It is a sad, sad day.

[Spevna]

There needn't be some huge GW conspiracy behind it.

Don't spoil my fun!!!! I want a fluffing conspiracy!!!

[Primarch]

Don't spoil my fun!!!! I want a fluffing conspiracy!!!

Watch your lang....oh, carry on.

I'm sure he'll do ok. Alessio left fairly recently and he's already written the rules for Mantic's new game as well as a new chess game.
There could be a lot of different reasons why he left the company, but I guess we wont know until it shows up on his blog or in an interview somewhere. It's interesting that just a few weeks ago he was promoting his new project 'Warhammer Forge' though. GW have said that is still going ahead, so I wonder who will be running it.
Wherever RP ends up, and whatever he ends up doing will be something worth watching though.

[Spevna]

On the subject on Alessio, has anyone had a gander at the Mantic rules? If they are anything like the LOTR rules it might be worth having a look.

[Lovejoy]

Don't want to go too off topic, but yeah, I think Alessio said something about the Kings of war (?) game rules on a recent podcast, perhaps it was baddice.
I could be making this up, but if memory serves he mentioned a very simple ruleset for KoW (just a handful of pages, and I think free with some of the minis) there are no removals of casualties from units, and a chess style clock is recommended, or integrated even, which is said to really ramp up the tension in games. Maybe thats why maelstrom seem to be flogging those clocks of late? Fairly interesting anyway, the podcast will explain it better than I can obviously.

[Spevna]

Don't want to go too off topic, but yeah, I think Alessio said something about the Kings of war (?) game rules on a recent podcast, perhaps it was baddice.
I could be making this up, but if memory serves he mentioned a very simple ruleset for KoW (just a handful of pages, and I think free with some of the minis) there are no removals of casualties from units, and a chess style clock is recommended, or integrated even, which is said to really ramp up the tension in games. Maybe thats why maelstrom seem to be flogging those clocks of late? Fairly interesting anyway, the podcast will explain it better than I can obviously.

Cheers for that Lovejoy. I shall see if I can grab a look at them somewhere.

[Lovejoy]

Here is the episode I was thinking of, for "the inside scoop on Kings of War". You can listen from this link.
http://baddice.co.uk/episode-47-alessio ... interview/
Sounds like a thoroughly nice bloke!

[Spevna]

This is from someone who spoke to R.P directly apparently;

Rick no longer works for Games Workshop. I spoke to him last Friday and can confirm that he's absolutely fine and, like many people in his situation, actually sounded relieved that he could now talk about it.

Sound like there were things he had to keep to himself while he was at GW so we may hear more about it now that he has left.

[Spevna]

http://www.battlegames.co.uk/documents/ ... ridged.pdf

Not related to the departure of RP, but an interesting read nonetheless.

[The Other Dave]

http://www.battlegames.co.uk/documents/ ... ridged.pdf

Not related to the departure of RP, but an interesting read nonetheless.

Very interesting! Especially the stuff about the design of Warhammer - the "primitiveness" of D6's, the reason they chose IGO-UGO, the comments about how younger folks take rules Very Seriously... All things that I slowly came to realize over 10-15 years of playing were things I didn't like much about 40K, and it turns out the designers had been aware of the weaknesses all along! I'm vindicated, heh.

[Spevna]

I hear you mate.
The part that stuck out for me the most was about the playtester's attitude being different to his. They play with a more frame of mine whereas he had written the rules from a more gaming point of view. WH40k was never intended as a tournament rules set.