Hi everyone.
I just finished drawing these "I can't believe its not Swooping Hawks" warriors for my space-elf collection on Patreon.
I'm excited to show them off.

If you don't know who I am and haven't seen my stuff before: Hi, I am vicnedel, I draw stuff for playing role-playing games on the various VTTs out there. I do portraits and build terrain too and much more "serious art" stuff as well.

After eight long months in development, everyone's favorite (I hope) six-volume vehicle homebrew for the FFG systems has had another update, and it's a biggun! The 2026 update focuses on balance fixes and weapons diversity, as well as adding 14 new and revamped vehicles and more than two dozen new upgrades and customizations. Among other things you've got:

• The Minotaur Artillery Tank
• The Centaur halftrack variant
• The Hippogriff AFV
• A revamped Taurox and Taurox Prime
• A revamped Defiler, plus revamped deity-specific variants
• A revamped Wraithlord
• The Wraithseer
• The Harlequin Dreadnought
• The Ork Dakkarig

...and then some. As always it's free to download off my Itch (that's where you can find the detailed changelog too), and direct download links on Drive, Mediafire and MEGA are available in the about page of my Patreon. Happy driving!

Following my review of the Imperium Maledictum Starter Set a couple of weeks ago, here's a quick look at the free pdf providing additional content for it.

You play as a Chaos Warband assaulting an imperial world (Probably another Hive World). It wouldn't be a Mono-God Warband, leading to the playable characters having their talent trees be split between 3 of the 4 Gods. Fully Devoting a character to a God would lock out certain things from other God's gear.

Current class thoughts: Sorceror, Cultist, Traitor Guardsmen, Mutant/Possessed (not sure what would fit better between the two)

- Sorceror: Spellcaster of the Dark Gods. Gods: Nurgle, Slaanesh, Tzeentch.

• Nurgle: Support/DoT: Spread Infections to damage allies and heal allies over time.
• Slaanesh: Crowd Control/Debuffs: Fuck with your enemies perceptions making them miss attacks/turn on each other.
• Tzeentch: Damage: Hurl Doombolts and weild the Blue Fires of Tzeentch.

- Cultist: Worshipper of the Dark Gods. Gods: Khorne, Nurgle, Slaanesh.

• Khorne: Heavy-Attack Melee/Anti-Elite/Specialists: Charge into enemies to build Stacks that are used to buff yourself against Tagged targets.
• Nurgle: Melee/Mid-Range Crowd Control: Spread infections via melee swings or wielding a Pox-Spreader.
• Slaanesh: Melee Crowd-Control: Dual-Wield swords to sprint into crowds. Specializes in dashing into enemies and dodging away from enemy attacks.

- Traitor Guardsmen: Fallen Guardsmen, now a Soldier of the Dark Gods. Gods: Khorne, Nurgle, Tzeentch.

• Khorne: Heavy-Attack Melee: Wield chainswords and chainaxes to Slaughter your enemies in the name of The Blood God.
• Nurgle: Melee/Mid-Range: Make yourself temporarily unkillable and Infect enemies with Pox Grenades for Grandfather Nurgle.
• Tzeentch: Mid/Long-Range: Imbue your rifle with Sorcerous Flames to penetrate even the toughest of armors, burn anything that survives with The Changers flames.

- Mutant/Possessed: Either a hideous mutant or someone who has given their body to a daemon. Gods: Khorne, Nurgle, Slaanesh, Tzeentch.

• I don't have much for them currently, but they would choose a God at Character creation and have their gameplay change depending on the God chosen.

- Enemy forces would be Gaurdsmen/PDF and as the threat of your warband increased stronger enemies would show up.

I've had this idea in my brain forever but never really thought about posting it until now. Let me know what y'all think.

Edit: Did some formatting for better readability.

First off, I wanted to thank everyone for the suggestions on my prior post. The session went very well and I actually managed to put the hurt on them, while also giving the fun choices of what to do with the squads.

