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[Xantalos]

Allow me to give you some feedback from my mindset of 'careless shoot errything swag loot' player, which I delve into on occasion; basically a prediction of what action your players may take when presented with these scenarios:

-Planet and society totally dominated (like mentally dominated) by a cabal of Psykers.

Ask to meet psyker cabal leader(s), shoot in face, loot everything in resulting chaos, fly away in spaceship.

-Study in contrast between a savage human world and a moderately technically advanced society in their response to Dark Eldar piracy and slave-taking.

Shoot dark eldar, possibly set up racketeering operations in the advanced society if the DE prove skittish enough.

-Gonna throw the Rak'Gol in there at some point as a another "Let's see how much abuse players can really put up with" encounter.

Shoot the Rak'Gol. Probably go 'oh fuck what did we ever do to deserve this'.

-Totally new alien race I cooked up, hell-bent on secret keeping. Gonna try to really dig into a non-human mindset, a totally reordered way of thinking.

Shoot 'em, steal their shit

-Space Station of rich noble who went crazy and died while his medieval space fantasy palace went on without him.

Become head of police, cause absolute chaos in attempt to embezzle as much money as humanly possible, end up accidentally destroying space station/allowing Chaos cults to summon daemons to take it over. Flee in spaceship with swag loots.

-System where like 4 factions are engaged in all-out war and no-holds bar plunder.

DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA

[Andres]

-Planet and society totally dominated (like mentally dominated) by a cabal of Psykers.

Do this. Make it so they all live in this massive, ultra-luxurious palace where an artifact collects their powers and brainwashes all the poverty-stricken plebs for them. They're completely unchallenged so their guards suck and they don't have any real defences. When your players inevitably kill them/destroy the artifact/loot the artifact, the brainwashing of the populace will be instantly removed. The massive surge in uncontrolled emotion of all kinds combined with weird stuff related to the artifact opens a bunch of daemon portals on the planet. Suddenly, the entire planet becomes the stage in a four-way fight between daemons of the four Chaos Gods.

In short, the planet is fucked and it's all your players' fault. Might get them to stop going on random adventures.

[nenjin]

Guilt tripping my players have never really worked. They know what it's attempting to do and they'll just embrace their choices as a reaction to it.

DAKKA

The sad truth of the matter is, anything that qualifies as "adventure" will result in them shooting at the plot points. Some of that I'm ok with. But it's hard to create a scenario where the players don't feel like shooting is a valid solution to all problems. Because like I said, at the end of the day, most of them are there to shoot things and look cool. Not really delve deeply into roleplay. Their idea of roleplaying is achieving their ideal in their own minds, and they've (for the last ~15 years) set that bar incredibly low for themselves. The point at which they think roleplaying has become too tedious or involves too much work, they just resort to combat.

S'alright though. They effectively wrote off the Rogue Trader whose colony they raided. They're going to get taxed for that in ways they don't yet understand. Since shooting directly at them is only half effective and gives them what they want...I'll just have to go after them in more indirect ways. Starting with everything they own in Imperial Space that they're 70,000 Light Years away from.

[Digital Hellhound]

Honestly, nenjin, it's starting to sound like you're fighting your players, not having a good time with them. Are you even enjoying yourself at this point?

[nenjin]

Honestly, nenjin, it's starting to sound like you're fighting your players, not having a good time with them. Are you even enjoying yourself at this point?

I am, at times. But it's exhausting to put the effort in and then basically get the reaction of a 14 year old boy playing Counterstrike to it. I know the group I signed up with so I'm not honestly complaining. Sometimes what they chose to care about surprises me, and they do enjoy a good narrative as do I. It's me trying to prove we as a group can have a better game than the nauseatingly self-serving, obnoxiously puerile power fantasies the OTHER GM favors.

So when push comes to shove the main drivers of the group will basically double down, because the campaign is trying to run directly opposite what they feel inclined to do. I've been told by one of my players if they don't like how things are going they just won't show up. And i've told him the same thing several times in response. In truth a lot of what this game is about is me trying to run an alternative to the LAST knuckle dragging, yolo swag adventure that was run for this group.

I also opted to have a bonified crazy person be captain, so I'm effectively getting exactly what I asked for. Even other players are starting to be like "jesus christ, thanks for shooting that guy in the face."

