I'm about to be starting a new campaign and am wavering back and forth on which sub-sector to base the game out of. Without going into details, the characters will be high ranking, Ordos Xenos affiliated. They're not subject to any real directive from a senior figure outside the PCs (No NPC telling them what to do, sending them on missions etc.). They're thus free to investigate and prosecute where and how they like.

I'm currently leaning towards the Malfian Sub-Sector as the setting for the campaign. I am, however, torn between it and Hazeroth.

Malfian: Maflian noble politics and shenanigans allow for just about any Inquisitorial investigation, conspiracies etc. Seedworld AFG, NNX215and Xeiros Prime are both forbidden, giving potential plotlines out of them. Two war worlds, Close to both the Halo Stars and The Periphery for Xenos/extra-imperium threats and antagonists. Including Rogue Trader and, eventually, Deathwatch with extra Xenos goodness. Fydae System Piracy. Remote from Scintilla prime but not too far for increased factional conflict.

Hazeroth: Hazeroth Abyss, Malfi, close to the Fydae great cloud, Bloodfall & Phagir grouping of dead worlds. Very remote so group would be more removed from Scintilla support.

If anyone has any recommendations for why their favourite sub-sector is the best place to run a campaign then I'd love to read them.

Evilref said:

I would definitely choose Malfi. Xenos-dealing corrupted noble bloodline of Malfi? Yes, please:)

Use the Malfian Sub. My own campaign plays there, too. Maybe we can swap our ideas? If you are interested in this, say it to me.

My campaign is set in the Markyn Marches, don't know why, just liked it!

Is there a gazeteer of planetary infomation anywhere for the Calixis sector?

Cheers, Hal

Evilref said:

There is one thing I am not "getting" right now: do you preparer any adventures/oppositions/happenings "before hand", are going to make anything up as they go or do they tell you a couple of weeks before the session "we would like to investigate XYZ"?

a) "I am preparing something"
Try to come up with your first something. Without fixing it to a backdrop. After you have everything in place, have a look at the subsector and choose the one that seems "most suiting"

b&c) " I will improvise/prepare based on where they turn
Give you descriptions of the subsectors to your players and ask them what would be most fun to them. If your gamestyle is heavly based on player-input, why not going all the way?

But to answer your question:
I would advise the Hazeroth Abyss . It´s very remote from the light of Terra, a place where on can believe that the men living there have shadowy dealing with mens enemy. The lack of "subsector infrastructur" ensures that your players won´t be able to "re-acquire" equipment easy and will thereby make "resourcing" important. In addition, the lack of "civilization/development" will lead to a lot of "blind spots" on plants, map areas marked with "there will be WOE". Last but not least, xeno pirate activity and strange xeno cults seem to be ripe (part of the "fluff") there, so it is "in game reasonable" to deploy an independt cell of acolythes there.

Give them there own guncutter and everything they need to do is find a vessel to the next world... and fuel and food and ammo, of course!

Gregorius21778 said:

I am inclined to agree with Gregorius21778 here, for all the same reasons. Though another good option could be the Adrantis Sub-Sector. Both of these have a wealth of undefined (in the lore) planets, yet still have hints (also in the lore) that there is a great deal of nastiness going on. JMHO.

Gregorius21778 said:

Both. This campaign will be a mix of Turning Wheel (plots keep happening whether players are involved with them or not) and Sandbox (the sector's open for them, there's no set route for them to go down, no real directives other than the usual Inquisitorial reasoning (kill things and burn their stuff). The group is able to get involved in whatever it wants, overtly or covertly. As such the campaign will start with a large amount of data for them. Personalities of the sub-sector, history, recent activities, Adeptus reports (all of which they have a greater or lesser amount of access to and can get more if they insist on it), past cult activity etc. etc.

Amongst all that information will be X number of plotlines. Y amount more will be ready to be discovered and Z amount made up as they go along. I make extensive use of handouts, informing the players, a game wiki etc. so prepping in advance is key to this. From the point it's all prepped, however, it's up to them to follow up on whatever they're interested in. Sometimes not following something will lead to that cult/individual getting stronger/succeeding at their goals, other times it won't. At the point they go all official investigation on a major antagonist then it might switch for a while to a nemesis campaign, concentrating on that one opponent for as long as it takes (or as long as they think it takes, obscure death rules and all).

Gregorius21778 said:

Given their nature/authority the reosurcing would be less of an issue for them than it would be for a cell of acolytes, but would certainly come up on X number of remote planets/situations. Nice breakdown on the sub-sector though. Those are pretty much the reasons Hazeroth was tempting me. Of course that doesn't resolve it but it does reinforce the reason not to dismiss it out of hand.

Wow thats really ambitious, I couldn't do that. The amount of work that would inevitably go unnoticed would just be soul destroying to me.

Have you done anything this ambitious before because in my experiance projects with such grand ambitions rarely get off the ground not due to lack of trying but just due to real life getting in the way.

Kaihlik

Kaihlik said:

Several times. I've run a number of long-running campaigns in the past (All of Enemy Within twice, Horror on the Orient, Mountains of Madness, Masks, Night Below. My D&D group is going through Scales of War (extensively adapted) and I've done about 15 custom handouts for that so far (only 5 sessions in). Then for my own creations, a Roman-Late Republic campaign in which the players created (at least) two characters each, covering the Boni and Populares. I had pictures, maps, lot of period inspirational material. A nWoD Mage campaign with about 100 NPCs by the end of it. Delta Green campaign which started in WW2 and went in arcs through to the modern day. For the WW2 section I did period handouts, mission briefings, actual recon photos etc. In the Modern day arc I had 2 videos and about a dozen audio files as handouts. For DH I'll be having audio files as well. I've already done custom character sheets for the game and have worked out a list of 20 handout styles (albeit not detailed yet as the campaign setting/antagonists etc. aren't done).

I'll lean Malifi as well, if only because the group I'm in is all OVER the sector...we just so happen to be housed and based on Scintilla

Evilref said:

I found this to be...pleasent after a while. My group got into the same situation on a "micro-scale" while visiting a village on Dusk. They quickly realised that while anyone is "civil", they are "grudging"...and that it won´t be a problem for the village to get rid of them and declare that they never reached the village. No one ever stated it to them... but they got the notion.
Now think this on a planetary scale with a "I am law here!" insular governeuer and your pc might become more carefull about how much they are asking for. Makes for good "social skill" situations as well as the pc try to figure which buttons to press and which not while dealing with this official or that local had figure. Getting allies for working "with the system instead of against it" could be minor plot itself.

Take note: I am not talking about limiting "regular guns and ammo" here but about "the big time stuff" like ordering system ships, re-doplying high number of personal or "snatching" highly priced technology ("We damned your power armour, your lathe sword and your gravspeeder!")