Warhammer 40k RP: Dark Heresy

[Azdeus]

A 'slaught'?

 

The Worm that Walks; Xeno-race of hyperintelligent creatures, made up of hivemind-linked "maggots" with acidic "blood" that can take on different shapes by sort of possessing human bodies. Or rather, they wear their skin. They live of brainmatter wich lets them take memories of what they kill. The Storm Wardens astartes chapter went in to clear a den of Slaught on a world and nearly got their arses kicked, since every time they lost a Battlebrother, the xeno would devour his brain and learn of their tactics and culture. Hence they started goading the Storm Wardens into unfavourable battles since they learned what made them "tick".

They also have quite advanced technology, one of the Astartes in our group was nearly oneshotted by a Slaught, and the other one was. And this is from stats brought from the Dark Heresy rulebook, not Deathwatch.

Edited April 2, 2011 by Azdeus

[Walsingham]

I can see why the Emperor in his wisdom wants those bastards dead.

[Malcador]

Thank God our DH game fell apart before we had to face the slaught. I had done a write up of everything my DH group had done, on a whim (kind of strange looking back at it). I'll have to find it.

Edited April 3, 2011 by Malcador

[Walsingham]

I'm still struggling to corrall my players for he campaign I was running.

[Raithe]

Hm, just had a copy of Rogue Trader turn up in the post.

 

It's amazing, even with getting it shipped over from the States it's about half the price of picking it up locally.

Although for the moment it gets put on the shelf for later reading when I'm in the proper mood for it.

[Azdeus]

Thank God our DH game fell apart before we had to face the slaught. I had done a write up of everything my DH group had done, on a whim (kind of strange looking back at it). I'll have to find it.

 

The Slaught are'nt so much creatures to use as combat opponents, you just frickin' run as a Dark Heresy character - by the time of Ascension/Deathwatch you can start thinking about killing them, and only if you've got a full group. They're really great as antagonists though, when presented in the right manner they can creep the hell out of you.

 

Hm, just had a copy of Rogue Trader turn up in the post.

 

It's amazing, even with getting it shipped over from the States it's about half the price of picking it up locally.

Although for the moment it gets put on the shelf for later reading when I'm in the proper mood for it.

 

Yikes, I would've thought it was quite cheap in England. What was the pricetags?

 

---

 

Anyway, we've not gotten 'that' much new information yet, just some small tidbits, the last two sessions have been focused on preventing a planned attack against the entirety of Solomon, centered on Hive Gloriana.

 

The captured commander of the 34'th Scintillan Penal legion revealed to us that he had a meeting with three other leaders of different groups in the Hive, during wich they recieved information and orders from a Slaught. The 34'th were supposed to take out key infrastructure targets in the hive, a group of Psykers called Divina Rex were supposed to cause mayhem by opening portals to the Warp and a group of mutants called Newborn Sons was to release an toxin into the watersupply to kill of as many people in the hive as possible. All of this was supposed to happen during the festivities to honour "the Emperors ascension", including attacks against all the other planets around the sector. Oh, and the freedomfighter group "Forgotten" was supposed to help the groups with backup.

 

The Inquisitor had'nt yet been able to rally the sectors forces to prepare for the attacks, due to the massive cost of locking down planets and so on and wished for the leaders of these factions captured. So that's what we set out to do.

 

Our Witch Hunter, Vindicare and Judge, together with some Adepta Sororitas set out to deal with the group "Divina Rex", a few Sororitas died during the assault. When they went to apprehend the leader of the Psykers, the first thing that happened was that he was possessed by a bloody Daemon. One shot from the Vindicare took care of the daemon, and the Witch Hunters holy crossbow stakes dispersed the leader's advisor, a daemonhost, to dust and ash.

 

Myself as the commander, the Magos and the Astartes went to deal with the mutants and their fortified outpost in the wastelands, later joined by the others. Since the Newborn Sons had roughly 2500 men and an fortified outpost with artillery, anti-air emplacements and had recieved training from the Pale Throng (Tranch war), we rallied an army, tanks and artillery to attack their base while me and the Astartes plus 7 Storm Wardens were supposed to drop pod into their base and apprehend the leaders. Some ****ups later and I had to return to ground to take command of the ground troops. The Astartes fought their way into the base, confronted their leaders and one of the Psyker leaders was... possessed by a frickin' once-bound daemon. The Daemon proceeded to kill all but one of the mutant leaders (Who tried to flee, but was intercepted by the other players), the 7 Storm Wardens and nearly killed the two PC's aswell.

 

It was pretty damn late by this time, so we have'nt interrogated the mutant leader yet in detail, but the Inquisitor got the pull he needed to mobilise the sector to deter a possible invasion atleast, through accounts from the mutant leader, commander of the 34'th Scintillan and the massive stocks of toxins found in the mutant base.

[Raithe]

Hm, just had a copy of Rogue Trader turn up in the post.

 

It's amazing, even with getting it shipped over from the States it's about half the price of picking it up locally.

