Ahoy folks!

An idea has been bouncing around in my head for a while, of a WFRP 2e campaign where the players are servants of the chaos gods, slowing becoming mutated, gifted, and seeing they can can ascend to demonhood before being turned into a spawn.

There's several ways I can see this going:

• Norse marauders, wanting to show their faith, and steadily making their way into the Chaos wastes
• Cultists, hiding in the normal world to bring greater influence for their god
• Existing chaos warrior and building their retinue as they are rewarded by their god

One thought with this is, would going bigger than a solo campaign work?
If a group, it would need to be a small group, who would need to be serving the same god. I'm not going to imagine a successful way of a servant of Khorne, Slaanesh and Tzeentch all hanging out and getting along.

I also feel this would be at least mature, and more likely adult (depending how much fading to black is needed/wanted).

Would such a game be of interest?
Would it have a chance of working?

A late night braindump...

I like the idea of cultists in a city campaign, rather than just the out-and-out violence you'd get with marauders or warriors. More opportunities for subtlety. Trying to build out a cell in a hidden location, getting worshippers, corrupting the elites, staying one step ahead of witch hunters, trading with Skaven, investigating lost tombs for relics, and so on. It'd be good to build out a city, or use an existing one like Middenheim.

I think a concern would be that many chaos mutations would effectively end the campaign for that character because they would be noticed in a city environment. One bad random roll would be an effective death sentence/start again

A small group would be good. Say a prospective priest, and their 2 or 3 helpers - a mix of face/warrior/wizard skills?

Agree on them worshipping the same god. Trying to do Chaos Undivided feels complicated.

The WH world is pretty dark, so mature as a minimum, but probably adult, especially if you play Slaanesh, which is also ideal for corrupting people through their vices. Lots of FTB moments though. Khorne may be too violent and Nurgle could be a real mess, literally. I'd guess Tzeentch would be the tidiest and most able to play without adult rating?

One or two bad mutation rolls ending a character's usefulness, or just ending the character, was pretty much the point. Even in (miniatures) tabletop a bad roll could turn an expensive champion into that which shall not be named. So that isn't something I would personally want to see changed, though having a character stable might be a good idea - getting attached to WFRP2 characters is a bad idea in general, anyway.

That's interesting isn't it. If you were recruiting for your cult you could be hiring an NPC that might be your replacement. It'd need to be clear to players at the start of the game about the likelihood of this happening, and how the game will work for a replacement character.

I'll admit, I'd be all for a solo chaos warrior campaign, but that's because it lets me get away with irregular character concepts--though at least Warhammer Fantasy supports that instead of tells you to Go Away like Black Crusade does.

It'd be interesting to me, though whether it works or not depends mostly on OOC player/GM vibes.

A cultist group sounds fun and would give a lot of scope for adventure beyond pure combat.

 This could be a ton of fun if there's a setting that gives the group a fairly solid reason to work together. I would personally favour something that permits weirder ideas, but there's no reason you can't set something in evil cult tunnels under a city or in the wilderness near a series of civilisations.

Which has always been a problem for Chaos. If it's a party of evil equals then how do you stop them climbing over the corpses of their colleagues? Does that feel like the game setup needs to be Hero + sidekicks, an unwritten agreement to support one person, unless they turn into goo?

Could split it into two campaigns. One a warlord working on getting a warband together to assault the world. Followers of Khorne and/or Nurgle, and maybe Undivided - with the Undivided trying to keep the other groups working together. The other group would be cultists of Tzeentch and/or Slaanesh with Undivided again trying to keep them going the same way. The two groups might very well work at cross purposes and be opposed to each other.

In reply to V1510n (msg # 8):

 That would be something to arrange as a precondition to joining the group - either they have pledged to the same cause, share the same enemy, are united by a common belief or mutual dependency, rescue... And whatever that thing is, that thing is sufficiently important that the characters that are created will not oppose each other because of it.
 If someone isn't prepared to buy into that, then it's polite refusal time.

I like that idea but it'd be up to the GM. I've never run two groups in a single game so I don't know how the GM workload changes. I suppose if you limit the total players to 3-4 split between the two groups.

It'd be interesting if they were operating in the same neighbourhood e.g. both going after the same relics, both dealing with the same Skaven, the same beastmen, the same NPC groups of Chaos that might indirectly oppose them.They might even collaborate from time to time against some threat?

One of the attractive aspects about the city cult campaign (and partly why I like it more than the warband angle which to be honest doesn't interest me at all) is that there seems all sorts of reasons people end up in a Chaos cult, some of them even quasi-sympathetic (a mutant might not be evil or devoted to Tzeentch or whatever but where else are they going to go?)

In reply to RossN (msg # 12):

Totally second this.

In reply to Nu_Fenix (msg # 1):

so, based on the feedback what are you thinking?

Colour me interested as well.

I’m not at all interested in a power game between warlords. However, a game set on a lower level in an urban environment with characters who are falling to darkness through either misfortune or desperation or just deep character flaws is an interesting concept. Infighting is a thing, but if we are all part of the same recidivist cult it should be reasonable to assume one utter psycho would be managed out by the group. Fundamentally the story should still be prioritised over individual character gains?

I'd be interested as, well

Well, there is definitely interest, which is great, and the cult in a city isn't the direction I expected the most interest in (not a bad thing!).

I need to have a think about a story I would want to make around it, and make sure I have enough planned out to make it worthwhile for everyone.

I don't want to have a flimsy idea and waste everyone's time with it all.

Sounds good :)

In reply to Nu_Fenix (msg # 18):

 Sounds like a plan. I would definitely suggest two things though:

 Take a bit of inspiration from the old Ars Magica, which was big into the idea of 'you create your wizard and also a couple of their mooks who you also play' so that any given adventure might be one players wizard, another players swordsman and a third players scholar - that let folks mix and match to do different things.

 Don't plot a story exactly, rather just figure out who's around and what they're up to if no-one messes with them. Ambitions rather than storylines, narrative beats as it were. I say that because players are absolute stone cold death on a tightly worked-out storyline. ^_^

This ^

Work backwards from the ambition to ascend to demonhood. What do we have to in general terms that will make the relevant Chaos power happy? Pray, kill, infect, sacrifice, display temporal power, convert? From there will flow a series of ideas for plot points and scenes.

Many cults presented in the 1ed and 4ed include people who have no idea it is a cult. That would be an interesting starting point - a group of people starts regular meeting to talk about something or perform some minor practices that are not obviously evil. Only with time they discover they've been doing something bad, but that 'bad' brought them prosperity and they cannot step back now (witch hunters will burn them anyway).

I would start it from having an NPC as a cult leader - who later dies/gets arrested/disappears. It leaves it up to the PCs to decide whether they want to carry on (and they should have plenty of reasons to do so, but also quite a few to abandon it) and select their leader.

Ehhh...

I'm not really a fan, at the end of the day, I want a cool power fantasy if I'm doing Chaos, not just gnawing at the roots of society as a bunch of scrubs with ambition or a bunch of deluded dupes being suckered to work against their own interests by sweet talk.

"Low Powered Cultist Game" just doesn't catch my imagination, since it's all the asshole with none of the fun until there's a disproportionate level of investment poured into it, and even then, it's questionable because apparently there's enough people who just don't want a high powered Chaos game, or at least enough to shout down those who do.
This message was last edited by the user at 00:22, Thu 02 Mar 2023.

 I'm there for either, but that's why I suggested the 'create a couple of minions' idea, so any given adventure arc can be high or low powered according to the needs of the story.

People liking a different idea than you do doesn't count as shouting you down.