d100-based WH40K: Imperium Maledictum Announced

Cubicle 7 has announced a new Warhammer 40K game called Imperium Maledictum. The game will use a d100 system, and players will take on the roles of Imperium citizens in a game focused on intrigue and investigation.

Cubicle 7 is excited to announce a new Warhammer 40,000 roleplaying game! Imperium Maledictum is the spiritual successor to the beloved series of roleplaying games started by Black Industries over ten years ago. Imperium Maledictum is a d100 based system for roleplaying in the grim darkness of the 41st millennium, and builds on previous Warhammer 40,000 d100 roleplaying games, as well as Cubicle 7’s own award-winning Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4th Edition.

Players take on the roles of citizens of the Imperium in service to a powerful patron, with games focused on investigation and intrigue. The Imperium is a deadly place, and the players must tread carefully if they hope to survive. Your service to your patron allows you to move through Imperial society where others can’t. The Influence you and your patron have with the many factions of the Imperium will determine how your investigations proceed, where you can go, and what resources you have access to.

Imperium Maledictum takes place in the Macharian Sector, named for Lord Solar Macharius, and will allow players and GMs to explore the sector as never before. The Imperium Maledictum core rulebook gives players and GMs everything they need to begin playing, including a guide to the Macharian Sector, patrons to serve, and enemies to face. Future books will focus on specific factions, allowing players to take on the roles of agents in service to a powerful Inquisitor, or perhaps as dedicated servants of the Ecclesiarchy.

We are hard at work on Imperium Maledictum and will be sharing more news and details in the coming months, so be sure to keep an eye on our website, and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram so you don’t miss out! You can also check out our currently available action-focused Warhammer 40,000 roleplaying game Wrath & Glory and it’s recently announced packed release schedule.

 

[TheSword]

Excuse my pedantry, I am proud to be an owner of the original Black Industries' Dark Heresy role playing game books, including the super rare black artificial leather edition. that was all black with just the Inquisitorial "I" embossed in golden outline, and the book also had gold leaf edges all round pages.

The following properties were published by Black Industries:

1a. Dark Heresy Core Rulebook Limited Edition (only 200 and sold out almost immediately).
1b. Dark Heresy Core Rulebook (hard cover)

2. Inquisitors Handbook (soft cover sourcebook)
3. Purge the Unclean (soft cover adventure)
4. Game Master's Kit (including softcover adventure "Maggots in the meat")

5. Shattered Hope (softcover small digest size adventure) free gift at convention

The confusion is probably that the books were re-released later on in hardcover.

I really liked Purge the Unclean, and disciples of the dark gods is frankly one of the best sourcebooks I’ve read for any system. The chapter on the Vile Savants is one of the most darkly inspirational things I’ve read.

 

[aramis erak]

I might have been interested, but not if the game is anything like Warhammer Fantasy or Fantasy Flights rules for their 40k RPG. I have their Rogue Trader, and my players and I thought the rules were so bad we quit mid-campaign. I think 40k is a great setting you can do a lot of with, but I just haven't been happy with any of the RPGs yet.

that's the most divergent ruleset of the bunch... more abstractions and more diverse subsystems.

Personally, I loved it...
But I liked Dark Heresy, too. And Deathwatch ( tho' I've only run deathwatch as a one shot).

I particularly liked the abstraction of money and the use of various missions generated by trade operations. I wouldn't run another DH or DW campaign without its ship rules.

 

[humble minion]

The later games in the FFG line always seemed to me like they were a bit hamstrung by the dogged adherence to the d100 system. It made sense for the hard-scrabble street level stuff that Dark Heresy was intended for, but it didn't scale up very well. Life-is-cheap grit isn't necessarily what you want when you're trying to run a Deathwatch campaign. Something completely different would have fitted the genre better (I messed around with a Mutants and Masterminds binding for Deathwatch for a while), but then the lines would have lost even nominal cross-compatibility.

I really liked the IDEA of Rogue Trader, and I bought the whole line just because the books were so gorgeous, but I always wondered how it'd work in play. It seemed to suffer from Star Trek Away Team Disease, in which it was really hard to justify why the high-ranking starship officers would be the ones going off on their own and getting involved in all the risky fighting rather than getting their minions to do it for them. ESPECIALLY in the WH40K universe where life is cheap and any ship has thousands of expendable menials, and almost everyone you meet wants to eat your face, or turn you into a meeping mutated mass of organs, or stick you in a auto-torturing war machine that is fueled by your agony.

I'm still going to play the hell out of the Rogue Trader computer game when it arrives though. Even though I'll have to buy a new computer to do it.

 

[MGibster]

I particularly liked the abstraction of money and the use of various missions generated by trade operations. I wouldn't run another DH or DW campaign without its ship rules.

We absolutely hated the ship rules. Depending on your character class, there just wasn't a whole lot to do. It's not exciting for the Priest character to just "Put Your Backs to It" every single round. I found ship combat to be too abstract for those in my group interested in tactics and a little too detailed for the players in my group who weren't interested in that kind of thing.

Ones of the things I really liked about Rogue Trader, was that everyone had a vested interest in making sure ship did well. When the rogue trader got more wealth, everyone got to take advantage of that. Right out the gate, everyone has a reason to make sure the enterprise is successful.

