How to Run a Dark Heresy campaign
LibrarianThorne
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Registered User regular
So, the other night I was browsing Amazon hunting down some movies and, on a lark, I decided to see when the Warhammer 40k: Dark Heresy RPG was coming out and was astonished to see that it's this Friday.
Now, I loved the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay system and am very much looking forward to seeing the sci-fi implementation of the system. Basically, I started planning out my campaign when the RPG itself was just a rumor, with a plan to mod in 40k elements to WFRP. The reason is that the system really feeds into the universe's background extremely well. WFRP and (likely) WH40K:DH are very dissimilar from systems like Exalted or d20 in that the big successes are not what define a game. Indeed, big successes may be beyond the ability of the party to accomplish, so then it becomes a matter of small victories. As someone who's ran dozens of WFRP sessions, the biggest trick with the system is to make those small victories, sometimes in the face of overwhelming evil, matter. This requires an understanding of the background not provided, usually, in the rulebooks. So, I'm going to try and impart some wisdom in that regard though I have every expectation of my vocabulary failing me.
Now, your players will not be banishing Chaos and closing the Eye of Terror. Abaddon the Despoiler can (and should!) singlehandedly wipe a group that encounters him. Threats like a Hive Tyrant should and will guarantee sacrifice from the party, in the form of madness and death. So, if even something like a Hormagaunt or Ork Boy is a bona fide threat to the group, why should they continue? They need to have an overarching objective, a goal that despite all their struggle they can achieve. Maybe their patron Inquisitor has learned that Helsreach Hive on blighted Armageddon is the focus of a new assault by Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka, and that a major force of Ork Kommandos are infiltrating the Hive. Any significant military movement would tip Thraka to the Inquisitor's move and so he sends in a group of trusted companions to deal with the threat.
This scenario, whilst simple, does a good job of drawing your players into the wider Warhammer world, something that is very key as most pen and paper gamers aren't big fans of Games Workshop and their money-intensive tabletop games. However, with the above scenario, we've involved the players with the wider Ork threat and with the structure of the Imperium of Man, referenced a major character and event for those who are already fans of the universe's background, and ensured that there will be a mix of combat (with the Kommandos) and non-combat (discussions with the Imperial forces on Armageddon), hopefully giving everyone at the table a chance to interact.
The hope for this thread is that those new to the Warhammer setting can come in and get advice. One of the surest ways I've seen to make WFRP unfun is to run it like it's D&D. At a very basic level, your players are going to need more than the exp/loot system that drives D&D and the best WFRP campaigns involve many more and different things than killing dragons and spelunking around old dusty places. The simple reason for this is that your players stand very little chance of killing a dragon and entering old, dusty places is a similarly short road on the path to regenning a character. So, if potential game masters are having difficulty cracking a particular motivation or need some advice on how to get a group together and into a storyline, feel free to post here.
My campaign, designed to run biweekly for about 5 months, is probably too complex for its own good. Essentially, the players will be sent in to a world to investigate its capital hive city and the problems of new cults forming therein. Essentially, the hive is so massive that it's built into three different layers, with the noble elites living on the top layer of the city which, coincedentally, is also the only part of the city that recieves large amounts of sunlight. In the middle section is where most of the wealthy merchants and craftsmen live, and the lowest section, deprived of sunlight, is where the poor workers live and die. Crime is rife in the low section and tow new cults haved been rapidly organizing in the lower levels. One paints itself as essentially egalitarian caregivers, aiding the sick and wounded and offering people refuge from the seemingly interminable gang wars. What that cult is really up to, however, is preparing the way for a Hive Fleet invasion as they are, in fact, a Genestealer cult. The second cult essentially grew out of the warring gangs and despises the residents of the higher sections of the Hive, publically believing them to cut them off from the Emperor's guidance and privately backed by a squad of the Alpha Legion of the Chaos Space Marines. Thier ultimate goal is to summon the forces of Chaos to the world and shatter Imperial power throughout the system. My players will have to investigate and infiltrate at least one of the cults and, if they fail to stop both, either deal with a Chaos incursion or an attack by a Hive Fleet. What I'm worried about is that the challenges set before the players, essentially small ones leading up to destroying one or both of the cults, will be too much to accomplish in 5 months, or that the party will get wiped by one of the bigger threats (either the Purestrain Genestealers and Patriarch for the one cult, or 5 Chaos Space Marines in the other).
Now, I loved the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay system and am very much looking forward to seeing the sci-fi implementation of the system. Basically, I started planning out my campaign when the RPG itself was just a rumor, with a plan to mod in 40k elements to WFRP. The reason is that the system really feeds into the universe's background extremely well. WFRP and (likely) WH40K:DH are very dissimilar from systems like Exalted or d20 in that the big successes are not what define a game. Indeed, big successes may be beyond the ability of the party to accomplish, so then it becomes a matter of small victories. As someone who's ran dozens of WFRP sessions, the biggest trick with the system is to make those small victories, sometimes in the face of overwhelming evil, matter. This requires an understanding of the background not provided, usually, in the rulebooks. So, I'm going to try and impart some wisdom in that regard though I have every expectation of my vocabulary failing me.
