Frustrated by "Black Crusade"

Oddly, I was sure I had posted something about this game on my other blog, but looking through the archive, I can't seem to find it...

Back when "Black Crusade" was first announced, I was delighted. Despite never having been a huge fan of "Warhammer 40,000", and having largely skipped the first three RPGs in the line, I found there was something about the concept of this book that really grabbed my attention. The notion of a game where the PCs were followers (willing or otherwise) of the Ruinous Powers, carefully trying to balance their Infamy and Corruption as they did mighty deeds... it was just intriguing. (And besides, it's not really as simple as playing the "bad guys" - the WH40k universe doesn't have any good guys at all. The closest equivalent, the Imperium, is a flat-out tyranny.)

Unfortunately, although the book was extremely well presented, I was left with an overwhelming sense of disappointment. The big question I was left with was, "Now what?" - I couldn't see any clear way to structure a campaign that wouldn't just collapse almost immediately, and I felt (and still feel) that one-shots run the real risk of falling into the same trap as Sabbat chronicles in "Vampire" - the players don't care, so they just run amok. (That's about to be tested...) Plus, it didn't help that the game, despite being built on a fairly rules-light engine, is incredibly detailed and heavy in key places, which mean that it isn't ideal for one-shot use.

Still, I persevere. While reading the book, I had come up with a concept for what I figured should be a fairly strong one-shot game, which would be a good test of the system in practice (as opposed to mere theory). And, with the passage of almost a year since I finished reading the book, it is now coming to time to run the game.

My first step in preparing for a one-shot game, once I've got the basic premise worked out, is to generate the PCs that will be used. There are three reasons for this:

1. The PCs are the one and only thing that I can't fudge. If I run out of time to generate villain stats, encounter layouts, and the like, I can either wing it or run the game out of the book. I generally prefer not to do this, but I can if necessary. But if I don't have characters to give out, that's game over.
2. When developing a one-shot, I like to have the design of the PCs to be influenced by the concept of the adventure, but not the specifics, while I prefer to have the specifics of the adventure influenced by the specifics of the PCs - that way, I can check that at least one PC can actually jump before inserting a jumping challenge, and when creating the characters I don't have to make sure to remember to give one of them the ability to jump.
3. Creating PCs is generally a really good way to revise the system, which can only help when developing the adventure.

But creating the PCs for the "Black Crusade" one-shot is proving to be something of an ordeal. Partly, this is certainly down to just not being able to block off some time to do the job. Partly, it's because I want to create two characters per player (to give a choice between Space Marine and Heretic characters). Partly it's because the character sheet for the game is just crap.

But to a very large extent, it's down to the system itself. Specifically:

• Characters can be members of two 'races' - Space Marines or Heretics (humans). That shouldn't be a problem, until you look at all the 'stuff' that gets tied to race. Space Marines start play with about a dozen fixed skills, a half-dozen fixed traits, and some fixed equipment. Humans start with considerably less, although they gain additional development points later in the process. The upshot of this is that the choice of race is the single most important decision in character building. It also means that all Space Marine characters are incredibly homogenous - there is almost no scope for customising such characters.
• The game is awash with specialised terms, with are referenced by name but not description. So, your character may well have the "Medicae" skill. Good for you. Any idea what that actually does, specifically? What about "Bulging Biceps"? That was probably the single greatest weakness of "Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay" in its second edition, and it's worse here. It's a real pain when trying to evaluate character development choices, especially when everything has different costs, and three-quarters of the options aren't available anyway as they have prerequisites that need met. Grr.
• Characters just start off with too much stuff. The aforementioned Space Marines have about a dozen skills to worry about and half a dozen traits. That's a good eighteen things that the player will need to get a handle on before starting play - they'll either need described on the character sheet, or we'll need to spend a lot of time passing around the book. And, worse, most of that stuff will just never come up in play.
• Characters also start off just too damn powerful. Apparently, a starting "Black Crusade" character is roughly the equivalent of a 7,000XP character in the compatible "Dark Heresy" game, which is the equivalent of some 70 advancements from the baseline. There's not really anywhere to go from there. But that's not what really bothers me - characters also start with pretty much the best gear available in the setting. Now, I don't have any particular problem with powerful characters. That's not the issue. But, powerful or not, don't start them at the top of the power-level in the game - that just leaves you nowhere to go!

So, what am I going to do?

My current plan is to steal an idea from the "Broken Chains" one-shot adventure that Fantasy Flight produced to introduce the game, and boil the characters down to essentials. Rather than a two-page useless monstrosity of a character sheet, I'm planning to whip up a single-page digest featuring just the key elements - the attributes, a subset of the skills (omitting the pointless dross from the full version), the key traits (with descriptions), and the like. I'm also going to get rid of much of the fixed package for the Space Marines, in favour of giving a bit more character differentiation. And I'm going to ease off on the equipment package - bluntly, I want there to be an actual chance that characters could run out of ammo in the course of the game.

My hope is that that will allow me to get the characters together a bit more quickly, will omit much of the pointless dross I've been trying to deal with, and will give something that's actually playable. Of course, if we should ever come to play this game in 'campaign mode', then I'll revert to using the standard package of stuff. But even that will be fine, because with more time to play the game, it's more likely that things will actually come into play.