We see a lot of "my players kill people without a second thought" type posts around here and I was wondering how many people use the corruption point system to double as a mechanical, and visible, meter to let players see when they are being inhumanly jaded, callous or "efficient". Yes, this is the Grimdark future, and yes the acolytes are employees of an oppressive totalitarian theocracy - but not all acolytes should be heartless sociopathic killers - which seems to happen far too often. Too readily most players swallow the "ruthless enforcement" way of approaching situations and forget that they are humans - not machines. Using corruption as a reminder of this - having them become effectively less human the less human they behave, seems like a possible way of reminding them of this while not having to add another mechanic to the game.

Has anyone had any experience trying this out for themselves, and if so, how well did it work?

This of course depends on what you want corruption points to represent in your campaign. Both BL and FFG are rather vague on this matter.

I play corruption points as a measure of how far from the imperial ideal you believe that you act. This means that when my group exterminated an entire planetary culture the players were asked to rate how happy their characters were about what they just did, on a scale of 1-5. Everyone who set a 5 gained one extra fatepoint, because they had obviously done a heroic deed in the name of the Emperor by purging a genestealerinfected population. Anyone who set a score lower than 4 gained 5 corruption points for each step below 4, because their character had obviously done something that they were not entirely sure was a good idea, thus they started questioning their purity in the eyes of the emperor... Also this means that our Moritat Assassin can eat babies without suffering corruption, because it is his way to pay respect to the Emperor.

This approach can also be used with an "objective" ideal of the imperial creed, where the GM interpret what is "truly" imperial, and then hand out corruption points for big steps away from this. In this case it would make a big difference if an exterminatus was done by official imperial nuclear warheads (no corruption if it was certainly needed compared to the risk to the imperium) or if it was done by using xenotech (corruption earned no matter how needed the cause). An exterminatus that is done wihtout certain need of it, where there are much more effective solutions available, should of course cause corruption points. Also please remember that there is a certain difference between what is today considered imperial creed and what the Emperor himself thought was proper when he was more active. The space marines are (by players) believed to hold with a much more "original" creed.

The least interesting view on corruption is, imho, the "humanity" view. There are plenty of RPGs that does stories around 21th century (or 20th century) ethics excellently good already, Vampire by White Wolf is an obvious one). The major point of the 40k world is that there are no good guys. The protagonists are working as a secret police for the nastiest fascist imperium imaginable, and they are still the less bad alternative! Nearly nothing in the imperium encourages compassion, what is encouraged is serving the Imperium. Failing to serve the Emperor, by for example prioritizing love before your duty, should yield corruption points. This makes for much more interesting stories, since your players get to experience rather different lines of thought. Best case this makes them notice and appreciate all the social norms and more or less unspoken rules that we benefit from in our world.

You can of course consider Corruption as a sort of chaos-radioactivity. It taints things, leaves damaging residue behind and a good faith in the emperor and a strong willpower works a bit like a radiation protective suit or eating Iodine. I find this approach rather bland, mechanical and uninspiring.

Another interesting view is that chaos is often interpreted as causing corruption merely by being present or observed. Consider this dilemma: should a bloody sacrifice cause more corruption points if it is done to honour one of the big chaos powers, compared to if it is done to honour a fictious "chaos god" that the sacrificer just made up in his drugaddicted mind? Also, if an acolyte investigates the two sacrificial altars later, will she earn more corruptions points at the one that was dedicated to an actually existing chaos power? Will it change the amount of earned corruption points if the investigator has the appropriate forbidden lores to understad the difference?

And on a more constructive note. If you want your players to consider different solutions before acting, set up situations where the characters get into trouble by killing indiscriminately. Such as let them find out that one person they killed was needed as an informant later, and if you are a nasty GM send them to interview her ten year old son who might know something but who is of course traumatized by the death of his mother. Show the consequences of the killings, both in personal cost for another human and for the chance of success of the mission. Twist up the meters to the spot where the players will feel the knot in their stomach.

I once had my players all worked up over storming a genestealer cults inner sanctum to cleanse it with fire. Once they had fought their way inside they discovered they had torched a daycare center for minors. Sure some of the kids were tainted by stealer implants, but still. The characters had done a good job, and the players thought long and hard about the ethics of the imperium vs our ethics.

