See I personally think that one of the greatest parts of any RP system is the fact that you get to be someone you're not. Of course no matter how good an RP'er you are some of your personality leaks into a character, but being able to be "evil" in an environment where there are no real casualties and no one really gets hurt can be incredibly fun. I've had players who out of game are saints of kindness and generosity play characters that were unmitigated bastards.

The most recent example I can think of was in the last DH session of a campaign I've been running the PC's got stuck on a ship in the warp with a rogue eversor assassin on it. This thing was WAY more powerful than them and had been cutting a swath through everything they and the NPC guards could throw at it. The one thing that had slowed it down at all was when the pc's purposfully traveled through populated parts of the ship as it followed them as it would stop to kill every living thing on it's path between it and them. As they started taking wounds and running out of resources they had to find more and more crew/passengers to keep between them and it to have time to plan and reload/recover.

The finale of this whole session will probably live on in infamy for being one of the biggest ******* moves I've ever seen a PC do. They had tried using grenades on this thing before and even tripwired explosives, but every time they had it had either been too fast and avoided them or too perceptive and disabled them. So using the knowledge that it would stop and kill anything alive and that they were running out of people to slow it down with they strapped a bunch of explosives to some hapless passenger and shoved him out into the hallway with the assassin who promptly spent his turn cutting the guy down and then dying in the resulting explosion. The PC to formulate this plan is the biggest hippy love/peace vegan pansy I've ever met. Your in game decisions are just that, what your character would do, not what you'd do in real life.

My players don't know where the rails are most of the time and I've no problem with that ... let them think outside the box and go in weird directions - situations like that are why I GM and don't merely write fiction.

As for moral dilemnas - those are nothing new to my games, so my players are quite used to them. However, in DH I've found my PCs tend to embrace the whole "servants of the empire" thing to the point that they'll willingly do just about anything in service to the God Emperor. Kill a village of people? Done it. Gun down a child who may have been irrevocably corrupted by exposure to heresy? With a smile. Shoot a man dead for refusing to gladly sacrifice himself on the battlefield; burn a man as a heretic for being corrupted against his will? Done and done.

I've thrown my players up against dozens of morally grey (and sometimes outright bleak) scenarios in DH, but every time they've chosen to go ahead and follow their mission/orders/spirit of their duty. It is actually rather irritating how little they fret over making such decisions.

Jack of Tears said:

Maybe you could play this angle up a bit? Introduce an NPC/just the voice of conscience that'd ask them about these things? Maybe some sort of intra-Inquisition investigation. You have the "kill them all, the Emperor will recognise his own" mentality, yes, but think about how you can introduce uncertainty and shake their belief in the righteousness of their actions. One thing is to play up the consequences, I think.

Maybe amongst the villagers was someone dear to someone who is dear to the PCs? Maybe they find out?

Maybe someone wants revenge?

Maybe ordinary people in the face of their shooting a child dead will abhor them for their actions and become much less willing to co-operate, where the only way to achieve co-operation will be to coerce them? What if their actions lead into a spiral of rebellion, each step fuelling further discontent among the populace? What if the rebellion finally erupts and chaos (literal or metaphorical) engulfs all around them?

Will their Inquisitorial masters not put the blame for a rebellion on them?

Maybe they become the hunted and try as they might prove their innocence and righteousness, they find their persecutors implacable?

Maybe they find themselves placed against impossible odds and you "remind" them of the man they shot for "cowardice" - will they baulk or will they gladly lay their lives down? What if they are survivors and try to get out, somehow - maybe there is someone "truly righteous" who will not allow such "cowardice" to happen?

In Nomine Imperator exitus acta probat

In essence, Dark Heresy is a horror game. Whenever I run horror games I tend to go for the jugular right away and make the horror personal. One of the tactics I use is to humanize the opposition and de-humanize the player characters, leading to situation where you can't really judge people by the "color of their clothes" but you have to look at the actions... And thats when things get interesting. A few examples from my current campaign:

- In the very first mission of the campaign, after the daemon had been stopped, the acolytes were asked to round up all the witnessess (a couple of dozen miners in Sepheris Secundus) into a mining shaft... after which a group of Adepta Sororitas promptly went in and killed them all. No explanations, no forewarnings just plain and simple execution. This was pretty much a wake-up call to the players so they know what kind of tyrannical regime they are serving and set the tone to the campaign: Horrible things can and will be done by everyone, not just "them" (the so-called "enemy").

