Hey,

I am have trouble convincing my sceptical friends that Black Crusade as a campaign setting can actually work.

Three main qualms:

1. mixing Chaos Space Marines and regular humans in a party will not work - the SM will outshine the humans in combat and action scenes, and the humans can't do subtlety, infiltration and interacting with Imperial citizens while having SM in tow.

2. what are the reasons for a party of self-centered, untrustworthy and chaotic miscreants for working together without resorting to backstabbing and betrayal as soon as it becomes convenient?

3. what kind of missions can you play as a bunch of chaotic renegades?

The setting's been out for a while and I'm sure it has been discussed at length here and there, but maybe we can compile the views in this here thread for aspiring players. Curious to your experiences!

1: Yes... and no. The space marines will definitely outtank the humans. They'll draw fire, wielder heavier guns and all in all get to go all Rambo on the enemy. But there's still plenty of room for humans to shine, be that through stealth and sniping, battlefield tactics and leadership, or just good ol' fashioned psychic rains of death.

Infiltration does get more difficult with space marines, but infiltration's not the core of a BC campaign. A lot of people want to play it, but there's a reason we got the Screaming Vortex lurking in the back of the book. Also, covering up a space marine is not that much harder than it is to cover up tentacles, extra arms or eyes that constantly leak pure warp energy. Creativity and persistence (and maybe a bit of warp magic) can hide 'em all when a bit of infiltration is needed.

Also, players hardly need to infiltrate in order for the humans to benefit from superior technological know-how, social expertise, stealth skills and pure skill monkey style shenanigans. Not to mention superior psychic might.

Lastly, because it can't be said enough: There is no rule saying you must allow a mixed group. If the gm and/or the players all agree to it, a fully human or fully space marine group is completely viable. It will most likely tilt the game in certain directions, but all of them could be quite a lot of fun, and offers their own appeal.

2: Evil is not stupid. Also, Chaos isn't necessarily evil. Not only can players play noble demons who turn to chaos out of good intentions, they can thrive while doing so. Furthermore, just because you're "evil" doesn't mean you can't have honor, and even if you don't, it doesn't mean you're an idiot who doesn't understand the value of team work and suddenly becomes incapable of trust or friendship. Being on the other side doesn't suddenly transform you into some sort of apathic monster that eats babies, despite what any good war time propaganda teaches you.

In short, they stay together for the same reason ANY traditional rpg party stays together. They're stronger in a group and so they stand next to someone who can compensate for their weaknesses and who benefits from their strengths. And, perhaps, because they're genuine friends.

3: Discovering ancient, lost relics. Unearthing/stealing/finding/capturing/pirating archeo/xenotech or forbidden lore and knowledge. Conquering a planet. Spreading dissent and corruption amongst the citizens of the Imperium. Assassinating local governance to pave way for democracy. Expanding into the Vortex in the hope of finding power and influence through it's many secrets. Gathering followers. Ending a planet wide tribal war in effort to secure the services of it's fierce and powerful warrior clans. Kidnapping a Planetary governor's daughter in an effort to sway him to your cause or perhaps just to free her from her despotic father. Going on a very epic pub crawl through the entire vortex.

For example.

The Laughing God said:

I just wanted to start this with a general statement about RPGs; the setting is gravy, there to provide you with cool fluff and general concepts to go forward with, and with that said, if you enjoy the basic premises of any particular setting, then the only thing stopping you from doing so is your fellow RPGers.

1. mixing Chaos Space Marines and regular humans in a party will not work - the SM will outshine the humans in combat and action scenes' date=' and the humans can't do subtlety, infiltration and interacting with Imperial citizens while having SM in tow.[/quote']

Honestly, this has not been an issue for me. I personally help to optimize my players optimize their characters, and no character is left behind on the battlefield, human or not.

A human melee renegade can't deal with hordes, and they have a rough time if they get jumped. However, they have significant advantages when it comes to a number of skills, like stealth. Throw a Cameleoline Cloak on that guy and he will be able to Ambush, etc, like no other.

It's also important to note that humans can do roughly the same damage as most space marines (potentially more in the case of psyker vs non-melee focused sorcerer).

Space marines can easily interact with other heretics and other less noble groups (like rogue traders), which can be a very large portion of your NPC base, depending on how you set up your campaign/missions.

2. what are the reasons for a party of self-centered' date=' untrustworthy and chaotic miscreants for working together without resorting to backstabbing and betrayal as soon as it becomes convenient?[/quote']

For one, your players not being douchebags might help in this department. We all play RPGs for fun, and as a result, even if you want a relatively realistic experience, eventually you are going to have to suspend your disbelief a little bit for the sake of the game (it happens in every RPG). This is not necessarily true in the case of motivation not to back-stab in BC, but if your players are really wondering this, then I suggest an attitude adjustment, personally.

However, luckily for you BC comes built in with an automatic "you must work together or suffer the consequences mechanic" in the form of compacts. Simply put, you have to complete your compacts in order to please the dark gods and to gain infamy/xp. If you fail, bad things will happen, and you need your fellow heretics in order to succeed.

