Occasionally someone ask a question about a document we released a long time ago and one of us digs it up and takes a look to see whether we can remember that far back. These days that tends to result in one more document being added to the refurbishing list. Today’s document is one you’ve seen before – Easy E’s Ork Klan rules. They’re in the new template and look rather swish but other than that they’re unchanged.
Here’s what he had to say about them:
I have been playing ork boyz since they were known as Space Ork Raiders in Rogue Traders days. At first, the orks were a pretty generic “fantasy orc”…IN SPACE! However, the release of Waaagh! Da Orks changed all of that. Suddenly Ork Kulture became relevant as the ork society was fleshed out with glyphs, brewhouses, and oddboyz. The basics of the background of Gorkamorka were seeded.
The ork background continued to expand with such hefty tomes such as Freebooterz and ‘Ere We Go. These books essentially expanded on orks as an army for Warhammer. The Klan system had originally been introduced in Waaagh! Da Orks, but had been explored in much more depth in these later books. When third edition 40K rolled out, the orks moved away from the Klan system in their codex, but Andy Chambers himself decided to tackle making some Klan specific rules for Chapter Approved.
Gorkamorka was released at the end of Warhammer 40K Second Edition when Klans were still in full swing and part of the Ork Second Edition codex. I always felt that leaving the Klans out of Gorkamorka was a huge miss, since they had been an established part of the background for so long previously. The idea of Gorkers and Morkers as the only Ork gang types within the Gorkamorka rules set always concerned me.
I was also an avid Necromunda player. I enjoyed the unique and varied background of the Hive Primus gangs. It provided a bit of flavor that Gorkamorka lacked. Again, I was surprised Gorkamorka did not use a similar system, only based on the ork Klans. The only downfall of the Necromunda system, was that starting gangs had very few differences. Again, this is something I felt was a drawback.
Therefore, when I tackled doing some additional rules for Gorkamorka, it seemed logical to focus on the two aspects of the game I felt were lacking; Klans and gang differentiation. Almost all of the rules here are based on background or rules from previous versions or imaginings of ork klans that came before. Bad Moonz teef naturally grew faster, so they were wealthier. Deathskullz were the best Lootas, painted themselves blue for luck, and made heavy use of Gretchin. Goffs were dead hard fighters, with a lot of nobs.
Whenever you make new rules, potential balance issues arise. The important thing to remember is that no game system is perfect, especially one with as many moving parts as Gorkamorka. No matter what a game designer does, players will find a way to exploit it. Fact. So, like all rules, these will need you and your game group to decide what works, what doesn’t, and where the tweaks need to be. Thankfully, Gorkamorka is a cooperative wargame not set up for tournament play. That should leave plenty of scope for you to use Klans in your games and have a good time sticking in the boot.
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This document was written by Eric Farrington. It’s licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share-Alike license. The layout was made by Benjamin Fox using images created by Jenny Mathiasson and is also licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license.
