So, my PC's are tired of playing Acolytes and they want to walk on the heretical side, I have no problem with this I just know certain things would go away and others would be replaced with something else. My question is, does anyone have experiance running a Chaos game? andif so what did you change and how?

I would love the input, and I know the game is mean't to be played from the Imperium side of things but really I don't see why you can't go all evil like.

It is going do depend, are they "good guys" dipping into chaos to fight fire with fire (radical), or are they full blown cultists in training? Those are two differnt senarios. If they are good guys they could still be part of the inquisition. Otherwise they may be forced to track down forbidden heretical artifacts, perform ritual killings, create diversions (like exposing a gene stealer cult to hide their own activities), and content with oposing chaos factions. Oh and dont forget the mutations! Mutations for everyone!

Yay Mutations!

My players want to start out bad, I was thinking they would be like sorta an advanced force for an invasion. They would be meant to go in and soften things up, eliminate officals, enact rituals to summon daemons, muck things up generally as quietly as possible so that when the main force arrives there is almost no resistance and stuff gets fun.

demon rituals quiet?...lol but yeah anyways if they are gonna start out bad just get DotDG and use that it will help with deciding what everyone will be.

My husband runs a Dark Elf game in WFRP and it has been a great success. It took a lot of work though. We wrote pages and pages of custom careers, rules, weapons, etc.

One of the best things you can probably do is to pick what source (be it DOTDG, Liber Chaotica, a novel series..) best represents the feel of chaos you like the best, and use that as your reference point for whatever house rules you build. For our Dark Elf campaign, we used the Malus Darkblade novels.

Why not have them as Cultists in a Hive or whatnot as they try to summon their Daemon-gawd without being dectected?

We played a great WFRP equivalent at TimCon where it started with the 6 Cultists discovering that their cult leader was dead and they had to perform the Great Rite next week and didnt have all the bits and formulae they needed while everyone suspected that someone else was the killer. I called it "Carry on Cultist" as our murders and villainy touched on farce.

SJE

Get a copy the tome of corruption for warhammer fantasy. It's got a d1000 mutation chart, daemons, daemon weapons, and the like.

Dalnor Surloc said:

This. The systems are all but Identical anyway, a minor variation on the stat line and no traits. And all weapons use the same critical chart.

I would say to really develop the method of their corruption. It should probably be similar, or at the least related(ie. exposed to the warp in transit, had contact with a tome of Chaos knowledge, had contact with an apostle of the dark gods in some lower hive area and convinced of the "truth", that sorta stuff) . Also I would develop the power that they worship, usually best to use a lesser power with possible affiliation to the big boys, rather than going for a cult of one of the big four, that gets cliche. Perhaps the Crow Father has corrupted them with visions of the saints or the Emperor and now they serve the "True purpose of the Imperium". That would give you some interesting fodder to play with as it pits acolytes against acolytes basically. Perhaps even a Shadow Inquisition...oOoOooo....the Tyrant Star could have influenced them into being harbingers by performing sacrifices and rites to call it forth into a system and create havoc. Yesss, I like that....

Propaganda.Art said:

I must say that I like the way you think!

In contrast to some of the more "fixed" GM's on the boards who are actively trying to come up with ways to punish their players for wanting to play the more evil/heretical/chaotic characters, you go with your players wishes and try to adapt instead.

Now about mutations and corruption points. Sure some Chaos rituals and Dark Pact's probably require one to get a few corruption points and one might end up as mewling, mutated spawn of chaos. But also remember that Chaos isn't really an intellectual being, but rather a primitive natural force. And natural forces can be used and controlled as long as one know what you are doing.

For instance, you don't have to preform the entire daemonic ritual yourself and put yourself in harms way as you try to summon fourth "Baelomichagidiel the arch defiler of the void", as daemons tend to be grumpy at the people summoning them. You could gather a couple of slaves, pump them full of suggestive narcotics, and instruct them in exactly how many fluffy bunnies they must eviscerate over the altar with the tied down virgin, and which lines of daemonic language they have to chant while doing so. That way, your drugged-up "cultists" will suffer the brunt of the corrupting effects while you can stand and watch on the side-lines to monitor that the ritual is going as planned.

Quite simply, if you don't want to put your own soul at risk of corruption from the warp, put someone elses soul at risk instead.

I would be an excellent cult magus don't you agree?

Varnias Tybalt said:

Without wanting to sidetrack this discussion (or launch into my lengthy opinions on this topic on realism and theme and radicalism), I will say it is important to distinguish between GM's punishing their players out of character, and Inquisitors punishing their Acolytes in character.

aethel said:

I wholeheartedly agree. **** you aethel! You make me look like such a major brown-nose by pointing out things which im pretty much bound to agree with!

