Warhammer 40k RP: Dark Heresy

[Walsingham]

Hahhah, the latter is great! Where is it from?

 

White Dwarf magazine, 104, I think. Although really it's talking about ogryns. *sigh* I miss the old days. When I were a lad we were still fighting the Horus Heresy.

[Oner]

As horrible as 4chan is, they sometimes do contribute something good to society.

[Azdeus]

I've played quite a few different RPG's to this day, and most of them I've liked, but Dark Heresy is so far my all-time favourite, the only thing that bugged me was the fact that I played as a guardsman, and the rest of the group played high payed careers, wich became annoying in the long run since by the time I got an armorupgrade from my standard issue flak armor the rest of the group had moved on to power armor.

Great game though, and the world is highly intoxicating - I can't help but love it.

 

Recently finished the Harlock trilogy, and while it was good generally speaking, the end-part of it was a bit of a... okay, a big letdown in my eyes. Did anyone else here play it through?

[Oner]

I wan to but sadly can't.

[Azdeus]

No group or timeconstraints?

 

"'ere we go, 'ere we go, 'ere we go..."

 

Or ogryns. Some of my favourite quotes are ogryn based.

 

"Blessed is the mind too small for doubt."

 

And

 

"Let's see how these degenerate sophisticates handle a dose of pure unreasoning violence."

 

Bah, the english language sounds so damn much cooler, and quoteworthy than anything in Swedish.

[Oner]

Our GM ain't bad, but he (IMO) couldn't tell a good DH story (and he knows next to nothing about 40k and I don't have the patience to wait 3 years till he learns every little detail ) and he doesn't want to play DH. Second person doesn't know WH 40k either. Third guy knows WH but doesn't want to GM and I'm not allowed to GM games because I wasn't the spotless avatar of game mastering they apparently expected.

[Azdeus]

That sounds somewhat eerily familiar. >_>'

 

Last time I GM'd was nearly 10 years ago, and all the other players had their most seasoned characters - and I wanted to give them some decent opposition - and managed to kill of 4 out of 5 players. :D

They did like the premise of the adventure though, just not... the combat parts.

 

I knew next to nothing about Warhammer when we started playing either. I read through a copy of the Imperial Infantrymans Uplifting Primer (Yes, my friends bought one. ) as prep for my Guardsman, and listened to some brief explanations about the world before we set off. Out of 6 players, only 2(3, one none regular) had any real knowledge/insight into the world of WH:40K before playing, we learned as we played through the game.

 

I do understand your GM not wanting to lead a game that the players know more about than him, but I will say that I'm sorry for you.

Edited July 16, 2010 by Azdeus

[Oner]

Thanks.

Leading a game of Warhammer 40k for 2 guys who don't know anything about it...such a delicious opportunity it would be!

[Azdeus]

Oh, boy did the GM take advantage of us, my poo-hole would'nt close up for days.

 

My best memory was when he set an Arbitrator on my Noble Guardsman (Pre-Inquisitors handbook though) ass. "I'll have you know that my family are the leaders of the Castelle Alliance! Cease and desist!"...

 

I lost my characters arm. ;_;

 

Since the GM is really strict on income and whatnot he really encourages us to find our own ways of making money. Guardsman. With access to the Armory. Hilarity ensued 3 meetings later when we were investigating an cultist uprising in the sector that apparently got ahold of some serious firepower. *Coughs* I swear I'm innocent. >_>

Edited July 16, 2010 by Azdeus

[Oner]

Nice.

[Azdeus]

Our Inquisitor naturally found out, and I was suddenly 15000 thrones short of money. Ofcourse the Inquisitor took over my operation, and all that time the GM was laughing his arse off in my face. XD

 

After that it was back to earning the standard 50+(5*Rank) thrones a mission. Considering a lasgun chargepack costs 15 thrones, I was poor.

 

That character is now Ascended by the way. Rank 9, rawr.

 

What games do you normaly play?

Edited July 16, 2010 by Azdeus

[Malcador]

Anybody planning on giving Deathwatch a whirl ? You get to be SM's! woo.