Now, your players will not be banishing Chaos and closing the Eye of Terror. Abaddon the Despoiler can (and should!) singlehandedly wipe a group that encounters him. Threats like a Hive Tyrant should and will guarantee sacrifice from the party, in the form of madness and death. So, if even something like a Hormagaunt or Ork Boy is a bona fide threat to the group, why should they continue? They need to have an overarching objective, a goal that despite all their struggle they can achieve. Maybe their patron Inquisitor has learned that Helsreach Hive on blighted Armageddon is the focus of a new assault by Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka, and that a major force of Ork Kommandos are infiltrating the Hive. Any significant military movement would tip Thraka to the Inquisitor's move and so he sends in a group of trusted companions to deal with the threat.
This scenario, whilst simple, does a good job of drawing your players into the wider Warhammer world, something that is very key as most pen and paper gamers aren't big fans of Games Workshop and their money-intensive tabletop games. However, with the above scenario, we've involved the players with the wider Ork threat and with the structure of the Imperium of Man, referenced a major character and event for those who are already fans of the universe's background, and ensured that there will be a mix of combat (with the Kommandos) and non-combat (discussions with the Imperial forces on Armageddon), hopefully giving everyone at the table a chance to interact.
The hope for this thread is that those new to the Warhammer setting can come in and get advice. One of the surest ways I've seen to make WFRP unfun is to run it like it's D&D. At a very basic level, your players are going to need more than the exp/loot system that drives D&D and the best WFRP campaigns involve many more and different things than killing dragons and spelunking around old dusty places. The simple reason for this is that your players stand very little chance of killing a dragon and entering old, dusty places is a similarly short road on the path to regenning a character. So, if potential game masters are having difficulty cracking a particular motivation or need some advice on how to get a group together and into a storyline, feel free to post here.
My campaign, designed to run biweekly for about 5 months, is probably too complex for its own good. Essentially, the players will be sent in to a world to investigate its capital hive city and the problems of new cults forming therein. Essentially, the hive is so massive that it's built into three different layers, with the noble elites living on the top layer of the city which, coincedentally, is also the only part of the city that recieves large amounts of sunlight. In the middle section is where most of the wealthy merchants and craftsmen live, and the lowest section, deprived of sunlight, is where the poor workers live and die. Crime is rife in the low section and tow new cults haved been rapidly organizing in the lower levels. One paints itself as essentially egalitarian caregivers, aiding the sick and wounded and offering people refuge from the seemingly interminable gang wars. What that cult is really up to, however, is preparing the way for a Hive Fleet invasion as they are, in fact, a Genestealer cult. The second cult essentially grew out of the warring gangs and despises the residents of the higher sections of the Hive, publically believing them to cut them off from the Emperor's guidance and privately backed by a squad of the Alpha Legion of the Chaos Space Marines. Thier ultimate goal is to summon the forces of Chaos to the world and shatter Imperial power throughout the system. My players will have to investigate and infiltrate at least one of the cults and, if they fail to stop both, either deal with a Chaos incursion or an attack by a Hive Fleet. What I'm worried about is that the challenges set before the players, essentially small ones leading up to destroying one or both of the cults, will be too much to accomplish in 5 months, or that the party will get wiped by one of the bigger threats (either the Purestrain Genestealers and Patriarch for the one cult, or 5 Chaos Space Marines in the other).
LibrarianThorne on
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One great example of something like this was in the recent Night Haunter book, where a small cult uprising and an Inquisitor's machinations lead up to a full-scale Night Lords invasion.
If anything, that and other books have shown that a single Chaos Space Marine, usually a champion, is more than enough to bring down an entire planet if he's smart enough. If your Chaos cult's endgoal is planetary destruction, you might not even need a whole 5 marines - just one aspiring champion seeking to offer up a planet-sized sacrifice in an attempt to ascend to Daemonhood. It'd give you less of an immediate physical threat to deal with. The rest sounds great - the Genestealer Cult's stuff is classic.
I don't know how much it would fit in with the setting, but I was sort of hoping as I read through it that one of the cults was just a cult. To be purged surely, but not necessarily some great power to be found amongst them. On the plus side, that would probably be more survivable as well, and "everything that needs to happen" will be far less of a time constraint. Just throwing that idea out there.
Arbites basically lead a raid on a suspected cultist stronghold in a planet's worst slum.
It basically went from black hawk down-style street-fighting to a freaking emaciated corpse in the cultists' main lair pronouncing doom for the entire planet.
