Dark Reign | The Unofficial Warhammer 40K Roleplay Site

I’ve always felt that a 40K roleplaying game should have rules that are easily understood by players of the wargame. The rules of the 40K wargame are too abstract for a modern roleplaying game. Ideally, the roleplaying rules should be inspired by the wargame rules without becoming a totally different system. Dark Heresy does a nice job, but IMO falls short. Players of the wargame can’t use any of the books and other background material they have and there is no easy conversion between the wargame and DH.

My goal is that owners of the various 40K armybooks can use almost everything in them with a little bit of conversion and interpretation. This way players don’t have to wait for FFG to create rules for the various races, gear and other stuff, but they have the whole of GW’s 40K game to use. Why create a totally new game when GW had done 90% of the work.

Besides using an elegant and quick resolution system, the Dark Reign 40K game will have rules for skills, followers, traits, passions, martial disciplines and other stuff necessary to a modern rpg. Read the rest of this entry »

Well, we’ve slowly began to put material up on the Anargo website, so I thought that I would post the current teaser pages (which are basically WiP pages, so keep that in mind!).  Anyway, you can it here:

Anargo Sector Project Explore Website Teaser

Let us know what you think…

Regards,

Kage

As the EnginSeer of this site it is proper to maintain a memberblog myself. In this blog I will not only write about what’s going on behind the site, but also what is going on in my group’s Dark Reign game. Let’s start with the latter.

This week my group will start with a new campaign set in the Warhammer 40K setting - and the Calixis Sector in particular. As some of you know we don’t use the official Dark Heresy rules system but the REIGN rules system designed by Greg Stolze. With REIGN the characters are not lone wolf strangers in strange lands, but leaders of communities, and those groups of followers can resolve large-scale conflicts against their rivals. This divide allows players to focus on the story elements they choose. If they do not care for blow-by-blow combat, they can simply send their army to besiege an enemy stronghold. On the other hand, if they lead the attack in person, they can drastically improve the chances of success - or doom their enterprise through foolish choices. The benefits of ruling are great, but the consequences of failure are drastic.

From the description above you can see that playing Acolytes following the orders of an Inquisitor is too limited. With REIGN the characters should be the movers and shakers in the world. I was struggling to think up how to do this, when I stumbled upon GW’s Specialist Games website and especially the section about the skirmish game Necromunda. I’m not the only one that saw the potential of setting the game in a Hive City like Necromunda.

My players have just finished the scenario Illumination from the corebook and survived (only the Scum died). As a reward they will become sleeperagents of the Inquisition working for one of the ruling houses in Hive Sibbelus. To flesh out this important Hive City I will mix the descriptions of Hive Prime from Necromunda with Hive Sibellus. The Acolytes will become the senior secretaries of one of the Houses and can thus partake in the decision making to make their House more powerful.

In this blog I will keep you up to date if they succeed in this endaveour. 

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve posted something to the ‘blog, partially due to real life commitments, but also in part due to spending time trying to pull together the Explore site that I mentioned in one of my previous entries. It’s not particularly time consuming to code up a website, but I’ve been dragging my feet for quite some time over it. Indeed, I guess the most difficult thing is coding for redundancy, or playing the "What if Kage disappeared tomorrow?" game who would continue pulling the site together, developing new aspects to it, and so on. (The actual continuance of the project is assured with the presence of CELS, and it’s quite likely that it would have folded if not for his dogged perseverance.)

Anyway, one of the things that we’ve done is move towards a fixed width design rather than the fluid one we had previously used (and which currently resides on the Anargo server).  You can have a basic look at that here:

Anargo Fixed Width Page Design

I just thought that I would share.

Anyway, while we’re aiming for an August 1st release, I have a slight worry that we’re not going to quite reach that. What is sure, though, is that the Explore site will be up and running by the end of the month since I’m sure that there are going to be some teething problems.

Stratagem Magister (Lord of Strategy)

While the Warzones of the Imperium come in many varieties, none of them quite compare to the Stratagem Magister. Known throughout the Imperium as Warmongers, these societies have embraced combat and warfare in a truly unique way; they view it as a national pastime. It is a noble pursuit, a dedication to what they consider to be the purest of art forms; the greatest test of human potential.

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This is first part in a series where we explore characters of Imperial World origin, in our continuing search for a deeper understanding of the characters that emerge from these unique environments. My purpose, as always, is to further the enjoyment of the role-playing experience, and not re-writing rules or contradicting existing ones.

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What privilege it is to instruct the ignorant in the lessons of servitude to the Emperor. While born into abject mindlessness, a savage may not at first appear to be of any use in the eternal struggle. If given the proper tempering however, even a oaf may be taught to justly serve in His name."

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In the first part of this series, we looked at modifying the base Dark Heresy system to get a "Necromunda-style" game out of it.  We started with the beginning of character creation, and wound up spending our starting XP and cash.  But while we’re on the topic of cash, I’d like to look at a place where Dark Heresy diverges with Necromunda quite radically: the income system.

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Or Playing a Necromunda-themed Game of Dark Heresy

Before I get started, I’d like to thank Mordheim and the rest here at Dark Reign for allowing me this opportunity.  I’d also like to ask everyone to cut me a little slack, as I’ve never blogged before.

This blog will deal with my project of capturing the feel of Necromunda using the Dark Heresy ruleset.  I’m going to be laying out what I’m changing, but more importantly why and to what end so that you, dear reader, can create the game that’s right for you and your group rather than being forced to fit your group to my system because there are few options.  As nice as it would be for my creation to be widely played, I’d rather everyone get the game they and their group wants by being able to modify the system.  Towards that end, I’m going to write this as a kind of instruction manual.  However, there will be places where I haven’t figured everything out, and I’ll be asking for comments and ideas.  Feedback is greatly appreciated, especially constructive criticism.

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So, this will be an accutal productive Blog Post. Here I present my own rendition of various weapons including many Xenos and Exotic weapons that haven’t been given a Dark Heresy stat line and several new patterns and models of standard weaponary.

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