What I think is the next narrative supplement (that should also include a campaign) after 500 Worlds [ > ] and The Maelstrom [ > ] has been teased.
The New Year Preview – Revealed: The Eye of Terror
https://www.warhammer-community.com/en- ... -of-terror
Games Workshop wrote:
We'll give you the full lowdown as soon as we can. For now though, we can only confirm that these are all part of a new Warhammer 40,000 supplement on the horizon titled Eye of Terror, due out in a few months.
After Raid and Ruin, I figured I had to add the previous campaign to the overworld as well: https://akbattlegrounds.net/w/multivers ... edef4eca9b
Campaign: War on the Vespator Front
https://akbattlegrounds.net/w/multivers ... ator-front
Two trailers to check out, and some tantalizing info. It turns out the campaign is made for 3 alliances of 3-12 players! So that each alliance can have 1-4 players. It'd be great if we could get 12 people to play this, but this seems unlikely as Warhammer probably won't be as popular as Pathfinder. That said, this campaign is quite a ways off, so maybe we'll manage to assemble a crowd until then. Plus new people might join who like tactics more than roleplaying. In any case, the campaign is still playable with 3 people, and one of them can be Cult Intelligence (CI), so really 2 players isn't much to ask for to play this.
Even more excitingly, there seem to be a lot of strategy aspects incorporated in this! Way more than in any 40K campaign I've seen before! Get a load of this:
500 Worlds: Titus – Will you brave a deadly campaign on the war-torn Vespator Front?
https://www.warhammer-community.com/en- ... ator-front
Games Workshop wrote:
Each Alliance will do far more than simply fight for a common cause, as planets need to have infrastructure built upon them, while attacking and defensive battles must be assigned to those best placed to fight them. All of these operations are tracked on the map itself, and you even get a full sticker sheet with all the markers you need so you don't have to go drawing all over it straight away.
Games Workshop wrote:
In each Campaign phase, your fleet will choose from a number of Operations that might see them attacking a neighbouring planet, moving to a more advantageous location, building infrastructure, or sabotaging an opposing Alliance's control over a planet. In this way, players that might not have time to play a game in that phase can still contribute to their Alliance's overall progress.
Naturally, attacking your opponents and playing games of Warhammer 40,000 is the best way to progress in the campaign, and there's much more to do than simply throwing down some models and having at it. Each planet has a number of Theatres that the aggressor can choose to assault, which carry their own twists for the upcoming battle as well as offering recommended terrain to keep things thematic.
The Xenoflora Jungle, for instance, might blanket the battlefield in rage-inducing spores or be so choked with vegetation that units can't Fire Overwatch, giving melee-oriented armies a particular advantage.
Getting very close now, this is almost playable.
I got a very cool background mat so that zooming a bit outside the battlemap in order to capture the entire battlefield doesn't look ass, and you can almost get a little angle on the shot (not shown above) to show off the 3D models. Almost. Might still not be usable, but if it can almost be done here it means that in somewhat larger maps it will be very feasible.
The wall isn't super-cool, but it's much better-looking from the sides than from straight above. I spent quite some time looking for something useful, and there weren't many options. It does the job at any rate.
The 3D Hive Node is nowhere near as detailed as the 2D one, so I am thinking of using the 2D for the sake of the top-down screenshot. It will look much better next to the hyper-detailed models than the basic 3D model.
The sizes are still all off, but I think I have a solution. The units all come "perfectly" scaled next to each other from the repository where dozens of experts have assembled them over years. So the trick is to leave them alone. Take the units as they are, and instead of scaling them, scale the map to fit ONE unit whose size roughly matches the map's squares. And if you do that, all other units should be the right size for the map. The wall doesn't matter, you can scale it until it fits the squares perfectly, because walls come in all sizes. The Hive Node, if we use the 2D one that came with the map, is also perfectly scaled by Games Workshop for this particular map.
I put "perfectly" in quotes for the unit scaling because it's done by experts whose work I am unable to check. But we are talking about hundreds of competitive players who have assembled thousands of miniatures over years. If they can't get it right, no one can. So the trick is to not mess with that part of the equation, because it's the most complex and delicate. Resizing the map and some props is nothing in comparison.
The scale issue will be encountered again and again in the 3D VTTs. Some experts have said that they find it really hard to fine-tune the scale of characters in TaleSpire for example. I am sure we won't even notice that issue. I am just saying it to show that this isn't something that is easily solved or perfected. And with 40K there are some units that are really titanic, the size of a small child, compared to which the Space Marines barely come above its toes. You really need to get the scale right on all that stuff, because angles and lines-of-sight matter, not to mention aesthetics; but it really does look like the competitive scene has done almost all the work for us here.