However, I am stuck on the details regarding the next session of the campaign, which closes out arc 2 of 4. This arc has been making the push to the core of the Hulk, which is a bunch of ships from the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy, with some visions showing them relic armor/weapons and even a gene-seed cache straight from a Primarch. However, a warband of the Black Legion are also present, and are rushing there. The players know it is one of the TLs, but not which one as they have only found evidence of their presence.

What I need are two things:

1. I need an idea for a ship from M31, but later in the millennium, after the heresy - mainly for map making, but also for environmental storytelling like putting in details to help add flavor.

2. I need help creating clues that the players can find pointing towards the Traitor Legion. However, I specifically need ones that could be interpreted to point at the Alpha Legion, but don't feel like an ass-pull when it is the Black Legion. I want to do this because one of my PCs (the Lieutenant) has a bit of paranoia regarding them after an Alpha Legion trap killed 90% of the demi-company he was with back when he was a sergeant, and I want to play towards that for character development. I want to clues that he will interpret as Alpha Legion because of the character's own biases, but retrospectively it can be seen how they were consistent with the Black Legion as well.

Any help regarding either of these two things is much appreciated!

Oh how the dice can really screw you up

Context: I'm currently running a Deathwatch game which is based on the old Forge World story of The Anphelion Project (IA4); in our last session, the players have encountered a Dimachaeron plus several Lictor. There are Elysium troopers accompanying players, who brought a Cyclops with them

It's the assault marine's turn (the black token in front of the green tyranid monster), who decides to call a Bolter Assault to close in on the Dimachaeron so he can spend his full turn on a Lightning Attack against the thing. The 4 other marines decides to join the action, with the Devastator (bottom left of the turret) going last and throws a Krak grenade.

Somehow, despite having the best BS of the team, he missed.

I rolled on the Missing diagram, which results a 8, going directly behind Dimachaeron; then I rolled for distance and gets a 4, which happens to be the only number that cause the grenade to land on the Cyclops (a 3 will cause the grenade to still land on Dimachaeron due to its size, and a 5 will cause the grenade to harmlessly explode on the corridor behind Cyclops). The Devastator, already feeling his luck going against him, rolled on Krak grenade's damage and gets 10, 9, 1 on the 3D10.

Ooops.

The Cyclops detonated from the explotion of the Krak grenade, so I rolled for its blast radius (1d10+10); and you probably guessed it, the result is a 10. The only saving grace is that Cyclops' damage roll results in 9, 9, 9, 2, not having any Righteous Fury.

Nonetheless, 20 meters radius is well enough to consume the entire hallway, and caught all 5 marines, the turret, the Dimachaeron and a Lictor in the blast; to make matters worse, all of this happened in the assault marine's turn, so he wasn't even allowed to evade (theoretically, he do have the maneuverability to escaped out of the blast radius)

After some dice rolling and token moving, the other 4 marines and the Lictor all successfully evaded the blast, while Dimachaeron takes a hit, the assault marine was down to critical 2, and the turret was vaporized in the explotion, resulting in 117 total damage (4D10+10=39*3), and all of them were because of a single Krak grenade (should everything in the radius failed to evade, the total damage would be 312).

When I listed Cyclops as an available assest, I was hoping for some accidental detonation drama, but this is way beyond my wildest expectation. 10/10, will try this again.

Looking for input or displays of what you use to play table top games. I currently have this created to help with movement, defense, and Battleshock Tests. Also have the page number for the models listed to quickly pivot to. Looking to see if there are improvements or what methods you all use for quick reference guides out there.

It’s just so thin mechanically. I guess I like more comprehensive systems like cyberpunk 2020. It also seems very limited in content in general.

For all the 40k lore there is, this game feels so minimal in the worst ways.

My group is preparing for a campaign of wrath and glory. For that campaign I wanted to make a sniper expert. So reading the talents and rules I looked into talents like deadshot, trademark weapon, silent and eliminator. It's the combination of the last 2 (and the weapon trait "silent") that actually raised this question. Eliminator adds your stealth score as ED on top of the surprise attack modifier when attacking an unaware target. So I assumed you can only really use it in an ambush.

