LINKY

And for those of you who don't want to bother reading it... Black Crusade has no career paths or levels, it is an open choice game.

I'm very glad to see people excited about this. It was a fantastic project to work on, and very cool to get to write a Developer Diary about it.

JohnDunn said:

I will say this is EXACTLY the sort of thing I wish the entire line had from the beginning.  and I hope for some sort of future supplements to allow the same in Dark Heresy especially.

Dulahan said:

I can only imagine it wasn't like that from the beginning because that's how GW wanted it (especially since it was planned as a trilogy of games from the start by Black Industries).

Either way, I'm glad FFG get to have more freedom with how they do things now

Yeah.

Honestly, it always baffled me that DH wasn't more like Warhammer Fantasy.  I would have been more ok with that then the current system of career advancement.  That offered a lot more flexibility and less pigeonholing.  And would have given a lot more possible options on the start and endpoints.

Ah interesting. I wonder if they would have done it from RT onwards, had they the choice?

Dulahan said:

Think a lot of us where in a way having played WHFRPG for a very long time, plus it would have made for some easier cross-polination between the two with a little bit of fiddling by the GM if you really wanted that feral guardsmen a former pit fighter etc. Advances and backgrounds sort of fill the void adequetely though.

Im really interested in seeing this system work, it sounds very divergent and flexible.

Dulahan said:

Actually, the first version of Dark Heresy (during the playtest) did have a WFRP-like career system. It was scrapped in favour of career paths, primarily because it's not actually more flexible, just differently flexible, and the WFRP-style system didn't do the job that BI wanted it to do. Every individual career in WFRP1 and 2 was essentially a tiny and largely inflexible block of compulsory character advances, with the flexibility gained through being able to mix and match the careers rather than being inherent in those little building blocks. The system eventually chosen for Dark Heresy throws away that external/mix-and-match flexibility in exchange for a lot more options within each archetype.

This looks very nice and I must say I'm intrigued.

I have to say it makes a lot of sense not to restrict the development of PC's by career advances for an RPG where the core theme is the protrayal of the heretics climb to power...or descent into madness. Certainly a moorcockian feel to it in the way that if you start leaning one way the more heavily aligned/influenced the heretic will become to a particular ruinous power...devoted and submitting to that one power.

Love to see the insanity/corruption rules for this one...hey what about conditions of purity and the ire that would bring from the ruinous powers?

...

I think what BI were intending with the DH mechanics was something akin to a dark medieval feel, basically if you were guardsman who was selected to be an acolyte though you could later specialise by becoming a sniper/stormtrooper/officer you remained basically a guardsman. Because of the lower tier power setting and the feudal nature of the imperium there wasn't really much in the way of advancement...basically you were stuck with your lot.

Problem was though that you couldn't really play a commissar or other roles until someone posted them on say the Dark Reign site or elsewhere...or supplements like the Inquisitor's Handbook.

Then FFG took over the development of the 40k RPG line and seemed to have made some interesting refinements to the line whilst some of the flaws in the core DH were exposed. I'm sure the developers will in time address them...

Hrm.  While this could be interesting, I can easily see the Alignment being implemented really poorly.  One thing that jumps out at me is the apparent fact that acolytes of Tzeentch, whom I'd think would be the supposed masters of social intrigue, are discouraged from taking Charm.

My thoughts exactly. While the classless system is a great improvement and something I've envisioned a while ago for the similarly "boundless" Eldar Outcasts and Corsairs, the attribute and skill alignment isn't really what I'd imagine to work. With FFG trying to present the Chaos Gods as more three-dimensional entities rather than "all sex all the time", "all rage all the time" etc, I'd think that they wouldn't be just limited to a bunch of skills and talents. There really is a lot of crossover - while, say, Forbidden Knowledge makes you think of Tzeentch and his mysteries, FFG itself presented a Slaaneshi esoteric cult in the form of Ateanism. Both value secret knowledge, but former uses it to increase personal power, while the latter applies it to works of art to experience personal rapture. The methods are the same, what matters is the goal.

Still, I hope that it's just unfortunate wording and FFG's work will be splendid as always.

 @MR Inres

Hrm. While this could be interesting, I can easily see the Alignment being implemented really poorly. One thing that jumps out at me is the apparent fact that acolytes of Tzeentch, whom I'd think would be the supposed masters of social intrigue, are discouraged from taking Charm.

I daresay "discouraged" does not mean "precluded". Either just take Charm as one of your early advance before you become aligned or suck up the XP-penalty or just accept that when it comes to charming the pants off of someone, Slaaneshi will have an advantage over you while you'll likely be better at flat-out Deceiving people with slightly wonky Logic.

I do hope the rules for corruption are tweaked a bit, lest the PCs all implode in a twisting mass of tentacles and fangs before they even meet the Inquisition.

MR Innes said:

I don´t think it´s intended for non chaos undivided chars to not pay increased XP costs in some areas.

Let´s take a khorne aligned warrior character for instance. I assume he will need some nurgle aligned stuff aswell to survive melee carnage and some tzeench and slaanesh aligned features to round out the character.

You either get no discounts at all, and play chaos undivided, or you play a character aligned to a specific god and your discounts get balanced out with cost increases in other areas. Otherwhise it´d make no sense to play an undivided char if others come off cheaper all the time.

That´s what I guess it´ll be.

nvm