Age of Sigmar & 40k

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Rogerdee

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Thinking of doing a 40k rpg, and having the latter end up in Sigmar verse.

What are the best ways to do that?
What are the best lore books to pick up?
 
I know little/nothing of modern 40K and AOS, so I've got no 'canon' answers... but in the old days a supposition was that Warhammer's planet was somewhere in the 40K verse... maybe cut off by a warpstorm (caused by the Slann?), and that Warhammer's Chaos problems were the fault of the Slann built warpgates at the poles going broke.
Soooo... maybe the AOS is the planet gone bust into some sort of pocket universe, shadow realm, whatever... and can only be accessed through arcane means... the Eldar Webway (a lost gate on some lost craftworld?), warp travel shenanigans, a trip to Tzeentch's bath house... something epic and psychedelic.
Old chaos had a 'multiverse' feel to it anyway... so maybe a backdoor through some other plane of reality? Maybe an excuse for a visit to the Eye of Terror (is that still a thing in 40K?)?
 
There's no canon way to combine the two anymore, if there ever was. Age of Sigmar is a world tree of vast, interconnected realms, not a single planet.

Of course, if you don't care and want to do it anyway, you can roll right into some Sigmar-ified version of the Old World, or just the Old World as it was for all those years, whatever works for you.

I play 1st Edition WFRP, which barely looks a thing like the Old World before the End Times asploded it up good. Keeping up with the official lore is a fool's errand. Just do whatever sounds coolest and is the most over-the-top in terms of scale, it's bound to fit thematically that way.
 
Maybe AOS is now kindasorta like Ravenloft... a bunch of mini-realms. Just wander in through some monodirectional fog bank (that is full of sparkles and swirls... and smells like curry... because it's Warhammer) and voila! You're wherever that is... and you can't ever go back, much like sinking too much cash into the 'Games Workshop Hobby' and never escaping.
 
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Thinking of doing a 40k rpg, and having the latter end up in Sigmar verse.

What are the best ways to do that?
What are the best lore books to pick up?
Warp Fuckery; the party's ship gets lost in the Warp and they end up being spat out of the Eightpoints. Easy. Of course, given it was a freak occurrence, they're now stuck there; no way back. If they're humans, they could probably fit in okay in one of Sigmar's cities, but it would be a big culture shock for them.

I'd start by picking up an AoS core rulebook - either for the wargame or the RPG - or going on a wiki dive.
 
Warp Fuckery; the party's ship gets lost in the Warp and they end up being spat out of the Eightpoints. Easy. Of course, given it was a freak occurrence, they're now stuck there; no way back. If they're humans, they could probably fit in okay in one of Sigmar's cities, but it would be a big culture shock for them.

I'd start by picking up an AoS core rulebook - either for the wargame or the RPG - or going on a wiki dive.
Warp Fuckery for the win!
 
I know little/nothing of modern 40K and AOS, so I've got no 'canon' answers... but in the old days a supposition was that Warhammer's planet was somewhere in the 40K verse... maybe cut off by a warpstorm (caused by the Slann?), and that Warhammer's Chaos problems were the fault of the Slann built warpgates at the poles going broke.
Soooo... maybe the AOS is the planet gone bust into some sort of pocket universe, shadow realm, whatever... and can only be accessed through arcane means... the Eldar Webway (a lost gate on some lost craftworld?), warp travel shenanigans, a trip to Tzeentch's bath house... something epic and psychedelic.
Old chaos had a 'multiverse' feel to it anyway... so maybe a backdoor through some other plane of reality? Maybe an excuse for a visit to the Eye of Terror (is that still a thing in 40K?)?
Okay so current backstory is Fantasy went boom creating Age of Sigmar.
Warp Fuckery; the party's ship gets lost in the Warp and they end up being spat out of the Eightpoints. Easy. Of course, given it was a freak occurrence, they're now stuck there; no way back. If they're humans, they could probably fit in okay in one of Sigmar's cities, but it would be a big culture shock for them.

I'd start by picking up an AoS core rulebook - either for the wargame or the RPG - or going on a wiki dive.
Thinking of Space Marines working alongside Stormcast Eternals. One is tech based, the other magical.
 
