I've always been curious to what extent most warbands just stay in the Ragged Helix or other sections of the Screaming Vortex and spend most of their time plundering other Chaos forces. The first campaign I ran never left the Vortex and we never ran out of interesting adversaries or story hooks. How often do other groups' head out to actually do battle with the Imperium, or other threats?

Similar, I've seen three general ways to run Black Crusade over time. Saturday Morning Cartoon Heretics, where everything's so over the top that it's really more of dark humor than anything else. Antiheroes, where the Heretics have decent reasons to hate the Imperium or have hooked up with Chaos and chronicle their slow degradation and the loss of the ideals they began with in the face of Chaos (Or perhaps, their triumph and ability to balance their goals and the demands of the Gods). Finally, there's just running it as is, as a bunch of crazy people worshipping dark gods for power. I've tended to prefer the former two, having run one of each, but I'm curious what kind of tone most people try for. Comedy? Drama? Crazy murder?

Personally for me as a player I enjoy the anithero. This mainly stems from one of my most memorable RPG experiences in WFRP many years ago, where my character (who was the nominal party leader) ended up using the power of chaos to save the day... and became more and more addicted to using it. Great fun to play the role, even to the point of insisting he was a "good guy" when he got to the horribly mutated stage. Then finally throwing in his lot with Chaos when he realised there was no other option left.

That said I've also had a blast playing the OTT heretic for more light relief.

As a GM the campaign I'm working on has the players start out as a fallen radical inquisitors retinue. Some will be may be corrupted already, others still believing they are basically "decent". Their challenge at first will be to stay alive as they have already been judged as tainted radicals who are too far from the emperors light. I really want to expose them to both ends of the chaotic spectrum, and see whether they can keep their principles, or just go off the deep end and wholeheartedly throw in their lot with the dark gods.

Antiheroes is good; a lot of people have problems with playing 'the villains'.

Fortunately, the Imperium makes an excellent bad guy.

I had the players be the inhabitents of broadly neutral worlds in the charon stars being attacked by the Achillus Crusade (a few years prior to the canon Deathwatch timeline), with the Imperium doing what it always does when encountering any worlds where xenos are tolerated within society, daemon-engine AIs are employed and psykers/mutants/sorcerors aren't burnt on sight. Viewed from the other side they are not nice people.

The wealthiest, strongest world in the region had just been burned from orbit by Imperial warships using exterminatus weaponry (something which much of the population in this region didn't even know existed), killing billions of people in an eyeblink and ripping the heart out of any organised defence.

The players were the leaders of the various free factions left in the region, pirates and smugglers, rebel groups behind the lines, along with legion forces and other mercenaries which had got involved in trying to slow the Imperial crusade down, and at the same time trying to help a charismatic leader called Sarda form an alliance against the Imperium (which will ultimately become the Stigmartus) and keep him alive whilst he does it.

Whilst not intentionally so, it's essentially the Star Wars series with the Imperium of Man cast in the role of 'evil galactic empire'. But with slightly more scarring and extra limbs on the part of the rebels, and stormtroopers actually being dangerous opponents, of course.

The fact that " I find your lack of faith disturbing " followed by pain and/or death is a perfectly reasonable line for an Inquisitor is just a bonus.

Well i try to run a 'make your dream come true' style story.. gaining power, allies, resources to lead a proper crusade, whit they could write they names on the history of the Imperium with blood.. lots of gut spilling..back stabbing.. making complex machination.. bearing ancient forbidden lores and a likes...

Main problem the characters started to bitching the npc's (with no particular reasons , maybe they think it is the right to do for Tzeench alignment) so there could be some good old spanking in the next time for them ( for example psyker thought it is a good idea to motivate other CSM's (npc) with calling them cowards (NPC prides: Martial prowess and devotion ))

The campaign I'm in at the moment has a mix of motivations - one, an escaped convict from St Annand's Penance who is out for revenge against someone 200 years dead; a feckless Rogue Trader who barely escaped with his hide when the Imperium found out about his trafficking in forbidden items; a former Loyalist Librarian who realised that the Lords of Terra have completely betrayed the Emperor's dream, and who still denies he's fallen to Chaos; and my own character, a devoted and gleefully psychotic Slaneesh cultist who considers all these other PCs useful idiots, and who intends to have them wrapped around her little finger before the decade is out. So far her ploy of being useful, and generous, and offering good advice, is working brilliantly.

