So one of the members of our irregular rpg gaming group went to a magical place called GenCon. And at this palace of wonders and delights he purchased an advance copy of Fantasy Flight Games' newest rpg addition to the 40k universe: Black Crusade. This last weekend, the gang (most of it anyway) got together, got characters built and set forth into the warp, utilizing the Free-RPG day scenario, Broken Chains, that a couple of us obtained earlier in the summer.
I honestly can't remember when I've had more fun in an afternoon of pen and paper gaming. We laughed our collective rear-ends off and obtained our own ship in the process. The system takes everything that has worked so well in Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader and Deathwatch and corrected many of the problems with mechanics in those three rpgs to create a fairly polished product. Of course there are typos and page number references are wrong and meanings can be unclear at times prompting a desire for errata, but overall the book is good.
Allow me to introduce you to the cast of our little 3 hour tour...
The names of the players have been changed to protect the innocent, err guilty, or whatever. Character names have not and are recalled to the best of my ability:
Tor Sedirae - Chaos Champion of the Black Legion. Hootie rolled up a real leader type. Command, a good fellowship, veteran of the long war, a Marine who was around when the whole heresy went down. Shame on the emperor for turning his back on us, indeed. Armed with a chain fist and suit of poorly crafted, badly in need of repair, we misread Ancient Warrior during character creation and he shouldn't have ended up with it, Legion Terminator Armor he's the current leader of our little war band of smashyness sacrificing minions second class and members of the evil inquisition all across the galaxy in the name of Chaos and possibly Khorne.
Marcus, or Stone, or maybe a surprise from the psyker - Forsaken space marine. Al rolled up a forsaken with an interesting back story. I met Al playing the tabletop version of 40k and have known him for a good long while. His space marines hail from the Blood Knights chapter, a chapter of his own devising, whose fluff has them working with the Inquisition and the Grey Knights. SOP for the Grey Knights is, if you see them and are a brother marine, they mind wipe you. If you see them and you aren't a marine, it's death. No witnesses. Well, Brother Stone, or Marcus, or w/e has been mind-wiped enough he forgot his oath to the emperor. Couple that with a complete disgust, nay hatred of the protocol surrounding killing friendlies, warriors especially, for no reason (ooh, I've seen a Grey Knight, ooh.) and you've got a mind ripe for sedition.
The purple pimp - I'm really not sure what Rom named his character. We're using a pimp figure from Reaper's Chronoscape line (they can call him a street boss, but I know a pimp when I see one) to represent his renegade, so that's how I identify him. Currently, he's shown himself to be an able medic, but I don't know anything else about him.
1010011010 - Our heretek, played by Angron seems to be the most capable of the group so far. I just don't like that gleam in his eyes he gets when he starts talking about servitors and how to make them. Or the Greater Minion Defiler he wants to build. 40k mad scientist all the way.
And at last, Brother Maynard, or BM for short - I'm playing a backwater preacher of Father Nur'al. The bean father. He who grows... (on you, like a fungus, no really, that's a fungus, yup, ain't plagues great?) I rolled up a psyker from a planet that until recently has been cut off from the Imperium by a fairly crazy warp storm. The storm cleared up and lo and behold, these strange people landed in our little frontier town and started talking about this Emperor, and how we should worship him and then started relocating all the psykers and preachers for 'further education'.
Next thing I know, I'm waking up on an inquisitorial prison ship stranded in the warp... Can't wait to see what our next adventure brings.
I give Black Crusade an A+. It's got some proofreading and spelling errors, but overall it has treated us well so far and I look forward to seeing what else it brings with it.
Until next time...
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