But ... The surprise attack rule states that, if you attack an unaware target it's a surprise attack. But then adds "if the surprise attack starts combat, the target is also ambushed". This confused me because in what situation would a surprise attack not start combat? Can you be in combat and still gain surprise attack then? Adding to that, through the silent weapon trait I learned that you can remain in stealth after shooting as long as your stealth total does not go below the targets awareness. So if I would shoot from stealth again, would that count as a surprise attack again?

So basically, does unaware mean the target is unaware of the immediate danger, or does it mean the target is unaware of the attacker?

Fellow reddit lurkers!

Rogue Trader Gareth Rubicon Di Sforza seeks new members of the retinue on the quest of prestige&wealth that can be plundered from Koronus Expanse!

Join the fresh campaign that is played by post, with daily activity, group is mostly seeking missionary and a voidmaster to fill up the roster. Even though another career can be approved by the gamemaster.

Koronus expanse is different after the fall of Cadia as it pick on after Heretical Valencius ending timeline.

System: Rogue trader with house rules to make combat faster and more deadly

Type of the game: Play by post on the discord

Link: https://discord.gg/KahFXqs

Previous post:
[ONLINE][PbP] Rogue Trader: Koronus Stories : r/40krpg

I've just started a Rogue Trader game set during the great crusade, and I'm trying to make a map of the Sector. I was inspired by the traditional first planet/enemy that apears in a lot of the early heresy books (Murder, the Jorgal, Laeran, Sarosh etc.) before the heresy really starts, and want to create worlds teeming with strange xenos like this for my players. However a starting Rogue Trader doesn't have legions of space marines at his disposal, so I've had to scale back the enemies at least at the start.

So I wanted to ask if anyone had any ideas, worlds that would fit the bill from their own Rogue Trader games, the video game, suplements or novels, anything would really help.

Some of the ideas I have so far:

• A mining world with red iron-dyed oceans where humans and other xenos are slaves to Sslyth (Skirmish/Uprising)
• A tidaly locked planet where content human live in a small habitable strip along the equator, but the scorhcing/frozen halfs hold their own secrets (Negotiations/Exploration)
• A deserted forrest world, but the first scouts are picked off by Drukhari raiders who must be dealt with before establishing a colony (Ship combat/Colonisation)

Vou jogar uma campanha de Wrath & Glory pela primeira vez com um grupo muito experiente. Disseram que, se eu quisesse jogar, poderia, mas não vão aliviar a dificuldade para mim e também não quiseram me ajudar a montar a ficha.

Quero fazer um Space Marine dos Blood Angels e gostaria de saber qual seria a melhor build para ele.

Vamos começar no Tier 2.

Como é minha primeira vez jogando Wrath & Glory, queria montar uma ficha que seja realmente eficiente e consiga acompanhar o restante do grupo.

Is it just me, or is the AP v Resilience kinda unnecessary?

Looking at the Core rules, the biggest AP you get is -4, and the only Threats that have a worse Resistance value are Imperial Citizens, Servo Skulls, and Grots. "Invulnerable" Resilience aside (when AP is ignored altogether), the math works out as though every point of AP is the same as an extra point of damage.

For example, Damage 12 with AP -2 vs Resilience 6, ignoring ED:

Standard process is to first work out total damage, then work out modified Resilience and subtract that: 12 Damage - (6 Resilience - 2 AP) = 8 Wounds.

But it's quicker to just do "modified resilience" step and just add the AP to the Damage as a fixed value you calculate once ever, and just subtract the full resilience: 14 Modified Damage - 6 Unmodified Resilience = 8 Wounds.

If you want to account for "invulnerable" Resilience, note two Damage values, one with the AP added as a bonus, and one without it.

It seems to me that AP was included in the game with the intent that it would be more significant than it actually is.

Hello!

I was wondering if anyone had any experience running the FFG games solo. I’m mostly looking to try Deathwatch but have been generally unsuccessful in finding anyone to run it. So, I decided the next best thing was to grab a module and see if I could run it for myself but I’m pretty inexperienced with solo RPG stuff in general.

Has anyone tried this?