As for music, we use the same solutions we've been using for Pathfinder.
Just need to figure out rulers and dice-throwing, then rebuild everything from scratch using my latest insights, do a little testing. And it's done. Really one day's work, but I will probably take at least a couple to be sure.
I hope you guys are already thinking tactics!
Now this is what I call motherfucking progress.
It is insane, beautiful, unbelievable fun.
I can spend all day dicking around with it, and I am not even playing.
But there are still issues.
Above all, this is a 3D scene, but the map is so small that if I employ any angle other than top-down, the scene is ruined because you can see beyond the map's edges. This should be less of a problem with larger maps, but we have quite a few small/tutorial ones to get through before we get to the larger ones, and I want at least one great picture from each of them to publish in the forum threads and on the overworld. And the only way I can get it seems to be top-down. Which is a shame because then what's the point of the 3D models? From this angle you wouldn't know if I was using 2D tokens as in Cult Engine 1. This is CE2.9 btw. I will make a thread about it soon and explain all.
Another issue I have that is mostly in my head and no one else will notice is that every object has to be scaled manually, meaning the units, the Hive Node, the walls, everything. And so far I've only been able to scale them by eye, meaning the size relationships between everything aren't accurate. And that's bothering the hell out of me. There's probably a way to make it accurate, but who knows how much research I have to do to figure it out.
This is what I mean when I say perfectionism. I can probably spend days if not weeks obsessing over every detail, during which time we won't be playing. Or I can cut some corners and have it ready tomorrow.
I'll do the reasonable thing and spend a few hours to a couple days max trying to figure accurate scaling, including asking for help from experts, and if I don't manage it I'll just look at many official pictures and try to match the scale as closely as possible by eye, then add "Figure accurate scaling" on my tasklist and leave it for later.
About the angle, I can't think of any solution. It's just a tiny battlemap. The pics will have to be top-down for now.
They look gorgeous even then, don't get me wrong. But these models deserve to be seen in 3D.
P.S. The Tyranid can be animated if we want it to :) But there's a catch (lower model detail).
P.P.S. I moved the earlier dev post from the Battle Honours thread [ > ] to this thread, because it's really a dev post, not a playing post.
I have some news on Battle Honours!
First off, you can see the tag I added to the thread title: 40K10. This means Warhammer 40,000 10th Edition, to distinguish from other editions, but also from subgames/modes of 40K like Kill Team, Necromunda and others we'll be discussing soon, plus of course other tactics games like Marvel: Crisis Protocol etc.
I also added the player names: ysignal vs. Some guy.
Then in the mission page I changed JOIN BATTLE to FOLLOW BATTLE since the battle has been fully subscribed, and the link now goes straight to this thread instead of the Battlemaster forum.
Then I also added the season: Season 10, because that will eventually link to a page that will list all the season's missions like episodes in a TV show.
Plus there's now music! Plus you can now go to the battlefield by clicking "ENTER BATTLEFIELD"! So if you click on the music to play first, and then control-click to enter the battlefield and switch to the new tab, you'll get a pretty good idea of what the battle will feel like. Gameplay!
This is what it looks like at 4K. Note the 40K skulls background which has now also been added to the other map pages. This way no matter how you pan the map, you won't see the anti-immersive grey background again: the skulls will stay there no matter what you do. There's no escape from my metaverse!!! In Cult Engine 2 it won't even let you go further than the edge, so that will be even more immersive when I move the overworld there.
As you can see, the map doesn't include the Tyranid Hive Node, nor the little wall section. The reason is that I am still deciding how to implement them. I can just leave them slapped on in 2D as they were, or I can try to add them in 3D.
This is what the node looks like in 2D:
And I think I can make it out in 3D near the bottom-right of this image:
The above pic is not Cult Engine 3. It's Cult Engine 2.9. Haven't talked about it before, it's an early 3D prototype Cult Engine that I thought we'd never need. But it turns out it has certain advantages over CE3, so I am evaluating whether it'd make sense to play at least the first mission there, if not indeed many/all of the official ones.
Whatever I decide, it will be for the best, and I'll lay out all the reasons for you.
TL;DR: All overworld-side preparations are finished, and the only task remaining is to import the 2 miniatures plus wall and Hive Node to one of two engines. Just have to decide which one. And then we start.