I think a willpower test with GM directed modifiers would be a good way to handle repeated killings. And as Mellon mentioned, there should be consequences for killing anyone/everyone who gets in their way. Unless the player is channeling some serious imperial might and intimidation, people are not going to sit quietly when their friends are getting gunned down by an acolyte most likely cut off from or on the extremity of their support network. Who knows, maybe a freak gasoline fight accident might result from the death of random hive tough mocking/laughing at the sensitive acolyte. A mad dog is usually not going to be desired by an inquisitor. They'd get a fairly sturdy leash and a spartan kennel if they get too out of hand.

So maybe, if you still wanted to award corruption to someone for repeatedly killing, you could come up with a scale. 1cp = 1 death. then you get another from 5, then 10, and up? It would need to be a certain type of people though. Otherwise the frontline guardsmen would be hooped more than they usually are. But then you or the player would need to keep track of "questionable kills" to know when to award a corruption point.

Awarding a corruption point for killing your first person might be warranted, but after that it seems a little much. Like Mellon said, it probably should be more of a moral corruption, learning forbidden lores, interacting with xenos, encountering 'alien' philosophies, etc. Anything that shows an acolyte something OTHER than the pure light of the Imperium... If anything, repeated bloodshed should be wracking up insanity instead, as that would related to the Jaded talent. You could maybe award that talent on a player who reaches a certain level of IP if their career path does not let them acquire that skill with their own experience.

You would probably also need to come up with a grading system that takes into account the players background and career. A feral guardsman/assassin, hiver scum, or an arbitrator would technically have had more experience in seeing death and/or killing things, so their resistance if you will, should be higher in that regard, than a cloistered adept caught up/participating in a full on massacre.

Problem is, my players would gladly beat the information out of that ten year old kid and not think twice about torching a daycare full of - potentially - dangerous children. They've taken this "we'll do anything for the Emperor" shtick so far they have no humanity of any kind. That is were things become a problem, because it is difficult to make them care about anything or anyone other than upholding the "god will know his own" mentality. Sure there are social consequences, but it is still like running a group of sociopaths who are only avoiding wholesale slaughter and breaking every inconvenient law because they'll be punished for it.

They should be like that to a point, in some situations, the problem is - they always are. So there is no room for moral questions, or doubt, or feeling the weight of sacrificing innocents to save the Empire. The thing is we're not playing an evil game here - the PCs think they are good people acting in the right, so whatever their duty they shouldn't be soulless machines, and that is how they behave; characters who'd watch an old lady being beaten to death by bums and not give it a second thought. ( "oh, old women getting beaten to death by bums? I need to buy some bread for breakfast")

Corruption in DH should not be taken simply as 'Humanity loss' per V:tM or some other game system.

From what I've seen, generally anything that is done, whilst exposed to the horrors of the warp could cause CP or IP gains.

In my game I have worked out some rules that certain drugs taken recreationally, whilst engaged in certain activities may cause these gains to occur. Sometimes these drugs have been given via Needle gun, but the result is the same... players having to roll Toughness to resist them, and then Willpower or have issues.

Corruption should not be gained simply because your world view differs from the established 'norm'. What is normal fo the DH universe anyway. We can't agree on that in our universe, so I don't see how a GM can judge that for his players, as they may see things differently.

Let me give you an example of someting that happened fairly recently in a game I play in. We were doing a 'Part II' of an adventure that we had played in previously. One of the GMs had written a very well done sequel to Purge the Unclean and while running it, there was a scene wherein the players were interrogating one of our opponents. This involved a lot of torture and pain for the unfortunate NPC. Did this mean that the players should gain CPs for the interrogation? Or should my character, a younger girl (age 21 at the time of the adventure I think) and more prone to just killing someone rather than hurting them, should she then gain CPs because she doesn't fit the world model?

Apparently the GM never thought of it, or he realized, like I did later, that how the characters acted in the scene was more a matter of personal choice; but however cruel or humane the players wish to be is their choice, and by imposing CP or IP gains on the characters for their actions will detract from the player's enjoyment of roleplaying their character, as they may become more concerned over that and possible sanctions, then how they think they should react.

I believe you could benefit from some clearer distinctions between players and characters. To me it seems like your players are in the exactly right mood to play cynikal, sadistical bastards without compassion or empathy. The Inquisition certainly use such people all the time and a lot, compare to Inq Ryykehus (who I believe has rather few corruption points). Indeed I'd say that mentality is what the Inquisition, or indeed any "secret police" is all about, to enforce the will of the rulers no matter the cost for the individuals. This is imho an excellent way to experience some of the things that truly makes the Imperium unique as a Sci-Fi setting. The film Tropa de Elite (aka Elite Squad) might be good inspiration for your group. But please do not confuse your players wanting to play this setting with them feeling that this behaviour has any place in the real world. You are roleplaying, and what is considered "right" for your characters have nothing to do with what i considered "right" for your players IRL.