- The next tough choice came when acolytes infiltrated into an Imperial Cult to investigate if it was heretic or not. For several sessions they came to know and like some of the cultists who were, in many way, "better people" than the established rule they were rebelling against. Unfortunately they also happened to be Slaanesh-serving chaos-heretics...

- The worst morally ambigous situation I've put them in was rooting out the rest of the cult sympathizers from the local cathedral. Essetially their own inquisitor ordered them to kill people who had carried out another inqusitors express orders for the fact that they knew a terrible secret the acolytes also happened to know...

ZillaPrime said:

+1

p.s. You told what i think. Oh, I am Polish, I am Catholic, I am rolplayer and GM for 15 years now and used to play with future priests in catholic school in the past.

In regards to the whole moral compass of my PCs in Dark Heresy. Generally I look at the players and see how they handle the situation, which gets kinda interesting when you've got a ork-hating feral guardsman, a feral scum, a noble psyker, a old fashion cadian sergeant who bosses around a necromundan guardsman, and a hive assassin for a team. The best thing is that most of them have a strong understanding of the 40k universe, which allows me plenty of breathing room. 'Course the downside of this is generally my choices like this are quite small ones, like killing the patient in a mad-man's lab to put him out of his misery, or do you keep him alive to put him to use. Another thing I'm testing is the fine art of living shields and the age old "to fire, or not to fire. That is the question" set-ups.

I tend to give them conflicting options because it's more fun that way. Do you want to save the little girl trapped in the room that just became full of animated corpses, or do you take the safer route and keep her locked in with the daemons? This causes players to be conflicted (hopefully) and with luck not everyone in the party will agree but someone will make an executive decision. This usually leads to some very exciting situations.

I also like to pit players against each other, raising the normal level of paranoia to unhealthy levels. On several occasions I've passed a piece of paper to a random character that reads "You hear a soft whisper in your head... 'Kill them all.'" and that usually turns out interesting one way or another too. Sometimes I'll hand everyone a piece of paper with different things, just to add confusion. Everyone wonders if they got the same message, and if so, who's going to be the first to crack? Will anyone crack? I've had delightful results.

I echo many of the responses that have been posted here. I love my players dealing with the moral ambiguity of the setting, but then ALL RPGs eventually come down to the biggest moral dilemma of all - to kill or not to kill.

I am an atheist and most of the people that I have grown up around are either that or at least agnostic and yet I also remember the concern that people had about me and my friends playing with 'those' books. Hell, the first D&D session I attended aged 12 or so, my Mum came too just in case it was being run by a pervert!

Anyway, back to the thread. Mindless killing is for the Space Marines. In my opinion, DH characters should come from a more diverse moral background. I then let the players roleplay their particular characters so that I can get an idea of their backgrounds. Later, when faced with moral decisions I judge them based on whether they are being true to their characters or not. After all, they are brand new Acolytes being exposed to the true nature of the horrors that beset the Imperium and these are the true tests of an individual. There are plenty of penalties that you can dish out should you feel that a player is acting outside his characters' 'alignment'.

As for dealing with friends who surprise you by acting strangely when they realise that they have a gun and can shoot it with real world impunity, don't worry, they may come around. Trust in human nature, it's not as bad as people would have you believe...

Great thread!

My group started as DH characters and have become RT characters. In there we have a fame and glory seeking scum/Rogue trader, a psychopathic and deeply dim guardsman/arch-militant, a puritanical adept/seneschal and a Psyker/missionary.

Our puritanical scholar is very moral, in 40k terms, not reluctant to kill, but deeply offended by xenos, xenostech, mutants, heretics, etc. Her current moral problem revolves around the clear radicalism of her inquisitor whom she is now plotting to destroy.

Our arch-militant is a vile, murderous beast and likes taking trophies, usually weapons from defeated foes. He thus enjoys wielding xenotech weapons. He has no problem with this and is fiercely loyal to both the rogue trader and his inquisitor. He hates the scholar because she gives him grief about the xenotech. In many wys he has the morality of a child, liking those that agree with him and hating those that don't.

Our scum is reasonably moral in 40k terms. He has executed troops under his command for cowardice, killed when he needs to, but lacks and real enthusiasm for killing just for the sake of it and has a strong streak of making himself look good. He has a personal scribe who follows him around recording his victories in prose.

