[Irisado]

I picked up a copy of Black Crusade recently, and while it's a great read from a narrative perspective, I found the layout of the rules a little bit confusing in places.  I'm particularly baffled by certain elements of the character creation section, in the sense that it talks about advancement in terms of acquiring new skills, traits, etc, but it doesn't really explain how advancement works.

I've never played a role-playing game like this before, so it may be that I'm missing something obvious, or that I've simply overlooked a page.  Could anyone help me out here?  A page number where advancement is explained in detail would be particularly useful.

The thing that has disappointed me about the book is the sheer number of typos.  On average, I seemed to come across one or more every five pages or so.  There are also copy and paste errors, which have resulted in similar sections being replicated without certain names being changed, such as the entry for the Greater Daemons of Nurgle and Tzeentch (the former is written twice, instead of Lord of Change).  Is this the case for anyone else who has the book, or have I just been unlucky?

[Koval]

I picked up a copy of Black Crusade recently, and while it's a great read from a narrative perspective, I found the layout of the rules a little bit confusing in places.  I'm particularly baffled by certain elements of the character creation section, in the sense that it talks about advancement in terms of acquiring new skills, traits, etc, but it doesn't really explain how advancement works.

I've never played a role-playing game like this before, so it may be that I'm missing something obvious, or that I've simply overlooked a page.  Could anyone help me out here?  A page number where advancement is explained in detail would be particularly useful.

I can't give you a page reference as I don't actually have a copy of Black Crusade (although I'm thinking of buying the e-copy from FFG), but in all three of Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader and Deathwatch, the mechanics of advancement are covered in the same chapter as the advance charts themselves, just before the first career path (or, in Deathwatch, just before the General Space Marine tables). I can't imagine Black Crusade being that radically different from the three games that preceded it.

[N01H3r3]

I can't imagine Black Crusade being that radically different from the three games that preceded it.

As it happens, Black Crusade differs in numerous ways from the three previous games - FFG (including myself, as I wrote the Psychic Powers and Daemon Weapons sections) took it as an opportunity to make some fairly significant changes to the way the game works. In particular, Black Crusade character advancement is near-freeform, guided by the character's alignment to one or other of the Chaos Gods, replacing the older Career Paths with starting archetypes packages.

To the original poster:

Character advancement in Black Crusade does not impose any sweeping limits on who can buy which advances, skills and talents - any character can buy anything, so long as they meet that individual advance's prerequisites. What differs is that the cost of those advances is determined by the character's current alignment.

All skills, talents and characteristics have one of five alignments - Khorne, Nurgle, Slaanesh, Tzeentch and Unaligned. Every 10 Corruption you gain, you check your alignment. Ignoring Unaligned advances, total the number of advances (skills, talents and characteristics) in each alignment - if you have five more in any alignment than in any one of the others, then you're aligned to that god. When aligned to a particular god, that god's advances are purchased at the cheapest rate, another god's advances are at the middle 'allied' rate (as are Unaligned advances), and the other two are at the most expensive "opposed" rate. So, a Khorne-aligned character treats all Khornate advances as the cheapest, all Unaligned and Nurgle advances as allied, and all Slaanesh and Tzeentch advances as opposed.

I can't give proper page references, as I'm not at home and don't have my book with me - rules references are from my copies of the pre-print manuscripts.

[Irisado]

Thanks for the help.  That makes things somewhat clearer.

I agree that it all seems somewhat 'de-structured', if that makes sense, and that's what I've had problems adjusting to, as I'm used to more structured forms of roleplay through board game version of this genre, such as Advanced Heroquest.

I had also considered investing in the Tzeentch expansion book, but in view of my ongoing disappointment with the number of typos, I've rather gone off that idea.

As a final thought, the sections on psychic powers and Daemon Weapons are two of my favourite parts of the book in terms of the background, and how they work, so thanks for doing a good job with those.