I added the campaign to the overworld and the Codex! It looks smashing, if I may say so myself! Check it out: https://akbattlegrounds.net/w/multivers ... edef4eca9b
Campaign: Raid and Ruin
https://akbattlegrounds.net/w/multivers ... d-and-ruin
Check out the two trailers! You can even start them simultaneously for a pretty cool effect. The first one is just for the leader! He costs as much as a full-price Steam game, ergo he gets his own trailer.
Now you might say isn't it better to withhold content from the overworld until players have unlocked it and can play it? Absolutely. That's the best way. However, Insomnia is still a game news site, and of course I will report on this stuff because it's the best stuff coming out these days. So it's not like people will be able to avoid it. You're seeing it one way or another, so it might as well go on the overworld to start populating it with cool things and get us hyped. Ultimately, with my approach we are getting the best of both worlds: The early-season stuff needs to be painstakingly unlocked one by one, by playing all the content, so you never know what comes next; while at the same time we're following the latest news and putting it on the map to get us motivated to play all the content. And note that there are multiple paths to follow, so people will have to guess how to seek their desired goals, including this campaign.
So now there's some content to check out while listening to "Astropath"! More is coming asap.
And now you know where all this stuff takes place and can follow along, to an extent, as I present the news on the site. You'll be able to follow along even better once I start building out the Codex entries, so that you can look up location names like "Maelstrom", or character and faction names, etc. I mean you already learned something about the Maelstrom: that it's pirate-heaven.
P.S. I use the crossed swords marker to designate standalone missions, and the crossed swords with shield for crusades/campaigns. Not sure btw about the distinction between the two. The first four narrative expansions for Season 10 were called crusades, and it is only with the last two that they seem to be switching to calling them campaigns. I have no idea if it's just a naming convention or if there are substantive changes. I'll know when I get 500 Worlds [ > ] in my hands, which was the first to be called a campaign. More precisely these last two book collections are called narrative expansions that contain a campaign, among other things.
Revealed today, the next narrative expansion after 500 Worlds [ > ].
The New Year Preview – Enter the Lair of the Tyrant
https://www.warhammer-community.com/en- ... the-tyrant
Games Workshop wrote:
The Maelstrom: Lair of the Tyrant, is the next narrative supplement coming to Warhammer 40,000. It begins at the centre of the galaxy as vulnerable worlds are pillaged by traitors and xenos, and great heroes must brave this nightmare realm of the Maelstrom.
Games Workshop wrote:
Like 500 Worlds: Titus, this expansion consists of four books stored inside a decorative slipcase, full of rules and lore detailing an entirely new war zone in the heart of the Imperium where Huron Blackheart and his Red Corsairs have launched a vicious raid into Humanity's underbelly.
The extensive background lore book covers many of the region's most notorious figures, from Huron himself and Prince Yriel of the Aeldari to scattered tribes of Ork Freebootas and Chaos warbands hidden within the Maelstrom. Alongside it, the Raid and Ruin book details rules for new campaigns that have players competing for Notoriety Points and earning titles to prove themselves the greatest captain of all—gathering valuable booty across 12 new missions with options for three- and four-player engagements.
Store page is up with high-res cover.
Pathfinder Bastion of Blasphemies Adventure Path $79.99
https://store.paizo.com/pathfinder-bast ... nture-path
Paizo wrote:
The Bastion of Blasphemies Adventure Path is a complete Pathfinder campaign by Pathfinder co-creator James Jacobs, with adventures ranging from level 5 to 13, making it the perfect follow-up for players who have finished the Troubles in Grayce adventure anthology.
Paizo wrote:
Special Edition: This limited edition deluxe hardcover is bound in faux leather with metallic deboss cover elements and a bound-in ribbon bookmark.
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spec ... y-survey-1
Baior Of Red @Baior-CIG wrote:
[Live Feedback] Star Citizen Gameplay Survey
Hello!
The gameplay survey is back! This survey is a chance for us to hear directly from you. We want to learn more about who you are, how you play, and how you feel about the game today as well as the long term vision we are building toward.
The survey should take about 15 minutes to complete, and you are free to skip any questions you prefer not to answer. As a thank you for participating, all respondents will receive an in game reward. This year's reward is a light up Café Musain hangar flair, attributed directly to your account. Rewards will be distributed shortly after the survey period ends on January 15.