Librarian, you said so yourself Warhammer RP is not about taking one Hive Tyrants and Chaos Marine Lords, but you haven't exactly described an adventure that's more than a couple steps away from that. On the other hand, it may work really well for the Space Marine book later on; a combat squad arrives, meets with the hive officials, puts demands upon the local law enforcement, and then drives indiscriminately into the heart of the most threatening cult. I'd suggest working on it a bit longer with that in mind and develop some new ideas that are a bit more cloak and less dagger.
Also, as a big fan of 40,000, I have to admit I find that Armageddon example adventure to be utterly boring and D&D-like. My first summarizing thought was 'Elminster has conjured up an adventure for you.' There's such thing as being too iconic. I'll argue that the great advantage of galatic settings like Warhammer are their boundless potential for settings and larger-than-life events. A good DM just needs an enjoyment for creating new worlds & antagonists along with a good grasp of the underlying themes of the setting to find conflicts for the players to partake in without having to retread well-defined ground or hit the reset button on overarching threats. Nothing made the majority of Star Wars RPG adventures uninteresting to me like Everything Happens on Tatooine. If I'm playing my own character with his own destiny, I'd rather have my own locales than to borrow the movie characters'.
For me, the major elements of Warhammer 40,000, especially for a small group of agents like the demo described, are its sheer scale and its unknowable horrors. The Imperium is not an enlightened or organized body, and the galaxy has a potential for all forms of malevolent aliens, nightmarish worlds, and undiscovered technology far too dangerous to simply stumble upon. Even other forces of the Imperium can be dangerous through simple miscommunication and the shifting thin line between loyalty and heresy. A character's mortality, particularly through a system like WHRP, depends greatly on the amount of things he doesn't know about the dark universe, and plenty more things which he shouldn't.
For me much of the appeal is in the stark contrast to conventional fantasy; idealized Arcadian realms where clean-cut heroes erase the evil tarnish from their henotheistic communities, one monster lair at a time. I want a 40k campaign where the effort is greatly in just facing adversity and ambiguity, consolidating that the truths are nothing what they assumed they were, and finding a victory in the end of it all, even as a drop in the bucket of humanity's survival.
Anyway, I've got some adventure ideas simmering still from the past year or so, mostly from considering what to use West End Games' D6 Space system for as a play-by-post campaign. I'll post them later.
How much variation of party composition and skill levels does the new book suggest as a whole? Are they invariably all rag-tag, freshly recruited acolytes, or do the rules encourage more powerful or homogeneous teams on occasion? It may be fun to play a simple one-shot adventure with an Arbites team for example.
"I kick down the door and point my bolter at the man."
"The man has green skin, a forked tongue, and no nose."
"I yell at him to put his hands in the air."
"Oh, he doesn't have hands, either. He just turns and runs away."
"Fine, then I shoot him in the head."
"He's dead, and now the woman is in hysterics."
"I tell her to be quiet."
"She keeps screaming at you."
"Ok, I shoot her in the head, too."
"...She doesn't have a head."
On the other end of things, I'd like to know if it suggests playing as Inquisitors themselves, especially with having a designated leader to a retinue, or a trio of Inquisitors commanding several Sororitas squads to much of the dirty work of fighting. Something with a bit more defined role of service or independence away from a Charlie's Angels' form of mission-acquisition.
As for the adventures I toyed around with, what I have in mind is a sort of horror/mystery series of separate missions, where combat is deadly and secondary, and the main goal is to think your way around situations rather than through them (this usually encourages teamwork and non-combat character types, and discourages competitive kill-tallying and bogging the game down into pure dungeon crawling). I decided the best way to focus on that idea was to place them within an Inquisitorial Ordo not of the main types geared almost entirely towards elimination of a target, and with a bit more potential for surprises.
For now I've referred to it as the Ordo Simalcrus, or just Relic Hunters. Their task is to investigate and reclaim lost or captured artifacts and items, mostly holy or technological in nature. This has the benefit of connecting its Inquisitors potentially to both the Ministorum and the Adeptus Mechanicus, often in a position of as mediation when the two groups' interests conflict.
I've so far got a couple of adventure hooks I could start with, generally going for crazy pulpish stuff with plenty of room for surprises and opportunities to kill bull-headed players (ones who think they can charge their way through a crowd of cultists to slay their leader, when the real final confrontation is revealed as the leader activates his ancient talisman and it turns out it's actually a *vortex grenade* and now everybody has got to get the fuck out of there oh god oh god):
-Habeas Corpus
A century ago, an Imperial agent on a backwater world located the Serbatio Atlas, a map and key to a reported Pre-Imperial armory of an anti-alien weapon. He had it surgically implanted it in his body in attempt to sneak it offworld, but in the process was imprisoned and incarcerated for life. He is likely dead by now. Locate his body and recover the Atlas.