The theme is important, and Inquisitors would punish (or even execute) their acolytes if they went too much astray. It's just that the theme should be clearly established on beforehand, so the players know what would be punished and what would be allowed. And if one player wishes to play the "bad boy/girl" character that has an inclination towards the heretical/chaotic side of things, then there are pretty much two ways the GM can react to this.

One would be where the GM simply says: "No, you can't do that" and when the player defiantly tries to do it anyway, the GM simply fudge the game completely making it impossible to the player character to accomplish anything at all regarding his or her evil ways.

Another would be where the GM is open to the idea and actively promotes it because of the interesting group dynamic that would arise between the player characters in the group and how it would affect the campaign in general. While at the same time make it very clear that any such character would have to work hard to keep thier agenda hidden from their Inquisitor.

Twist endings and moments in the plot are always interesting, regardless if it means that the "heroes" win, or the "villians" win. And I appriciate when both GM's and players make an effort in trying to get everyone in the group to second-guess the intentions of the others.

Doubt might be hard and awful, but it is so much more fun than being completely sure of something in fiction, don't you agree?

Anyway, my main point was that even though the rulebook for Dark Heresy says that it's most common for the gamemaster to play the Inquisitor, while the players play the acolytes, GM's should make sure that they don't become their designated Inquisitors, giving the Inquisitor ultimate GM fudging powers over life and death over their acolytes in the process.

While the Inquisitor might be biased, the GM should remain as un-biased as possible, except when it comes to interesting plots and narrativism of course. And I do hope that the upcoming Radical's Handbook will contain some info that make it easier for GM's to let their players explore the dark side of being an Inquisitorial agent. After all, happy and good endings are so cliché.

But, like you said, it is important to distinguish the forms of punishment. And I hope I have managed to clarify what I meant exactly.

Now, could you please say something on these messageboards that I completely disagree with so we can have some debate over it? Im not used to agreeing with people too much! Im more used to my debating cannons (being of the same calibre as the Nazi battleship "The Bismarck", if I am allowed to do some shameless self-flattering) glowing white hot. But you force me to wave the white flag and invite you over for tea. It is too unusual for me.

I do like the ideas and I appreciate them alot guys.

What I'm doing right now is deciding a few things regarding classes, what goes and what stays nothing big really most Ciphers and Secret Tongues. I figure since they aren't connected to the imperium but in the slightest of terms Secret Tongue (Eccelsiarchy) wouldn't make much sense. Right now my view of Chaos is the sorta subtle sneaking in when you least expect it sorta chaos, very un-Khorne and I already thought I might associate them with the Horned Darkness.

I'm still working out the kinks of my game and it is slowly becoming overwhelming, as no one, player wise, wants to help me with conversions and such, or if they do they become uber powerful. Oddly enough my main problem is coming up with new rank names and I know it seems small and unneeded but it's a problem for some reason.

I personally never thought of the idea of playing a chaos campaign. However here is how i would do it.

Replace inqusitor X with Chaos Magister Y.

Allow the use of sorcery.

possibly make it sound like they are working for a radical...for a while (since they wouldnt neccesarily know what they are doing all this for)

???

Profit (or damnation at least)

lots of mutations and a bit of corruption also wouldnt go astray.

HOWEVER

certain things would be out of bounds such as the adeptus sororatis etc.

I had a similair idea in WFRPG where the players had the chance of being marauders and then later become chaos warriors (We never even started playing it tough).

In that version I invented a system for gaining mutations. It basically was do bad deeds (rituals, murders, heresy etc.) and you gain a new point value I named chaos points, these points you could trade in for a dice roll on an extended table of mutations I came up with.

The difference between this version and corruption points is that they gained the points for the purpose off getting a mutation. It went a bit faster, you could get more specialized mutations (In which god's name did you do your nefarius deeds?), the mutations were often stronger and it was more probable that you did not turn into a chaos spawn or something.

You could try to use this system if you wish, I made it so that they could get a minor mutation for about 3 points or something like that but it's all up to you. Remember though, chaos is fickle by nature and it is by no means safe to delve into the powers of mutations, you should probably make some kind of disadvantage if the PC's rely to heavily on mutations and not all the mutations should be beneficial.

Lastly, try to thik of some mutations that is used especially for the different gods, the collar of Khorne for example, that takes the form of spikes coming out and encircling the throat, much like a dog collar, makes the wearer highly resistant against psychic powers and magic.

In my game there are going to be special one off sessions where the players will abandond their usual characters and play as cultists, space marines, other acolytes etc, and participate in some event that's relevant to the main storyline. once the cultist players have kidnapped the hive Overseer's family, for example, the main storyline will turn to investigating the aforementioned kidnapping etc.

I think the important thing in Chaos campaigns is to have a way to get rid of some mutations. I recommend a way to trade them. A daemon, or a ritual. That way the PCs can go on some sort of quest to remove character ending mutations.