I'm ok running a pulpy space adventure. I just wish these fucking guys would grow up some day and quit treating EVERYTHING like a friday night troll session in LoL. But for them, this is the night to act like kids again, with all the BS immaturity that sometimes entails.

S'alright though. I'm honestly starting to get worn down running and it further tanks my motivation to really craft adventures I know only have a 50/50 chance of hitting the mark I intended. I've run for more sessions in this campaign than I think any other I've tried to run, so, if I decide to bail because it's not fun for me any more, I have few hang ups about doing that. I had a Rogue Trader game fantasy, I ran it. That at least is enough for me.

But I'm not planning on quitting yet.

[LordBaal]

Can you rip them apart? Before reading you already considered to throw the Rak'Gol in I was going to suggest just that.

Another thing would be to split them up, have one or some of them imprisoned and/or subjected to experiments and mutilation or something while hurt bad the rest. Not killing them but cyborg replacement limbs at the end would be a nice touch.

See if you can come up with a situation where they need to get rid of some of the powerful equipment for the life of a partner and how they react.

Have a bigger powerful force after him, perhaps a Inquisitor or such, make them cross a space marine chapter or something even worst.

[nenjin]

Another thing would be to split them up, have one or some of them imprisoned and/or subjected to experiments and mutilation or something while hurt bad the rest. Not killing them but cyborg replacement limbs at the end would be a nice touch.

My general experiences in gaming over the years have taught me:

-Players almost universally resent imprisonment, even though it's tried and true gameplay trope.
-Players almost universally resent having their gear taken away, even though it's tried and true gameplay trope.
-Players deeply resent having their characters radically modified against their will.
-My players, at least, find torture and mutilation thematically unpleasant.

So I'd tend to avoid solutions like that.

See if you can come up with a situation where they need to get rid of some of the powerful equipment for the life of a partner and how they react.

I'm not so much worried about the equipment. Like I said, I hurt them decently I just didn't leave any permanent scars. I'm kinda digging throwing heavy weapons at them.

I do want to divorce them from their ship for a while. How you believably cut off a captain from his space ship though isn't totally trivial.

[LordBaal]

What if you find a planet that pretends to be iron/medieval age but in reality it's a cover up to lure exactly the right kind of scum. They come in believing a easy prey awaits but soon discover they fallen into a trap, the locals do have technology beyond crossbows and your ship has been boarded and being overrun to be resold while you are left stranded planetside (your transport is blown up or something and none are coming from the ship).

It's a race to the clock to avoid imprisonment or escape if such is the case, find the means to return to orbit and then take the ship back.

In the mean time, if you have a character that can't fly the ship by himself, try to leave such character on the ship and see how he reacts to the boarding.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

It doesn't have to be that complicated. Have the players lured onto some planet, it doesn't matter which one.

Then the warpstorm hits.

[Kot]

Mutiny plot -> make the crew want something (or something) and once Captain goes to blow their brains out, make the whole crew flip their shit (bonus points for Chaos cultists) so in the end the team is captured. The ship arrives on destination or somewhere and then they must bust out of it and get help, but once they leave the ship the mutineers should notice what is going on and warp the fuck out. Then make the party have to go long distances to retrieve the ship, and if they try full frontal assault instead of doing something more subtle, they should be forced to destroy it because fuck those guys.

[Grim Portent]

As part of my revisiting of Tyranids I decided to grab an Overkill box to add a genestealer cult to my planned Behemoth army. So far I've only finished the Patriarch, but I am really liking these models after seeing them up close.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[nenjin]

What if you find a planet that pretends to be iron/medieval age but in reality it's a cover up to lure exactly the right kind of scum.

Bait and switch actually sounds kinda fun. A little contrived but it might be lulzy to run.

They come in believing a easy prey awaits but soon discover they fallen into a trap, the locals do have technology beyond crossbows and your ship has been boarded and being overrun to be resold while you are left stranded planetside (your transport is blown up or something and none are coming from the ship).

The crew compliment is 26k. That's without counting the actual House soldiers or elite troops in Power Armor with Melta Guns on board. Seizing an entire starship is actually not as straightforward as one would think. Which is why it would seem a little contrived to have a planet of pirates masquerading as savages. One would think it would be simpler to just wait at the warp translation point and jump the first ship that comes out of the Warp when it's blind and struggling.

Then the warpstorm hits.