You can find the survey here:
Star Citizen 2025 Player Survey – Fill out form
Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts with us. We appreciate your continued involvement and look forward to what 2026 brings.
Baior
Player Experience Team
rausrh wrote:
"How new to Star Citizen are you?
Very new (started in the last few months)
Somewhat new (started 3 to 6 months ago)
Intermediate (started 6 months to a year ago)
Veteran (Been playing for a year or more)"
Just a little bit limited in range.
Martinmex26 wrote:
"I been here longer than a lot of you devs" doesn't have a good ring I'm guessing.
Mindshard wrote:
Right?
Next they should have a question that asks how much you've spent, $1-$10, $11-$12, and $13+.
It just feels like they don't value the people who've been here for a decade or more. I mean, if someone's been here 10 years, through all the changes, you'd think CIG would want to know the feedback of that specific demographic.
EVERY EDITION of WARHAMMER 40K in 16 minutes!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zU7TWQgG11A
Arbitor Ian wrote:
I'm always yammering on about different editions of 40K, but what were the ACTUAL differences? When was Warhammer's Red Period? When did the grimdark start? Who was Mat Ward anyway?
The 2025 Invisible Wall Game Awards in a Nutshell
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWOH_JpkUtY
Why are we starting in Season 10? Why not 1 as with Pathfinder, Alien, etc.?
Well, first of all this is a tactics game and those are roleplaying games, so with those you can affect the plot, but not with this one. So in terms of mechanics, it makes no difference where you start with Warhammer, whereas with the RPGs it makes all the difference. So there's that.
But even still, isn't it better to start at the start?
Well Season 1 was back in 1987, and the miniatures look like CRAP compared to the newer models. Moreover, they're extremely hard to find even if we wanted to play with them. I have no doubt that some day the fans will get around to 3D-scanning all of them, and we'll eventually have all of them, but currently we don't. So it'd be a bitch to set the game up, and compared to newer seasons, it would be ugly. Finally, the old scale is different, smaller than D&D's/Pathfinder's, complicating integration into VTTs, whereas the scale of newer editions is identical to the RPGs'.
Moreover, there's really not that much going on in the plot in the earlier seasons. It is only in the last couple of seasons that Games Workshop has started leaning heavily into the story and producing an evolving metaplot, inspired no doubt by the roleplaying games which have been at the forefront of this evolution since the '90s. So I'll be soon linking a video that explains that for most of the setting's history, the plot has been "frozen in time", and it's only in the last 5-6 years that cool new events have been happening.
In sum, we CAN'T play the older seasons right now for purely technical reasons (don't have the miniatures), but even if we could we WOULDN'T want to because the miniatures don't look very good plus there's not that much to play from a narrative standpoint: it's just a bunch of battles/missions with no narrative progression until Season 7. And if we're not going to start at 1, we might as well start at the current one which is 10, because we have the maximum amount of miniatures for it plus in terms of missions and narrative it is the coolest, though admittedly not in terms of mechanics, according to most fans. The pinnacle in terms of mechanics seems to be 8th-9th Edition, but this comes at a cost of much higher complexity. So finally even from the perspective of easing into the game with a minimum of friction, Season 10 seems to be a superior choice than 9 or 8 etc. Let's first learn the simpler 10th Edition mechanics, and once we've mastered that and cleared all its content (which is entirely possible, it's only a couple hundred missions or so) we can employ a cinematic flashback technique and play Season 9, then 8, etc. And the further back we go, the less content there is, so the first few seasons from the '80s and '90s will go by in a jiffy if we ever get to them.
Also note that GMing Warhammer is orders of magnitude simpler than GMing RPGs, so I am very open to admitting a bunch of people to the GM role so you can breeze through hundreds of missions per year without my help if you want, finishing up season after season of 40K while I concentrate on the roleplaying worlds. Plus, GMing Warhammer can be a stepping stone to GMing RPGs, for those so inclined.
Season 11 is expected this summer! And there is a massive build-up of narrative campaigns leading up to it, very cool stuff that you can follow in the 500 Worlds thread [ > ]. It is entirely possible for us to have finished up Season 10 by the time Season 11 arrives, or shortly after—certainly by year's end when enough new content will be available to play for the new edition—as long as enough people play, and enough of them help with the GMing. Keep also in mind that 40K seasons are about 3 years now, whereas Pathfinder and D&D take a decade. Also, wargame missions themselves take a lot less time than roleplaying adventures. Most 40K missions take an hour or two, so you can finish a bunch of them in a single weekend if multiple people are playing. And Season 10 is maybe 200 missions? 300 at the max if we include the mission decks? (more on all this soon).