While I have no interest in the Age of Sigmar setting per se, I always have interest in non-DnD based Fantasy RPGs.

How is the Age of Sigmar RPG? Is it amenable to running in a custom setting?
 
How do I get around the chaos god existing in AoS, and 40k?
 
You mean, you don't want them to exist in your setting or how to reconcile them existing in both?
They would exist in both technically, so I would need a way to explain and reconcile that problem.
 
In 40k they do, absolutely.
But not in Age of Sigmar though.


Oh, Age of Sigmar must have altered their lore more than I thought then in recent years.

In The Old World and when AoS started, it was the same as 40K.
 
While I have no interest in the Age of Sigmar setting per se, I always have interest in non-DnD based Fantasy RPGs.

How is the Age of Sigmar RPG? Is it amenable to running in a custom setting?
I haven’t tried running it yet, but the system looks good for running (high-powered) heroes in a fantasy world - not as powerful as Godbound, but definitely more powerful then low level D&D. The core book has rules for free-form character creation so you aren’t tied into the archetypes (the base character creation rules use archetypes as the default). There are also rules to lower the power level a bit and ditch the Soulbound aspect (and do the whole you meet in a tavern style band of adventurers). Magic has the eight ‘colours’ baked in as a default, but there are rules for learning multiple colours. I am not sure whether it would unbalance anything to just ditch the colours and let wizards take any spell.
 
What do they (the 40K PCs) do when they run out of ammo for their giant guns?
What do they do with the tech priest when his batteries run down?
How will they feel about 'alien abominations' like elves and halflings?
 
Running out of power isn't an issue as 40k batteries are sub-atomic microfusion generators with a back-up solar power converter and 100 solar cell batteries to store excess accumulated energy - making their lifetime many times than of a human being (I don't know of they even have the technical knowhow to recreate batteries anymore, or like most tech, it is still leftovers from thousands o years ago being treated as holy relics).

Bolters, OTOH, might be an issue. A Heavy Bolter clip contains 50 rounds and standard equipment for a marine is 4 backup clips - so maybe 200 rounds total. But if anyone has a lasgun, power sword, or chain sword, those will continue working.

Halflings and Dwarves are most likely going to be treated as members of the Imperium - Stouts still exist in the lore, even if they no longer have an army (IIRC in cannon, their homeworld was wiped out by a Tyranid hive fleet.

Elves, however, are going to be interpreted as Eldar, and likely dealt with hostily.

Chances are, wherever they end up, 40K residents will just assume it is some backwater planet that's lost contant with the Imperium and regressed i technology - not acually entirely uncommon, ad essentially what The Olld World was, originally.

I think the issue is the prevalence of magic, which I can see being seen as Heresy. I guess it depends if they become aware o the fight against the forces of Chaos before they evaluate and judge the Free Peoples
 
As far as I know, the Realm of Chaos in AoS is basically the Warp, or close enough for handwavium. The Mortal Realms are the kind of thing you get when Chaos wins...almost. 40k is headed that way already with The Great Rift.
 
As far as I know, the Realm of Chaos in AoS is basically the Warp, or close enough for handwavium. The Mortal Realms are the kind of thing you get when Chaos wins...almost. 40k is headed that way already with The Great Rift.

Yeah, Realm of Chaos was what the Warp was called in the Old World, and it was the same setup in AoS when it started, but apparently the lore has changed. I kinda gave up on AoS lore after the first releases, so no idea what it's morphed into now
 
Yeah, Realm of Chaos was what the Warp was called in the Old World, and it was the same setup in AoS when it started, but apparently the lore has changed. I kinda gave up on AoS lore after the first releases, so no idea what it's morphed into now
Other than Slaanesh being imprisoned, I don't think it's morphed that much.
 
Chances are, wherever they end up, 40K residents will just assume it is some backwater planet that's lost contant with the Imperium and regressed i technology - not acually entirely uncommon, ad essentially what The Olld World was, originally.
Except it isn't a 'planet' anymore, is it?
Like I said, I know nothing of AOS... but I thought it was bits of the former Warhammer planet... floating in some Disneyland arrangement of themes. No?
How powerful/weak is a handful of 40K PCs vs. whatever the nu-Warhammer factions are. How hard will it be for them to navigate the landscape, make friends... will THEY look like witches to the local witch hunter (are there still witch hunters?)?
 
