| 40K RPG rocks! Games Workshop is teh sux0rs!

Even for Games Workshop, this is pretty impressive:

1. On Friday, GW (well actually Black Industries, their RPG arm) released Dark Heresy, the long-awaited Warhammer 40K RPG (based on the WFRP system).

2. This game sold like fucking hotcakes. I mean... it's the long-awaited Warhammer 40K RPG! Of course it's gonna sell. The guy at Endgame said it's one of their best-selling games ever, and it's already out of stock from all the online vendors already.

3. But in addition to selling like crazy, just because it's 40K, this game looks awesome, both in terms of physical print quality and (so far) in content. I don't know how exactly to put it except that by my admittedly non-scientific criteria it appears to be fucking metal. I want to play this game with, like, Napalm Death and weird electronic music in the background while ideally eating Taco Bell. I mean, your central job in the game is to violently hunt down mutants and aliens and stamp out insidious demonic forces, while praying that those same insidious demonic forces haven't corrupted your friends or colleagues, which they probably have, all in the service of a ten thousand year old cannibalistic God-Emperor. It's Call of Cthulhu meets boltguns meets "guilty!" That just sounds fucking great to me.

4. Today, GW announced that they're closing down their role-playing arm.

Go Games Workshop! They are notorious for breaking hearts (ex: WFRP, Blood Bowl, Space Hulk, Necromunda, Warhammer Quest...) but this is a spectacular example of pissing on your own parade, even for them. One full business day from opening up what by all appearances is a watershed new RPG, to shutting that shit right down! I mean jeez guys. The RPG arm was profitable, even if it wasn't huge. And it probably would've sold, I dunno, at least a few Daemonette miniatures or something.

On the plus side... the game is in my hands anyway, and it still looks metal. (Note: I have never used this phrase as praise before, please let me know if I'm using it right.) And they are still releasing the three completed expansions for the game. Even if they fail to do so, it doesn't matter that much. This is a big-ass, 400-page book that can definitely stand on its own. One thing that WFRP 2nd ed was kinda lacking was in world information and this game seems like a conscious effort to correct that (and it's got a huge adventure too).

So, three cheers to Games Workshop for doing what they do best... producing masterpieces and then utterly failing to support them when they suddenly realize they don't require customers to spend hundreds of dollars on Space Marines!