[Nepenthe]

Anybody planning on giving Deathwatch a whirl ? You get to be SM's! woo.

 

Picked it up yesterday, just barely managed to crack it open, so don't have an opinion yet. I skipped rogue trader, but do have all the dark heresy books. Glad to see there's some (minimal) advice on combining the two...

[Raithe]

I actually managed to read through Dark Heresy, Deathwatch and Rogue Trader core books recently...

Although I was expecting the character creation and advance to be a bit more like Warhammer Fantasy RP.

 

I've got to say they do seem quite interesting, and both Deathwatch and Rogue Trader include some short comments on how you can combine the other games with them.

 

All made so much easier by that combination of Calixis Sector, Koronus Expanse, and the Jericho-Maw Rift.

[Raithe]

That being said, I was thinking of picking up my own copies of the books for my personal library.. and good god the price.

 

Although what really blows my mind is if I try picking them up from the shops here they're

[Nepenthe]

The price is... considerably, but they are some of the highest physical quality RPG books I've ever seen, IMO beating even WotC products (and they have some serious economies of scale on their side). But the price has been enough to keep me away from Rogue Trader so far, just sticking with Deathwatch and Dark Heresy so far (and will probably keep doing so).

 

And, I'm getting my forums confused, I though I read this here, but here's the announcement for the next game in the series, Black Crusade: http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=2014

[Raithe]

Although I do have to admit, whilst I enjoyed reading Deathwatch and seeing just how they've set it up .....

 

I do kind of get the feeling that they did it less for the sense it made as a roleplaying game.. and more for the "It's Warhammer 40k. We have to let them play space marines somehow!!"

 

As an agent for the Inquisition, or as crew for a Rogue Trader I can see all sorts of potential roleplaying arenas and potential hooks and places you can use...

 

But Space Marines by the very nature of what they are seem quite constrained. Then add on top the secretive nature of the Deathwatch adding even more constraints...

 

You're going to roleplay training and meditation. Then you're going to roleplay them travelling to some combat type zone. Then you're going to have lots of combat with potential recon/info gathering/ possible diplomacy talk with other members of the imperium.. then you're going to kill large amounts , before you go home. Then start all over again.

I can sort of see how you can expand it a touch... but I don't know. Something just never feels quite totally solid.

[Azdeus]

While I am not a fan of Deathwatch due to absolutely loathing Spees Mahrins, the concept can be interesting if you want character to your numbers. It's quite a challenge to describe your character, since you've got certain frames to work within, and armor too. The personalities withing the group will vary quite alot aswell, and having different cultures withing the space marines chapters makes for interesting moments aswell.

 

But yes, the Deathwatch adventures tend to have quite a focus on murdering things. Because of some reason or other.

[Malcador]

I'm not noticing much difference, then again our Dark Heresy games were kicking in doors, torturing people and executing little mutant children. Is alot of fun with half our team as DAs, one SW Librarian and one BT, hehe.

[Oner]

Rejoice, they announced a Chaos Space Marine game too! Because apparently spiked powered armor requires different rules than standard ones. Yes indeed.

 

*starts walking away, stops, suddenly turns back*

 

Oh hey guys, I'm back! Did ya miss me? ,o/

[Malcador]

I did, but only because of a poor roll.

[Azdeus]

Recently my group started a new campaign, with characters from Dark Heresy/Ascension(Me as an IG;Commander/Stormtrooper Captain, an Witchfinder/Interrogator and an Adeptus Arbites Judge and one of the two GM's Vindicare Assassin), Rogue Trader (Our vessels Rogue Trader captain, and the second GM's Voidmaster pilot) and Deathwatch (One assaultmarine and one tactical marine). We've got two people GM'ing and alternating between adventures, often these adventures are divided into two or three gaming sessions. It's an ongoing campaign and not completed, so what I'm actually telling is the viewpoint of my character really.