Also, most characters should not be complete sociopaths. They can have honor and develop friendships just like anyone else. Similarly, they could be cowards or lazy. The big picture is that they probably need each other in order to advance their goals, hence creating compacts. The BC core rulebook goes into a fair amount of detail on this; I suggest reading it, as it actually answers a number of your questions.

3. what kind of missions can you play as a bunch of chaotic renegades?

You can pretty much play any kind of classical RPG mission. You want to save the princess? Well, in the case the princess happens to be a demon that has been bound by the inquisition, protected by fire breathing Sororitas and other nasty inquisition minions. Do you want to play a cloak and dagger, subterfuge/espionage scenario? Well, going through a hive city corrupting/assassinating/gathering intelligence is all very plausible. Do you want to play warmonger or rebel leader? Guess what? The only limitations on mission choices is your imagination. You can even be semi-good guys in BC if you really wanted to (you might inevitably fall into greater and greater depths of corruption, but you might have relatively "good" intentions for most of, if not all of, a character's career),

edit: I'm sorry, but I have no idea how this forum's quoting system works. My post is a mess right now, but I'll try to fix it later.

I don't buy into the the "evil can't work together" line. That's a stereo-type. Some of the best campaigns I've played were "Evil" campaigns. Usually desperate people who have little choice in what they do. It's them against everyone else and therefore every ally they make they hold on to. It makes for tighter bonds when you can't trust anyone else. In all the campaigns where I've played "evil" types, the group got along and worked better together than when we played "good-guys", who end up being from vastly different backgrounds and may have had little reason to trust each other or even travel together.

Also, the Emperium isn't exactly cakes and roses. There are plenty of reasons to hate and fear the Emperium. Anyone that has escaped the Emperium would feel justified fighting against it. Some war leader probably feel it's their duty to take down such an oppressive regime.

When peasants revolt against the ruling class, I'm sure they look like cut-throats and bandits to the aristocracy, meanwhile that same ruling class seem to be heartless dictators to the serfs. The best evil Characters are going to be the ones that beleive in their cause and feel their actions are justified. They are going to see themselves as heroes, not villains.

Game actually hangs together a lot better than you'd first think, as the old saying goes, assumption is the mother of all f***-ups Very refined, simplified combat system, they've tidied up all the skills and talents, in my opinion that makes the book worth buying simply for the mechanics that any long term 40KRPG'er will find some use for.

1: The marines we've had in the game haven't had the huge impact that we'd expect in a party where the more 'veteran' players are mostly just playing humans and I figure them in as more of a "force multiplier" than a driving factor in combat. If you do tool up a renegade or psyker, they are extremely dangerous individuals, heck even a crazy heretek is dangerous in their own way by contributing knowledge and the ability to make all manner of terrible things. After long enough the majority of the party won't be able to hide in plain sight or disguise themselves easily as they're all full of some kind of mutations.

2: The main reason the miscreants hang together is the mechanic of doing their Compacts. While one heretic may be able to achieve a few minor things of note, 'extra heretics' can actually achieve a lot and as a result they become more infamous because the impact they have is expotential, if they set out to do something of note. If your players are liable to sit around waiting for the GM to come up with a new dungeoun, they'll earn some xp, but they wont earn any infamy or corruption points and it is very driven to that concept. The other reasons are that the galaxy is a dangerous place... if you cant back it up, then you're going to lose it or have someone kill you for all your shiny things or their orthodoxy dictates that they must blow you up and there is safety in numbers.

Backstabbing? Sure, as long as the compact succeeds, you can. If you fail, you will be f**ked on for failure and make no bones about it, the failure WILL HURT. GM's should encourage PC's to have their own secret motivations during a compact where they can further their own goals, they dont necessarily have to clash with other PC's motivations but sometimes they might. Inadvertantly my character has ruined many PC's secret plans along the way, likewise they've also screwed up a few of my own!

Don't forget, the PC's actually need each other and Chaos isn't "Dumb Evil" in so much the Imperium isn't "Lawful Stupid" either. We've got most of us quartered into the 4 gods as devotee's, a couple in the unaligned. My heretek (Tzeench) gets along just fine on a personal level with renegade (Khorne), pysker (Slaanesh) and the marine (Nurgle) because while I might be tuning up all thier guns and gear, fixing them when they're hurt, they're the guys who have the firepower to keep the Imperium away and extra skills that I don't to get me the shiny things for "next sekwet projex for kaos".

3: A lot of our Compacts revolve around the very mundane basics of survival. As I've reminded people time and time again, you can't just run down to the Imperial Shopping Mall and bomb-up with guns, gear and toys. You need supply lines of resources, somewhere to live, a place to rest, repair and get up to all the other fun things like making daemon weapons and enough hallucinogen gas to get a planet high!