While that is totally thematically appropriate for 40k, it kind of violates the primary rule of table top roleplaying (IMO) where players need to be able to do something in the face of X. Being caught in a warpstorm doesn't really leave the players a lot of options other than "don't die." While it's great for newbies or easy going roleplayers, veterans with a strong sense of fun vs. not fun and what's fair can sort of see through the narrative and can often resent situations designed purely to put them through ordeals with few options for them to act on.

That and I did write up my psychotic warp travel procedure so I could make "warp stuff" a regular part of gameplay. (So far, some of my most effective warp events have actually been 100% flavor things that became something more in the minds of the players. God I love Warp-based paranoia.)

Mutiny plot -> make the crew want something (or something) and once Captain goes to blow their brains out, make the whole crew flip their shit (bonus points for Chaos cultists) so in the end the team is captured. The ship arrives on destination or somewhere and then they must bust out of it and get help, but once they leave the ship the mutineers should notice what is going on and warp the fuck out. Then make the party have to go long distances to retrieve the ship, and if they try full frontal assault instead of doing something more subtle, they should be forced to destroy it because fuck those guys.

I get where you're coming from (man I'm just full of nay-saying right now) but a couple things:

-The players were inspired by like old-timey high seas adventure. "Master & Commander" is what they're going for. Their crew is populated by 'hard men' from the captain's own planet, and they joined him on his revenge quest against this Ork Freebooter that wrecked their world. So up until now it's all been very "Yes sir!" and "We won't let you down Captain!" and "you heard the Captain!" and "Death to Grom Kol! YYEEEARRRRGGGHHHH!" Having the entire crew mutiny on them both would reverse what the theme has been so far....and the players haven't really done anything to warrant it. Yet.

-Mutiny is already part of the rules based on how bad crew losses are and how much shit they've been put through, how long they've gone without shore leave. I'd prefer to let a real mutiny organically arise from that. That way I'm free of accusations of rail-roading them.

-I planted an unknown number of sleeper cells of saboteurs on the ship. Basically they're men from a disgraced house that considered itself the archenemy of the Captain's house. After their disgrace, they signed away their lives for a chance at revenge against House Kincaide, joining teh crew under false pretenses and succeeding since the Captain needed every warm body that would say yes. The players have already "foiled" a number of sabotage attempts. I'm just waiting for the right opportunity to do something else. So far it's been sabotaging munitions or planting bombs around the ship. I'm tempted to have them attack someone in their quarters next time. There are plenty of people already who bear the ship and crew ill will. I don't know if I need to turn their whole crew against them. It's also a lever I can use when, in the middle of something truly dire, the saboteurs can make the situation even worse. (As an aside, they caught one of the saboteurs and turned him into a servitor that picks up dog shit on the bridge. They named him Doodles. These are my players.)

Also I got an apology from a friend for basically being immature dicks at table. That went a long way toward soothing my ego.

[LordBaal]

Oh I thought it was a far smaller ship. Then indeed.

[nenjin]

It's a Sword-class Frigate. The smallest ship compliment I can find seems to be about 20,000, and that's a transport. It's 40k so ya know, everything's gotta be YUGE.

[Rolepgeek]

While that is totally thematically appropriate for 40k, it kind of violates the primary rule of table top roleplaying (IMO) where players need to be able to do something in the face of X. Being caught in a warpstorm doesn't really leave the players a lot of options other than "don't die." While it's great for newbies or easy going roleplayers, veterans with a strong sense of fun vs. not fun and what's fair can sort of see through the narrative and can often resent situations designed purely to put them through ordeals with few options for them to act on.

I thought you said they weren't really in it for anything more than shoot and be shot? They don't seem like 'veterans' in that sense, at least. And while railroading is hated by the players, you gotta do what you gotta do to make your game work, and be fun for you to run as well as for them to play. Sometimes plot points require the players to be powerless precisely because they hate it so much. Who makes for a more despised enemy, one who just tries to kill you after you screw them over, or one who captures you, gloats about it, then drops you in the middle of nowhere? Or something similar, you get the idea.

Like, really, it almost sounds like you've been resentful of them, apologies or no. Trust your players to be able to handle the occasional risky plot or two. Don't make it a constant thing, but it's the rarity that makes it special and able to be dealt with if they don't like it, and a highlight of the campaign if they do.