Warhammer 40,000: Imperial Knights

[HairyHeretic]

*sighs wistfully*  Oh, to be young and have a lifetime of roleplaying ahead of me!

Yeah, that's it. 

In many ways, 40K back then was simpler, not having had decades of accumulated work - but there was also a lot more nuance in much of what was there.

It also had Inquisitor Obiwan Sherlock Clouseau 

If you remember the Sensei, I'll definitely be impressed :)

[ThisOneGal]

I remember the Sensei.

Even allowing that all the characters are of equal rank, a Knight force would have someone in charge of any given mission, even if who that was might change from mission to mission. If the group gets into a discussion on a given course of action, someone has to be able to break any deadlocks

Consensus is definitely preferable, but isn't always possible.  If a tie-breaking vote is required, then something like a rotating "your faction arranged this particular mission, so you have final responsibility" role could make sense.  Every mission, someone new gets the casting vote, should one be required.

Or there could be formal ranks within a clear command structure.  Or the less-certain ranks of a social structure.  Or all three systems at once, to make RP as complicated as possible....

Honestly I do like going all matrix management on them and having social ranks, military ranks and mission ranks, just to get them in the headspace of being part of a thousand years of nobility with all its traditions and nonsense.

[Outcast]

I dimly recalled the Sensei - but had to look them up to check.  I see that my garbled memories arose in part from the wildly garbled original source material.    Those Realm of Chaos books always seemed like they could really have done with another few months of editing....

Honestly I do like going all matrix management on them and having social ranks, military ranks and mission ranks, just to get them in the headspace of being part of a thousand years of nobility with all its traditions and nonsense.

I am seriously tempted to try to convert you to the One True Faith that is Fading Suns: a science-fantasy setting that stood at odds with pretty much everything Games Workshop had fallen into by the time that it was published.    In summary, it's been described as "like the good bits of Dune" - guilds, neo-feudal aristocrats, religious sects, and more.

But what put me in mind of it at this point is that the first edition had a very detailed system of benefits you could buy for your character, including noble ranks... which could then be modified for bastardy, being a black sheep, the title being only nominal (because your family had lost all associated lands), and so on.  And wealth, of course, did not necessarily go with rank...

Ahem.  Anyway: it'd be simple enough to list ranks of Knightly operators in whatever degree of detail you wanted to make available to PCs (from squires up to varying degrees of Knights-Banneret, or the like), perhaps with the addition of modifiers like "bastard, but the only child who was available to bond with the Knight in an emergency" or whatever you want to add as ways to even things out between PCs.

[Sludgewave]

Hmmmmm, this is really tempting.  
I've been a bit Knight-brained since reading Assassinorum: Kingmaker not too long ago.

[HairyHeretic]

I dimly recalled the Sensei - but had to look them up to check.  I see that my garbled memories arose in part from the wildly garbled original source material.    Those Realm of Chaos books always seemed like they could really have done with another few months of editing....

I am seriously tempted to try to convert you to the One True Faith that is Fading Suns: a science-fantasy setting that stood at odds with pretty much everything Games Workshop had fallen into by the time that it was published.    In summary, it's been described as "like the good bits of Dune" - guilds, neo-feudal aristocrats, religious sects, and more.

But what put me in mind of it at this point is that the first edition had a very detailed system of benefits you could buy for your character, including noble ranks... which could then be modified for bastardy, being a black sheep, the title being only nominal (because your family had lost all associated lands), and so on.  And wealth, of course, did not necessarily go with rank...

RoC were broken as hell, but so much fun   The only fair fight for a RoC chaos army was another RoC chaos army. 

Funniest reward I ever rolled was for a champion of Khorne who got Fear of Blood. For every wound done within 2" he had to make a Cool check or pass out. He'd rock up with his 14 or so attacks, berserk frenzy into the enemy, slaughter all round him, scream like a little girl and faint for the next few turns.

Fading Suns I remember, though I never played it. I do recall it had a pretty solid background though.

[Outcast]

RoC were broken as hell, but so much fun  The only fair fight for a RoC chaos army was another RoC chaos army.

I've wondered if the warband mechanics from RoC could be adapted to a forum game: a clear primary PC for people to focus on for RP, with simple(ish) systems for the successes and failures of their band of followers...

But if I remember right, the Senseis weren't the only things to have utterly-contradictory descriptions in the two halves of RoC.  It wasn't just the balance that was out of whack, it was the internal lack of any apparent attempt at consistency....