I thought Slaanesh got released a few years back
Yeah, Slaanesh got kneecapped at the start of the Age of Sigmar race-to-the-top so that Khorne could come out ahead early on.

But Slaanesh got a sexy (?) new range of miniatures and has been back in sexy (?) business for a while now.

The big events roll along taking about a year each, and the return to power for Slaanesh was a fairly early one.

My favourite metaplot event remains the "Necroquake", that Nagash (the eternally-patient and carefully planning) had a plan to conquer the realms by claiming all the souls of the dead since ever, a plot millennia in the making, at the cost of untold dead troops.

And it was fucked up by some nosey skaven just happening to be alive in his super-duper evil pyramid when the ritual finished, screwing the spell up. The realms were saved by some thieving ratmen being where they shouldn't be!

...And people say Warhammer's lost it's sense of humour.
 
Thinking of Space Marines working alongside Stormcast Eternals. One is tech based, the other magical.
The Eternals are very much "Space Marines v2", they're the same underlying concept but re-done (As opposed to Primaris, who are "Spacier, Marinier, Space Marines"). While it would definitely be interesting to see the contrast between them and Marines, particularly in how they engage with non-augmented mortals, they rely on different cosmologies; Eternals need Sigmar and his pantheon to reforge them, while Marines are obviously dependent on the Imperium and AdMech backing them up.

If you want to contrast the two, the easiest way might be through bringing Stormcast directly into 40k. Cast them as a form of lower-powered living saint that starts appearing on one particular planet during a crusade; a lot of their iconography is very similar to the Emperor's (He was big on the entire thunder and lightning theme), and souls are Very Real in 40k, so you don't have too much work to do. The question as to why the Emperor needs to directly intervene in this particular theatre of war is up to you, but you could probably come up with something important enough to need them yet localised enough that they're not appearing all over the entire Imperium.

Except it isn't a 'planet' anymore, is it?
Like I said, I know nothing of AOS... but I thought it was bits of the former Warhammer planet... floating in some Disneyland arrangement of themes. No?
How powerful/weak is a handful of 40K PCs vs. whatever the nu-Warhammer factions are. How hard will it be for them to navigate the landscape, make friends... will THEY look like witches to the local witch hunter (are there still witch hunters?)?
It's a series of realms connected by transportation gates, originally made out of bits of the world-that-was but now significantly bigger and expanded. That said, that makes it being accessible through the Realm of Chaos even more plausible - from a 40k point of view, everything in there is A Mess, with time and space being somewhat broken. A small bubble of unreality that the chaos gods have to play in on a similar level to other warp entities works perfectly fine IMO.
 
They exist in the Warp, which is outside of time and dimension
iu
 
Except it isn't a 'planet' anymore, is it?
Like I said, I know nothing of AOS... but I thought it was bits of the former Warhammer planet... floating in some Disneyland arrangement of themes. No?
How powerful/weak is a handful of 40K PCs vs. whatever the nu-Warhammer factions are. How hard will it be for them to navigate the landscape, make friends... will THEY look like witches to the local witch hunter (are there still witch hunters?)?
Basically the Chaos Gate at the top of The Old World let raw Warp essence into reality, where it became the Winds of Magic.

When the Old World went BOOM!, so something something happened and each Wind of Magic became essentially a Material Plane. So the Mortal Realms are all Infinite Planes based around one of the Winds of Magic. As you say, Disneyland Theme Parks. Think trippy Prog Rock cosmic album covers with zero soul and nothing cool about them.

They're not made of pieces of the Old World though. The Old World (ie. the core of Sigmarite that Sigmar clung to as he was flung through eternity.) exists as Mallus, a giant asteroid of rock floating above the City of Azyrheim in the Plane of Azyr.

The level of Worldbuilding makes 40k look like Tolkien.
 
The Eternals are very much "Space Marines v2", they're the same underlying concept but re-done (As opposed to Primaris, who are "Spacier, Marinier, Space Marines"). While it would definitely be interesting to see the contrast between them and Marines, particularly in how they engage with non-augmented mortals, they rely on different cosmologies; Eternals need Sigmar and his pantheon to reforge them, while Marines are obviously dependent on the Imperium and AdMech backing them up.

