Greetings Brothers and Sisters

i whould really like to do a campain baset on the fall of the imperium

my ideas are

to bring Primarchs (ones still alive) into it

To have the team members called back to there groups one by one e.g cypher spotted on terra all dark angels are recalled (the groups still togeather)

have the astronomican faulter and go out

have the terminus decree go off (star child theroy)

and the Chaos gods even come to the mortal realm

The problem with creating/running a truely massive campaign (in any rpg system) is that they require a comparably massive amount of prepwork to do justice to the concept. The Fall of the Imperium? To prepare even a bare-bones version of that (thousands of npcs, hundreds of epic-scale battles, dozens of worlds) is (at least) a full-time job. If you are unconcerned with such trivialites as work, school, family, social life, etc, then go for it!

-And let us know how it turns out.

The problem of such a large scale capaign is that you get lost in its (badam tsum) large scale.

Another problem is that you cause some "badass" or "awsome" overloads with implementing to much, to crazy thing that will automaticaly degrade anything else. The appearance of a Primarch? That can only be beaten by the resurection of the Emperor. Large scale Battle, whole military campaigns, thousands of people fighting? Even millions? The script for this campaigs has to be writen in detail as any good novel, or even several novels to make it believable and consistent. The Imperium has lasted 10.000 years, makes makes in fall now? All the Events have to make sense in terms of fluff and fluff rules, they have to be backend by believable NPCs, believable atmosphere. This are some basic rules for every RPG but for such kind of capaign they are essential. The fall of the Imperium is the ultimate event, it is not just a row of battles with some random badasses that appear.

I dont know you as a GM but I simply want to warn you that I have seen very expirienced GM fail with a concept that includes larger scale in a military campaign like a crusade. The fall of the whole Imperium… thats a shitload more. Such a campaign will lasta !years! even if you play for 3-5 hours per week. That needs an awsomely good GM and awsomely good players.

The Idea might sound good, no question. I bet everyone would like a Capaign that brings the Imperium on the Brink of extinction with the players in middle of everything, maybe even the only hope left. But the story telling, the whole background will require you to be an author. As mentioned before this will take tons of time. A black library novel is nothing against the story arc you are planning to start. Just take a look at the horus heresy novels. The players might not be involved in every action, but that does not mean that you have to think of these as a gm. The background includes heavy story scripting. In such a scale it is impossible to make a single group the key element of the fall. There have to be others that are more or less linked to the group or are completly independant, never the less they have to be thought of.

All the events you mentioned (Primarchs, Dark Gods, etc.) rely on authenticity, they must be belivable. They are the pinacle of the campaign that has lasted some years. But what do you want to do in the meantime?

All those things could happen in your campaign, but what is it that you intend your players achieve? If you call them all back to their own chapters, then you do not really have a group any more.

If you want to keep the fall of the empire setting, I would focus more on what your players can achieve in that setting. What missions do they carry out while the empire about them collapses. Are the players missions aimed at averting or mitigating the fall?

i say go for it. As the others have said, it's a lotta work, and you hafta be careful; but it'll be a heckuva lotta fun if you pull it off (and even if you don't….). Having the players split off from each other can consume game time *(but may be necessary for the players to coordinate their actions across the entire galaxy??); but you sound well-versed in 40k lore (Cypher, Star Child), so I suspect you have some over-arching idea that just might work…..yes, you'll hafta, as GM, figure out everything that goes on beyond the players (which oughta be a lot); but that's story, not mechanics, so you can dream that up at your leisure. (be sure to write it down, though….that stuff is easy to forget/confuse in the heat of the game)

I'd try to spring the whole End Times thing on yer players in a sneaky, unexpected fashion, so it catches them by surprise once they are already in the middle of the action, but that's just me. (it might even be cool if it's yer players who first figure out that the End is nigh…..)

It's nice that you want to be encouraging, Zappiel , but there are certain practicalities that have to be taken into consideration. Kor'O Knightblade 's very first post, from less than a month ago, contains the phrase "I'm new to GMing". I don't mean to sound negative, but, dude, learn to walk before you try to run (-or try to set a land-speed record while juggling chainsaws, in this case)…

don't listen to the negative nellies…..do what you wanna do, koro……you know yer friends and what they like, not us…..and it is your game….go big or go home, brother!

