I never really gave this much thought until i heard that BC was the next big game coming out, and now it's a really interesting idea i've been batting around.

when my group of explorers started playing, we knew from the getgo that we would be seriously toeing the line between borderline renegade and flatout heretic, and that's a line we've crossed a couple times. In the beginning, our navigator brought up the idea of actually being consummate followers of chaos, keeping the Warrant around as a nice mask to get into Imperial space, but mostly putting in port at Daemon worlds. The game mechanics themselves wouldnt change, and we'd still (technically) be doing what rogue traders do best, but the reasons on how and why we went about it would all change radically. Our "Warrants" would likely come from Patrons like Magnus and Lorgar, who -from what we understand- have a vested interest in claiming new worlds in hopes for finding a practical reversal to the Rubicon or the Prime Truth, respectively. We'd get a slightly modified version of the perks of being an RT, along with some nice Chaos benefits on the side, at the expense of access to imperial space and being hunted by the =I=. At the time, i felt it wasn't worth the trouble, and we went about playing the darker side of RT, but now i'm thinking about opening up the Chaos avenue if the players want it.

Opinions on the concept, the ramefications, and ideas on how to make it a relatively smooth transition?

Just as long as they know that being bad guys dosent make the corruption and insanity rules go away. If anything, it will get much worse.

You know i was thinking about the whole corruption and insanity thing, and how your character simply stops functioning at a certain level. I was thinking that there might be a Chaos perk or something that allows you to simply continue accruing those points indefinately. You REALLY would want to stay on Chaos' good side at that point, since if they take away that little gift, you die, for all intents and purposes, but that's just an idea

Thats the whole thing tho. They want you to die. There is always another fool to corrupt.

There are a couple talents that give you some ways to avoid corruption and insanity. There may be some renaming in order to make them fit, but that shouldnt be a problem.

korjik said:

Ah, that depends entirely on how useful you are. If characters would just dead after reaching a certain amount of CP there wouldn't be people like Bile or Abbadon still around and causing trouble.

I think BC will introduce new mechanics for Corruption Points. Just like the Star Wars P&P did it with Dark Side Points, which would have otherwise forced you to retire a character in the early versions, too. Maybe these "new" CP will even sport both advantages and disadvantages at the same time, improving your daemonic side whilst purging your humanity. The short story "Daemonblood" was quite cool in describing how a fallen Space Marine that became a Champion of Nurgle slowly changed over the years, how his armour warped, how his body mutated, how his weapons fused with his hands, ...

I might have to take a look at WFRP's Tome of Corruption - I think that book would employ similar mechanics in terms of Corruption.

korjik said:

That defeats the purpose though. Why would someone with a +30 corruption get the Armor of Contempt talent?

I don't think they'd get the Armour of Contempt Talent, but they might get the Your Skin Would Make A Fine Cloak Talent - which is mechanically identical to Armour of Contempt (or requires a minimum number of corruption points), but flavour wise different.

I think there will be options for mutations taking away control of your character and talents that will mitigate or give you control over that (roll twice on the mutation chart, pick which one you like? Bonuses to resist malignancies? Bonuses to hide your taint level)

Ultimately, I think Black Crusade is a race to damnation and spawnhood, or exaltation and daemonhood (and also damnation)

Fortinbras said:

Easy. They take it to slow down their accumulation of more Corruption. Is this a trick question?

Even someone that seeks out and/or is comfortable with a certain threshold of Corruption for whatever reason may then want to slow down before they hit another threshold and become "too far gone" or whatever.

thanks guys. from the look of things i'm gonna need to do some tweaking of the corruption system. i was thinking about writing up (or finding) a list of chaos benefits you can get from a high corruption, and replacing the malignancies chart with that. as long as you do things that please Chaos or a dark god, you gain benefits (or "benefits", chaos can be a little ambiguous with it's pay package). start pissing off chaos, and you have to go back to using the malignancies chart until you get back into it's good graces. REALLY piss off chaos, and you have to start swapping out Gifts with Malignancies. also, i'm thinking i might suspend the whole "remove Character from play" mechanic, so long as the characters remain more or less loyal servants of chaos. opinions?

Well how about instead of not rolling on the malignacy table make them roll a d10. 1-4 malig, 5-8 your 'gifts', 9-10 you roll on both(since chaos is known for blessing and cursing at the ssame time).

And what about a toughness for 100 corruption and willpower for insanity at 100, to see if they remain in player's hands. every 10points beyond 100 they test again with a -10 for every 10 points beyond 100.