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Spreadsheet or Database showing options?

Started by ColonelMatt, October 07, 2020, 02:38:45 AM

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ColonelMatt

Hey everyone.

I've been a fan of inquisitor for years and come up with some warbands and ideas for campaigns bit never had the chance to actually play. As we're still more or less in lockdown it's looking like I might manage to convert a family member to playing so I'm looking back into everything.

Is there some excel sheet or easy to search list that details all the options for characters - classes, equipment, psychic powers, wargear, skills and abilities etc?

I've got the physical rulebooks and the old exterminus magazine with the chrono gladiator rules and there seem to be a load of other articles on the resources post but no handy guide as to what can be found where exactly as far as I could tell?

Many thanks,
                        Matt

Mentirius

Hi Matt,

Welcome to the Conclave!

It's not a spreadsheet, but there is a two-page PDF document with a compact list of all the various weapons from the rulebook and columns for their stats etc.  Download links in the first post of this thread, courtesy of our generous admin MarcoSkoll:

http://www.the-conclave.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=34.0

You want either the whole Mega bulk pack (which contains every Inquisitor article there ever was, as far as I can tell) or the Specialist Games files section, where this particular file can be found.  It's called WeaponSummary.pdf - I'm sure you could extract the data to a spreadsheet with the right software if searchability is a must.  INQ_REFERENCE_SHEET.PDF may also come in handy, as a similarly condensed printable reference for some core game mechanics.

With that said, house rules are a big part of Inquisitor so inventing new mechanics, items and skills in your own right is never off the table.  Different GMs use different conventions, and are encouraged to do by the rulebook itself.  In light of this, I don't think any such list could ever be exhaustive.  If it makes any sense in 40K lore and can be modelled at the scale you're using, it can appear in a game of Inquisitor - "all the options for characters" is pretty much an infinite well of possibility, and really the background for the setting itself is the primary yardstick of what can be used (E.G. If an Imperial citizen is carrying something like an Eldar shuriken catapult, that is not impossible in lore but sufficiently unusual there had better be a story behind it). 

Personally I'd say the best way to go about creating characters for the game is to start with concepts the player finds inspiring, and then figure out how to translate those into the rules.  If inspiration itself is a problem, I remember in the early days of the game there were a lot of "third-party reference" characters around, E.G. 40K Jedi analogues.  I don't think there's anything wrong with that, as newcomers to the setting are usually building on a fondness for other science fiction universes and GW appropriates so many ideas to create 40K versions of things already.  A friend of mine had a pretty large warband based on characters from a fantasy series by Steven Erikson, and the very act of translating them into 40K made them pretty unique and fun to play against.

Regarding the download links, my advice would be to get absolutely everything, as there is a ton of useful and/or inspiring stuff in the bulk pack that I never knew existed before.  There's also the unofficial Inquisitor Revised Edition on here with a far more extensive Armoury, though I haven't had a chance to test those rules out myself:

http://www.the-conclave.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=2387.0

Good luck!

ColonelMatt

Thanks!

I'm definitely looking at some homebrew stuff - I'll trawl through the articles and use them for inspiration and power level ideas.

I've had quite a bit of experience DMing D&D campaigns in the past year or so. Anyone have any idea of that kind of stuff will be useful as an Inquisitor GM or are there dangers of bringing over that king of approach to the game?

Mentirius

#3
I reckon you're on pretty firm ground treating it as a roleplaying game with a tabletop element - the core of Inquisitor is, in my opinion, the development of unique, complex characters who challenge the standard 40K archetypes, and the telling of exciting stories.  I've heard of GMs going so far as to combine elements of the Inquisitor rules with parts of the Dark Heresy system for a more detailed/immersive roleplay experience linking up their tabletop engagements, which you might want to look into as an idea...  I do however get the impression that even the sort of short, fast-paced campaigns some Conclave members run at organised events tend to be strongly narrative-driven and involve detailed world-building beforehand, numerous bespoke NPCs and so on.  At the other end of the scale, the rules also hybridise well enough with skirmish-style games like Necromunda or Killteam for campaigns focused largely on combat, for those who prefer that style, but I'd say the majority of Inquisitor groups focus on developing a shared narrative over the potential for PVP competition.  Game balance, should one choose to pursue it as a concept, rests entirely in the hands of the individual GM, with the only universally accepted rule I'm aware of being that all characters should have individual backgrounds that fit into the 40K setting and feasibly explain any particularly exotic gear or skills they possess. 