The important thing to remember is that it's not what's going on that matters. It's what appears to be going on the players. Sure you need to have a grand plan and make it convincing but you don't need to know exact minutae of the destruction of Fenris, you just need to know what space wolf they meet has to say about it.

As long as the elements you mention are BACKDROP for the PLAYERS' story, then I see no problem with it. If the players are only there to ride along in your awesome story where the real action is being done by MEGA-NPCs, no one will want to play. Remember, the PLAYERS have to be the stars of the show.

I have something similar in the works myself. I plan on separating the players from the rest of the imperium, and making them the only ones who are aware of the situation. The players will be responsible for finding and recovering the lost primarchs, disabling/destroying the fallen ones, manipulating various xenos races into taking the brunt of whats coming, especially the eldar, and other equally near-impossible tasks. Im kind of excited about the player vs farseer manipulation war. I plan on having the players rescue the black library from ahriman, who finally gets there. The spacewolf player will be confronted with leman russ, fallen to the curse of the wolven. There might be a face off against abbadon in there somewhere, although that might also end up being an npc background action as well. They will force a confrontation between cypher and his primarch. I plan on taking my time with it, but it is going to be fun. As it is dealing with deific powers, I am going to try to include as many as I can. Oh yeah my favorite part is my planed destruction of mars to release the void dragon… Now that will be an epic battle.

An over-arching theme in my Dark Heresy/Deathwatch Campaign has been The "Risen" Emperor. The nutshell version goes like this:

PCs get caught up in an ever widening conspiracy; eventually, they put enough clues together to realize it's not a conspiracy at all, but a sudden and dramatic change in the power structure of the Imperium; persistent inquiries are made until the PCs determine that the Emperor has "Risen"…and they all think "WUT!?"; certain Imperial institutions begin to jockey for supremacy, and there is much infighting, all the while the business of protecting the Imperium falls by the wayside and the PCs' work become exponentially more difficult; eventually, the "Risen" Emperor is verified, and when this sinks in their is a total collapse of Imperial infrastructure outside of the Segmentum Solar; Ultramar insulates itself and prepares for war on a scale to rival the Horus Heresy; the Segmentum Solar consolidates it reach and boundaries to within 80-90 core systems; news arrives that the Emperor is not at all pleased with the way his Empire has been managed in his absence, and he is cleaning house, kicking ass, taking names, but most importantly he's abolishing the Ministorum…and then all Warp breaks loose as the Imperial Church retaliates, Adeptus Sororitas so confused they are useless as invalids, Inquisition more than at loggerheads and viciously gunning for the top seat next to the Emperor's ear; the Iron Hands and the Adeptus Mechanicus come to an unprecidented arrangement, basically becoming the new Administratum (known as the Imperial Apparatus), with the Iron Hands raised to Legion Strength and set on the naysayers and holdouts as the Emperor's new personal Gestapo…and all the while the PCs have to deal as best they can, learn to adapt, or count themselves among the hunted.

Stole most of it from the Risen Empire duology, by Scott Westerfeld. I wish I could do literary justice in describing the Players' reactions. Trust me when I say the "WUT!?" was earth shattering. Sadly, this campaign is temporarily suspended. It became so very intricate, the Players were losing track of…everything. My bad, as I exposed them to far too much. Now I work on bringing all the loose threads closer, without having to crash the whole thing.

Meanwhile, we've started a new campaign. Simple, grass roots, feet on the ground, one planet, heretic geneticist antogonists (glorified drug smugglers), with an Inquisitor as straight as she can be after nearly 150 years. Regular pay, some perks, loose reins, low intrigue. My Players are eating this up, and it may be a while before we go back to "The Imperium Has Gone Completely To Shite" campaign…if ever.

Go big, but keep it as simple and localized to the PCs as possible. News travels relatively quickly in the Imperium, Astropaths and all, but it's still slow as sin. Keep them in the dark about the fine points, and let them see the big picture as it pertains only to them. So yeah, go big, hit hard, hit fast, and out. Otherwise, you'll lose your Players somewhere along the line, and once that happens there's no getting them excited again.

Good luck.