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Adults only: grim dark dystopian sci-fi fantasy. We will be making great use of the Megaverse all things Warhammer.

Game philosophy: I love creative types who ask lots of questions about the game setting, the physical location, and use that information to make wise decisions based on what their characters know. We are not our characters, its a team effort between the GM and the player to conceptualize what the character knows. The GM owns the setting and part of what we know as individuals is experienced through a life time of interactions that cannot be summarized into a notecard or character sheet. As a GM running a WH40K game, I have read most of the Horus Heresy and several of the current 40K series, in total around 50 novels in the last 12 months. I do not state this to brag, I assume there are others who have far more given the size of the Black Library. That is my point. I am interested in meta gamers who want to enjoy real home cooked role playing. You can be a part of the story altering the fate of the Galaxy. I want players who want to consume this IP or who have already begun their journey.
Roleplaying is more important than any bonus or extra attack, by far. XP will be rewarded as normal but bonuses are heavily slanted toward good role playing. Smart use of skills, abilities, and powers are also rewarded heavily.

I do not create on rails games, the setting, the NPC's, current events, politics all create opportunities for the characters. The interaction between Player motivation and NPC motivations creates the adventures. I am a heavy reader and pull complex characters from the many science fiction and fantasy novels I read. All players in any active session will be expected to pick an alignment that helps progress the game for everyone. You can choose anything but your decisions may limit how many scenes you participate in.
I heavily encourage each player to help me develop the game, its a collaborative experience and if done right we can make a very special experience for everyone. That is my goal, always. In that light I need players who want to contribute and that means we create reasons for the group to stay together when needed to smooth the game experience and limit the number of scenes. If we design good characters to begin with, this becomes easy. Alignment matters, obviously, but more than that, aligning the motivations of the group matters more. For good role playing we need good scenes.
Character trees: Using character trees allows each player to take ownership over more of the game territory, this creates a positive feedback and a richer game experience for everyone. If you want, if you feel ready, and are committed to upping the ante you will be allowed to create multiple characters all who all know one another and relate in the greater story. Each of those characters will have NPC associations and when the campaign progresses along far enough this allows the group to participate in EPIC events changing the course of the Megaverse. Think Squads of Main Characters™ with companies of NPC's.

How are games run: Each game is broken up into scenes and the GM starts each new session with cards laying out the characters who are in that scene with notes as to where we left off. We are very good at creating creative reasons to bring in or exit characters, do not sweat this.. At the end of each session 5-10 minutes will be given to make notes for where your character left off in the scene.
To make the game more enjoyable and less grindy each player will be allowed to design up to 3-6 characters from low to epic level. This also allows you to participate in more scenes. Balance is a matter of organizing scenes, character trees and good players make this easy.
If you cannot make a session your character will be removed from the scene via creative measures unless you allow the GM to NPC that character. You will never be made to play a character or force progression by being pressured to allow a character to be NPC'd. Simple as, its your creative decision, you are the executive of your company of characters.

Obviously the more days you show up you can play in more scenes and progress your characters and participate in more Epic Adventures!
The game takes place Saturday or Sunday Afternoon twice monthly. Schedules go up the first Friday of each month for the next month, days are negotiable, if we have more players in an active scene already willing to commit to a given day we will schedule those players scenes first on that day, Saturday or Sunday. The game lasts 2 hours with 1 hour early session to develop characters, ask questions, be creative, shoot the poop and strategize getting your characters into scenes. We are on the EAST Coast and thus scheduling is in EST, most game sessions are scheduled between 1PM EST to 6PM EST and again last 2 hours with a 1 hour pre-game.

Looking for 2-6 players at this time. Discord and a microphone is required. System knowledge is not needed. Roleplaying and being a good game detective asking those in game, in character, questions is what we want. Its a plus if you have read Warhammer 40K Novels, Sourcebooks for the wargaming experience, and other popular media, but its not needed at all whatsoever. What is needed is creativity. Building good characters. Making RPG friends. We adopt rules that make sense, everything is negotiable during the early session or via PM.

Discord is private, reply here or message me and I will reply via PM with a link. We will discuss your ideas and I will explain where the game is at and see if you are interested and if this will be a good fit.

TL;DR

44 year old GM who used to run 10 man games regularly needs a few players for a D20 based system. I am system agnostic and can be convinced to adopt any rule that makes sense or even change how things are done. I have used sooo many systems through the years and this is simply a base more of my regular players can relate too, I am sure many of you can appreciate that. Our games tend toward Mega.

I wish you luck with this! It's clear you put alot of thought into it. It's not for me personally as I'm working on my own thing but it's good to see it regardless.

 warboss wrote:
I wish you luck with this! It's clear you put alot of thought into it. It's not for me personally as I'm working on my own thing but it's good to see it regardless.

Thank you! It is not easy recruiting, especially if you are system agnostic looking for creative types focused on Role Playing.

Our current Adventure is a Space Hulk that just popped out of the warp in the early stages of the Psychic awakening.
Ordo Malleus Agents and Grey Knight characters are present in the current scene.

