Reading

Aug. 9th, 2007 09:46 pm
lederhosen: (Default)
[personal profile] lederhosen
At [livejournal.com profile] 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...

Date: 2007-08-09 12:55 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] 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.

Date: 2007-08-09 01:45 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] 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.

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