A year after purchasing the Imperium Maledictum RPG rulebook, I had the chance to run the Chemical Burn adventure at the Kapcon gaming convention in Wellington. Then I ran it a second time with one of my weekly gaming groups. This is my review of the module, with no spoilers until the appropriately named Spoilers section.
Imperium Maledictum is set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. As with any established setting, if you're running the game for people well versed in the lore then you probably will find it helpful to also be familiar with the lore. However, if you and your players are new to the setting, the rulebook provides everything you need to know. As a bonus, the book's immediate setting is the Macharian sector, which has been cut off from the rest of the galaxy by warp storms, so any deviation from "official" lore that you introduce in your game can easily be explained away as either isolationism or weird effects of the warp. It couldn't be easier to drop into Warhammer 40,000.
In the Chemical Burn adventure module, the player characters are hired by an Inquisitorial agent to hunt down the origins of a new narcotic called Gratis that's becoming popular in hive city Rokarth. The Inquisitor wants the player characters to be discreet in their investigation, and absolute in their judgment.
At 60 pages, the module feels more intimidating than it is. Although I could have done with an extra hour or 2, I did run the scenario successfully in 3 hours both at the convention and with my home group. The module is basically a structured sandbox (if there is such a thing). The printed page provides you with a bunch of locations and characters. In the early sections, there are lots of locations, because you never know what course of investigation the characters are going to take. In later sections, there are fewer possible locations because the only way the players could have gotten to those locations is by investigating those of earlier sections.
It's a funnel, and it is impeccable. Both times I ran the adventure, the players specifically mentioned ideas I immediately recognised as valid avenues they could have taken at the start. I knew exactly where in the booklet to look for information, and I knew exactly what information to feed them, should they pursue the idea.
But wait, it gets better. At the start of every section, there's an explanation for the Game Master about how the player characters could have possibly arrived there. You get a full recapitulation of the logical flow of the adventure so far, up to that section. If you flip over to Section 2 and see that your player characters haven't gotten this bit of information, or met one of these characters, or whatever, then you know they're not ready for that section yet. Either that, or you know to feed them extra information the moment they arrive at the new location.
The book is like a non-visual road map, and it makes the act of investigation fun and intriguing. If you regularly run games, then you've probably come across (or regrettably invented yourself) an adventure that seeks to emulate investigation by stringing a bunch of fetch quests together. This adventure drops players into a literal investigation, and it gives the Game Master plenty of material to work with when revealing clues about what's really going on. It's the kind of investigative adventure that makes the Game Master eager toreveal information, and that makes it fun for players to work to find it.
From this point on, there are spoilers. Stop reading now if you want to be surprised by the adventure.
Aside from the structural design of Chemical Burn, the story itself is entertaining. I think there's an argument that it's over-complex. There are about 3 different factions behind the distribution of the drug Gratis. They're basically independent factions, with stories that aren't really connected except by the drug trade. This can be both a good and bad thing for the Game Master. Because there's a needlessly complex backstory, you do have to keep track of varying villains and motives, which can get confusing to remember.
However, it also provides a lot of flexibility. When I ran the adventure at the convention, the players got to the source of the drug, both its manufacture and its distribution (of course, they also tore a hole in reality after a monumentally bad Perils of the Warp roll). My Sunday gaming group only unraveled how the drug was being manufactured, and successfully brought that to a halt. Both were valid victories, and I appreciated that the story functionally provided varying degrees of success. If you're running out of time for the game and you need to wrap it up in an hour, then you can easily guide or even force a conclusion by focusing on just one faction's involvement.
The reaction players have to an adventure often depends on their investment in lore. Obviously, the game itself ought to inspire investment in the story, but someone fully invested in the lore of a setting is unavoidably going to pick up on nuances and easter eggs that other players miss. Even when the setting isn't a big commercial property like Forgotten Realms or Middle Earth or Warhammer, you run an adventure long enough and lore develops. It's the equivalent of inside jokes within social groups.
I think this is an enjoyable bonus to roleplaying games, and one of the appeals of established living settings and long-term gaming groups. I love feeling familiar with my game world, and I think it's one of the strongest long play strategies of a good roleplayer. It's indescribably satisfying when your success depends on having a widget you don't have, and then you remember that there's a little-known widget vendor at the end of the alley behind your favourite in-universe pub. Job done, and even the Game Master didn't remember the store until you provided a map and the notes from the session when it was established. What a feeling.
As a byproduct of being set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, Chemical Burn contains a good deal of easter eggs and lore-dependent surprises. In my convention game, I got some of the best reactions to plot developments I think I've ever witnessed, and it fostered some of the most authentic roleplay. The majority of the players knew Warhammer well, they knew the significance of some of the established factions that got revealed, they knew the threats posed by what they were up against, and they knew what resources they had available to them.
My home group, I think, struggled a little to understand what their characters could do, and I think I did a poor job of introducing clear threats. They got the job done, and they enjoyed the game because we enjoy playing together, but I don't think they enjoyed the story of the adventure as much as they could have. It was my fault for forgetting that they had no connection to Warhammer 40,000 (even my partner, who sees me painting and playing Adeptus Mechanicus every week, had no idea what a Tech-priest was even after I said "the little red guys I paint and have out on my gaming table").
Learn from my mistake. If you're running this for people unfamiliar with Warhammer 40,000, then consider emphasising a clear and present threat. The adventure doesn't actually provide a constant threat, so you may need to make the street gang or the Cultists more aggressive than they're written, or else create a plot timer (maybe the military's going to move in and deal with the problem if the player characters don't get it sorted in time). Gratis comes across as pretty innocuous, especially if you're not a player who cares one way or the other that addicts are having dreams of a 4-armed Emperor (my home group literally had to ask whether it was unusual for the Emperor, who they'd only just learned about at the start of the session, to have 4 arms). Give your players a threat to fight against, or else the whole adventure may end up feeling like a very long fetch quest.
Chemical Burn is a good investigative adventure for a truly great RPG system. I don't get a chance to run Imperium Maledictum half as often as I'd like, but I enjoy the game every time I do. Chemical Burn has a strong sense of structure without imposing any specific play style, and the story is very strong for players familiar with the lore. For players unfamiliar with 40k lore, a good Game Master can emphasise a few minor threats provided in the adventure to help players become invested in the story. There are enough locations and details in Chemical Burn to also provide a setting for more than just its written story. Were I running a regular Imperium Maledictum game, I'd keep players in Rokarth for a few side quests at least. If you're playing Imperium Maledictum, I highly recommend Chemical Burn.