In Only War, each player takes the role of a Guardsman, a member of the Imperial Guard, one of the countless billions of hardened conscripts constantly fighting on myriad fronts at the whim of the earth based government of the Imperium (Adeptus Terra).

The Warhammer 40,000 role playing system uses 10-sided dice (d10) exclusively; all information is generated either through a single die roll with numbers one through ten or as a percentage with two 10 sided dice rolled together, one designated as the tens digit and the other a single digit.

Characters are created with 9 statistics;

Weapon Skill (WS): Hand-to-hand and melee proficiency.
Ballistic Skill (BS): Governs all projectile and ranged attacks.
Strength (S): Physical strength of a character.
Toughness (T): Resistance to physical punishment.
Agility (Ag): Governs how quickly an individual can move as well as how well they can dodge.
Intelligence (Int): Used to work technology and understand languages and writings.
Perception (Per): How quickly you notice things and in how much detail.
Will Power (WP): Your resistance to horrors and used to manifest psychic abilities.
Fellowship (Fel): Used for interaction with other people.

Each attribute ranges from 1 to 100. Very high (above 70) and very low (below 10) scores are extremely unlikely with the current game system and based upon the current published rules. The system scores indicate that your average human is in the 30s range for his abilities and variations will indicate if he is particularly well suited for a task or if it is one of his weaker areas. Game mechanics also introduce a wide variety of special rules that provide bonuses and reductions in certain areas (For example, a character from a hive world has a higher Fellowship, but a lower Toughness.)

All actions, like making an attack roll or using a skill, uses the following basic mechanic:

Roll percentile dice
Add bonuses or penalties associated with the action
Compare the result to the appropriate characteristic; equal to or lower indicates success; greater than the characteristic indicates failure.

With some character actions the amount by which the character succeeds or fails can add degrees of success for spectacular results. When using degrees of success the GM details the result.

Personal message from Lord General Wheatoms~:While we do need all participants for a mission or battle that requires time to be taken into account to be in a Skype call, If their is no mission or battle going on, or you're are on a mission that only requires a very loose time structure you are free to start events and RPs in the forum if either to acquire some extra equipment, to further someone's back story or just have something nonsensical happen that doesn't derail the plot that much.