Reading

[lederhosen]

At usekh's recommendation, have been reading Ciaphas Cain: Hero of the Imperium, a collection of Warhammer 40K stories about Cain, a commissar (commissars are political officers charged with maintaining unit morale - generally in a 'the floggings will continue' sort of way, although Cain tends to avoid that approach).

Every review I've seen of this compares Cain to Flashman, and there are some obvious similarities - Cain keeps ending up looking like a hero while trying to save his own skin - but it only goes so far. Flashman is an unscrupulous bastard who makes a mess of things and then manages to take credit for somebody else's success; Cain earns his successes, even if saving his comrades and defeating the enemy is an unintended side-effect of saving himself (and even there, one gets the impression he protests his own cowardice a little too much). He has a sound grasp of tactics, he has people skills, and he's smart enough to understand that commissars who are unpopular with the troops (which is the default) have a very high rate of accidental death...

Nothing world-shaking, but rather fun, and got me thinking wistfully (again) about using the 40K setting for roleplaying one of these years. It's nice to see a character who gets the job done by being prudent and planning for trouble rather than trusting in pluck alone...

Comments

[usekh.livejournal.com]

Glad you enjoyed. But yes, he is certainly not as much of a bastard as Flashman was, and by and large ends up doing the right thing. They are nice fun books though.

They are releasing a 40K roleplaying game later this year I have heard, it would be interesting although certain groups (Like the space marines) would be a little limited. If you have read the average daily life of a Space Marine on the site it largely consists of praying and fighting practice, all day every day.

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the existing games already cover Space Marine life pretty well. Inquisition or rogue trader, now... I'll be watching reviews to see if the RPG system is decent, or whether I need to muck around with a GURPS adaptation.