So, I'm reading through Black Crusade, and yeah, the rules are a massive improvement on Dark Heresy et al, so, now, I want to run a Dark Heresy-style loyalist game using these rules.

How to do this? Hmm.

First: Use a mix of Dark Heresy Corruption with Black Crusade's. Use Insanity. Also; use something like 'Status' instead of 'Infamy'.

Second: Remove God-based alignments. (Treat all as 'Allied' for XP costs.)

Third: Come up with archetypes, similar to Apostate, Psyker, Renegade and Heretek.

Four: Minor details, such as adding in more Imperium flavoured talents (Chem Geld, Pure Faith etc), whilst restricting the Chaos ones.

Boom, that should be it. A mid-to-high level loyalist game, where the players play an Imperial Guard command squad, an Inquisitorial retinue, an Arbites suppression team, Administratum tithe inspectors or whatever.

Some help with steps 3 and 4 would be nice!

bluntpencil2001 said:

Pure Faith aside, pretty much all the talents from previous rulebooks are in Black Crusade, but some have been renamed to better suit Chaos characters (or, in some cases, changed to allow non-Techpriests to take them). If memory serves, Chem Geld was renamed Cold Hearted.

bluntpencil2001 said:

I like you're thinking. Would it be easier to just skip starting skills or whatever and give the characters a few hundred extra experience to start with? I do not have the book so cannot say if this is a workable solution. There's more than enough fluff from Dark Heresy to re-use for whatever archetype a player wants.

bluntpencil2001 said:

You mean like Cleric, Guardsman, Techpriest and...Psyker? (ie, just rename the archetypes that we have to match Imperial Themes.)

XiMao626 said:

I wouldn't even map Renegade to Guard or military sorts. You can make one hell of a social sort with that archetype too.

I was thinking switch infamy for destiny. Oh well... I always imagine that the renegade is actually more in line with the rogue trader, or inquisitor. Just saying... They seem to be the mortal leader type archtype to me.

@dulahan - You could. Renegade is probably the most flexible of the whole bunch when it comes to what it can and can't do well...

Mostly I mapped Renegade to Guardsman because of the WS and BS increase. Seems the most fighter like to me is all.

@snowman - I see them less as a leadery type and more as a swiss army knife archetype. You can design the character to be anything you want, from a scribe to a guardsman to an assassin to a charismatic leader. Where the Apostate is almost always going to be talky, the heretek is always going to be techy and the psyker is going to murder everyone with it's mind...

Did someone tried to just use the Tier based advances with classes from DH/RT/DW ? The only big problem I see is the cost for advancments; how do you rule the alignment for a loyal servant of the emperor compared to the 4 gods of chaos ?

@Lucius Valerius

Just consider them unaligned.

That seems almost a shame, since dedication to the gods is a huge thing when you're playing as chaos. Only a fool tries to play the gods off on another, after all.

Why not rename the four god loyalties Disciplines? When you purchase Khorne's advances, rather than actually earning favor with Khorne, your character is simply adopting an aggressive, Martial play-style, making future advances similar to it cheaper, while making it more difficult to learn and master skills and strategies of the other disciplines. Who needs a complicated scheme when you can just smash your way through everything?

Cifer said:

I'm not sure what that means. I don't have the book yet, just bits of info here and there.. I'm very anxious tho because I love the idea of classless system.

MadDuckMcRyan said:

But if you do that, then you're missing out on a great opportunity to play up dedication vs temptation. To stay pure, clean, and loyal costs the character. If they'd just let lose a bit and just get ten measly corruption points, why, they could have it easier . Then, if they just get a little more corruption, they get some more help... and so begins a loyal servant's road to hell ;-) Don't take that temptation away from Chaos.

I'm planing on running a loyalist game with the BC rules. How I plan on tackling such in a more structured Imperial society:

• Seven character races to chose from (Human, Noble Scion, Twist, Void Born, Navis Noblite, Abhuamn, and Space Marine) each with varying xp costs to take, human being 0 and Space Marine being... high (7,000 or so from the sound of it). These will determine the characters starting Traits and Baseline Characteristics.
• Six archetypes based loosely on the careers from DH with any association to affiliation and job title stripped (Scribe, Assassin, Militant, Technomat, Rogue, Cleric). These will give the character a Special Ability from a list of choices, determine their Characteristic Advance Cost, and give them 8 Skills that are "aligned" to them and 8 that are "opposed."
• They would also chose their social class to give them an extra skill or talent (like a Trade skill, etc) and determine their starting Influence (a Noble will start with a hell of a lot more then a Drudging Class after all).

All Talents will cost the Unaligned cost. However, they would make alignment checks just the same as a dyed in the wool chaos follower. However, only Talents and Characteristic advances will count for the check. Likewise, if they end up aligned, only Talents will be affected. Since their Archetype will determine their Characteristic costs, the Gods will simply give them a discount on their aligned characteristic (say, half listed cost). If they ever bit the bullet and sold themselves over whole-sale to chaos, then their patron god will start affecting their Skill and Characteristic costs directly as well instead of their Archetype as defined by the Imperium.

And that's my plan. I don't know how feasible a lot of it is as I don't have the book, but I think it might fly.

Hmm I was thinking this from a SM prospective but what if the alignment is related to how much a chapter follow the codex ? Again, I don't have the book so I have no idea how skills and traits are organized in each alignment.

I ha a chance to read a copy a friend at the GW shop has and we were discussing how to use the CSM templates for a loyalist game, not yet deathwatch but still astartes.

We figured for the alignment and costs to mimic somehow DW. IE, if you want to play an assault marine, then those count as true; tactical and devastator will be allied while libby and techmarine as opposed (ofcourse if a skill is present in more then one table at different ranks you'll use your "class's").

This also apply to chapter skills and talents. Your chapter's skills and talents are allied and depending on how different from your chapter structure the other chapter is you pay them as allied or opposed. IE Ultramarines. Chapters that follow the codex are at true, chapter that kind of follow it like BA and DA at true and chapters that don't follow it at all like BT and SW at opposed.

Stat advances are all at Allied regardless.

What do you guys think ?