I very much enjoy throwing moral dilemnas at my PCs. Typically i throw some kind of objective at them and a way to complete it more easily (or with greater reward) using underhand methods. So far they've mostly resisted being evil (in 40k terms). Except the arch-militant.

RPGs are great for exercising ones moral choices in a safe environment. When i'm a player, i usually play the "evil wizard" archeotype, regardless of the game. Its a way for me to flex my megalomania and evil tendencies safely and enjoy myself without anyone getting hurt. In reality, i'm nice as pie, never hurt a fly.

Excellent question.

My problem with it however is 'what is considered MORAL in the Imperium'?

Otherwise are you not just imposing our morality on a completely different culture?

Is that ok? Shouldn't we understand the 40k morality in order to introduce the 'moral maze' to the game (something i whole-heartedly support)?

E.g.

The killing of a deformed baby at birth in our world is unthinkable.

In 40k, surely this 'mutant' would not only be killed at birth but ritually killed to save its soul from corruption wouldn't it?

I don't know - what's 'moral' in 40k? Is it the same across the whole Imperium?

Is it important to know?

Its a vital aspect of actually roleplaying in the 40k environment isn't it? Yet there's absolutely nothing about it in any of the gamebooks - at least not explicitely stated.

Or is it?

First off I would like to say that this has been an amazing and awe inspiring thread.

Morality, honestly, in the Imperium of Man should basically be "Will this help the Empire?" Than you just have to mix that with standard human morals, killing is bad, stealing is bad, adultery is... Anyway, you have to look at it in a way that literally everything that is not human is trying to destroy your life and livelihood, so the only way to truly decide morality is going to be through how the players perceive it as you (the GM) describe it. In my game I am trying to build a tight emotional bond between the characters and the NPCs so that they see them as people, I am also trying to get them to see that the NPCs trust and treat each other fairly (most of them). The point of this is to make it so that my players, two of which are new to the universe, understand that the Imperium of Man must stand as one, that every person is important to the continuing fight against Chaos and the Xenos threats. This, hopefully, will make it so that when they have to make a moral decision that will end an innocents life, it is difficult for them. I think its working so far because on a back world planet they managed to crash a lander, piss of the Arbitus TWICE shoot a xenos in a crowded room and blow up a building without a single innocent killed in the exchanges. One player even decided not to fire on the Xenos scum because he didn't want to hit a civilian. Admittedly he is the worst shot in the group, but still he is also one of the most zealous about purging corruption.

To sum up here, in my opinion morality in 40k is this, trust your fellow man because they are all that is holding back the gates of chaos and the hoards of xenos scum bent on the extinction of man.

A good way to help the players get into the 40k universe a bit better is to get them a copy of the Imperial Guards Uplifting Primer. Its a good read and it will help them understand how the Imperium thinks. Just make sure that they understand that most of it is propaganda :-)

One more thing, they may not kill a deformed baby, it depends on whats wrong, if its born with a underdeveloped arm that is wrapped underneath his body and the skin has grown around it so that he looks grotesque does not me he is a mutant. Most likely the Medicae at the birth would know that this is just a deformity and that it can be fixed. If say the baby is born with glowing green eyes and an octopus tentacle for an arm, that would be a warp corrupted mutation in which case the baby and the mother and a probably the father would be executed immediately, as is your duty as an imperial citizen. If the Medicae has known the parents all his life he may not be able to kill them, he is still human, and no matter what your culture its hard to kill people you know, trust and possibly love, So if this happens in a game and the players learn that there was a corrupted baby born, would they kill the parents and the medicae for being a heretic or would they take pity on the family and the Medicae for being human and spare them?

As the GM it is your job to let them know what is commonly morally acceptable in the culture, every planet, station, hive, ship and slum is going to be slightly different culturally but it will always be wrong to kill another human, even if they scream heretic or mutant they should not do it themselves but should instead inform the Arbitus, church or Inquisitorial site if one should be available. If its ok to kill someone because they are a "heretic" than it would be anarchy and the Empire would fall, that's why the Inquisition exists in the first place, to follow these accusations and leads and to learn who is and isn't a heretic or mutant, and to seek out corruption wherever it is and to destroy it.

Best idea I could come up with is this, take the common moral understanding of where you live and mix it into the xenophobic world of the 40k universe, this will give the players a fun place to be and allow you to give them easy or hard choices, just remember that if they let the parents live, you might want to have the mother actually be a cultist or something, just to make sure that they understand that they can not rely on people being "good" by nature.

Let me know if this was helpful in anyway.