According to what I've heard, Kriegers have no ambitions, hopes, dreams, or motivations other than dying for the Emperor on the battlefield. They don't even have names anymore. So how do you roleplay a Krieg Korpsman and make it interesting? Do you have to be grim and dour all the time or is there some variance allowed? What do your squadmates call you? "Trooper 343-79-297" would be a bit of a mouthful. And lastly, some have told me that there are no female Korpsmen.

What's your guys' view on all this?

Whenever I think of the Krieg regiments, I think of Churchill's quote: "A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and who can't change the subject."

The Krieg regiments are kind of the 40k logical conclusion of what the Imperial Guard should be - effective, fearless, content to be mown down in their millions on horrific battlefields. As such, they're a world away from the "Abnett" style Imperial Guard, who are very human, for better or worse.

I thik the best way to play them is to explore forcing them to let their underlying humanity gradually peek through over a number of sessions.

At first they should be dour, fatalistic, religious fanatics, but exposure to elements beyond their experience - other modes of thought, philosophies, happiness, love etc - could cause them to question their underlying beliefs, forcing them to make moral choices unfamiliar to them. This gives an intelligent player an opportunity to let his character have a proper "arc," gradually growing into something more than he originally was.

Of course, a perfectly legitimate alternative is for the player to refuse to grow, refuse to have an arc…to react badly to these choices, and respond with anger, blind hatred, reactionary religious fanaticism etc. Either approach works. Indeed,the second is arguably more in character for a Kriegan.

One idea I had was on the subject of names; if he's in a mixed-Regiment party, then one of the less formally-minded Guardsman (such as a Catachan) gets sick of referring to him as "Trooper 343-79-297" and abbreviates his name from "297", to simply "7", and after that comes up with a nickname such as "Sev". Or just cuts straight to the nicknames and refers to him as "Johann Gas-mask".

The Krieger in question will probably be bemused or annoyed by the nickname at first, but if he starts to open up again, he might start responding to it, and perhaps even refer to himself like that (to non-Kriegers of course). He might even remember what his old name was, if he had one, buried under a mountain of training and indoctrination. I think hardline Kriegers (which would be nearly all of them) would refer to this as cultural contamination.

Or he could react badly to it and politely-but-firmly request that they call him by his designated number, which might be more typical of Krieg behavior. And typical of Catachan behavior, they'd ignore him and continue to use the nickname anyway, and thus begins a wonderful little vitriolic friendship paved with the corpses of dead heretics and xenos.

And dead friendlies. Can't forget that in a Krieg regiment.

Also, Johann Gas-Mask. That's priceless.

I could see them shortening it, yeah. Let's say his number is 343-38-130. They could just end up calling him 3's.

Try to start out VERY singelminded. A Korpsman cares for combat and little else, a catachan might be said to enjoy combat but not in the same way as a korpsman. Krieg men don't enjoy combat, they're just singelmindedly focused upon it as they see it as a way of redemption. But I could see their world view change dramatically as they come into contact with Imperial Guard act like human beings. It won't happen straight away obviously, but still.

Boss Gitsmasha said:

I don't understand why you are mentioning mixed regiment parties - the system is designed around all players hailing from the same regiment, otherwise half of character creation is creating arbitrary fluff that will never come into play and allowing each character to min-max what they provide to the unit.

For example you'd always want some Catachan flamer guys to backup your Mordian Sergeant, a custom made regiment of brawny guys for your Heavy, and an uber snipey regiment for your Ratling, finally an iron willed regiment of heavy troopers for your Storm trooper and commissar…

You can see it would get out of hand very rapidly.

Kasatka said:

You mean like Deathwatch then, ho ho ho.

Sounds like he hasn't got the Beta version and didn't get a chance to play the demo adventure on free rpg day (neither do I but downloaded the adventure now).

So though you aren't going to have mixed regiments squads the same is more or less true for dealing with other regiments. You know the type of story, Kreigers and Catachans are defending an area, they don't get one but learn to appreciate each others strengths yadda, yadda.

I'd have thought, doing and entire Kreiger game is risking it being a little low on RP on opportunities but using a selection of NPC's from other regiments and other parts of the Imperium would go a long way to offsetting that.

Face Eater said:

I forgot this isn't the beta forum but the regular one, apologies. Anyway i have to agree that a pure Krieg unit game would get dull quickly and would require a phenomenally good Gm to constantly challenge the PCs with well acted and realistic NPCs