Funniest reward I ever rolled was for a champion of Khorne who got Fear of Blood. For every wound done within 2" he had to make a Cool check or pass out. He'd rock up with his 14 or so attacks, berserk frenzy into the enemy, slaughter all round him, scream like a little girl and faint for the next few turns.

*laughs*  That is really quite impressive. 

Fading Suns I remember, though I never played it. I do recall it had a pretty solid background though.

Created by some of White Wolf's (former) leading lights, it was even more historically-rooted than WFRP had originally been.  They put serious effort into every bit of the original setting, and tried to do something fairly new in RP (the 'passion play' concept).

Back in the day, the Yahoo fans' mailing list could be dominated by discussions of the nature of different forms of serfdom and the differences in monasticism between Orthodoxy and Rome, as often as it featured debates on how inter-stellar communication was handled and how queues to use a jumpgate would be organised.

As someone dabbling in academia alongside my roleplaying, I absolutely adored it.

There's a new edition out now (courtesy of Ulisses Spiele), with Bill Bridges once again on board - so we might at long last get to learn what he had in mind for the overarching metaplot - but as with most such things, it's been made more accessible and has thus lost some of the nuance and complexity that so delighted the uber-nerds on that old mailing list. 

[ThisOneGal]

Hmmmmm, this is really tempting. 
I've been a bit Knight-brained since reading Assassinorum: Kingmaker not too long ago.

Give in to temptation~

[Krayz]

You can put me down as interested 

If you end up with too many players, I don't mind giving up my spot, but I think that this could be fun. Will need to brush up on Knights and such a little bit, but I understand the premise.

[TheRambler]

Huge 40k nerd, and I have built and painted some knights myself. I think they are just super cool. 

Would we all be from the same Grandhouse? Or would this be something where each of us is trying to prove ourselves? 

[ThisOneGal]

You can put me down as interested 

If you end up with too many players, I don't mind giving up my spot, but I think that this could be fun. Will need to brush up on Knights and such a little bit, but I understand the premise.

Glad to have your interest. ^_^

Huge 40k nerd, and I have built and painted some knights myself. I think they are just super cool.

Would we all be from the same Grandhouse? Or would this be something where each of us is trying to prove ourselves?

More akin to the latter. Players can be from the same house if they want, but I was going to leave the details of each Knight's house to the players. You're all part of the same country and serve the same hegemon. The scale of the house you serve is up to you. You are currently serving on the frontier, so you need a plausible reason to be there, but you could be part of a house with dozens of Knight machines or the last Knight pilot and machine left.

[Outcast]

I am woefully short of spoons and time and...

...so of course I am trying to work out coats of arms and possible house histories and....

 

[ThisOneGal]

Even if you don't have the spoons/time to join, you'd make a wonderful advisor/observer.

[Outcast]

Even if you don't have the spoons/time to join, you'd make a wonderful advisor/observer.

       

Awwwww!

       


Though the vast majority of material on it will be irrelevant (since the world isn't part of the Empire, and has no idea whether any such political entity might exist), are the Knight-specific pages on the 40K Fandom wiki suitable sources of information?  In particular, the page on the Throne Mechanicum and its impact on scions who survive the bonding process, stands out.

Something that not only haunts you with elements of every past pilot's persona, but amplifies what you felt at the time you underwent the rite of bonding, and modifies you to be an honour-bound protector... that's going to have an impact on character creation and RP. 

[ThisOneGal]

Yeah, the wiki should be fine as a source of info. I prefer Lexicanum, but while the entries there are better sourced, they are shorter. 1d6chan (NSFW) is also useful, though of dubious accuracy.

Something that not only haunts you with elements of every past pilot's persona, but amplifies what you felt at the time you underwent the rite of bonding, and modifies you to be an honour-bound protector... that's going to have an impact on character creation and RP

Yeah, I'm really interested in seeing people go with that aspect.

[HairyHeretic]

So do we post characters up here, or are we setting up an OOC thread?

[ThisOneGal]

Post characters here please. I'll get a formatting guide setup in a moment.

[ThisOneGal]

Okay, there's a character sheet template up now. Go nuts.

