I would personally like to see chaos shown in their full light also. They should have an advantage over their loyalist bretheren. Sure a space marine is an almost unstoppable fighting machine, but a chaos marine is one of those, but with almost a thousand years experience in general. Now thats scary.

Nice roundup by the way Thror.

Thanks Dave - it isn't meant to be the law laid down, just my thoughts on what the races should be like to fight.

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Thror Clawhammer
Is it sad that I spent hours trying to think of a signature?

Great idea. I like the 40k fluff a lot, but historically what has put me off has been the (IMHO) overcomplexity of the rules (and coversely the unrealistic and simplistic gameplay) and the need to build up a big army.

If a LO40k ruleset was developed I'd be in there like a shot.

To my mind the essence of each race should be incorporated, but if some of the complexity was lost in the process then so much the better! Seriously, who wants to try and keep track of the Orb of Whatnot and the Dumbells of Soandso and that one counteracts the other ... life's too short! "Keep it simple" is my motto!

There could be areas within the LOTR approach that could be refined without increasing complexity - for instance greater use could be made of the Fight characteristic. In LotR so many factions have base 3 Fight that it means that in any large fight draws are very common. Which detracts from the game in my view. If some thought was given to the ranking of F, and maybe expanding the range so that there were more options than F1 to F10 - say F1 to F20, then we could increase the sophistication of the mechanics without increasing their complexity.

We could produce a set of comparative stats to start with - so a base human in LotR is F3/4+ S3 D3 A1 W1 C3. For LO40k if that became F6/4+ S3 D3 A1 W1 C3, and other races were then varied from that, it might be a place to start.

An Imperial Guard soldier might be therefore@

F6/4+ S3 D4 A1 W1 C3 as he is a normal human with basic armour.

Ceramite armour would add a further point of D, Terminator armour 2 points and so forth.

The key thing is that we have upped the ante across the board so we are talking about base humans from the 41st millennium - so 1 point armour is actually more sophisticated than LotR armour, which in the 41st millenium would count as no armour at all for purposes of defence against lasers and the like. All we need consider is a heirarchy and how relatively the types of armour (or weapons, or whatever characteristic) compares to others in the same frame of reference.

Also when it comes to planning, we shouldn't go overboard. Start simple - so Imperial Guard (as they are basic unmodified humans) and Orks, and of course "normal" Space Marines (because they are eveyone's favourites) to begin with. Then (say) extend to other Xenos races and then Chaos. Way down the line would come Dreadnoughts and vehicles and Heavy Weapons - as these would have limited application in a skirmish game.

The way LotOW has developed was to begin with 4 styles of posse, and then later on add extra rules for banners, cavalry, Gatling guns etc. No need to try and do it all at once!

Hi, I was a bit bored so was browsing around threads I don't normally visit, anyway I found this one (no surprises there) and have actually played a 40K Battle Companies campaign this spring which worked wxtremely well. In our campaign we all had a basic Guard company and slugged it out amongst each other and nids. You can find the rules here if you are still interested: http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/LOTRvariants/

Cheers
dave

Like Dave, I was also trolling the murky depths of the forum....Is this project still being kicked around, or has it gone the way of the Dodo?

Jon

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Respectfully,
Jonathan

Do what is right, love mercy, and walk humbly

Battle Companies

It has pretty much died a quiet death Jon, but only because I've not had the time to devote to it. And since Hithero has found a LOTR rule variant already I saw no point in trying to develop another flavour of it myself. But if anyone else want to have a go at doing it, then great.

I'd really enjoy playing a 40K Battle Company game using LOTR skirmish rules - a platoon of Marines cut off from the main force, battling their way through an swarm of Tyranids; or perhaps a Tau recon team coming across a group of Necron Warriors. Could be a lot of fun.

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Dagster

Some of you may know me from my various postings over at The Last Alliance website. I hadn't been by the one ring in a while so I figured I'd give it a look and saw this thread so I figured it was time to join.

Anyway, I have a very functioning system for a 40k LOTR variant. The system itself is designed around keeping most of the core mechanics from both games intact while adapting it to the LOTR variant. I have play tested (what we have done so far) numerous times and it works very well. Some of the conversion mechanics are not finished yet. I figure what I'll do is post what I have finished in this link and if the feedback is good, I can post what else we're working on and where we're at and everybody here could contribute or make suggestions as we go about hashing out the rest of the mechanics.

It will take me a day or so to compile the notes, but I'll post up what we have as soon as possible. I think, if you play it once or twice, you'll really like the work. We don't play 40K normally anymore, we play it through this variant...that's how much we like it.

Be back soon.

Commoner

Excellent thanks commoner, looking forward to seeing what you've done.

Welcome to the One Ring too, I enjoy your posts over at TLA and its good to see you here too.

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Dagster