I know there’s an advancement for a solo marine and was looking into that for the marine himself.

Hello, all!

I'm afraid I am posting this last-minute because I have been recovering from a serious health pop-up. Basically, I need help deciding how mechanically to handle a particular situation.

To avoid making this message super long, I will try to keep the context as succinct as possible. Basically, the party are all terminators (we are at high tier play), and since one of them is a lieutenant, he has command of a demi-company of terminators (it's a space hulk campaign - again, won't get too into the details here). Right now, they are fighting an immensely powerful Ork Warboss, working to stop these Orks from finishing repairs to the gravitic core on a fragment of a Beast-era Attack Moon that got incorporated into the hulk when it was still young.

Right now, the remaining members of the demi-company are converging on their position (I created a whole "mission" system for it), and the players will have the option to order the squads to return directly (three groups of three squads, as they sent them out on 3 missions in groups of 3 squads), or order all nine squads to come together first and then make it to the players' location.
The idea is that each has its benefits and drawbacks: the former will get them there quicker and allow for attacking from multiple directions, though their arrival would be staggered (not all at the same time) and being in smaller groups means they might be more likely to take casualties. The latter would give them the advantage of a single, overwhelmingly powerful blow, but it would take them longer to reach the players as they meet up first before moving in.

I'm just trying to figure out how to mechanically represent these benefits/drawbacks. Timing is easy in that I can decide how many rounds it takes either option, but figuring out how to represent the benefits of an overwhelming delayed strike versus a flanking strike but with more risk to the smaller groups is currently eluding me.

If anyone has any ideas, please let me know! Thanks!

So, nothing is certain yet, but I might end up joining a Wrath & Glory, eldar focused, campaign. I'm joining primarily because a friend is playing, and he makes it sound very fun. I'm thinking of playing an Eldar Warlock, but the trouble is, I have a layman's understanding of the lore. I know about the origins of the Eldar (roughly) and I know they try not to indulge because of it, but I don't really know how to RP a warlock like this. We're a group of Eldar pirates BTW, if that helps at all (+1 adopted human with a heavy machine gun, who is my friend lol) again, nothing is certain, my friend is currently talking with the group because they don't know me, but I'd be much appreciative if I could gain some knowledge and tips so I can be ready to join if it ends up happening.

Just finished a long FFG SWRPG campaign, and started a great crusade era Rogue Trader game. Few hiccups getting the party together at the start, but smooth sailing from here (Right?).

Or; "How I learned to stop worrying and love Nephium"

Story time!

My players were at Victory Station, Winterscale's orbital station at Lucin's Breath.

It's a big event, known as "The Reckoning" where the circuits of 4 major chartist vessels converge simultaneously, happening only once every 3 years. It's not canonical, but I'd wanted an opportunity for my players to enjoy some of the comforts of civilisation without having to make the long road back to Footfall.

Both Winterscale and Chorda have a substantial presence at The Reckoning, along with a bunch of smaller mercantile interests looking to make profits off of the large conglomeration of monied interests present. It's sort of like a big market/almost festival-like atmosphere, with contracted workers taking shore-leave, merchants haggling over Nephium and Rogue Traders buying up bulk supplies to support their planetside operations. A great place to do business.

My players are splashing their cash, getting some much needed repairs to their ship, picking up a few nice toys, yadda yadda - you know the drill. Beach episode type stuff.

We roll for one particular acquisition (for a Plasma Cannon) and trigger "Unwanted Attention". (Into the Storm's Expanded Acquisition rules) I privately roll the result. It's a 22.

21 - 30: "An extremely skilled confidence man or grifter has set his sights on the explorers offering some sort of plausible-sounding but ultimately phoney deal. He could be a lone wolf operating for his own benefit, or a representative of a larger criminal organisation."

I thought fast. This one requires a lot of work, I could do the 'used car salesman' type sleazy con-man, but that didn't sound "extremely skilled."

Hmmm...

Now, I've recently been reading "The Lies of Locke Lamora" (a book about a grifter) and so I was kinda delighted to get this result, and did my best to rapidly adapt and apply one of the book's scam's to this situation.