However, and this is very important: If you doesn't want to play this kind of campaign, talk to your players about it and sort it. Maybe even start a new campaign with new characters with another attitude towards serving the Emperor.

Apparently I'm not articulating the problem well, because responses like "this is a roleplaying game" are so far off the mark of what I'm getting at they might as well be shooting at different targets. I have been GMing longer than some of the posters here have been alive, don't doubt it, so I have no problem with the Player vs Character divide.

And while trying to explain it better, I realize I'm not going to be able to. When reading the Dark Heresy material the idea I got was "Call of Cthulhu" meets the Grimdark future - but you can't create effective horror when the characters have given up on everything that made them fallible, reachable, human, individuals. You can create imagery, yes, and disturbing descriptions, but as any horror fan will tell you, it isn't the scenery or special effects that make a movie or story frightening, it is the ability to relate to the characters and what they are going through. But it is easy to lose touch with that humanity when your character is asked to do the most brutal things in the name of the Empire ... which is a fine theme, if it weren't for the fact that players reach the point of where this would be a problem and simply toss a switch and turn off the human part of their characters. With nothing to tie them to the idea that they have a humanity worth struggling with and fighting for, they become automatons and the idea that they are working for something "better" (at least in the eyes of their characters) becomes meaningless. And once this flip has been switched on, no amount of trying to remind them with IC material seems sufficient to toggle it back even a bit ... so I have been considering mechanical methods to remind them that a person doesn't just flip a switch and turn off their humanity. (just as we have a mechanic to remind people that they are in fact becoming insane and they can't just rp that when it is convenient and ignore it the rest of the time ... they have a meter they can look at and say "oh yeah, I'm this insane and being insane like this can be bad")

Nowhere in the material do I see Dark Heresy described as "Sociopathy: the Game" and as such I'd like to find a way to encourage people away from playing it as such.

If it were just my problem I wouldn't have bothered bringing it up here, but I have seen the same discussion appear more than once in the Gamemaster section, so wanted to toss out some thoughts on mechanical ways to address it.

I strongly advise against using Corruption as a "Morality" meter, as this is clearly not what it is. It is meant to show how corrupted by Chaos a given character is. While it is very likely that a very corrupted character is not a nice person, this does not need to be the case. The greatest heroes can be corrupted to the bone, simply by fault of the very work they do. Chaos is so insidious that you do not need to be subjectively EVILLLLLLLLL to fall to Chaos. In fact an outstandingly DECENT human being can fall by virtue of not guarding their soul enough. It would be really silly if a person would spontanously grow a mutation from being EVILLLLLLLL while at the same time never ever having had anything to do with the warp.

Insanity Points, however, work much better for this. The assumption being that extremely callous and sociopathic behaviour also deteriorates the mental health of the perpetrator, no matter how convinced of the righteousness of their course they are. In fact, this could actually be used to justify the "Righteousness" mental disorder should the character happen to exceed an Insanity threshold and gain a disorder. I would advise you, though, to be not too harsh on the players, it comes with the job description that they often have to do bad stuff to prevent worse stuff.

When it faciliates good roleplaying: Great; but when it just hampers the progress and success of the players: Not so Great.

I would be inclinded to use Insanity rather than Corruption as a measure of "Humanity" (or rather Inhumanity).

Corruption, for me, is a measure of far the forces of the Warp have inflitrated the character's soul. Insanity, on the other hand, is how broken the character's mind has become by the horrible acts they have witnessed and particupated in. In fact, I firmly believe that most higher Imperial officials (at least those who have a clue what's going on) are stark raving mad (Insanity 40+) with the Disorder Delusions of Righteousness.

Hmm. I guess sending the pcs to a re-education camp would be off base? Maybe have their inquisitor (if you are using one) crack under the pressure and go off the deep end, causing some 'internal reshuffling' assigning a new, law-based inquisitor to the acolytes? Ex-Arbite perhaps?

Or if the inquisitor has gone rogue/radical, have the pcs go without contact from their handler for quite some time, even the big boss disappear. Which could either start a investigation that ultimately lets them realize they have been off-book/off-grid for most if not the entire span of their adventures, then have them brought in to do some 'splainin'. Put them on trial for their more extreme actions? Have some Interrogators spend some one on one time with them?