Given that the narrative missions for 40K have never been more plentiful and more complex than they are now, and that there are only a couple of previous narrative seasons that we can use as flashback material, and if we also add that the current edition's mechanics are easier to get to grips with, I believe I can say without much coping/rationalizing that we really did pick the absolute best time and point to jump into the game. And with Henry Cavill's Amazon TV show planned to lead into an entire Warhammer cinematic universe, there won't be a better way and place to tie all the strands of the franchise together and experience Warhammer than Alex Kierkegaard's Battlemaster!
I'll have more to say and share soon, and feel free to post questions or suggestions if you have any, but in the meantime here's an extremely well-produced 3-minute video to give you the most absolute basic facts about the 40K setting.
The Story of Warhammer 40K in less than 3 minutes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5slncal0aY
@sabot8075 wrote:
Literally the best big picture Warhammer lore video ever lol.
Here's a cool little update I just finished: https://akbattlegrounds.net/w/multivers ... mmer-40000
I removed the Warhammer 40,000 theme music video from the top and replaced it with "Astropath", which is my 1-hour-long overworld music for the 40K galaxy. Normally, when you go to the galaxy page, this music should play, but unfortunately autoplay music isn't possible in Cult Engine 1.5 because programmers hate music and can't tell the difference between a web game and Amazon, so they treat the entire internet as if it's Amazon, and prohibit music. Nothing can be done about that, it's not even the engine's fault as the browsers themselves have banned autoplay in recent years, i.e. the user needs to click on something first in order for music to start playing. All this is resolved in Cult Engine 2, and I'll move the overworld there eventually, but for now clicking to hear music will be necessary.
So what you should do if you want to experience the galaxy optimally is first click on the music to start playing and then control-click on "ENTER THE 41ST MILLENNIUM" to open the galaxy map in another tab, and then switch to that tab. And voila: you're navigating a normal videogame overworld with music. Of course right now there's not much there, but when there are hundreds of POIs and countless hours' worth of content on there, you'll get what I am trying to achieve here.
The music is incredible by the way. Just listen to a couple minutes while exploring the galaxy. Even with no content, it's unbeatable. You've never experienced such an overworld. Even Star Citizen can't compete. And this isn't even my main overworld lol, it's just a side-game. The main overworld will require an insane amount of work to get running, and I am gearing up for that job by training with this one.
The other part of this update is that now there is a window with an embedded version of the galaxy map below the music video. It can be panned around as normal, but no zoom features, and the POIs can be scanned but not clicked on. So you might say, what's the use for it then? Well this sort of embedded map will be included in every Codex page of a POI, and once there are hundreds of POIs you'll be glad for it because it'll show you exactly where each is located. Plus it just makes the Codex pages look cooler, giving you a preview of the map/area you'll arrive at if you click through to the location.
P.S. And what about the Warhammer 40,000 theme music that I removed? That's going to go earlier in the site process: in the setting select page that comes before the Warhammer 40,000 Start Screen. So that you can click on the music to play before you arrive at the start screen. It's all because programmers are dumb.
https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/co ... to_run_yes
SkippTekk wrote:
How much ram does SC need to run..... YES
So computer specs...
Linux: CachyOS
CPU: R7 5700X3D
GPU: 7900XTX 24gb
Ram: 64gb
Swap: 64gb (extra ram just in case raw files up)
And this is all Max settings, 4k game play in Borderless mode.
average FPS is 30, space 100+.
PaoloBasile wrote:
I use about 45 GB of RAM on high settings.
Gear - Disrupt Camo - Patch Bundle $22.00
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/en/p ... le-Warbond
I bought three.
icycalm wrote:
I logged in today to do my clones but they were already done, must have been shubn.
I changed this subforum's name from "Roleplaying" to "Alex Kierkegaard's Metaverse". This is because with the launch of Alex Kierkegaard's Battlemaster—which is the world's first and only tactical metaverse—this subforum will start covering also miniature wargame news, meaning tactics game news. Moreover, it will cover all kinds of news on the franchises that comprise my metaverse: Alien movies, Blade Runner comics, Warhammer TV shows, etc. In short my metaverse has gone from roleplaying-only to ALL TURN-BASED GENRES (and in the 2030s with the launch of Battlegrounds 2.0 [ > ] it will also add all real-time ones).
