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Dark Heresy 40k RP: Terrors you didn't even know existed.
Utsanomiko
Bros before DoesRollin' in the thlayRegistered User regular
Bros before DoesRollin' in the thlayRegistered User regular
Dark Heresy: Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay has been out for close to a year now. It's gotten quite a bit of attention and seems to be rather popular here and in a lot of gaming circles. I've played several sessions of it so far and it conveys the Warhammer setting in a really entertaining, hard-edged action/horror game.
Fantasy Flight Games has recently started publishing their new supplements, with Disciples of the Dark Gods out last month and Creatures Anethma later this month, so I thought I'd open up another discussion of DH and start with a quick recomendation for some of the books (because I'd rather not do an extensive introductory OP).
The Inquisitor's Handbook, despite its name, is filled with a huge amount of material for players and should be the next book any player buys after the core rules. Besides the ovbious 4 new homeworld/origins and the Sororitas career, the book is almost entirely devoted to Calixys sector homeworld and background packages (these serve as good examples for making your own with your GM), alternate career paths, a huge section of equipment from all sorts of planets in the sector, elaborations on skill uses, and background guidelines to consider when developing your acolyte's career options (using aliases, contacts, hideouts, general suggestions for being a good agent, and some thoughts about personal faith and creed).
It's great, it opens up a huge volume of player options. Get it.
Disciples of the Dark Gods is a guidebook for utilizing the major enemies of the Imperium of Man and developing long-term advesaries and adventures around uncovering their cults and agents. The chapters I've read present a very broad and deep resource for GMs by providing several example cults, each covering different extremes and forms of heresy & treachery, with very insightful breakdowns of their goals and how to use them in your adventures. This even covers the inter-Imperial conflicts that arise between different organizations and the opposing philosophies and objectives found among Inquisitors. If you like developing your own adventures or want to sketch out an overarching direction for your sessions, this covers it; if FFG publishes another book like this one it'll probably cover a different subject, but in that case you should pick up that one too.
At the same time this is looking to be a really deep background book. When most Warhammer 40k fluff is either in mixed pulp novels or OOP early '90s rulebooks, DotDG gives a good range of info on the universe, especially on a smaller than usual scale. Sorcery is described and given several sets of traits, spells, and rituals separate from natual psychic powers, while Xenos are examined as minor powers and local infiltrators over the infamous regional armies like Tyranids and Eldar. This book is an overview of the troubles that your average semi-medieval or factory-laden world has to encounter, and it just outshines the brief fluff summaries you'll find on the wikipedia or message boards. I've been looking for a resource of example information like this for quite a while. Get it if you like to read about the dark horrors and feudal political conflicts of the setting, even if you're not a GM or play the game that much.
I know the rest of you are stil reading this, so you might as well add what you've enjoyed about playing or reading about the RPG so far.
Fantasy Flight Games has recently started publishing their new supplements, with Disciples of the Dark Gods out last month and Creatures Anethma later this month, so I thought I'd open up another discussion of DH and start with a quick recomendation for some of the books (because I'd rather not do an extensive introductory OP).
The Inquisitor's Handbook, despite its name, is filled with a huge amount of material for players and should be the next book any player buys after the core rules. Besides the ovbious 4 new homeworld/origins and the Sororitas career, the book is almost entirely devoted to Calixys sector homeworld and background packages (these serve as good examples for making your own with your GM), alternate career paths, a huge section of equipment from all sorts of planets in the sector, elaborations on skill uses, and background guidelines to consider when developing your acolyte's career options (using aliases, contacts, hideouts, general suggestions for being a good agent, and some thoughts about personal faith and creed).
It's great, it opens up a huge volume of player options. Get it.
Disciples of the Dark Gods is a guidebook for utilizing the major enemies of the Imperium of Man and developing long-term advesaries and adventures around uncovering their cults and agents. The chapters I've read present a very broad and deep resource for GMs by providing several example cults, each covering different extremes and forms of heresy & treachery, with very insightful breakdowns of their goals and how to use them in your adventures. This even covers the inter-Imperial conflicts that arise between different organizations and the opposing philosophies and objectives found among Inquisitors. If you like developing your own adventures or want to sketch out an overarching direction for your sessions, this covers it; if FFG publishes another book like this one it'll probably cover a different subject, but in that case you should pick up that one too.
At the same time this is looking to be a really deep background book. When most Warhammer 40k fluff is either in mixed pulp novels or OOP early '90s rulebooks, DotDG gives a good range of info on the universe, especially on a smaller than usual scale. Sorcery is described and given several sets of traits, spells, and rituals separate from natual psychic powers, while Xenos are examined as minor powers and local infiltrators over the infamous regional armies like Tyranids and Eldar. This book is an overview of the troubles that your average semi-medieval or factory-laden world has to encounter, and it just outshines the brief fluff summaries you'll find on the wikipedia or message boards. I've been looking for a resource of example information like this for quite a while. Get it if you like to read about the dark horrors and feudal political conflicts of the setting, even if you're not a GM or play the game that much.