Although for the moment it gets put on the shelf for later reading when I'm in the proper mood for it.

 

Yikes, I would've thought it was quite cheap in England. What was the pricetags?

 

 

The straight out retail price over here is

[Azdeus]

Ouch. Still, if it makes you feel any better, we paid roughly

[Minchi]

Still kinda Green at Warhammer 40k Paper and pen edition. Tooo bad you guys just can't make one on the forum and play together o3o...so we can all sit down a read your adventures XP....

[Drowsy Emperor]

Dark Heresy is a bit bloated for my tastes. Too many tables and unnecessary stuff, while the setting is rather limited.

Of the lot I think Rogue Trader is the best.

 

Fading Suns does everything Dark Heresy can do in a much better fleshed out and much larger universe. The rules aren't all they could be but there's a third edition coming in Q1 2012 and it will be GLORIOUS.

[Malcador]

Starting a Rogue Trader game, playing it by post (my crappy writing style will help here). Luckily, will be less combat than DH, our group was just a Death Squad in that game. Need to come up with a convincing way for a Death World merc/PDF guy ending up on a RT's crew though.

Edited January 26, 2012 by Malcador

[Gorth]

Maybe the RT struck a deal with local prison authorities. Always a few scoundrels awaiting sentencing and facing life as penal troopers. Sale of the week, the content of 30 prison cells, only pay for 25?

[Malcador]

Yeah could work that way. Heh the game was with 3 people, GM wanted one more and now we end up with 6 people. Should be fun regardless, play by post means getting us all together isn't a problem.

[Walsingham]

Starting a Rogue Trader game, playing it by post (my crappy writing style will help here). Luckily, will be less combat than DH, our group was just a Death Squad in that game. Need to come up with a convincing way for a Death World merc/PDF guy ending up on a RT's crew though.

 

Surely RT's stop at Deathworlds? RT offers to take him onto his crew in exchange for saving his life from rabid skalwretches or what have you.

[Malcador]

Naturally. Anyway, fleshed mine out a bit such that I was taken off that death world to be a mercenary which didn't end well but managed to sell my ability to kill things to the parent of the RT I'm with now. Eventually have worked my way up to be the best at killing things and part of the staff of the ship. Did get a nice laugh when I saw the RT mail out a blurb on his character, really have to up my writing to match him

 

In any event it seems like it'll be pretty fun.

[Raithe]

On a Rogue Trader note, I recently read through Stars of Inequity. I have to admit, after the months of waiting for this to shed lights on planets and systems, creation ideas, and how to handle setting up colonies by your Rogue Trader... I'm left feeling a little disapointed and I can't quite figure out why.

 

Chapter 1 is pretty much random tables for generating systems, then planets. But nothing too detailed or varied. So you'll probably end up following it vaguely but throwing in your own stuff like you've been doing until this point..

 

Chapter 2 "Planetside Adventuers" - more random tables. For ; Profit Motives, Encounter Sites, Local Phenomena, Planetside Complications, and Treasure Generator.   

Although these tend to have a fair few interesting ideas for you to expand on yourself.  There's also about 3 pages of "explorer's gear".

 

Chapter 3 "Populating the Expanse" - The first part that seriously engaged me, some general look at how colonies get founded, the world details involved ; ie. All the different things players would need to do, looking at founding colonies by themselves or getting contracts with backers, the practical matters of shipping equipment, the different elements you need to bring together to form the various types  of colonies, creating a colony charter.... That and a few basic mechanics for establishing, then running them in the background (and just how easy they are to fall to pieces if you don't micromanage them..). Also a brief section on establishing "Representatives" that can run things for your characters and do minion type things..

 

Chapter 4 "Factions of the Expanse" has some interesting ideas, but they seem more thrown in for no real reason. It's four different groups that have no fixed position in-universe, so you can drop them wherever. A mysterious explorator fleet, a rakish pirate king and his band, a semi-restrained ork  fleet, and a group of unusual kroot. None of which are tied in any way to earlier elements to the book. They just feel as if they've been added so there's some "fluff" elements to give you a break from the random generation tables.

 

One thing that seems missing, is any actual examples of systems, worlds, colonies, rogue traders actually using them. So you can't really do any comparison with what you create to get a feel for how well it balances out or if you're doing it right..

 

I know it's geared around helping you create new worlds and all, but it feels like too much consists of random generation tables that don't have that much variety or too much linkage together.

Edited February 11, 2013 by Raithe

[Hiro Protagonist II]

On a Rogue Trader note,

 

Chapter 1 is pretty much random tables for generating systems, then planets. But nothing too detailed or varied. So you'll probably end up following it vaguely but throwing in your own stuff like you've been doing until this point..

 

In our group, our GM decided to use us players to create a system of planets. Basically we went into this system and scanned to see what we found. Instead of the GM rolling dice, he would tell us how many dice to roll and us players would go in a circle rolling dice. It was a lot quicker to create a system that way than for him to spend hours creating it himself.