I haven't started the campaign yet but the tone I am going for is spreading fear. The group wants to play as night lords wich means a lot of hunting in the shadows and spreading fear throughout the planet. There is one player who likes the comedy aspect of RPGs (he plays only war as a senile old psyker and he wants to play as an insane devotee to khorne in black crusade).

So far the chaos campaigns I have been in have been antiheroes, either against the imperium or the imperium not being involved at all.

Though some (people I know in RL) argue against this vehemently, the big 4 DO have their good points. Tzeench being the god of Hope, for example. Even Rage isn't a BAD thing in and of itself. It's just that most people (xenos included) are asshats and as the warp reflects reality, the most seen aspects of gods and daemons are dark and evil. And lets face it, when people normally call up a daemon, they aren't looking for a pleasant chat over tea, they want something that hurts and kills things, and that's what they get.

Plus, in every Warhammer rules book I have read (both for RPG and the tabletop wargame), it is mentioned that there are innumerable gods and entities in the warp. They aren't ALL bloodthirsty horrors...

Imperium not involved at all is an interesting one.

I do like the vortex's worlds because not everyone is necessarily yelling "chaos gods chaos gods burn the Imperium tentacles mutation war blood death kill!".

The pantheon are just that. Gods. Distant, mythological gods. Yes, all right, the heretics might acknowledge them, and they do intervene in the same way the gods do in ancient mythology, but day to day...people are still just people. There's a fantastic bit of artwork in one of the Tomes (I think it's Fate?), and a chapter in Atlas Infernal (superb book) which in both cases show a market. On a world.

Yeah, all right there's probably a shrine to the pantheon somewhere nearby but if you look there's probably a church (/mosque/synagogue/shrine/gurdwara/whatever) within a couple of streets of most markets on earth today. And the world is palpably a bit wierd, but so what: it's a different world, after all.

Most of the people are just going about normal life. Yes, quite a few are mutants and one or two are aliens. But, this not being the Imperium, most people don't give a monkey's. No-one's planning a crusade to destroy or enslave the known universe.

In some ways, worlds like this are probably better places to live than a lot of worlds in the Imperium. At least, until the latest megalomaniac in spiky armour shows up.

Magnus,

If you want an interesting example (albeit not very detailed) example of a functioning chaos society in novels, take a look at the "Legion" Horus Heresy book. Was a perfectly functioning, normal-ish world that payed homage to the chaos gods (not by the names WE know now, but unquestionably chaos) until the Imperium showed up and shat all over it.

Scene from the book: An agent of a third party is walking around a perfectly normal-seeming market. A man comes up and offers him water (it is a desert world). He turns it down, the guy says "God love you anyway" and leaves. The agent shudders as what the man said LITERALLY TRANSLATED is, "The primordial annihlator immolate your living soul"

Of course, in our own society, if we took everything literally, many famous people are perpetually cold and in need of the attentions of a proctologist

Yeah. The Nurthene are another good example - as is...whatever the world in Pawns of Chaos is called?

what kind of tone most people try for. Comedy? Drama? Crazy murder?

Stupid?

There's at least a good 2 hours of just plain stupid that happens before anyone gets their act together enough to do anything constructive as the ship is inexorably being sucked down into the lower depths of the screaming vortex... the best we can kind of hope for is a few stops along the way where worlds can be plundered, deals negotiated and allies made.

Eventually, if we get through that and spat out the ascendant side, we'll have enough temporal power and infamy to raise an actual crusade and go ruin some chunks of the Imperium.

But, for the most part its a dysfunctional mess.