[Rashol]

REPOST (WIP)

Name: Emily "the beggar knight" and "Singer" or "Old Reliable"
Age: 25
Physical Description:

Personality Overview: Her personality is at odds with that of Orrem. She respects his whisper, but where he is all pride and 'the greatness' of the house, she is a little more grounded in that there's barely any castle, a lot of the servants are gone, and only familial loyalty holds those who remain. It doesn't help that she is the daughter of Leoric "the weakling" who never rose to the pilots chair himself. She considers Orrem a blowhard who could do with a bit more caution. But one thing they both share is a profound respect and adoration of Old Reliable itself.

Your House: Emily's house, the de Vanspyr's are much reduced in circumstance. The laws of chivalry preventing its subsumption have held, so far. There are barely enough serfs to keep the knight maintained, and barely enough to provide a credible presence for the household. The foundry has taken to recycling whatever it can in order to replace parts and repairs.

What happened to the previous pilot of your knight?
Sir Orrem de Vanspyr "last of the Great de Vanspyrs, son of Tuul, son of Furem," died of system shock after participating in tourney, having named no successor.

Emily was 'on field' at the time and succeeded to his position simply because she was the first de Vanspyr they could reach with the appropriate training.

How did your Ritual of Becoming go?

[Outcast]

Hugely stressed and really short on spoons, but I wanted to show this thread a little love.  Nothing at all to do with my having spent a good bit of time researching and thinking about possibilities for this, of course.... 

Name:  Amalia Morrow
Age:  26
Physical Description:  Blonde, elfin features, honed & athletic.
Personality Overview:  Driven, curious, powerful sense of noblesse oblige... somewhat haunted, with a significant temptation to enjoy the perks of fame and rule.

Your House:  House Morrow - very old documents suggest that it descends from settlement-ship officers called de Moreau.  Chosen for Knight service because they already had a reputation for honour and service, they have become obsessed with such things even by the standards of other houses.  Once a house of real significance, their determination to honour old debts and obligations has reduced most of their Knights to near-uselessness.
Motto:  We remember
Colours:  Black and white primary; purple (or tones of deep blue) and silver as highlights or alternate outfits.
Heraldy:  A white crow flying on a black field.
Rank:  Knight-banneret (nominal - none of the other Knights notionally under her command are mobile; some are little more than power cores and radios).  Other houses are likely to treat her as a simple knight, especially since she's the most junior of House Morrow's handful of active pilots.

What happened to the previous pilot of your knight?  Sir Orfeo was assassinated by a sniper while hunting (on horseback, not in his Knight), shortly before he was due to marry a much-pursued heiress.
How did your Ritual of Becoming go?  Very well, in part: having been raised to fight human-level duels to defend the family's honour, Amalia was already very much in tune with the Throne's views on honour and service.  She was also more combat-hardened than many who had gone before... but was still nowhere near prepared for the echoes of many previous pilots' experiences of maiming and death, nor for the horrors of full-scale war.  The lingering echoes of that night still haunt her.

Knight:  Ancalagon (named for a supposedly-historical dragon, from Earth's ancient past)
Personality:  One of the deepest issues Amalia has gained in her new role concerns strategy and tactics: for much of its existence, her steed was a close-quarters specialist, outfitted with thunderfirst as well as sword, and heat and flame weapons for roasting monsters (or infantry) at point-blank range.  In recent generations, however, it has served in a more conventional long-range and 'generalist' role - and the split between the ardent beliefs of different generations of her forebears can sometimes be hard to cope with.  Ancalagon's divided opinions usually serve to provide Amalia with options she can choose between, but occasionally it winds up in fervent disagreement with itself.
Opinion of the Ancestors:  'Too young and too green by far!'  'We should make use of her swordsmanship, and revert to a melee role.'  'With her speed and agility, she's perfectly suited to our role as a sniper.'  'She has the training and the wit to have real potential, and was one of us even before she survived the Becoming.'
Greatest Triumph:  Taking down a mutated behemoth in solo combat, after it had breached the walls of an allied city - then presenting its skull as a gift to that house, rather than retaining it as a trophy for Morrow's own glory.
Worst Disaster:  Helplessly watching flying horrors pass overhead to ravage Morrow's own lands, having misjudged the battle and used up all long-range ammunition on lesser opponents.