In my case, I tried convincing folks locally to try out a loyalist Black Crusade campaign (I previously ran Deathwatch and wanted all the power levels together) as well as a half-hearted attempt for WanG unsuccessfully. I've looked through Imperium Maledictus and it seems decent but I haven't tried for a third time locally to start something up as my general enthusiasm for 40k has slowly decreased since 6th edition. I've been more focused on a custom rules light system regardless in the recent past.

 warboss wrote:
In my case, I tried convincing folks locally to try out a loyalist Black Crusade campaign (I previously ran Deathwatch and wanted all the power levels together) as well as a half-hearted attempt for WanG unsuccessfully. I've looked through Imperium Maledictus and it seems decent but I haven't tried for a third time locally to start something up as my general enthusiasm for 40k has slowly decreased since 6th edition. I've been more focused on a custom rules light system regardless in the recent past.

Sounds a lot like my own experiences. Table Top War gaming has definitely taken the front seat on the IP, but its just too clunky to adapt for serious Role -Playing. Dark Heresy and Wrath are IMHO not very well fleshed out.

Systems in general are an anchor for your game, when they ground the game and create enough realism to help suspend disbelief and give an element of chance, they are good, but when players turn the game into rules lawyering the system or feeling aggrieved for not being granted an ability that crosses the line of the narrative, that is obviously bad. My games incentivize creative types who want to RP first and learn the system second.

For that purpose I like light weight systems to introduce players and advanced options for players that enjoy edgy combat.
For each player we create a 3x5 combat card with total bonuses for common attacks/abilities. This way you need only add one number to arrive at the final number which goes up against the challenge rating. If you want to do something novel a quick bonus or penalty will be applied and we move on.

Game information from my Discord Server.

Most of my players are old DND players, so most of this is adapted from DND and Palladium games. A character sheet will have the following information.
D20 Attack Rolls. D10 true initiative. (Str, Int, Wis, Dex, Con, Char) Character info: Age. Race. Sex. DR: (Threat Level/ Difficulty challenge). Skills/abilities/powers. CRP (Combat Resource Points) Dodge/Parry/Auto-Parry.
Rolls are adversarial, that means if you attempt to parry an attack you must match or exceed the roll of the attacker, including total bonuses.
System guts:

Damage Resistance:
DR replaces Mega damage from Palladium and THACO from DND. The first Digit of DR represents the Level of Threat needed to harm a given armor or supernatural creature. A light weight enviro-suit Armor with stealth systems and which enhance the users speed might have DR 119 which requires weapons with threat level 1 or higher and a roll of 19 or greater including bonuses on a D20. A hit will damage the armor. An armor with DR215 requires threat level 2 and a roll of 15 or greater, this would be something larger and bulkier, thus being harder to threaten but easier to hit. The second number represents the challenge rating for the attack role. The second value will change based on if the armor provides traction control, enhances a users normal movement, or otherwise makes it slippery or hard to target in combat, ECM etc. An armor that is harder to target has a high second number, a suit with very dense armor has a high first number. Unarmored is T0, light armor T1, heavy armor T2, and vehicle armor is T3. Exceptions are always in play when it comes to certain circumstances or special abilities being able to do damage across threat levels. (edited)

CRP (Combat Resource Points) The more combat oriented a class is and the further along the character is in their training, the more CRP they will accrue. ie, starting CRP and CRP progression is class specific. ex. Grey Knights are an advanced combat oriented class, they get 4CRP at Level 1 and 5 per level. A Guardsman, a basic combat class, would get 1CRP and 1 per Level. CRP represents professional combat training non-combat classes do not get CRP. CRP can be spent each round to 1) Increase an Attack/Dodge/Parry roll, 2) Increase damage on an attack, 3) Defer damage taken during the round. CRP regen at the per lv rate, per round. The Grey Knight in this example regens 5 points per round and can accrue an amount equal to his level. CRP are also regenerated while in Guard; for every attack not taken during the combat round the Combatant gains 1 CRP. CRP can also be used to gain Timing attacks for certain Classes that get access to those combat abilities. ex. A disarm is a kind of timing attack. A riposte is a kind of timing attack.

True initiative:
A true initiative system is one in which events in the attack round all have a place in order depending on the timing of each action. Players roll 1-10 as their base initiative roll. Each weapon or action has an associated speed and this is added to the roll. John is using a pump shotgun with a weapon speed of 5, he rolled a 2 on D10, his place in the order of events is at beat 7. Luke is using a handgun with speed 2 and has an initiative bonus due to his gunslinger abilities (-4). He rolls a 1, we add 2, which gives us 3 but then subtract 4 due to his bonuses arriving at -1. If that is the lowest number in the combat scene then that is the first beat of the combat round. If another player has some ability even faster and with total bonuses has a lower negative number, then they start the round.

Balance:
When a character has balance they gain the defensive and offensive bonuses of dexterity, positional dominance, and access to guarded defenses. When off balance you can only use an action to regain balance and while off balance all successful attacks crit. Some abilities allow you to exploit off balance characters stunning them or even gaining surprise for the purposes of backstab
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I have a very crunchy hand to hand combat system I have developed that, honestly, I never use because it would demand players commit to learning it, ala a board game, and that is not really where I want to take it. As it stands now, players really do not need to know any of this, I manage the combat rounds, I have a copy of everyone's combat cards, I will help you be well represented in each combat turn.
DR is my own invention, at least in this iteration. I usually just steal all my ideas, but if someone knows a source with a similar idea, maybe I stole it unconciously. Till then I will assume its fairly novel, lol.
My intent with DR: I wanted to consolidate variables to make it easier to fit on a combat card, not make things more complex. With that in mind, I am always open to ideas or to be influenced by other systems. The spirit of my system is always, make it easier while maintaining realism.