P.S. What is the difference between Alex Kierkegaard's Metaverse and Alex Kierkegaard's Multiverse? Metaverse is the out-of-game term, and multiverse the in-game. I.e. we talk about the metaverse, and the characters in it talk about the multiverse. That's all.
https://x.com/gamestop/status/2008956178731290831
Upgraded my Cutlass Black to a Clipper for $25. It'll almost certainly end up among the four 2956 Best in Show ships, so I would have to upgrade to it anyway by year's end. So why not upgrade now and get to enjoy it also during its Pledge Store exclusivity period?
Looking forward to solo ops with it, it's freakin' gorgeous and super-well designed.
https://x.com/chonkrider/status/1996421536966967336
The newly launched Drake Clipper is the only way currently to bring a medbed in the field without requiring a Medic, so it's the perfect platform for solo Inquisitor operations, and has now been added to the Spec. It'll be pledge-only for a few months, but should be buyable in-game by spring or summer at the latest, for pretty cheap too. By that time, everyone should have one. Until then, we already have a couple, and I just upgraded to it too.
https://x.com/TylerGSternbach/status/20 ... 9195799815
https://x.com/HMBohemond/status/2008047525345837138
Looks like I'll end up reviewing a programmer minigame again after how many years? But first I must clean up my Warhammer 40,000 code enough to start playing that. So it will take a few days. Maybe by the end of this week I can start streaming Shinobi (more likely recording it and uploading to YT because I don't think my connection is good enough for streaming).
BTW Shinobi is 30% off until January 12. The promotion was supposed to end today, but they extended it. I am not saying grab it, because I don't know how good it is... But if you know you have to grab it, grab it.
https://x.com/For_Macragge/status/2007941018554183871
Dice, it's all about how you use them...
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/eQYnnT2n_-g
I'd be put off too lol. I couldn't play with him.
https://x.com/HarmlessYardDog/status/20 ... 3957973050
Insomnia's undercover agents embedded deep into number 1 game company in the world Cult Games have uncovered what seem to be hints for an imminent release slated to be "the SECOND-best game of 2026" (the first will of course be the long-awaited Kingslayer) with the cryptic codename "Project Apocalypse" and the even more cryptic designation "PA2". We reproduce here the entirety of the message our agents were able to transmit from deep within Cult Games HQ in Monaco before their transmission was jammed by Cult Agents:
REDACTED wrote:
Kill Team to Warhammer 40K is like Warhammer 40K to Apocalypse.
Kill Team you work with individual characters in a squad.
40K you work with a collection of squads with wounds shared between them all.
Apocalypse you work with detachments for an entire, large-scale army.
Each has a larger pool of points that you use to make your army with and a different set of rules to balance things out.
Great to see 40K Battle Honours already fully signed up. They snatched it within minutes of release! That's the enthusiasm that fuels me! Now the plan is:
1. Get a couple days' rest because I'd barely slept in two days to finish up before LA NYE.
2. Take a further couple days to fix all those corners I had to cut to get the release out in time for 2025 GOTY.
3. Publish some supporting material in the mission thread so players can prepare (map, rules, music for the mood).
4. Do some prep for the VTT.
5. Play.
I reckon we can play in about a week. And things should get faster from there as we figure stuff out.
The only challenge I see is getting the VTT production values to a level I am happy with. But I am willing to start fairly low and just steadily increase it from there.
No one is ready for the stuff that's coming up. Epic beyond belief.
I'd like to sign up to play as the Tyranids.
https://akbattlegrounds.net/w/multiverse/a/battle-honours-40k
I'd like to sign up to play this as the Space Marines.
7. Battlemaster Tutorial
There's a lot more to explain about how Battlemaster works, I haven't even got into the Conquest mechanics I devised that turn Warhammer into Warhammer 2.0 like my Ultimate Edition in general turns D&D into D&D 2.0. But before I get into all of that, let's just play the tutorial mission so players can see these mechanics in practice and how powerfully they can unfold the game's world in a persistent and massively-multiplayer manner.
So first off, head to the Warhammer 40,000 setting start screen: https://akbattlegrounds.net/w/multivers ... e4a7ab639a
A few things to note:
s3xyrandal wrote:
This map is the culmination of a multi year effort cross referencing pretty much every map in every codex, supplement, and rulebook across all 9 editions.