Primary Weapon - Right Arm: Reaper chainsword
Primary Weapon - Left Arm  Rapid-fire battle cannon
  Attached:  Heavy stubber
Carapace:  weapon slot presently vacant
Tertiary Weapon:  Meltagun
Defensive System:  Ion shield

[ThisOneGal]

Hugely stressed and really short on spoons, but I wanted to show this thread a little love.  Nothing at all to do with my having spent a good bit of time researching and thinking about possibilities for this, of course.... 

I love Amalia and Ancalagon!
Thank you for putting in the effort to create a character, even (and especially) if you end up not having the spoons to join.

[Outcast]

I love Amalia and Ancalagon!
Thank you for putting in the effort to create a character, even (and especially) if you end up not having the spoons to join.

 

You're welcome.  There've been ideas rolling around in the empty space between my ears for some time, and I wanted to show you some support.  It's an interesting concept for a game!

 

[MetroFallout]

Having trouble figuring out my character's look but here's most of the character and Knight.

Name: “The Unicorn” Sir Judeau Asherton of House Sept
Age: 25
Physical Description: Average in physicality, reasonably athletic
Personality Overview: Compassionate, empathetic and with a burning zeal for protecting those without the means to do so themselves, Sir Judeau is the spitting picture of chivalry but behind all of that is a soul with many insecurities and thoughts of inadequacy that he pushes down as best he can, salved by the encouragement from Canondigue
Your House: nomadic House Sept, functionally a Freeblade.
Previous Pilot: One of the last scions of House Sept and a Pilot of significantly more renown, Sir Amuroius Rayek, he was secretly a Zeta-level Psyker who ended up disappearing without a trace after pushing back enemy forces on his own at Axis Fields in his final battle, leaving the Knight behind to be collected by his retainers.
Ritual of Becoming: Sir Judeau never truly harboured any thoughts of becoming nobility and a Knight Pilot, the responsibility pretty much fell upon his lap almost literally. After the disappearance of Sir Amuroius Rayek, House Sept was lucky enough in their wandering and assistance of other fiefdoms to not encounter much in the way of enemy actions that demanded the use of their inoperable Knight due to a distinct lack of pilots that Canondigue deemed worthy until the House’s luck ran out. During the attack that threatened to destroy House Sept for good, Judeau Asherton found himself drawn towards the Knight after a dream he had the night before while the fighting continued to intensify around him. As there was no real point in not trying to get the Knight going to try and turn things around, Judeau proceeded to try and get onto the Throne Mechanicum to pilot the Knight. As luck would have it, because unbeknownst to Judeau that he’s a psyker, Canondigue found him to have the same potential as Sir Amuroius and deemed him worthy, the battle was won with the power of the Knight and the rest was history.

Heraldry: A Crimson Unicorn as a symbol on a circular sea of stars as a field
Rank and Title: Complicated (Born to an abdicated noble of House Sept, Line was then convinced to be re-established and reinstated when Judeau was psychically drawn to attempt piloting the Knight decades after Rayek’s disappearance and successfully bonded in the Ritual of Becoming), Unsanctioned Zeta-level Psyker
Knight Personalty:
The Knight refers to herself as Canondigue and is rather warm and encouraging but behind the warmth is the scorching source of heat, a red-hot poker fresh from stoking the fires of war. Canondigue is, perhaps, a little too eager to get into the fray to protect those in the Imperium that she deems to be under her protection and destroy the enemy but does concern herself with the wellbeing of Judeau and her protectorates.
Throne Mechanicum: Adequate, untapped potential as a bulwark.
Knight Age: A Questoris Knight originally built on the principles of the Gallant-Pattern with two Thunderstrike Gauntlets and handheld weapons instead, this primarily white Knight with hints of blue, red and yellow is a bit of an oddity from the Age of Strife.
Greatest Triumph: Pushing back the enemy at Axis Fields solo.
Darkest Shame: Losing Sir Amuroius Rayek to some mysterious phenomena immediately after the greatest triumph that Canondigue did not understand.

Left Primary: Thunderstrike Gauntlet, Handheld Twin-linked Lascannon “Fusil à Faisceau de Particules” held in Gauntlet
Right Primary: Thunderstrike Gauntlet, Handheld non-corporeal blade Power Sword held in Gauntlet
Carapace Secondary: N/A
Hull Tertiary: Head-mounted Heavy Stubber with light Anti-Air capability primarily for use against missiles and light enemy air support.

[ThisOneGal]

Having trouble figuring out my character's look but here's most of the character and Knight.

No worries, and welcome aboard!