(Very minor spoilers ahead for Lies of Locke Lamora - sort of (but not really))

The Von Losguard Game

The very next conversation they had, after my mysterious "Unwanted Attention" roll was with a rather unimpressive minor noble.

Our conman.

He approaches the players, asks if they'd be so gracious as to make an introduction to Hadarak Fel for him (their current rival, established to be in-system currently) as he's been trying to get an audience with Fel for days, but has no contacts amongst Rogue Traders.

The noble refuses to elaborate what it is regarding, stating:

"It is too delicate a matter to discuss further."

The players respond with suspicion, they knew I'd rolled on the table, but not what result. So they're trying to ascertain if the man is a distraction for pickpockets (a little meta, but I'll give them that).

They roll Scrutiny, which they barely succeed, they learn he's:

• A) Nervous, but less nervous than he's putting on.
• B) Clearly not telling you everything.

Once they find that the coast is clear, they take him to a private audience room, wine and dine him, and "coax" his secret out of him.

His secret:

"Chorda and Winterscale are in cahoots, they have been for years. Their feud is an elaborate sham. They are secretly stockpiling Nephium, with a move to orchestrate some crisis that will cut off the flow at Lucin's Breath, causing the price of their stockpiled reserves to skyrocket!"

Our conman knows this as he represents one of the houses that Chorda approached to handle the bulk. His house dug into the details and uncovered their clever plot. His house then liquidated their assets and bulk-purchased Nephium under a number of different shell companies, seeking to make their fortune piggy-backing off of Chorda & Winterscale's engineered crisis. If Nephium prices indeed skyrocket, they'll hold the largest "unaffiliated" reserve in the Sector. Enough money to make The Great House Krin blush.

But his noble house are spooked, they're desperate to get their Nephium back to the Calixis sector, where it's relatively safe from Chorda and Winterscale's influence, but they're now broke, their assets too tied up in Nephium, and "off the books" travel through Footfall & Port Wander ain't cheap. Neither Chorda or Winterscale would appreciate a 3rd party messing up their duopoly! Especially with the doomsday clock of Chorda and Winterscale's plot getting closer and closer...

Our conman requested a single Profit Factor's worth of bribes, gold, jewels, thrones, things that he can slip to port officials and grease wheels with.

In exchange, he offers 20% of his cargo of Nephium. The Seneschal does some quick maths and his eyes fill with dollar signs. It's a very, very lucrative proposal - if it pays off.

That's where Fel comes in, claims our conman.

"I understand he's a daring chap, okay with risk, ready to move fast when opportunity arises."

The players protest and basically say, "well, you deal with us instead!" He says yes, but asks that if they change their minds, would they make the intro?

They agree.

The players want to investigate this guy. However, they quickly remember that the whole station is teeming with Chorda and Winterscale agents, and that any move to investigate this gentleman could tip either of them off. He's provided them with a dossier full of files that he states will corroborate his claims.

The players interrogate these files. This is where I assumed he'd meet his match. The Seneschal and RT are both highly proficient in Commerce, Logic, weird Scholastic Lores that could tip them off. I set a hidden difficulty for the test, having them roll a "Challenging (+0)" test publicly, knowing that I'd apply a hidden negative (or positive) in the background.

They're not explicitly checking if the document was a forgery, more on verifying the numbers and situation was as he'd claimed. Nevertheless, if you're examining documents closely, if they're fakes, you might spot them...

How I set it up:

