications you gave me here, I think we finally have reached an understanding. We both wound up becoming more and more hostile towards each other in the end, and I knew I was going to have to leave to let the game keep going. A good many times when I did actually have legitimate concerns, however, you did always default back to 'Deal with it' or 'You mad bro' instead of any explanation as to why. All that I wanted was the explanation other than what appeared as "what you are talking about doesn't matter, you are merely a pawn in my game, peasant" mentality when we would talk in person. It really did present a helpless atmosphere for everyone in the game when that would happen.

I'll also be honest again, recounting all of this did make me, for lack of better terminology, livid by this point, and that's just not something to leave unchecked:
>>24971705
Writing you off isn't true, it is however unlikely that I'd want you as a GM in a game for me for a while. It really did just get out of hand the way things went, and there was fucking up on all sides of the fence for this one. This was present in the write ups, and in the sessions, and by the end of it it seemed like the entire game was a chore rather than fun (some of the other player's words unfortunately).

I don't know if you're still even lurking, but if you are, I'm truly sorry for how this one turned out, and wish it could have gone differently. Heck, if you ever need any enemies rolled up for your next game let me know, I'll throw together some stats and pass em your way.

For all those who read through, it's appreciated, and for all those complaining about detracting from the rest of the thread, sorry for the hijack. Good luck to you Shas, I really mean that.