Voroxpete

So, all of the 40K systems follow on from the rough rules template of 2nd edition WFRP, which is a really solid foundation, albeit a bit long in the tooth by modern system design standards. There are 5 games and they all share the same basic core mechanics:

• Dark Heresy - Small teams doing investigative work for the inquisition
• Rogue Trader - Run a mobile heavily armed nation state doing whatever the fuck you like in space
• Deathwatch - SPESS MEHREENS
• Black Crusade - CHAOS SPESS MEHREENS
• Only War - You're guardsmen, you do war stuff.

Only Rogue Trader ever got a 2nd edition, which made the character creation much more flexible and cleaned up some other system stuff.

Since then, the license and mechanics have ended up in the hands of the same company that made WFRP 4th Edition, and they've given it more or less the same treatment. My recommendation would be to pick up Imperium Maledictum, which is basically a reworked version of Dark Heresy built around expanding out the concept from "You are acolytes working for an Inquisitor" to "You are some kind of peons working for some kind of patron", with the details being a lot more flexible. So you could be members of the ecclesiarchy working for a powerful minister, low level assassins cult members doing hits, low level mechanicus working for a tech priest... Whatever the GM likes. You can still run Dark Heresy in this framework, but with the flexibility to do other things as well.

It's also a cleaner, more modern version of the system, doing away with somewhat archaic ideas like your skill with firearms being a stat just like your strength. It keeps the core ideas of the mechanics, but strips away some cruft and generally creates a cleaner feeling system. My only complaint would be that it badly needs some expansions to up the numbers of available talents (think "Feats" or "Class abilities") as they're kind of the core of how you build a character and right now the small pool feels quite restrictive.

Yeah, "someone said it on Bluesky" isn't exactly a great foundation for an article.

What little I know of MtA lore is nuts. Canonically, the Technomancers (who are basically the Illuminati) faked the moon landing to convince the world that the moon (actually Arcadia, realm of the Fae) is nothing but a dead rock in space. By doing so they leveraged the power of mass unconscious belief to distort reality to actually make Arcadia nothing but a dead rock in space.

Actually, it's fairly likely that the UK is getting the better end of this deal.

First off, the UK is a net importer from the US already. So there's no reason for Trump to even be chasing after them for a deal in the first place. This whole thing is supposed to be about wiping out the US' trade deficits, but the US already runs a surplus with the UK. So why is this their first big "success"?

Second, the UK have been desparately trying to write new free trade agreements since 2016 and Brexit. They've been trying to hammer something out with the US for years, but neither side could agree on terms.

It's very likely that what happened here is Trump needed a win, heard that the UK were eager to make a deal, and just told his underlings to get it done (this idiot can't make it through a security briefing unless they break out the crayons, there's no way he actually reads these deals), and with the sudden urgency from the White House the UK were able to get through some terms the US had previously resisted.

Of course, it's possible the UK got ripped here as well. Like I said, they're badly in need of new trade partners after they fucked their sweet deal with the EU. But the fact that they haven't signed anything with the US previously, despite the urgency, strongly suggests that what they were being offered before wasn't good enough.

East Coast is a good choice too, especially if OP is trying to get away from a hostile political environment. Alberta isn't exactly much of a step up from the US right now.

Yes... The AI bubble. Which is definitely still a thing. Definitely.

• tugs nervously at collar *

This theory comes up every now and then, and they always refuse to answer what happens to your manpower when you shift to cheap, disposable weapons.

Because the answer, of course, is that those cheap, disposable weapons need cheap, disposable humans to operate them.

That's what this is advocating for; human wave tactics.

This whole argument was litigated multiple times over, long before drones became a thing, and the expensive hardware approach keeps coming out on top. Tanks got taken out by anti-tank guns, so we developed better tanks and better tactics. Planes got taken out by missiles, so we developed better planes and better tactics. The same thing is already happening with drones.

Yeah, that episode felt weird and forced. It really didn't seem to fit the overall flow of the season.

These "strongman" are pathetically weak. As soon as Harvard stood up to them they folded like a wet paper bag.

Fear is their weapon. Deny them that and its been proven that they can be beaten. Maybe not easily or without difficulty, but victory is entirely possible.

Its an amazing system if you want your games to feel less like Skyrim and more like Kingdom Come: Deliverance.

But, y'know, with magic and horrifying chaos monstrosities.

As someone who has run every edition of WFRP (really weird how they skipped straight to 4th from 2nd, but let's not get into that) along with Dark Heresy and a bunch of other stuff based on the same core, this is exactly right.

WFRP isn't meant to be "punishing" or "difficult" or whatever other term you want to come up with for "mean to the players." No system should ever be mean to the players by design, that's just bad GMing. You're here to have fun, not shit on people, and any system can be made unfair by just being unfair, that's not an accomplishment.

What WFRP is meant to be is tense. Success and failure rest on a knife edge. Dangerous enemies can be felled by a lucky blow, but by the same token a high level PC can be taken out by a lucky hit from a goblin with a knife. PC's still have plot armour in the form of fate points (representing the universe itself literally looking out for you), but everything feels more dangerous, not because the game is "harder" but because death is only ever a few bad rolls away.

High level WFRP characters will still become very powerful. A top tier fighter can duel three or four enemies at once and come out on top, and that's OK. They should be able to do that, they're a top tier fighter. But even when they hit that kind of power level they'll never feel completely safe even though they'll be able to dispatch most minor opponents with ease.

It's weird, I could have sworn we negotiated a trade deal with the US back in the nineties, and then renegotiated that same deal about eight years back. Who was the president back then? Oh, right...