This release is still happening tonight but at California time because Cult Games Beverly Hills has taken the lead on this. Of course I will be online helping them make sure that all the code is coded right. Can't even take New Year's Eve off. Such is the life of the ubercoder.
https://bouncyrock.com/news/articles/ha ... bouncyrock
The team at Cult Games Norway asked me to relay this message to our millions of fans across the globe!
Cult Games Norway wrote:
Season's greetings, Cult Games fans! We at Cult Games Norway are working hard to ensure that by this time next year some of you might have your own digital festive hearths to enjoy in Alex Kierkegaard's Metaverse—whether in a humble home, opulent mansion, under- or overground lair, or perhaps even stronghold and castle in Golarion's fractious River Kingdoms, and perhaps beyond—at resolutions of up to 4K... and perhaps beyond. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you and yours!
Good to hear. Here's the plan: First I get Warhammer off the ground and running smoothly. Then I go back to the Alien setting and 1) Upgrade the old content to bring it up to my new standards I am establishing with 40K, and 2) Add the content that's been released since the last update. And then we can play. It won't take very long. I'll keep you posted.
Sign me up.
A new edition of the Alien RPG is out called Alien RPG Evolved Edition. I will have lots to say about this soon in the Alien RPG thread [ > ], along with news of more new products released and announced. It's all super-exciting for Alien fans, and I know we have a few of those here. But for now I wanted to highlight one of EE's new features: a solo mode called Last Survivor written by "masters of the trade Shawn Tomkin and Matt Click".
Solo means no GM: just one player GMing himself. But of course we will play it with a GM, because that's the only way to verify the result and enter it in the overworld. Plus it's more fun this way for the player too because otherwise he kinda has to read ahead and improvise instead of be presented with situations and react. We've already done this with SriK in Skeleton King's Crypt, by the way: that too is a solo adventure that I ran for SriK and even considerably modified to be even more fun than RAW (you can read about the changes in the thread [ > ], they were a hit with both SriK and viewers).
Unlike Skeleton King's Crypt, Last Survivor is not a single adventure: it's an adventure generator, and in theory could be used for infinite adventures. In practice you pick one out of a list of Mission Starters to generate the theme, and there are 24 of them. So that's how many adventures I want to run: one for each starter available. And the way I want to use them is as rewards for a player's character surviving one of the normal multi-character adventures. Those are already tough and most characters aren't expected to survive. Often, the entire group gets wiped, and that's intended. Ideally, only a sole character will survive, as in the typical Alien movie. But since this isn't a movie but a game, there's no way to prescribe that. So sometimes the whole group will be wiped, other times two or three characters might survive. But in the most nail-biting and satisfying conclusions, there will only be a sole survivor.
Surviving therefore an Alien adventure is a reward of its own, but why not pile on even more rewards if you can? You'll only be raising the stakes, and thus the enjoyment. So my idea is to reward survivors with a round of Last Survivor, in which they get a chance to help ANOTHER character survive. Like a bonus round, so instead of ending the adventure with one living character, they can end with two. And why would they want the extra character? Well there is a whole mechanics supplement about building colonies, and my idea is that survivors can be used there to speed up the colony's growth. Note also that we have most if not all types of aliens as models for Cult Engine 3, plus many colonial marines, the power loader, that tank from Aliens, and other support characters and machines, plus a full colony city-building kit, so we could conceivably build everything in 3D. Cult Intelligence (CI) is also at the point where it can take 2D character portraits and give us 3D models. Hell I even think we have some spaceships.
Moreover, since Last Survivor is the absolute simplest way to get into the Alien RPG, why not start the entire setting with one of these, even before Hope's Last Day? And since ysignal started that thread, and I want to reward initiative because without it nothing in my game functions, let's give him the very first Last Survivor adventure if he wants it. If he doesn't want it, the second poster in that thread can have it (recoil), and so on.
Please note that this will be an extremely basic adventure, likely with no art at all, and we may just even play it via text on Discord if a VTT isn't required. So please don't judge Alien RPG and its adventures based on this. The Alien adventures are extremely detailed and complex to the point where many GMs are complaining that they can't run them: read the review quotes I posted on the Alien overworld to see these complaints. Last Survivor is just a 16-page supplement in a 314-page rulebook in a game with maybe 1,000 pages of rules and 1,000 pages of adventures. It's just a minigame, if not a microgame, and that's how we will use it.
So, ysignal, let me know if you're in or not.
I am very excited to finally kick off the Alien setting, even in this small and humble way.
