Splash the cash? Black Crusade: all that and a bag of chips?

[battle captain corpus]

Hello there! :D

 

So, as a well established roleplayer with quite a lot of experience (or XP! Hahahah! ), I'm always on the look out for different systems to try. I currently GM and play Deathwatch quite a bit and have the majority of the supplements.

Not being a fan of "Only War" and not overly keen on Dark Heresy anymore (more previous GM's than the actual game mechanics) I was looking at Dark Crusade.

 

What attracts me the most is the open world possibilities of being everything from a lowly ganger turns to a dark path to a full Legionnaire of the Long War.

 

In essence what I would like are peoples thoughts on a couple of points:

 

- Is it just a "fashionable" release by Fantasy Flight or a really good, solid product?

- Have you played it and what was the most fun had?

- And also, comparatively to Deathwatch how does it fair?

 

Thanks in advance!

 

BCC

[Hydriatus]

Black Crusade has been a lot of fun the various times I've run it.

 

It is a good and solid system, though some of the expansion rules in the add on books (Tome of Excess comes to mind) are a bit fiddly - social combat? >_> Really?

What I love is the the freedom to build your character the way you want them to be. There are no real classes as such. You pick your starting race and class sure, but after that there is no career like in Dark Heresy or Death Watch. There is just a list of all the skills and talents, ranked in tiers, and everyone can buy anything they'd like as they gain XP.

 

Compared to Deathwatch, it allows for a lot more...independence, and I personally recommend running it with a mature group if you want to get all the enjoyment you can from it (because if you're playing Chaos properly, your party is going to be stabbing each other in the back and you need players who can handle that!) I also highly recommend checking out the expansion books (the Tomes) for all the extra gears, rules and character types, including proper traitor legionnaires (since the core book is more recent renegade than millennia old super soldier in terms of power).

 

If you'd like, I could run a quick introductory game for you and anyone else interested using Roll20.

[Jareddm]

Black Crusade has the same problem that any "evil" game has. You must have a mature, cohesive group that's capable of working towards a goal without going, "I'm evil so I'm gonna backstab everyone!"

 

The systems was the first in which FFG deviated from GW's original design substantially. There are no more advancement tables, instead every skill/talent can be taken by anyone who meets the prereqs, with the xp cost determined by how aligned the character's previous choices have been to one god or another. As a system it works fine, but don't be afraid to stretch some of the alignments if you have a particular character design that doesn't fit. That said, it's important to remember that alignment to a god is not the same thing as worshipping a god. It just means you're acting in a way that pleases or displeases one of the four.

 

You mightr hear people say that you shouldn't mix CSM and normal humans, but I've ran campaigns with both combined and things have gone fine. Tome of Blood even has a whole section detailing how to run combat smoothly with the two combined. They might also say that because CSM can't sneak or hide that you can't do anything covert. These people are afraid of running a split party. Black Crusade is most certainly not a beginner's RPG and it can be frustrating for GM's used to getting by on dungeon crawls and NPC-driven fetch quests.

 

On the note of social combat in Tome of Excess, the system itself works quite good, especially compared to many of the other examples of social combat I've seen. A lot of newer TT RPG players never grew up with any real roleplaying experience. All they had was WoW. Social combat, at least for the new players I had to deal with, has given them something to help them build their characters because it's one more roll that they can react to. It's obviously something to be used sparingly.

 

To finish, the lore in Black Crusade, especially in the three (soon to be four) Tomes is honestly some of the best there is in all of 40k.

[Hydriatus]

^ This so much.

 

I have always run a group of mixed CSM and regular humans, and there has never really been an issue. Like all games though, it truly comes down to the gaming group and GM. The published adventures are also some of the best ones, and I often run Broken Chains since it is a great way to bring a party together.

 

The lore is indeed fantastic, but that's probably because the setting of BC is a tad smaller than the ones used by FFG's other 40k games. The size of the Jericho Reach the Screaming Vortex ain't. But that just allows a lot more detail to be crammed in.

 

...dammit, I REALLY want to run a game of BC now >_>

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Me and some friends have played Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader, and are looking to try Only War, but none of us cared for the Corruption/Infamy thing in Black Crusade. According to this book, the goal of every Black Crusade character is to become a daemon, and once you hit 100 corruption points, that's what happens and it's also the end of you playing that character. Corruption points can be had very easily and quickly, btw.

[Hydriatus]

Actually, you only achieve deamounhood at 100 corruption only if your infamy is high enough, as set by the GM. Otherwise you turn into a Chaos Spawn. That is a bad thing. And Infamy is a lot harder to raise.