Strategically, we've pissed off both sides of the fence, a lot of the major players in Chaos don't like us because we're unwilling to be boot-licks in their personal compacts and the Imperium has had a couple of good shots at killing us too. So we have a little ship, a secret skull cave base and a lot of troops, from there we've got somewhere to hide in between our raids and plan our next dastardly activity. Along the way we're careful not to always scorch the earth, a lot of the people we meet we make friends with so there's extra sets of ears and eyes, somewhere else to hide when things go to hell.

That all said, the game can be as complicated or simple as you want it.

Black Crusade as a campaign is very proactive, much like Rogue Trader - the player characters have freedom to do as they please and go where they want, within the limits of their resources, and the campaign goals are typically those characters' own ambitions. Early in the campaign, "gathering resources" works well as a focus - obtaining followers and other things valuable for their long-term goals. Doing this within a limited area helps - my campaign is set on a single tainted world within the Screaming Vortex, with the characters "washed up" there by the tides of the Warp. Their first goal is to claim dominance over the world's petty nation-states, tribes and so forth in order to give them an army and a base of operations from which they can strike out into the galaxy.

When it comes down to this sort of gaming, the Chaos Marine/Mortal divide matters little - my group is split 50/50, but the nurgling-infested renegade, or the apostate with the daemonette claw are unlikely to blend in to a crowd in the Imperium, and both have invaluable skills (and have worked to ensure their own safety - the Apostate building devoted sub-cults within the growing legion of followers, and the renegade serving as the group's medic and trying to learn how to create Space Marines), while the third human is a marksman of terrifying proficiency who largely keeps his distance from the group. They're all plotting against one another, certainly, but they also know that they need help to achieve their goals. Several characters who didn't fit to the "mutual prosperity of the group" idea have died already - Black Crusade is my deadliest 40kRP campaign yet - and two of those characters were very tough individuals (a Heretek in light power armour, and a Chaos Raptor who got overconfident and picked a fight with the group's Khornate Forsaken).

1: Mix it up, try to give both sides time to shine. Also, try to use your NPC's smart. Not just in terms of gear or stats, but in terms of intelligence. The space marines will most likely draw far more attention and thus more bolterfire/chainsaws. Alså, split up the group. Maybe have the heretics have to infiltrate and subvert security systems/stealthily killing guards etc to let the space marines inside.

2: If everyone backstabbed everyone they'd all be dead or alone by now. If they're pragmatic or thinknig long term in any other way they'll realise keeping others around is useful. If at best to avoid having to "befriend" new people.

3: In the Vortex you can do tons. Try to make your own warband/gather followers, take over someone's fortress and make it yours. Board ships and raid the other inhabitants of the vortex. Seek out strong foes in order to build a name and reputation for yourself and earn favour of the gods. Seek prohibitet and arcane lore to increase one's power. Discover new technology.

There's lots of things to choose from, discuss with your players what they want to do. When I played DH they wanted aliens, and I'd made a heretic based scenario. Next one we played? Aliens! Although, they didn't figure that out at first.

The Laughing God said:

I've yet to run a mixed game, but the differences in power aren't that big after all - they mostly boil down to those 4 extra points of Strength and Toughness bonuses, plus a bit more damage from weapons. All other things humans can compensate with equipment and a bit of Experience. As others have pointed out, hiding in the Imperium isn't easy for tentacle-ridden cultists either, so that's not a Marine only problem (hopefully the upcoming adventure will have some hints on the logistics of the whole corruption from within idea).

The Laughing God said:

Because if you're surrounded by self-centered, untrustworthy and chaotic miscreants, it's better to find a few least likely to stab you in the back and team up against the rest than try to strike out on your own. Also, because the brightest and most ambitious heretics (and those are the ones you play) tend to have goals more grand than their personal capabilities allow them to achieve, and sometimes those goals are mutually compatible.

The Laughing God said:

Any and every kind of mission, starting from keeping their butts safe and ending on raising the banners of Dark Gods on top of Hax's palace on Scintilla.

The Laughing God said:

In response to OP:

1. That depends on how you find "will not work". The mortal psykers in our warband, the Shadow Council, have wreaked havoc. A now-dead heretek used icon of blasphemy (from faster gain of gifts) to hideous effect and my apostate mostly hides behind cover and fires pot shots. Oh and caused two Battle Sisters to run away using only his voice and a laud hailer. Never underestimate the power of the right skills and talents, which mortals will have more of. When it comes to subtlety, the marines can lurk in the shadows or act as the iron gauntlet behind a velvet glove, backing up the words of the mortals.

2. Self-interest and self-preservation. As the book says, we can hang together or hang seperately. Our own Shadow Council is a gathering of peers (some more equal than others thanks to PC death and infamy loss, but still peers) working to increase our mutual power. So far, we're working together hideously well. It's actually less convenient to waste effort backstabbing each other when we can all benefit from our rising infamy and resources.

3. Raiding worlds for slaves to pay for a frigate, enacting hideous vengeance upon an uppity Tzeentchian temple, establishing a planet-base deep in the Koronus Expanse and gathering enough space marines to frighten other champions of chaos. All in a campaign's work.