Board Thread:Warhammer 40k Roleplay/@comment-24821739-20140418045408/@comment-6078851-20140420161341

@ chaffen: you may think i'm grasping quickly but none of this is new to me. i've never played but i'm well versed in the concept as i've lived long enough to know a world in which 40k only existed as metal models that had no rules :)

@ sang: using danny's rp's as an example: danny creates the scenario/plotline and then plays in it with the other players. but because danny is playing in it with his own characters when something happens that isn't good (for his characters) he then changes the situation in some way to benefit his characters, but in doing that the rp becomes biased in his favour, and to the annoyance of other players. the same goes for every rp where the creator also plays - the rp's will always be biased towards the character/s of the creator.

in those type of rp's, after the main plot is devised and people have started, the players tend to do whatever they want ("we're going here and doing this, and now we're going there and doing that" sort of thing), or do something they think is epic but breaks about a dozen rules of the universe (i do see the appeal but that makes it not 40k). but when an rp has a gamesmaster, then the gamesmaster takes the role of all the hostile forces, as well as making sure that the 'laws of the setting' are adhered to. however, even though the gm is responsible for so much in the rp, the gm isn't actually a player. the focus of the gm is providing events and problems for the players to tackle, while the overall focus of the rp is the development of players' characters - how they surmount obstacles/enemies, the development of the character, and gaining abilities/equipment. the gm takes all this into account in determining the paths available to the players. to use a similar idea - videogame rpg's: you control a character that travels through a world (in a gm rp the gm is the world) gaining experience, abilities and equipment, and the amount of experience, abilities and equipment determines what the character is capable of doing.

as chaffeen said gm's maintain the story and universe, so the laws of 40k are strictly maintained which in turn keeps up the believability of the scenario.

i think another big difference between the rp's is player versus player (pvp). the rp's done so far have almost exclusively been pvp, and this is a big issue when it comes to breaking the laws of 40k - 2 players have characters going against each other and neither wants, or accepts, that their own character can die, and so starts the "well if you do that then i'm doing this/you can't do that 'cause i did the other thing" shenanigans. gm rp's are almost always players versus gamesmaster, although i imagine pvp could be done relatively simply, but because of the gm there are no biased disputes between players - the gm sticks as closely as possible to the realistic (in terms of 40k). plot-armour is all well and good but when overused it gets really tedious really fast - even if marneus calgar went up against a carnifex the laws of 40k dictate, almost demand, that the carnifex will be picking power armour from it's teeth for a week :P

this is a bit long sang but i hope it makes things a little clearer.