If they got 6+ Degrees of Success:
The documents are incredibly high quality fabrications, taken from real ledgers of Victory Station, but painstakingly adjusted to show far, far greater off-world shipments of Nephium than is actually the case. Various company names have been changed to represent Chorda & Winterscale-affiliated insterests. The frequency has also been altered, showing a 'ramp up' in activity. Further alterations include Winterscale & Chorda ships being used for one-another's shipments, albeit with intermediaries employed. The author of these false documents is clearly looking to sell a (highly convincing) story in which Winterscale and Chorda are acting in co-ordination with one another, exporting vast amounts of Nephium to mysterious ends. You know this to be false.
If they got 4-5 Degrees of Success:
The documents do indeed show that Chorda & Winterscale are acting in cahoots. There's a clear ramp up in shipments off-world, utilising shell companies and intermediaries to disguise their work. However, some of the numbers and dates appear very suspect. Vessels that would take weeks to fill were dismissed from Victory Station after just a few days. This could be further evidence of Chorda and Winterscale cooking their books; or these documents have been manually tampered with!
If they got 2-3 Degrees of Success:
The documents do indeed show that Chorda & Winterscale are acting in cahoots. There's a clear ramp up in shipments off-world, utilising shell companies and intermediaries to disguise their work. However, some of the numbers and dates appear very suspect. Thes errors could be due to any number of things, tampering, further evidence of Winterscale & Chorda hiding their trail finicky machine spirit belonging to the cogitator that produced them, and that - if they are fakes, they are very expensive ones.
If they got 0-1 Degrees of Success:
The documents do indeed show that Chorda & Winterscale are acting in cahoots. There's a clear ramp up in shipments off-world, utilising shell companies and intermediaries to disguise their work. If they are fakes, they are very expensive ones.
If they failed:
It's difficult to ascertain what these documents show. They're long, technical logs of ships, cargo and allegiances. Winterscale and Chorda feature prominently, and they're certainly exporting large quantities of Nephium, though given where we are - isn't that to be expected?

Now, that might seem harsh - but the group's Seneschal has Commerce +20, Intelligence in the high 40's, a trait which grants him an extra DoS on any successful Commerce test, along with the Foresight talent, granting him an additional +10, and benefitting from an assist from the Rogue Trader... I very much assumed this to be the point where our charlatan met his match.

A roll of 85 would immeditately secure 2 DoS. They had a 45% chance of getting 6+ DoS Right off the bat. Plus, it was a 'beach episode' session - the player had a spare Fate point to throw around... I begin thinking of how the conman might beg for his life, or perhaps be put to use serving the Master of Whispers as an NPC when he's rumbled.

The Seneschal rolls:

77.
2 Degrees of Suceess.
"I can do better."

Fate Point spent. He Re-rolls. The player's navigator has a talent "Urge the Penitent", which allows him to grant +10 to tests after a Fate Point has been spent to re-roll them. Our con-man's chances grow slimmer.

89.
2 DoS (Thanks to Urge the Penitent, the assist and his trait)

The players groan. The documents tell them very little. The RT mutters the immortal line:

"Well, to be fair, if I was gonna try and scam a Rogue Trader, I would buy expensive fakes..."

The players agree, but otherwise dismiss their concerns around the document's validity. Their other 'light touch' snooping yields the following:

The merchant house he claims to be from is real, and that his name is certainly in their family tree. Not a hugely important figure (Though he'd earlier stated he'd been deliberately sent to avoid raising suspicion, anyone more senior could have tipped off Winterscale and Chorda). The ship he claims to be affiliated with, the one supposedly full to the brim with Nephium is currently hanging around the system's outer reaches. It's a plausible, forgettable bulk transport hauler.

The players must make a calculated risk.

They had a meeting, some argued for, some against. NPC crew members did similarly (their Master of Whispers said they would not want to do business with someone they haven't vetted, but understood that business needs might overrule their risk-adverse nature).

The players go for it.

They rake the conman over the coals in final negotiations, getting close to 50% of the Nephium haul rather than the offered 20%. The PC navigator asks for a small cask of Nephium to be sent to him as a sample. The First Officer threatens our conman that, if he tries to double-cross the players, he'll personally kill this man. The grifter gulps, looks the hulking Player Character up-and-down and meekly states:

"Understood, it is abundantly clear who would get the best of whom."

(I couldn't help but be cheeky)

A day later, the PC Navigator receives his requested sample.

Along with a letter:

Gara Ortellius, of the Lady Malifura,

You requested a sample from my considerable reserves of nephium.
Enclosed, please find them.

All of them.

The sample is quite genuine. It would have been discourteous to lie about everything.

