In Fate's Gullet | Lead Your Own Black Crusade

Creating your character

Character creation in Black Crusade is a fairly involved process and can definitely take some time (it'll almost certainly eat up all of session zero). We'll be starting at the start with the amount of XP recommended by the books, and all the Black Crusade supplements are allowed. While Black Crusade and Dark Heresy 2E are inherently compatible, be aware than any disputes will be resolved in favour of the Dark Heresy 2E ruleset. I'll include summaries and differences in the game materials on the discord. Finally, unless you are playing a mortal heretic (or mutant, beastman, or even a genestealer cultist!), you'll be expected to create one as a secondary character for scenes when your chaos marine or otherwise inappropriate primary character can't participate. You're welcome (and lightly expected to) flesh out your secondary character as an integral part of the narrative.

Preparing for the session

Players should be prepared to join my GMing discord server where I provide all the useful information I can think of, as well as have the actual voice communications for the game. Foundry is the virtual tabletop I use, and it does not require players to have anything other than an internet browser and the link I provide to each game session. Be prepared to use Edge in the event that your chosen internet browser experiences technical difficulties with Foundry. I do expect my players to familiarise themselves at least in part with the fiction of the game universe and the basic mechanics of the game rules. For Black Crusade, this means becoming familiar with the D100 system and watching some lore primers on Warhammer 40k, especially on Chaos Space Marines, so you know what to expect from the game universe.

What Roy brings to the table

First and foremost, I provide a living, breathing world that reacts and adapts to the players' decisions. There are no rails to follow; this is a sandbox where your actions matter and can change the fate of the universe. There are no throwaway or "silly" characters who exist just to serve a humorous bit; every character is brought up in the fiction of the game universe. Players that join my games can expect the rules as written to be followed, setting a clear baseline for how everyone's player characters can interact with their world. Over and above that baseline, they can expect me to try my best to fairly interpret the mechanics or consequences of any imaginative action they can think to attempt--just because there's no rules for swinging on a chandelier doesn't mean you can't try! I'll do my best to ensure my players have the best experience possible. I provide voices for all my characters and draw on my long gaming history to sample appropriate immersive background music for my games (in this case, there are many Warhammer 40k games with spectacularly excellent OSTs). Expect to feel a sense of scale if the warband includes a majority of Chaos Space Marines (though with the options available to players, this may not be the case!). If your warband is a squad of Khorne berserkers, you won't get bogged down in rolling the dice for every single attack--expect one roll of the dice to let you cleave your way through a squad of pathetic guardsmen or blast the tracks off a Leman Russ battle tank.

Homebrew rules

There will be extensive homebrew rules in use to essentially use the Dark Heresy 2E Homeworld-Background-Role system for character creation. These rules will be as balanced as possible using my decades-long experience of running the FFG 40k RPGs. Don't expect chaos marines to be inherently better at all things; they might be bigger and better armed and armoured, but they're rolling the same dice as their mortal counterparts, and they stick out like a sore thumb in a crowd... In particular, both marines and mortals will have similar starting characteristics (marines are slightly higher) so marines aren't automatically better at everything, and if a mortal and a marine attempt the same task there's some question of who will actually succeed. Players will have the option to play not just heretics and chaos marines but potentially genestealer cultists or other xenos (at the GM's discretion).

How Roy creates a safe table

My players will receive links to safety tools, in particular a consent checklist. I will review these checklists before a session 0, and then discuss how the content in the game might relate to or be altered by the consent of the players. Furthermore, session 0 will begin with a general consent check for players to indicate anything they forgot to mention or wanted to ask other players. In the case of safety tools, I will encourage my players to message me privately (using a whisper in chat or a discord message) in order to indicate when they are uncomfortable. When this occurs, I will alert the group that I need to take a quick break to handle a consent check, then private message with the uncomfortable player (I will do this without asking anyone to leave the group call, so as not to single out anyone).