 

[MGibster]

I really liked the IDEA of Rogue Trader, and I bought the whole line just because the books were so gorgeous, but I always wondered how it'd work in play. It seemed to suffer from Star Trek Away Team Disease, in which it was really hard to justify why the high-ranking starship officers would be the ones going off on their own and getting involved in all the risky fighting rather than getting their minions to do it for them.

I did hear someone suggest that the GM just make the charter for the rogue trader include a provision requiring them to be the first person to step off the ship during any economic endeavor. But the real reason is that if you have your minions doing everything, there isn't much of a game. And as incompetent as the PCs felt in those games, imagine how incompentent the minions are. You can't rely on those dolts to get anything but the simpliest tasks done properly.

The Warhammer 40k universe is absurd, and I mean that in the best way possible. This is a setting where dudes with swords will charge a tank and win. Just revel in the ridiculousness and enjoy it as best you can.

 

[ngenius]

The later games in the FFG line always seemed to me like they were a bit hamstrung by the dogged adherence to the d100 system. It made sense for the hard-scrabble street level stuff that Dark Heresy was intended for, but it didn't scale up very well. Life-is-cheap grit isn't necessarily what you want when you're trying to run a Deathwatch campaign. Something completely different would have fitted the genre better (I messed around with a Mutants and Masterminds binding for Deathwatch for a while), but then the lines would have lost even nominal cross-compatibility.

I really liked the IDEA of Rogue Trader, and I bought the whole line just because the books were so gorgeous, but I always wondered how it'd work in play. It seemed to suffer from Star Trek Away Team Disease, in which it was really hard to justify why the high-ranking starship officers would be the ones going off on their own and getting involved in all the risky fighting rather than getting their minions to do it for them. ESPECIALLY in the WH40K universe where life is cheap and any ship has thousands of expendable menials, and almost everyone you meet wants to eat your face, or turn you into a meeping mutated mass of organs, or stick you in a auto-torturing war machine that is fueled by your agony.

I'm still going to play the hell out of the Rogue Trader computer game when it arrives though. Even though I'll have to buy a new computer to do it.

My group ran Rogue Trader for years, and we had secondary characters for the away team missions when those characters made sense. Each Player had a primary character for ship and another away, so a Navigator who may not do much on the surface, had another character. The Rogue Trader had a a Sister of Battle as backup. The Tech Priest on ship had Kroot mercenary for combat on surfaces if the Tech Priest was busy supervising repairs and could not come down. And because the ship could field over 10,000 souls, sometimes we had abstracted military a team in the background was clearing the way for the Rogue Trader and team to arrive. This was abstracted using the mass combat rules in both Rogue Trader (Battlefleet Koronus had those) and Deathwatch rules (I think though I did not play much Deathwatch).

 

[aramis erak]

I did hear someone suggest that the GM just make the charter for the rogue trader include a provision requiring them to be the first person to step off the ship during any economic endeavor. But the real reason is that if you have your minions doing everything, there isn't much of a game. And as incompetent as the PCs felt in those games, imagine how incompentent the minions are. You can't rely on those dolts to get anything but the simpliest tasks done properly.

The Warhammer 40k universe is absurd, and I mean that in the best way possible. This is a setting where dudes with swords will charge a tank and win. Just revel in the ridiculousness and enjoy it as best you can.

Most of my players characters were in the 40-50 skill range in their core competencies at level 1. Add that most rolls were "doing the orduinary under duress" for +10 more...
Using the difficulty table and not rolling ordinary nor easier unless there's something odd or stressful happening, competence was never lacking.
To be honest, the skill levels in core areas are much the same in WFRP1, 2, and 4... and many other percentile systems.

 

[Jiggawatts]

This seems odd to me. Is there really an audience clamoring for street level 40k roleplaying? I would think an RPG focused upon Space Marines and Inquisitors and high tier Psykers would be the draw for 40k.

 

[Crusadius]

This seems odd to me. Is there really an audience clamoring for street level 40k roleplaying? I would think an RPG focused upon Space Marines and Inquisitors and high tier Psykers would be the draw for 40k.

I believe Dan Abnett and his WH40K novels Xenos, Malleus, and Hereticus (a.k.a. the Eisenhorn trilogy) are to blame for this obsession. Although they aren't entirely street-level.

 

[MGibster]

This seems odd to me. Is there really an audience clamoring for street level 40k roleplaying? I would think an RPG focused upon Space Marines and Inquisitors and high tier Psykers would be the draw for 40k.

I'm not really sure what they mean by "citizens of the Imperium" or who the powerful patrons are the PCs will be beholden to, but the 40k universe is just a rich setting that would work well for a variety of campaigns and stories without the need of Space Marines or even top tier psykers. Just off the top of my head: A group of mercenaries in the depths of Necromunda searching for an artifact from the Age of Technology? Zounds. Or perhaps representatives of the Adeptus Sororitas tasked with policing a formerly disloyal area after it was pacified? Or maybe the Adeptis Mechanicus runs across an ancient ship with an AI that is more human than they are. Good times.

It's always a good time when my Imperial Fists storm the battlefield and crush the enemies of man beneath their tiny plastic feet, but I don't think I'd want to play them in an RPG. There are better stories to be told with humans.