 

Alot of elements from the Haarlock legacy saga and similar things have been taken into it all. The GM's have put alot of time and effort into both writing textmessages to hand out before each session and the campaign itself, and most of us are having a blast with this. The exception to this rule seems to be the two Astartes whom can't and/or won't involve themselves directly into things, and only occasionally bring on the hurt when it is needed. Hence they don't have a whole lot to do while the ascension/Rogue Trader characters dive deep into the fun.

 

The campaign itself builds on from previous adventures our different acolyte-cells have experienced (The only character that has'nt been created for this campaign is my Ascended IG; Commander/Stormtrooper Captain), the adventures themselves have never previously been shown to be connected in any way, though the GM's has sat down together and cobbled everything together to make for one campaign.

 

I've spoiler tagged the details, incase anyone here is currently playing the Haarlock saga. Even though I have'nt read them myself, I don't know how much our GM adlibbed it.

 

 

A ring of smugglers, amongst them the Serrated Query, have been using their influences and network to smuggle weapons, transports, xeno-tech augmentations, bodyarmor and armor of unknown patterns; Brand new and clearly with hidden Xeno-tech to them(Looks like a normal Las-gun, but with the power of a plasmarifle for instance). These weapons have been smuggled mainly to Iocantos and "Settlement 228", where cultist militias/shock troopers are being trained alongside with the construction of heavilly augmented assassins (Seemingly Project Ashentear). Also a group of ships of unidentified hull-patterns have been seen, the only information available being "Sleek, black ships with a green glow to them".

 

Apparently, the cults have infiltrated Solomon, Malfi and Landunder alongside up to 50 other planets and their cities. On many of these a series of coordinated uprisings against the Empire has begun, targetting key military, ecclesiarchal(How do you "bend" that? >_>'), administrative and law buildings, descending the planets to unrest.

 

So far, our information and my characters memories of past events, such as visions from the Blind Tesseracht in the Haarlock legacy amongst other things has led us to believe that the xeno-race Slaught (The Worm that Walks) is involved in all of this, the weapondesigns and shiphull configurations, not to mention several prophecies and other clues ( A couple of years of adventure notes to be precise.). My character is extremely jaded and hateful of Slaught since previous meetings though, so I might be leading the group way off base! :D

 

We've been informed by the GM that none of our characters have ever heard of Necrons, but this is'nt implausible ofcourse - we might get a Necron suprise later on.

 

 

There is alot of fun in playing a really old character like this, when we were interrogating some of our prisoners the name of the feral/agriworld Iocanthos came up, wich immediately let me recall the very first mission my young (15 years younger and with both arms and legs to be precise) character was sent to there, telling the rest of the group what we set out to investigate, what we found and did, local politics and exports got me quite a few suprised looks from the rest of the group, not to mention the GM! The GM questioned my choice in buying the Total Recall talent when apparently I already possess that talent myself. :D

 

If there is any interest in it, I can continue to fill in the blanks as the story develops and maybe someone else can get some inspiration out of it. I'm off for the next session tomorrow and I'm all giddy already! :D

[Walsingham]

Keep us posted, Azdo. Sounds interesting.

[Azdeus]

So we did another little adventure!

 

During our previous excursions we have'nt managed to get ahold of any really solid leads, just som "lieutenants" and alot of thugs, wich we tortured and got some basic information out of that led us to assume the things I listed in the previous post.

Our Inquisitor deemed it nessessary to go to Solomon to process the information we have and find out more about a nobleman that was in charge of the uprising on the last world we visited, and also to get reports from other points in the sector to aquire more leads.

 

During our travels through the Warp, our Arbites Judge got an message through her mirror image, a warning that we would be ambushed at Solomon, and that they really were friendly, that we had a common enemy. Our group decided that we should pay no heed to Warp-entities or such filth.

When we reached Solomon and touched down, we were asked to meet up with an Emissary of the Lathe-system. An assassin took out the Emissary with an Haywire rifle as soon as he showed himself, and forced us to fight him, his Scitarii and roughly 20 servitors with hidden shielded heretech armaments.