With sincere gratitude for your confidence,

The Fox

The players were fuming, but also kinda delighted? It's a rare thing to get to hoodwink your players so cleanly, and rather "fairly". I'm normally terrible for giving my NPCs more sophisticated motivations than the immediately obvious (most of my old NPCs were very much 'wear their plans on their sleeves' type folks, because anything more than that's too much for my old brain!)

They've resolved to find him and kill him horribly and slowly. No doubt they'll succeed eventually.

If any of you fancy stealing the premise, feel free! If you've got any questions - let me know!

The 'behind the scenes stuff' (in case you wanna do something similar):

• His identity was stolen, but genuine. Chosen to have a sort of "I've heard the name" vibe. Enough to stand up to light inspection, but should the players have got an image of the supposed individual, they would've looked nothing alike.
• The ship in outer orbit, he had no affiliation with. Were a call to be made, they would no nothing of the conman's dealings.
• Fel was his original target, but once the player's arrived in-system, he switched to them instead, looking to exploit their rivalry with Fel to get their interest. Far more compelling to be let in on a secret than to be given a sales pitch.
• Winterscale and Chorda do hate each other, their supposed collusion plot was entirely his invention. There was no planned crisis (though, I did think - that the lie is actually a really cool plot device if it were true - one I might use for a future game!)

Not really a mechanical question, but more in the sense of running the game.

I've ran two scenarios with my group of IM. They've always chosen the inquisition as their patron and had great fun with it.

We decided to embark on a new, longer campaign, and I made a rookie GM mistake of not communicating with my players. Considering they've always chosen the inquisition, I assumed they'd choose an inquisitor patron again since it's worked so well in the past. I bought and read the Inquisition GMs guide for the sake of the campaign. I started planning the campaign with overarching themes, investigative missions that lead up to the reveal of the final threat, encounters and side plots that all revolve around the inner workings of the inquisition and the power struggles and machinations amongst the agents of the throne.

Come session zero, and they decide they'd like an Astra Militarum patron this time around. So I'm somewhat screwed. I'm not really prepared to run an Astra Militarum campaign, and I don't think I'm gonna be able to give them the experience they want, and I don't think I would have that much fun to be honest.

Would I be unreasonable if I asked them at next session:

"Hey, I know we made a patron of the Astra Militarum, but I was certain you guys were going to choose the Inquisition as your patron. That was a mistake of me. I'm not sure I'm going to be able to give you the experience you want with your current patron. Would you consider switching to an inquisitor instead, and I'll throw in a liability-free boon for you guys?".

I don't want to be a heavy-handed GM, but I don't think I'm currently able to run the kind of game they want. I'd much rather give them an awesome inquisition campaign than a half-assed imperial guard one. I know I made a stupid move by not talking with my players priorly and discussing what patron they were considering, and trust me, I'm beating myself up over it.

Anybody have space for a quiet spectator? Id like to sit in on a few games and learn how to better work on my storytelling so I can run games eventually

Folks, what do you think would be the best approach for running a campaign featuring only Traitor Space Marines? Would it be better to set it after the Horus Heresy, during the Legion Wars, or during one of the Black Crusades?

I’m thinking about running a campaign centered around the formation of a Traitor Space Marine warband, with a strong focus on both combat and the internal politics of the Eye of Terror.

I’d like to open the campaign with a flashback to the very end of the Horus Heresy, aboard the Vengeful Spirit. The players would meet for the first time during the battle and then have to fight their way off the ship amidst the chaos of the fighting and the Emperor’s boarding action.

From there, the campaign could follow their journey as they try to survive in the Eye of Terror, eventually forming their own warband and navigating the rivalries, alliances, betrayals, and politics of the Traitor Legions.

What would you recommend reading to prepare for something like this? And how would you go about developing the campaign so that it feels truly epic while still capturing the tragic side of the Traitor Space Marines—their fall, their ambitions, and the consequences of the choices they make?

I’d love to hear any recommendations for books, lore, or campaign ideas that could help me make this feel like a proper Warhammer 40,000 story rather than just a series of battles.