As I understand it, there are multiple schools of thought within the community as to what exactly the game's niche is and how it should be played, especially regarding a universal yardstick for power levels, to the extent that I don't think a full consensus will ever exist.  At the end of the day, Inquisitor amounts to a flexible rules system for table-top combat between individuals in a three-dimensional environment.  The extent to which one builds a detailed in-universe story around that is a matter of personal taste, but given you have experience with roleplaying games and an interest in the 40K setting, I'm sure you can see the appeal of going the extra mile.  An empire of a million worlds, spread thinly across a galaxy full of intelligent alien species, with all the limitless weirdness of the Warp underpinning it all, allows for the creation of entire planets and star systems for the purpose of your story, and looming threats of apocalyptic destruction on a similarly vast scale should a worst-case scenario result.  Providing one stays away from conceits like E.G. blowing up major "canon" planets on which the Imperium relies, there is pretty much no limit to what a GM can do in a campaign without breaking the setting - and if the GM wants to mess with the setting, there's nothing actually stopping them from opening a time portal back to the Horus Heresy, or moving the timeline forward to the year 50,000 and killing off the Emperor, providing the players are on board with the concept.  On top of all that space and essentially limitless narrative freedom, there is such a wealth of source material around for almost every aspect of 40K that inspiration for an interesting campaign is rarely hard to find.

In conclusion, I'd say approaching Inquisitor with D&D-style mindset is a fine idea, and in fact a year of running roleplay sessions will probably serve you far better as an Inquisitor GM than any amount of experience with GW's competitive wargames would.  From the sounds of things, you're already on the right track to get plenty out of it.

MarcoSkoll

Sorry about being late to getting to this, and for what's going to be a pretty short reply. (I'll try to elaborate further).

The main warning I would give to a GM who has come from another game system is that Inquisitor is a player-vs-player game. It's specifically balanced around the idea that the players will be vying against each other, and not the GM. This shows up in things like the relatively detailed injury system (hit points work well in PvE, where you don't want the PCs ground down too easily, but you want more granular debilitatation in a PvP game) and random action system (which removes the idea of players being able to rely on definitely having enough action points to do certain things).

It's versatile enough it'll (sort of) work as a PvE ruleset, but it's not (in my humble opinion) where it's strongest.

~~~~~

The main things to consider about PvP play are:

- You have got to clamp down on exploits and power gaming. It's one thing if one player is making power builds in D&D, but it completely throws off Inquisitor games. There are guides on character writing and experience will eventually help (and obviously the GM oversees it all), but the ultimate arbiter is really good intentions - the players/GM actively trying to write characters that are interesting and fair to play and play against.

- You need to focus on how to get your story lines to bring characters into conflict. I've seen some GMs write stories where basically all the characters decide to be on one side of the story, removing any real tension or competition. Focus more on politics than "big evil threat". I've run stories around ideas like "Should the sector go on a crusade?" or the like.

- When you've got players facing off against each other, you'll have less personal input into the story. That can be perfectly enjoyable (in fact, it's quite refreshing to run games where you have little idea of whether A or B will happen), but it also means things can get really really unpredictable.

I once ran a 13-player game where one of the players managed to contrive a way to simultaneously blow up two of the four tables. And this was *after* someone crashed a hallucinogenic Valkyrie into one of those tables. This was not a scenario outcome I had even vaguely considered.

~~~~~

There are certainly skills that transfer (improvisation when players do something crazy, fair arbitration, etc, etc), but bear in mind it's not exactly like D&D.
S.Sgt Silva Birgen: "Good evening, we're here from the Adeptus Defenestratus."
Captain L. Rollin: "Nonsense. Never heard of it."
Birgen: "Pick a window. I'll demonstrate".

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