So, I have a player that has voiced interest in a solo campaign (a game where he is the only player) due to a combination of scheduling and conflicts with other players.
This player has an interest in Black Crusade, and has also been interested in playing a lich in D&D for a long time. After kicking around some ideas, the two concepts seemed to merge together pretty well in the idea of an ancient Thousand Sons sorcerer, some psychic powers that are lich-like or vampire-like, and Rubric marines are pretty close to undead minions anyway (for the record, this is no worse than the vampire theme that Blood Angels already have, so we're not really screwing with fluff here, just building to a theme).
As such, the PC party is just the lone Sorcerer with his entourage of silent Rubric marines - not a lot of opportunity for character interaction there. I'll have to make some NPCs or whatever, I've run and played solo games before so I know that interesting people to interact with are what makes a solo game live or die. On the other hand, this doesn't exactly sound like the sort of character that will want a bunch of people with him that aren't directly under his thumb.
The part I'm having trouble with, is what to have this sorcerer do. He hasn't built the character yet, but when I pressed the player, he mainly fell back to his interest in having a lich (or similar) as a PC, not what that sort of PC would actually be doing in play. Searching for ancient lore or artefacts seems fitting, but that lends itself to a play style like a Metroid game. Now I love Metroid, but I don't see that being terribly fulfilling in a tabletop RPG.
I have all of the Black Crusade books (pretty much all of the books for all of the 40k lines actually), and I've read through them for adventure ideas, but nothing seems to stick. I've run Broken Chains multiple times and Rivals for Glory twice with different groups, but Black Crusade never seems to really take root - the players follow the hooks presented to get those modules going, but as soon as the rails stop, the game stops. Now, this may be partly my fault (or even all my fault), since I have a tough time getting my head around sandbox games, and I'm probably failing to provide interesting hooks to get people interested. But then, when people aren't really invested, I find it difficult to craft hooks for them, so it's a Catch 22.
This might be the heart of my issue with trying to get a Black Crusade game to keep running - what exactly are the player characters supposed to be doing in game? Lots of other games have a sort of blueprint for a typical adventure built in, but some don't. In D&D, you meet a guy in a tavern who points you at some old dungeon filled with monsters, traps, and riches, and offers to buy a specific item recovered from that dungeon - it's a simple, example game session, even if none of your D&D games even involve this setup. In Shadowrun, you get a job from a fixer, meet the Johnson, haggle, do legwork, perform the job, deal with the complications, and hope that you were professional enough that the Johnson decides that it's a better option to pay up rather than kill all of you. That's another built-in example of play that works well. Heck, even Dark Heresy has the hook of 'Inquisitor gives you a lead, investigate the heresy, narrow down all the bad guys involved, then capture/kill them all, potentially interrogating them to find hooks for further investigations. I've even run Dark Heresy quite successfully for years, handing off between a couple of GMs in our group between missions, playing from rank 1 all the way up to around 70k xp and well past the end of Ascension with a variety of characters.
But what about games that are open-ended like Black Crusade, Rogue Trader, or Vampire? Games that don't lend themselves to mission-based on-the-rails play? I've played in probably a dozen Rogue Trader games, and they always seem to be collections of Special Snowflakes that don't (or can't) get along. Within 2 sessions, they always dissolve, usually involving PvP violence, terrible decisions, and a total lack of direction outside of that. I've probably played in and run around 50 different games of Vampire (and other World of Darkness) that have all done much the same thing. Sadly, I've yet to play in Black Crusade, since games seem to be quite rare for it.
What exactly are Black Crusade player characters supposed to be doing during typical sessions? I know, people often say 'anything they want,' but that's not a useful answer when I'm having problems with players not seeming to want anything outside of what the railroad says they should want. Legionnaires also present the additional hurdle of being unable to blend into Imperial society at all, which makes most ideas for infiltration unworkable. Lots of heretics seem to have the motivation of wanting to lead a Black Crusade against the Imperium, but none of them seem to have any idea how to get to that point (and to be honest, I really don't either). The BC books seem to just present it as 'by the time you hit 100 Infamy, you should already have the resources to make this happen', but there seems to be a disconnect as to what having such a high infamy even means (apart from making it easier to conjure rare weapons out of thin air, since nobody seems to have any interest in how acquisitions actually work). And what about the heretics that don't give a toss about attacking the Imperium and just want to revel in their chosen vices?
I have an existing Black Crusade game that I'm running via Roll20 and TeamSpeak. The group is about halfway through Broken Chains, consists of two Night Lords, a Noisemarine, a Slaaneshi Psyker, a Pirate Prince, and an eldar that got hooked into a dark pact to learn about She-Who-Thirsts and has now spiraled to the point that apotheosis seems the only viable way to avoid being eaten by her pact. Yes, this means that the group is almost entirely Slaanesh with only the two Night Lords as unaligned. I'll admit that I'm a little worried that the group is going to finish Broken Chains and wander around the Vortex for a session or so before getting bored and wandering away the same way other groups have. I'm kinda hoping any advice I get might be applied to both campaigns, but that isn't strictly necessary. I've tried talking to my players (the guy with the Sorcerer concept is the same player as the Noisemarine), but nobody seems to have more than the most vague of suggestions.
TL;DR
So, back to the original idea. Here's a solo player in a Black Crusade game, playing Thousand Sons sorcerer and his retinue of Rubric marines (NPCs optional). They're here in the Screaming Vortex, I guess, on... some planet... doing... something? BC seems like such an interesting setting, but as a GM what do I actually do with it?
Or, second idea, here's a mixed group of heretics that are being set loose in the Vortex after breaking out of a derelict Inquisition prison ship and limping that ship into the vortex before crashing it. No idea what planet to even dump them on, or what they should be doing once dumped on whatever planet. Pretty much the same question again.