I just wanted to share a quick notion. I tend to play with some rather "bland" players when it comes to the story-side of things. Most of them are very combat heavy. One of our players made a Hiver Assassin who was forced to wear an explosive collar during his first few months as an acolyte due to the nature of his recruitment. The acolyte's Inquisitor later removed the collar when he showed courage in the face of adversity and saved the entire party at an extreme risk to his own life (the party was about to wipe and he had a extremely slim chance of surviving if he stayed). The character in question decided to continue wearing the collar(albeit with the explosives disabled) unfastened to hang loosely about his neck as a trophy and memento . It's actually brought up a few complications in certain scenarios but he has refused to remove it and taken sacrifices to leave it in play. I have rather enjoyed watching him roleplay through it and it occured to me that I should reward him in some minor way. I decided to allow it to act as a charm from the main book and, as long as he is wearing it, he receives a free re-roll every session. Now, I know the other players are going to see this as a chance to gain a game benefit and will try to emulate his actions in some way to meta-game it to their advantage. I will make sure that any such obvious attempts at meta-gaming will fail unless they're exceptionally original or imaginative. It will also give the originating player a chance to gloat a bit and make light jibes, which is always entertaining. Just thought I'd share. (:

You could simply not tell them that it's a luck charm. I had a player who spent three sessions with a Lucky Penny (not a penny, per se, but a lucky coin) in his character's inventory that saved him at least once during that time. He never knew. You could drop hints (e.g., a blade aimed at his throat gets stopped by the collar), but you could leave it a secret so that no one tries to use OOC knowledge to capitalize on the Charm. The downside of this is, of course, that you would have to remember that the Charm was on his person, since none of them would know.

dude i like that idea i should try it when my game gets going

I like that idea, consider the idea pirated.

Another thing that I've used to "encourage" role play instead of roll & play is award extra xp for roleplaying. And I scale it, so that the player that puts forth the most effort gets the most xp. Like a Gold, Silver, Bronze style of awarding. This is of course a guideline more than a rule so if everyone goes the whole nine yards so to speak I give out the same amount of extra xp. It's kind of fun watching the players try to outdo each other with their characters.

When the Meta-gamer saw this for the first time it was a complete 180... he used to sleep through the "boring" bits as he put it and 2 sessions later his assassin was beheading dead heretics, praying over the bodies of the slain as he drank blood with the best of the death cult assassins. He creeped the whole group out with some of his prayers and actions. Me too a couple of times, come to think of it.

This idea only really works if you've got xp hungry pcs or a single player that is really combat competitive.

zarkhovian i like your idea i should use it in my camaign cause my friends are xp hungry and they dont like taking roleplaying to siriosly

The game I'm playing in the GM has a 'checklist' of several different 'xp bumps'

1: Character history to the point he becomes a cell member, usually only a single page long. I grew up here, I did this, I became this because..., etc.

2: The faith questions out of the Inquisitor Book.

3: The nature questions from the main book.

4: 'around the fire' stories about yourself

5: narrative time actions. If at any time there is a 'game time' skip in play, you have written out things you want to do, upgrade armor, special training to get advanced/elite talents, etc Of course you have to have the resources available for all of this.

All of this does a few things. It gives the player 'ownership' into his character. It gives him 300-600 (total) 'rp' xp to spend after it's all done. It gives the GM story material to work with, hooks, ideas, enemies, etc.

I agree with most of the stuff mentioned above.

Additionally, how I handle a bonus for in depth character background in my campaign was to offer to the players who'd done in depth backgrounds elite advances that fit stuff they could have done/learned in that background. I let them buy these advances without spending any of their atarting XP but instead giving them an XP "debt" 1/2 of all XP earned went toward paying back for these advances until they were paid off, but the character got to go ahead and have abilities at character creation.

Zarkhovian_Rhythm said:

An excellent idea. I would allow the players to vote on best RPer as well, when XP is being awarded. Nothing involved; just have them rank the players and total up the rankings, adding your own rankings. That way, everyone has a say on who was the best RPer.

ebony14 said:

I think I'll give that a go.

I like it alot, I think i will try it

I had a guy who wanted to play a "Russian-born" character and, thanks to your many aids on another post, was able to help him get an idea started, but he wanted nothing more than to kill and destroy and pillage. When he first came to me, he gave me a quick alias background story but never ran with it in the game. Later, he insulted aplayer cause he was a former ganger, forgetting that his player had started as a Dross hound. he was soon targeting for destruction by other players when, as combat got thick, he actually lost 2 Wounds, first injury the whole chronicle.

He turned tell and fled.

he was an Imperial Guardsmen and a friend informed me later he should have been executed for desertion and, when I told him, his reply:

"I would have liked to see them try!"

Obviously he is no longer playing, and, unfortunately, we will soon be losing Dark Heresy due to lack of players.