 

After this setback, we met back in the Arbites headquarters on Solomon and discussed possible modes of action while we waited for a new emissary to be sent from Lathe. We decided to investigate the claims of instigators on Solomon, wich took us quite a few weeks (No direct action by the group, only used our Influence and sent some Acolytes and Arbites to do this) and found that a company of the 34'th Scintillan (A rogue I.G. penal legion) was trying to infiltrate the hive. After some interrogations we used their gear and some commendeered personell to infiltrate their group to destroy their insurrection and capture their leader.

 

During this , the Inquisitor was attacked by a Slaught in his quarters. There was quite a fight as the two Astartes fought to defend him, one of them was disintegrated and the other badly injured after when strike each, but the last standing Astartes managed to kill him before any harm came to the inquisitor.

 

Directly after this, the others of us managed to stop the instigation and capture the leader of the company of penal legionnaires after a big battle in the underhive, though the leader was quite badly injured and would'nt be able to live through an interrogation in quite some time. We sent out more Acolytes and Arbites to start sweeping the planet for more agitators and secure Solomon.

 

A day or two after the battle the new Emissary came (Wich was the dead astartes player) and after recieving the message we sat down to assimilate our findings so far.

 

 

 

1. The Agitators; Assembled from different groups of "freedomfighters" across Calixi, has been transported around by the Amaranthine Syndicate. Has recieved training in the use of heretech armamaments at Iocantos and Settlement 228. Many have reported that the nobleman Prince Felix Varcell is an higher up in all of this. Also they reported having sent men to Solomon, Malfi, Landunder and many other planets. They also told of seeing black, sleek ships with a green glow to them.

 

Their overarching plan seems to be Divide and Conquer tactics to spread I.G. forces across the sector, making it near impossible to mount an steady defence of the sector in case of a possible attack. We also have knowledge of their M.O.

 

2. Sightings of unidentified ships and increased raider activity in the Koronus Expanse suggest some kind of connection, increased pirate activity and raids suggest that something is brewing.

 

3. Project Ashen Tears; Is directly controlled by the Logicians, extremely potent and heretech augmented killing machines.

 

4. The Logicians; Heretech cult with the mindsickness known as "progress" (Goddamn I love 40K!! :D ), they've been trying to wrest control from Cult Mechanicus for quite some time, and have their main forces in the adjoining sector Ixani. Extremely unlikely to be working with Xenos though, wich is confusing. This suggests that either they are being manipulated or we've missed something.

 

5. The Slaught; Extremely intelligent and advanced Xeno-race, each Slaught is capable of mimicing humans to the point of only close examination, knowledge, small tells (Absolutely no emotions) or direct damage will break the image. Feeds of cranial matter and thus learns some of the memories/experiences of their "meal".

 

6. The Amaranthine Syndicate; We have next to no knowledge of this group yet, except they are involved in Cold Trade.

 

7. The Serrated Querry; Also possible Cold Traders or similar, we have next to no good knowledge of this group yet.

 

8. Prince Felix Varcell; Member of the "Council" or a direct subordinate, wich we think could be either the Serrated Querry or Amaranthine Syndicate.

 

We also have an prophecy from the Oracle of Ambulon, wich I sadly did'nt hear myself due to a toiletbreak, but I'm going to doublecheck on this later. It was getting pretty late at this point (Roughly 04;am.)

 

 

We did'nt really get a whole lot of new information in the last session, since much of the time went to let the astartes kill things and character creation and introduction.

 

The inquisitor himself is trying to get the sector officials to prepare for a possible invasion of Calixi, something wich is damn near impossible due to us not really having any solid proof yet.

 

Our sessions rarely go on for less than eight hours, so most of the things I write is extremely shorthand and I'm also not quite used to writing out things like this, so; Feel free to ask me questions about what you want to hear more about. I also would'nt mind some pointers and suggestions on how to write these; I've been thinking about doing it as a diary of my character.

 

Also, does anyone know if it's possible to do some sort of drop-down box for texts? I was thinking of including some texts that the GM's have written to us players that gives some extra flavours about the characters and goings on.

[Walsingham]

A 'slaught'?