Our Khornate marine is functionally retarded enough to have a handicapped spot and mostly useless for anything aside from killing, the tzeentch sorcerer is a menace to himself when not convincing everyone else his lunatic ideas are for their own good, the slaanesh apostate is a rolling sexual harassment train with no brakes and more daemon than human, there's a half-necron/half-heretek moping around which keeps the Shoud-class light cruiser buried in the grand cruisers engineering bay actually functioning... this tends to result in the odd necron incursion but aside from that it doesn't need fuel. Unaligned Cranky the tactical savant mostly sits on the bridge getting toe-rubs from some slaves, making sure the NPC cast of clowns don't start getting any smart ideas and shooting those that do. There's also a Nurgle marine the size of a Rhino wandering around down in the bilge... and he's welcome to it

Barracks 1 is full of Word Bearers, its pretty much a nightmare of 24-7 sacrifice when they're not off wrecking things

Barracks 2 is full of slaves, either destined for markets or the 'recreation facility' when it runs low on servitors

Barracks 3 is currently empty aside from the odd lost soul and some secret crazy heretek projects

Barracks 4 is some freely co-habiting Nurgle and Slaanesh worshippers Cranky recruited because they where 'aww cute' and you never know when you'll need a few 1000 heretics armed with both morbid obesity and literally dripping with veneral diseases to really ruin some Imperials

The Chapel has a saint crucified in it and tends to be a revolving door of both corruption and idiocy, used for crazy projects, daemons and other dumb things.

Bay #1 & 2 is full of dreadclaws, fighters and bombers... with the crews hardwired into them so they don't go wandering too far when cut loose.

It's 'Chaotic Stupid', we're all going to die...

Welcome to Chaos!

ROFL@MKX

Nice ship you have there MKX. It would be very unfortunate if it "blew up"

I swear every game i have been in goes like this: " whats the plan today boss?" " two words, first is F*%&, two is IT!" then all hell breaks loose. Although trapping a nurgaling in a virus torpedo was kinda fun lol.

In my groups' experience, comedy happens. Not on purpose, it just sort of crops up; generally we strive for a serious (well, semi-serious in some cases) game, but goofs and gaffs happen. We play the role of villains, doing villainous things, but even still, sometimes a situation or thing will strike us funny.

Villainous plotting and greed, coupled with a healthy dose of enlightened self-interest leading to villains played straight yet cooperative, with strong doses of drama. Most of the group has goals beyond 'accumulate power,' even if those goals are stupidly far-reaching ('tear the corpse emperor from his shiny chair and poop on it' being the most egregious example. Still not sure whether he means the corpse or the chair...).

What tone do we hit? It ranges from moustache twirling villainy to high drama and legitimate 'no really, this IS better for everyone' to moments of awesome as a xanatos gambit reaches its endgame phase.

Behind the scenes (skype PMs) plotting, alliance-building, enemy making, minute moves that bring the players one tiny step closer to killing one another...

And then sometimes we look for artifacts, deal with people and punch the IoM in the face.

My group enjoys combat and tends to build characters around this, so I suppose if I had to choose one of the three it would be the fanatical worshipers of the gods. However, I don't think they really fell into any of these.

First off, our group has always been chaos space marines, veterans of the Long War who have had a grudge against the Imperium for 10,000 years. So that in and of itself sort of sets the stage and tone. These are warriors forged in blood who built an empire that has turned its back on them. They have hatreds spanning longer than any who are alive, and this can't help but manifest.

Luckily our party had a good mix of marine types, an Iron Warrior, two Alpha Legionnaires, a World Eater who went as a War Hound and hated his own legion, and a Night lord. Together, they successfully planned and performed a devastating assault/sabotage on Sacris.

Our game held a very...secret agent-like feeling for being full of five gene-enhanced men who wanted only to kill everything they were in contact with.

Black Crusade is in my opinion the most flexible and adaptable of the systems. I always found it easier to take something and put it into Black Crusade than, say, Deathwatch. BC can really cater to any group's preferences and a good GM can really take advantage of that. Definitely one of my favorites of all time just for the way the system seemed to work so well for us.

Black Crusade is in my opinion the most flexible and adaptable of the systems. I always found it easier to take something and put it into Black Crusade than, say, Deathwatch. BC can really cater to any group's preferences and a good GM can really take advantage of that. Definitely one of my favorites of all time just for the way the system seemed to work so well for us.

This. So much this.