Journey Around the Sun
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ainUdtq ... XVyolQO3wj
@hawkzulu5671 wrote:
For those of us with less than the top-grade rigs, it's always a treat to see SC in its full HD glory... but it's your artistic eye that really makes the game pop. Fantastic work this year on the vids and equally fantastic work on the Issue Council, pushing those bug reports so more eyes can see them and pile on to push them to confirmed status. You are a huge asset to the SC community. Thanks from your fellow citizens.
@Jhtpo wrote:
"All footage captured in-game" almost needs to be on the bottom, this looks so damn good!
@FunkThompson wrote:
A machinima maker's dream, it seems. Crazy how you can get this level of "cinematography" - as a player, without 3rd party software other than to do cuts or merges or fades or whatever. All in-engine with the in-game camera tools, then a touch of post-processing to put it together.
@intelrecon wrote:
Just beautiful! Awesome cinematagrophy! And that Akira shot was just the cherry on the top!!
@xXE4GLEyEXx wrote:
This has to be one if not the greatest Vertical Slices into the game! So much to do, so many beautiful graphics to stare at! SC is a marble, a buggy ass mess, but a marble! And this video, is God Tier! :D
With all the hype about Battlemaster, I didn't want people to forget that this is also coming soon. It will be 2026 Game of the Year, guaranteed. And no, it won't launch December 31, 2026. It's ready, bros! It really is ready. Hell that is even more ready than Battlemaster. But one of the reasons I am launching Battlemaster first is because it's an easy entry into Cult Engine 3. It's just combat, and nowhere near as complex combat as Pathfinder where I'll have to have a SECOND VTT open to run the battles, plus no dialogue, no complex events and scenes, no city-building, etc.
How can I have so many screens of diverse locations to show without feeling that I am spoiling anything?
It is an entire country rendered in 3D, every point-of-interest in it, thousands of square miles of it! Could I spoil France for you by showing you a few dozen pics? I couldn't spoil France for you if I showed you hundreds of pictures a day. That's how the River Kingdoms are in Alex Kierkegaard's Kingslayer. Nothing like this has ever been attempted, let alone pulled off. And I'll be pulling it off shortly.
Calling all tactics fans! The first and only tactical metaverse is coming!
Prepare yourselves for battle.
The C'tan Shard of the Nightbringer rises from its tomb
https://www.warhammer-community.com/en- ... m-its-tomb
Games Workshop wrote:
The new plastic C'tan Shard of the Nightbringer brings its classic miniature from 2002 bang up to date. Wielding a giant scythe, with its necrodermis cape billowing out behind it and attended by swarms of Scarabs, the new iteration is a perfect centerpiece for your immortal Necron host, and rivals the Shard of the Void Dragon [ > ] in its dark majesty.
Games Workshop wrote:
In aeons past, it was one of the most powerful of all the C'tan before the Necrons [ > ] yoked it in vengeance for its part in the great betrayal of bio-transference. Even now, its Shards remain among the most fearsome foes on the battlefields of the 41st Millennium.
Games Workshop wrote:
It's not just Warhammer 40,000 fans who can look forward to facing down this ancient Star God. The Nightbringer will also be appearing as a Non-Playable Operative in Kill Team – an awesome new development for the game and a fitting final boss for your brave band of warriors.
@guineapigsith699 wrote:
Perfect. Bravo to the designers. It's the art from the 1st Codex brought into realspace.
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/en/c ... nalia-2955
I like that they went back to naming the events out of the in-universe calendar because for the last year or so they were using the irl one. If I was them I would go back and retitle all the last year's events from 2025 to 2955. But, as perfectionist as Chris Roberts is, he has nothing on me. And he doesn't even need to do it personally, he can just get one of his 1,300 employees to do it. Anyway. Happy Luminalia everyone!
So there are 13 gifts to grab this year (most years it's either 12 or 11, but this year they've been going all-out to please the playerbase, so they added an extra). All you have to do is log in and click on all of them. Then you should check your web hangar to make sure they all registered. You don't have to launch the game at all, it's all done through the website. And if you have clones, do them for them too. I logged in today to do my clones but they were already done, must have been shubn. So we'll have a lot of these items to give out to new players if we end up using any of them for the Spec. And I believe we'll use one or two. Certainly the knife.
Not sure how long these will be available. Probably through January 1 at least.
If you can't be bothered to do it, no worries. We'll have enough extras from all the clones.
Just a quick note to say that clone 10 is Ciaróg's because we're now up to 12 and we forgot to report 10.