If you want to contrast the two, the easiest way might be through bringing Stormcast directly into 40k. Cast them as a form of lower-powered living saint that starts appearing on one particular planet during a crusade; a lot of their iconography is very similar to the Emperor's (He was big on the entire thunder and lightning theme), and souls are Very Real in 40k, so you don't have too much work to do. The question as to why the Emperor needs to directly intervene in this particular theatre of war is up to you, but you could probably come up with something important enough to need them yet localised enough that they're not appearing all over the entire Imperium.


It's a series of realms connected by transportation gates, originally made out of bits of the world-that-was but now significantly bigger and expanded. That said, that makes it being accessible through the Realm of Chaos even more plausible - from a 40k point of view, everything in there is A Mess, with time and space being somewhat broken. A small bubble of unreality that the chaos gods have to play in on a similar level to other warp entities works perfectly fine IMO.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if all this Great Rift stuff was leading to the destruction of the 40k universe and it melding into AoS.
 
I wouldn't be surprised at all if all this Great Rift stuff was leading to the destruction of the 40k universe and it melding into AoS.
I can't see it, 40k has enough mainstream attention at this point that they'd be insane to abandon it, while the world-that-was... well, didn't really, outside of our particular hobby niche.
 
I can't see it, 40k has enough mainstream attention at this point that they'd be insane to abandon it, while the world-that-was... well, didn't really, outside of our particular hobby niche.
It's weird though, in the world that really matters, video games Fantasy has always been Top Dog, as 40k games sucked until Dawn of War, but then choked through the rest of the series. Underhive Wars wasn't as good as Mordheim, there have been some lackluster shooters, a string of worthless phone games, etc. Space Marine hit pretty big, but 40k games tend to be low hanging fruit.

Where's the Far Cry of 40k, or the 4x game of Tau Expansion? The investigative games following on Abnett's Inquisition Series? The co-op mission based shooter or pvp shooter based on the Gaunt's Ghosts novels? The Old Chaos Gate was a reskinned Xcom, and the new Chaos Gate is pretty enjoyable.

I won't argue that in Fandom, 40k casts the bigger shadow, but somehow Fantasy keeps inspiring the epic games. Of course there's no way to capitalize on that since that IP is technically dead.
 
It's weird though, in the world that really matters, video games Fantasy has always been Top Dog, as 40k games sucked until Dawn of War, but then choked through the rest of the series. Underhive Wars wasn't as good as Mordheim, there have been some lackluster shooters, a string of worthless phone games, etc. Space Marine hit pretty big, but 40k games tend to be low hanging fruit.

Where's the Far Cry of 40k, or the 4x game of Tau Expansion? The investigative games following on Abnett's Inquisition Series? The co-op mission based shooter or pvp shooter based on the Gaunt's Ghosts novels? The Old Chaos Gate was a reskinned Xcom, and the new Chaos Gate is pretty enjoyable.

I won't argue that in Fandom, 40k casts the bigger shadow, but somehow Fantasy keeps inspiring the epic games. Of course there's no way to capitalize on that since that IP is technically dead.
Ehhhhh, I think you're looking at it from a fairly narrow gamer perspective, rather than the wider business perspective that these decisions would be based on.

1. It's not just about the videogames. 40k is huge, with many, many licensing deals and a lot of very established IP's (Mostly Space Marines, but eh). At least in the UK, it's rarer to find a chain book or game store without a Warhammer (And heavily biased towards 40k) section of some kind than with one. It's not quite a lifestyle brand like Marvel yet, but it's on it's way. Fantasy never had anywhere near that saturation.
2. The shovelware videogames actually show the strength of 40k; publishers know they can get out something fairly quickly and cheaply and make a decent return on it, because the franchise itself has a lot of recognition and a wide fanbase. All that said, the higher-quality games are in a far wider variety of genres than the Fantasy games were.
3. There have always been significantly fewer Fantasy games; and even they weren't very good until Blood Bowl (2009) or Total Warhammer (Arguable which you prefer) either, though. The 40k games pre-DoW were fairly well-received, if in fairly niche genres, and at least popular enough that they made it down to the budget labels at the time.