I know the rest of you are stil reading this, so you might as well add what you've enjoyed about playing or reading about the RPG so far.
Utsanomiko on
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Also it has fully random chargen, which is great for characters who don't know enough about the history of the Imperium to make a fully-fleshed out character.
Also coming out is Creatures Anathema, which is like a monster manual I think.
I beleive my first use of psychic powers almost killed my own team... good times, good times.
Crovax.436 Steam: Crovaxan
good times indeed
one character had to spend one of his fate points to not die in the first or second round of the first encounter, as i recall.
If the players are new, I suggest that while they roll other things randomly, they have their origin world be a feral/feudal world to go with them not knowing much about the Imperium in general.
I read a particularly amusing anecdote on the Fantasy Flight forums from a GM who had convinced his players that they were playing Warhammer Fantasy, until a few sessions in when their Inquisitor showed up to take them off-world.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
That REALLY makes me want to try to run a game.
Any interest?
You have 3 posts to sell me.
Do you like ROLEPLAYING? Because this game is all about that. With all the different origin options, and each origin having lots of planets with their own unique quirks (and plenty you can make up yourself, as well) there's an infinite number of ways you could create an interesting player character. I had a lot of fun working with Law coming up with his feral-world pskyer character.
Combat is fast and intense. Obviously it still takes longer to do when playing via the Internet than in-person, but I had a 5v6 battle last week and it only took four rounds to resolve. By the end of it, the gangers were dead, their leader had been shocked into unconsciousness by the tech-priest, and our pskyer had his nose shot off!
I don't know what else to tell you, it's hard to think of things on the spot, but I suggest you look over some of the games that have been played here in CF.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Ooooh, can I have him make an appearance in one of my campaigns as an NPC some time?
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
SOLD!
He is yours. Use him as you will as long as you let me know if anything cool happens.
Crovax.436 Steam: Crovaxan
do it, DO IT.
Crovax.436 Steam: Crovaxan
Mind-cleansed seems to be working pretty well too; the PC is indoctrinated to know stuff without any necessary background as to why. You may want to provide the new player with more flashbacks than usual. I think the less familiar a player is the setting as a whole (and the nuances of Imperial culture, as well), the GM should take time to develop their homeworld, and a mostly-new party should start at a low level and take small steps to exposure into the galaxy and their masters' service (we usually start at around rank 3 for a broader range of skills, but at the same time we minimize information about the group's involvement with the Inquisition).
The campaign I'm still toying around with (once I've run another one-shot or a pickup game for our group to get back into the swing of GMing) sets the players on a late feudal era backwater, visually and culturally akin to a mix of WH Fantasy and 17th century England (from Gunpowder Plot to English Civil War, if that means anything). The thing is there's also a level of Imperial society on the world, such as the Governor's palace and the Arbites Precinct, as well as myths about starships and tech artifacts made by the governor's magi and astrologers. I really like the precedence the IHB sets for templates, so I'll be providing not only an altered Imperial homeworld, but bonus packages for social class and local creed, to give those aspects of society some actual meaning. See, I don't expect anybody to listen to me babble about the difference between Perpetualist versus Humanite creed, but they'll put some thought into looking over cards that'll give either Unshakeable Faith or Hatred (Heretics) if they pick one. Once they progress through an urban action/investigation adventure of street chases, stings, and bar fights with the grim style of 40k, I'll consider moving them offworld.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I've definitely got one I want to try out as a one-shot with my local gaming group, in between DarkPrimus' adventures, and all I'll say is it's based on Space Station 13. Otherwise I'm sure I can work something into an actual continuation.
We've got another game tonight, which presumably will finish up our current caper. He needs to share the story of what's happened so far, especially the part where our psyker gets his nose shot off.
I'll try and get a summary of events written up tonight, but you've reminded me of another thing I like about Dark Heresy - that combat encounter would have taken at least an hour longer to finish if it were D&D.
Don't read Purge the Unclean unless you are the DM of the games. Letting your players read them means you can't use them in your own adventures, not even as loose inspiration.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Reading rules...
edit: well there you go
And what other methods are there for doing these kinds of things over the internet? MSN or some other kind of chat?
And it seems like our group's hot-headed but talented psyker will not be joining our group in further sessions. It seems his player has been under the assumption that his Career Rank equated to some kind of universal Imperium-wide rank over people in or out of the Adeptus Terra, and has gotten fed up with his inability to persuade local authorities by flashing his brand of sanctioning. I'm hoping we can settle the misunderstanding by next session, that Imperial psykers position is as servile/advisory wards to higher authorities and (like the rest of the party) has little to no power outside those positions, especially not with other Adepta. It's a good character and really strong with mind powers, and every time he hasn't gotten his way he's unleashed some hell that somehow aids our mission, so I'd rather not see him go.
Anyone else experience issues like that? I think part of the conflict is he knows about 40k through the tabletop, but not much of an idea outside that. Our two clean-slate players have been winging it quite well.
@Utsanomiko Remind him of his Inquisitorial seal, which DOES grant respect and fear, and assassination attempts.