40K started with Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader (RT), more of a skirmish game than an RPG. there’s an article by Ken Rolston somewhere in the early hundreds of Dragon Magazine that gave guidelines for roleplaying using RT on the basis that D&D started with two pages in the back of the Chainmail rule book. for years there was an expectation that Games Workshop would publish a proper 40K RPG as a companion to its acclaimed Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (WHFRP), but RPGs don’t sell minis and that’s where GW makes its bread.
but twenty-odd years later in the mid-2000s Games Workshop published Dark Heresy (DH) through its Black Industries imprint. DH presented rules for playing members of an Inquisitor’s retinue a la the popular Eisenhorn and Ravenor novels, was loosely based on WHFRP and iirc developed for GW by Green Ronin, to whom GW had successfully outsourced development of WHFRP 2nd edition for the last few years. in a highly unexpected turn, on publishing the first wave of DH products – the rule book, a GM’s screen, and a single adventure compilation – GW immediately killed their RPG lines and licensed them to Fantasy Flight Games, bypassing Green Ronin entirely (to GR’s extreme displeasure). FFG subsequently flooded the market with four more extensively supported WH40K RPGs, each touching on a different, largely siloed-off aspect of the expansive 40K setting:
- Rogue Trader: ne’er-do-wells plying the uncharted void in your ancient, gargantuan starship, bearing Imperial letters of marque and trade. see new worlds, meet new people, and exploit them
- Deathwatch: veteran Imperial Space Marines, generically-engineered and surgically-enhanced monstrosities each the equivalent of a platoon of human soldiers, seconded from your home chapters to the court of last resort, artisans of mass murder in the defense of humanity, the Deathwatch
- Black Crusade: Chaos heretics, freedom-loving party animals you’d actually want to hang with in the grim darkness of the 41st millennium…nah just kidding these guys suck too
- Only War: Imperial infantry, the guys who get stomped before calling in the Space Marines
FFG also released a pricey, component-heavy third edition of WHFRP that met with mixed reviews. FFG lost the 40K license after a short run at Dark Heresy 2nd edition.
next, Cubicle 7 picked up the WHFRP license, released a critically-acclaimed 4th edition and is currently publishing an extensive revision and expansion of the Enemy Within campaign. at the same time, German publisher Ulisses Spiele got the 40K license and released Wrath & Glory, a new system that would allow for player characters of disparate power levels to more easily adventure together. but Ulisses Spiele’s first wave of releases for W&G were badly plagued with errors, and the license passed to C7, bringing both worlds back under one roof. C7 published a revised and corrected edition of W&G and has continued to release a narrow but steady stream of product for the game.
Wrath & Glory and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, 4th edition can be found and purchased on Cubicle 7’s website or at your friendly local game store. Previous editions and games are available in PDF on DriveThru RPG.
