A quick forward: The first part of this post is simply an explanation of how and why I created this rules-lite OSR inspired system for running Imperial Guard focused games in the Warhammer 40k setting. If you don't give a shit and just want to get the rules PDF scroll on down to the Imperial Aquila.
I make no secret of the fact that I am a big fan of Warhammer 40k RPGs, especially the d100 based systems created by Fantasy Flight Games (other than the first Dark Heresy of course) until they lost the license in 2014. But they have always left something to be desired in my mind. They are all incredibly in depth, which is good in a way, but as a result tend to be slow to run. Combat involves tracking a dozen different factors such as weapon type, ammo, range, feats, cover, armor, special abilities and fate points. The GM has to handle the same but for many different enemies, who's profiles often simply list the names of feats and require an insane amount of cross referencing to use the way they were meant to be used. This problem is still present outside of combat as well, albeit less so. In spite of these factors I have run many games in these systems and had an incredible amount of fun, but I found myself fatigued by the heavy crunch.
By contrast, I have recently been really in to several games in the OSR scene. OSR for those who do not know stands for Old School Renaissance, and refers in general to a set of old school design principals common in games such as the first editions of Dungeons and Dragons. While no two people can conclusively agree on what specifically OSR entails, there is generally some common ground. The following are what it means to me, more or less.
OSR systems tend to be rules-lite and stats-lite. Crunch is kept to a minimum whenever possible and anything that falls outside of the given rules is up to player creativity and GM ruling
Rulings not rules is another big one. The rules are there to serve the fiction and not the other way around. If something does not make sense the GM makes a call that does make sense and the game moves on. A facet of this is that rolling is rare and reserved for situations where failure moves the game forward in an interesting way. Rolling can be avoided by mitigating your risks through careful planning and deliberate use of all tools available to you in creative ways.
High lethality is a common factor. This one is a bit more controversial but many of these older systems and their contemporaries in the OSR sphere share this theme. In ADnD 2nd edition you died as soon as you hit 0 hit points, and it was possible to only have one hit point at 1st level. One measly point of damage away from permanent death. This contributed heavily to the aforementioned careful planning and creativity, as the only way to survive the adventuring life for many was to be as careful and methodical as possible, and to NEVER fight fair when fighting was inevitable.
Finally, and this one is a bit more modern, but ease of adaptability and modification. In the modern OSR scene systems are often built to be broken and customized as the players and GM see fit. Since many of them tend to be lighter on the rules this is much easier to accomplish on a grander scale.
There are others, obviously. It is known within the community that if you ask 5 OSR players what they define as OSR you will get 7 different definitions. While this project has been heavily inspired by the OSR scene, and in fact the OSR community has been extremely helpful as far as design advice goes, I probably wouldn't label it exactly as OSR. Not in the way most people think of it.
Anyways, within the last couple years I have been reading a couple Warhammer 40k novel series. Mostly ones by Sandy Mitchell and Dan Abnett, the Ciaphus Cain and Gaunts Ghosts series. The Imperial Guard has always been my favourite part about Warhammer 40k, something about regular men and women forced to content with and compete against the likes of Orks, Space Marines, Deamons and other horrible monstrosities using naught but sound tactics and a prayer to the Emperor is massively appealing to me. These books are very good and perfectly showcase what is good and what is terrible about the Imperial Guard as an organization, as well as the staggering variety that can be found in military regiments pulled from disparate worlds in a realm as vast as the Imperium of Man. I tried to emulate this a couple times using Fantasy Flight's Only War system, but to only middling success. Tactics such as cover and suppressing fire were often not necessary in the system due to the sheer durability offered by armor+toughness bonus damage reduction and the deceptively deep pool of survivable crit damage. This is to say nothing of the general bloat of FFG rulesets and how it makes combat drag out.
This system started with a single design principal, namely what if there was a system in which an unarmored man getting shot with Lasgun would usually die. The very first thing I did was decide on average human health range and Lasgun damage to make this the case, and then as the system took more and more shape I worked fervently to make it into a system that captured the essence of what makes the Imperial Guard interesting without slaughtering characters wholesale. How exciting would any of these novels I had been inspired by really be if the entire cast of characters suffered a 95% casualty rate every single book?
The result ended up, well if I'm being honest a little heavier on rules than I was hoping, but still overall very light in comparison to its inspirations. My small number of test combats I have run went pretty smoothly even with some of the crunchier systems like suppression and cover but it all badly needs more testing which is part of my motivation for making this post.
Hopefully what is presented should be suitable for running anything from Band of Brothers to Platoon to Catch 22 in terms of theme and style, but your mileage may vary.
OKAY MY BLOG ENDS HERE YOU CAN GET THE BOOK
Google drive download link here: Download
Be sure to actually download it so you can use the bookmarks, it will be damn near unavigable without them.
Clocks in at about 50 pages but a lot of that is my own advice and ramblings as well as a bunch of example profiles for vehicles, weapons and enemies.
I have done my best to edit things where they make sense and try to have everything organized in a logical way that flows well and lumps relevant entries together. The bookmark system on the sidebar should give you a pretty good ability to find what it is you are looking for easily, I tried to make it as complete as possible.
Potential GMs, get a copy of the Fantasy Flight game Only War if you can. It was a massive inspiration for this project and it does so many things well that I can not and will not repeat ad nauseam. It is referenced several times in the GM section as an amazing resource for running these sorts of games, which it is. It is not however mandatory, the rules as presented should be enough for running games in this setting as long as you are comfortable setting up your own adventures and stuff.
You will notice it is all plain text on white background. The reasons for this are twofold. Firstly I have never been one for visual design, and as this is only a very early first test release there is not much point in agonizing over its looks. The second reason is that GW is notorious trigger happy with protecting its IP and I feel like not having any of their official art is a good step towards staying out of their crosshairs. Which brings me to my next point...
THIS IS A NON-MONETIZED FAN PROJECT THAT IS NOT ENDORSED BY GAMES WORKSHOP. ALL WARHAMMER 40k COPYRIGHTED MATERIALS AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY BELONGS NOT TO ME BUT TO THEIR RESPECTIVE OWNERS. PLEASE DONT SUE ME OR C&D ME I AM A GOOD BOY
Seriously if you somehow paid money for this shitty PDF take your money back by force because you got fucking ripped off.
Feel free to use any of my work in your own projects, in the spirit of OSR, but just give me a shout out in the credits or something.
That said I would love to get any and all feedback, even if it is just angry emails where you call me a number of nonsensical racial epithets with a 4GB jpg of goatse attached. I have plans for other stuff I want to add but I would love to hear what works and doesn't work, either on any of the places I have linked this, comments on this post, or via email at wyzack2222@gmail.com. I will likely be running my own playtests as well so if a series of short, likely gruelling campaigns to try out various bits of the system sounds interesting to you drop me a line and I will see about arranging it.
In the future I hope to release additional campaign-based systems, mass combat rules, and a ton of extra weapons, equipment and vehicles, as well as perhaps some more comprehensive game play examples and tables/resources for generating various parts of warfare. if anything is unintuitive or doesn't make sense/needs clarification let me know and I will happily respond as soon as possible.
I hope you somehow manage to enjoy the abomination I have created. Grab your lasgun, shine up you flak armor and prepare to do your Emperor proud, soldier!
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