An extreme result could be mind cleansing. But that could be going to far (but it would be interesting). But yeah, this idea might be far off base from your concerns. You could always dial back the epic nature of various campaigns. Maybe they've blown up one to many worlds, or cleansed one to many populations. Now maybe they have to go escort/protect a research team in some dusty archive until they find the tiny fact needed. And the information is so insignificant, the attack they may inevitably feel is coming...never comes, and the acolytes are forced to patrol and uncover insignificant crimes (theft of office supplies, illegal office romance, etc). Set them down in "Dunder Mifflin" of the DH universe.

Jack of trades, Now I see what you mean. And yes, that is indeed a completely different issue.

My top of the head suggestion would be to include the families of the characters. If neccesary make new characters and include their families and friends in background and in the adventures you play. Make the characters do inquisitorial work in their own communities, or at least nearby, and have them return to their families between assignments, or even at the end of each day of investigating. Let their normal social life interfer slightly with their duties to the Inquisition. This could serve as a reminder of their "mortality", that they are only humans. Maybe even require them to lie to their families about what they are doing.

Play a few short stories with one or two of the players as hir/their character and the other players as family members and friends of them to immerse the players and make the families come alive. Preferrably these should be quite ordinary happenings, and not really any action/mystery/horror scenes. If you put the family in direct danger, it risks turning into a rather standard action movie with the family only playing the part traditionally played by "maiden in distress".

If possible, talk to friends who have done military service in "hot" zones, and talk to them about how they try to regain their humanity and reconcile their "military" life with their "civilian" life. It's quite astonsihing how humans are able to reevaluate "one human life" between dinner and directing airstrikes, and how hard it is to make you a complete person that includes both those experiences.

And as to the original question: I believe that if you do something like this, you will not really need a game mechanic to keep track of humanity lost and regained.

From what I've seen in your later post, and posts by others, it's not so much as the IP/CP issue, but more a callousness on the part of players?

I've seen this in my game somewhat. The issue I've had is slightly different. It's been more an issue of letting NPCs die, because they're not REAL people or players.

The way I've handled it, at least so far is now that they''ve been operating like this for a while, people (NPCs) have noticed ther callous reactions to others, and no longer have the same level of trust or belief that they're there to help. This can be very difficult on any group, especially when they have cause to go back to areas they've been to in the game before (same transport ship or same world somewhere).

In my current adventure, the players are using a Rogue Trader they've used in the past, for transport to Solomon from Scintilla. The players are running around now without an Adept and without a Scum... both of whom had been NPCs in the group at one point, but because of players' actions (or sometimes inactions) have perished. Their last Scum was originally from the ship the're now on. Now they can't find anyone to help in key areas and don't know what they'e dealing with. Rumours are floating on the ship of their untrustworthiness and they even had a preacher going around trying to raise up the ship's crew against them.

Of course, they don't realize there's actually an infestation of Cryptos on board the ship, causing most of what's happening, but even so, it can actually made it easier for a GM to slow down a group, when their reputation takes a hit.

BTW Jack, like you, I am a lot older. I'm 49, and ran my first game as a DM back around 1978 playing 1st ed D&D. It took me a long time to learn, you don't have to railroad players into proper behaviour, it's usually much simply to show them what happens when no one trusts them anymore.

Denmar1701 said:

Thing is, they used to know this - it seems like a symptom that has popped up almost exclusively in 40k and from what I can gather it is because of that issue I addressed above about reconciling and retaining humanity.

hahh, I LOVE THIS post!

We often debate this in our games. It usually comes down to ... well, this IS grimdark! lol

my guardsman in the game is always trying to do the right thing, save the damsel in distress, protect the innocent, and yet they always die! when it comes down to it, civilians just get in the way normally when a fire fight starts, and to be very frank, the Inquisition recruits ruthless (logical) , driven individuals, who look for the big picture, not people who make emotional decisions (which is precisely what this is)

So to be fair, this is a loaded question really... If you beat up 10 year old kids to get the information promptly, which saves millions of lives, or you ask him nicely, which results in a delay, which COSTS millions of lives... which route do you take... inquisition is a busy organization... it states in the book after all, staving off destruction in the 11th hour!

I LOVE the 'what results from all the cruelty' threads!! I always laugh so hard reading them.