-Gaia Theory
The last known location of a Ministorum vessel carrying holy crusade relics has been identified as an unexplored system; upon the surface of the third planet, thousands of derelict space ships are discovered... amid unending fields of daisies.
-Epiphany
Reports surface on an Imperial world of an item described only as imbuing the user with 'infinite consciousness.' The trail runs thin when every previous owner of the item has been found dead of unknown causes.
-I Live On
You cross paths with another Inquisitor, hot on the trail of the heretic Thaddeus Donovan, who so far has reportedly died and reappeared twelve times. The other Inquisitor is convinced it is through sorcery; You consider other possibilities.
-No More Tomorrow
A chaos cult has discovered the means to stop time within a small sphere of their hive city. Locate the means to revert this effect and destroy the cult.
-Wooden World
The Inquisitorial retinue ends up in deep space upon a station made out of wood, a spherical monastery built around a gravity & atmosphere generator. The resident monks are resistent to assist, claiming they have brought the devil with them. When the bodies start turning up, it becomes clear something malevolent is certainly now among them.
I've got a few more like that, but those are the ones I've already devised clear paths for the middle and ends of the adventure. I've also got an idea or two for some major arcs, but I'd have to severly spoil them to summarize.
Totally possible, infact this games version of "you all met in an inn" is actually a really usefull way of starting adventures. Your already under the employ of the inquistor and have been for some time, this is just your first mission together.
Infact characters start with 400exp to represent previous adventures alone. As for group compositions and things its a pretty good class system. Rather than the 101 random careers of WHFRP, your locked into what you start as. As you spend enough exp on skills you gain ranks, and occasionally you get the option of two or more different ranks, representing expertisen a certain field. For example at 5th rank, an Arbitratior can choose to either become a proctor (riot squad leader, heavy weapons training and the like) or an intelligencer (spymaster, forensic expert). Like WHFRP certain ranks can only learn certain skills/talents but each rank on average as 15-25 options, with some being able to be taken multiple times. Unlike WHFRP attributes arnt linked to current rank, and you can simply buy upgrades to whatever stat you wish regardless of rank (with an exp increase each time).
One thing ive noticed is that combat in this is going to be brutal. The maximum wounds you can have when starting is 14 (d5+9 if your feral). A las pistol does 1d10+2. A shotgun does 1d10+4. Lucky rolls on dmg and your going down pretty quick.
Please get out of my head. Now, if possible.
Because that is basically how my campaign is going to run.
It is large enough to kill a man with, as well. And I love that.
About 50% of it is pure fluff. Which is soooooo good. Its not like the standard fluff you get in 40k books too. We all know about the navy and the marines and things, but stuff on planets, and corporations and they way normal people who you whould never see in tabletop live. I had no idea for example, the overalls were the most common clothing in the imperium.
Also,
I saw that way back and knew, regardless of anything else, they knew how the setting was supposed to look.
The artwork I've seen so far has been great. When it's not some huge Karl Kopinski painting or a crazy-ass John Blanche character piece, it's at least got all the right dark elements and anachronisms crammed in it.
What he said.
This game sounds seriously awesome, it'd be a seriously sweet experience to roleplay as an inquisitors retinue. Everybody needs to go read the Eisenhorn trilogy, i would happily sell my soul to Tzeentch to be involved in a campaign along those lines.
I made a TD for iphone and windows phone!
Uh, I mean ours.
I was going to buy three copies for the sake of having three copies.
Because me and books do not get along.
My copy of Eisenhorn is now in the rubber bands and gorrilla glue stage.
I have read it seventy times.
As they say in France, shit goddammit fuck.
In regards to the Chaos Space Marines, the party shouldn't encounter them unless they (the party) fuck up majorly. Being members of the Alpha Legion, they're doubtless rousing some rabbles on other planets all the time using Ancient and Heretical Technologies. These are the guys the Inquisitor for the group is hunting down and he's basically using the party to apply pressure on a world where he thinks they're active (without telling the party so because hey, grim dark future). In the grand scheme of things the world isn't very critical to the plans of this particular squad but would provide extreme use in their overarching plot to drag the sector to Chaos. Basically, important enough for them to intervene but not important enough to be caught over. The CSM involvement might just be down to rumors in the Chaos Cult and little more, but I'm still going to leave the party the option of trying to track the squad down and kill them (or, more likely, die trying).
Not that there's anything wrong with plots like Utsanomiko's advising. A large part of running a game is realizing your own limitations as a DM and what you do poorly and what you do well. The great thing about Dark Heresy is that you can run games with Big Damn Heroes fighting Holy Shit Evil, or something far more subtle.
I should be able to pick up my copy of the book on Monday, if my LCS got the order out. I'm so excited to start statting everything out.