Another 40K-themed RPG bundle from Humble Bundle. This time, it features three games from the RPG lines developed by Fantasy Flight and handed off to others along with the license. Although the systems are mostly similar, the three games are thematically quite different:
- Dark Heresy: players take on the roles of Inquisitors and their retinues, tasked with rooting out heresy and corruption within the Imperium. The theme is one of investigation, conspiracy, and the struggle to maintain order and purity in a universe rife with chaos and corruption
- Only War: players take on the roles of soldiers in the Imperial Guard, fighting in the never-ending war against the enemies of humanity. The theme is one of duty, sacrifice, and the brutal reality of warfare in a grim and dark universe.
- Black Crusade: players take on the roles of Chaos Space Marines, warriors who have turned against the Imperium and pledged their allegiance to the Ruinous Powers. The theme is one of corruption, power, and the lure of the Chaos Gods.
This bundle features the core rules for each set and then a ton of supplementary content. As is becoming the norm for Humble Bundles, the structure of this bundle is truly, truly terrible. There are multiple tiers to the bundle, each placed at different pricing thesholds. The problem is that the core rules – i.e. the books you need to actually play the games – are not available until the highest-cost tier. What then is the actual point of the lower tiers? An illusion of choice and value?
Cynical. Cynical and awful.
So, then, let’s ignore the lower tiers and just focus on the bundle as a whole, which is priced at a threshold of £20.32. For this meagre sum, you get 46 items:
The only item that got clipped off the bottom of these images was a voucher for the Cubicle 7 webstore.
Putting aside the cynical bundle construction, this is a pretty fantastic deal. That’s a huge amount of content for not much money. Even if you just grab it for the background into for the 40K setting, it’s really good.
Of the three games, Dark Heresy is the one that appeals to me most. Rogue Trader is my favourite 40K RPG. The options, flexibility and investigative themes of Dark Heresy are interesting to me. My issue with Black Crusade is that I generally don’t like ‘evil campaigns’. I feel that they tend to just devolve into dickery as players misplay “evil” as “cruel to point of self-sabotaging stupidity”. I just don’t feel most people know how to play evil campaigns properly and productively. Only War is likely fine as well, but I’m just not all that fussed about the Imperial Guard.
You can click here to visit the bundle page over at Humble Bundle.
No Rerolls 
2 Comments