Beyond all that; for quality 40k games, there's a Rogue Trader CRPG coming along (Done by Owlcat, those behind the fairly good Pathfinder CRPG's), a co-op shooter (Darktide, by the same team as the Vermintide games), a 4x (Gladius), multiple turn-based strategy titles, and I'm sure I'm missing a few. It's a glorious time.
 
Basically the Chaos Gate at the top of The Old World let raw Warp essence into reality, where it became the Winds of Magic.

When the Old World went BOOM!, so something something happened and each Wind of Magic became essentially a Material Plane. So the Mortal Realms are all Infinite Planes based around one of the Winds of Magic. As you say, Disneyland Theme Parks. Think trippy Prog Rock cosmic album covers with zero soul and nothing cool about them.

They're not made of pieces of the Old World though. The Old World (ie. the core of Sigmarite that Sigmar clung to as he was flung through eternity.) exists as Mallus, a giant asteroid of rock floating above the City of Azyrheim in the Plane of Azyr.

The level of Worldbuilding makes 40k look like Tolkien.
Not infinite, just large. I believe AoS Battle said some were hundreds of continents or something.
 
I won't argue that in Fandom, 40k casts the bigger shadow, but somehow Fantasy keeps inspiring the epic games. Of course there's no way to capitalize on that since that IP is technically dead.
On the wargaming side, fantasy was less iconic looking and most factions could easily be proxied by cheaper (better) minis from other fantasy or historical lines... unless you wanted to play in some 'official' venue.
 
Except it isn't a 'planet' anymore, is it?

Yeah, I don't know how they'd percieve that, though, except from orbit. I'm talking about what they'd reasonably assume if they just ended up there.

Like I said, I know nothing of AOS... but I thought it was bits of the former Warhammer planet... floating in some Disneyland arrangement of themes. No?
How powerful/weak is a handful of 40K PCs vs. whatever the nu-Warhammer factions are. How hard will it be for them to navigate the landscape, make friends... will THEY look like witches to the local witch hunter (are there still witch hunters?)?

As I said previously, I am not current on AoS lore, but at the beginning it was somehing like Sigmar floated through space clinging to a piece of the Old World unttil he met a space Dragon who taught him special space dragon mgic which he used to turn the winds of magic into "realms". He then used the pieces of the Old World (now called Sigmarite, get it?) to make weapons and armour for his Sigmarines (I'm leaving out a few centuries where, after Chaos found the realms, Sigmar hid away for hundreds of years in his not Valhalla while everything went to crap)

I don't know if these "realms" are like planes in planescape, or they are planet-shaped, or even if they have set geography to be honest.

As for how much of a match Space Marines are for the inhabitants of AoS - I think one could reasonably asume that they are physically equivalent to a Stormcast Eternal with slightly better weaponry (based on the stats of creatures that exist in both games). So they won't be invulnerable OP pseudogods like Overlord NPCs, and will likely die eventually if they don't make alliances.

Don't know about Witchunters, they hadnt really fleshed out any lore for the humans when the game started, or even explained why they were still a pseudo-Renaissance style civilization that had for some reason developed in the new realms, culturally and technologically, exactly the same as they had in the Old World thousands of years prior (besides, y'know, those were just the models on hand).

I get the impression AoS isn't a setting one is meant to think too hard about.
 
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On the wargaming side, fantasy was less iconic looking and most factions could easily be proxied by cheaper (better) minis from other fantasy or historical lines... unless you wanted to play in some 'official' venue.
You also need way less big ticket figs to make it feel epic. 40K on a large scale really needs Superheavies and Thunderhawks and shit to feel awesome, or a least a feth-ton of normal tanks. Fantasy felt epic just based on the sheer number of units. IMO anyway.

The proxy side of things is very true though, for sure. :thumbsup:
 
So how similar are the systems in Wrath & Glory and Soulbound? I know there are differences but they're also both based on d6 dice pools. Would they be easy to convert between?
 
Completely different. You'd have a far easier time picking one setting as your base mechanics and then porting in whatever you needed for the other.
 
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