 

Took us a couple of hours to create quite a few planets, a couple of asteroid belts, stc outpost station, etc. And we have one planet that's habitable by humans, pesky heretics!   A lot of planets with resources, some archeotech sites, etc. We went back to our port to get mining and agriculture colonies to set all this up.

 

It was quite fun as everything was so random with the four of us players rolling dice. Some funny outcomes and our GM was face palming quite a bit.

[melkathi]

Sounds like a lot of fun, Hiro. I kinda envy you a little bit

[Malcador]

Sounds good, Hiro. Sadly my game fell apart due to...uh I dunno why, shame as RT was a nice middle ground between the mook PCs of DH and the Space Marines.

[Hiro Protagonist II]

Sounds like a lot of fun, Hiro. I kinda envy you a little bit

 

Sounds good, Hiro. Sadly my game fell apart due to...uh I dunno why, shame as RT was a nice middle ground between the mook PCs of DH and the Space Marines.

 

 

Yeah, really enjoying Rogue Trader. Our GM is using parts of Dark Heresy and putting it in RT. Also, he said he created a couple of systems and we played that for a few weeks. It took him hours just to create one system and asked us if we wanted to create a new system. We just roleplayed it as if our ship entered the system and we went through each part of it (inner, middle and outer). It kind of made sense to do it and it halved the time in creating it while having fun. Some hilarious outcomes with some of the planets. But looking at it overall, it surprisingly made a lot of sense how the system turned out.

 

We were playing D&D 4th ed for the last 3 years and started Rogue Trader about 6 weeks ago. We've never played it before and having a ball. Really enjoy the fact that you can die so easily so we're always hesitant to engage into battle. I've been fortunate enough to not be killed, have critical damage or burn any fate points, probably due to having a storm bolter with a 90m range. So I'm always at the back of the group. Been in melee a few times but have managed to dodge or parry with my power axe and destroy the opponents weapon.

 

I play a tech-priest with high ballistics and INT. Basically a glass cannon and also the healer as no one has any medicae skills.

[Kveldulf]

Our gaming group has religously played dark heresy since release. Quite a fun setting to tinker with. I will warn you though, the modules are not very user friendly; they have lots of interesting fluff, but typically any of the social dynamics or splits in the module can be confusing to iron out. Make sure to take plenty of notes and write it all out before commencing.

 

GM'ing Fantasy Flight modules requires a Difficult 30% check to succeed (   ). Each degree of failure usually equates to angry popcorn flung. However, each successful test means more tears and terror. Muahahaha!

 

Also, beware of psyker player characters. They can make things either very interesting or very scary.

[Azdeus]

Out of you here that have GM'd or played Dark Heresy alot, how powerful does your acolytes typically end up becoming?

Have you yet managed to cultivate a character from Acolyte up to Inquisitor/Throne Agent?

 

I'm also a bit curious how other people dole out rewards, such as thrones, equipment and XP.

[Raithe]

The annoying thing is that every game they've done (Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader, Deathwatch, Black Crusade, Only War) all use ever so slightly different rules systems. Mostly similar but with tweaks and shifts. Same weapons have different stats and damage dice, Special Qualities that are treated every so slightly different...

Things that they fixed in one game with Errata since it was first published.. they then put in one of the later games without that Errata.

 

After all of this, they've started developing the 2nd Edition of Dark Heresy... and it completely dumps every single thing about the games system for something totally new and with absolutely no connections to any of the other games lines.  Oh, and they've announced that they will no longer produce anything for the Calixis Sector and the new game is set somewhere else.

[Azdeus]

Yeah, our group recently got hold of the beta books, and I thought it was just a big epic trolling attempt by Fantasy Flight and GW... Been reading some of the passages, and while some of the things are relatively interesting, it feels like it's been forcibly broken.

My biggest personal gripe is that they've removed Thrones/currency for Influence. I liked the old system, were you had to scrounge for those thrones and had essentially no help from the inquisitor. Influence does not suit Dark Heresy, where you are supposed to be a nobody!

 

Atleast the first three books were reasonably compatible, while Black Crusade and Only War, while having better balanced rules, are'nt.

[aluminiumtrioxid]

Out of you here that have GM'd or played Dark Heresy alot, how powerful does your acolytes typically end up becoming?

Have you yet managed to cultivate a character from Acolyte up to Inquisitor/Throne Agent?

 

I'm also a bit curious how other people dole out rewards, such as thrones, equipment and XP.

 

They generally start to become halfway competent around the end of rank 3 (2000 xp), reasonably competent at rank 5 (5-6000 xp), and downright frightening at 10.000-ish. Never managed to get to Throne Agent level, though.

 

The GM of the party I play in generally awards 200 xp per story, which tend to take 1,5-2 sessions to complete. We don't get any funding, nor loot, but we can requisition pretty much anything within reason. (And if something goes wrong - say, we get 200 liters of promethium instead of the stuff we ordered - we can sell the what we don't need.)

I, on the other hand, tend to follow the "detailed method" and give out xp based on how difficult the mission was (hereby punishing efficiency, but hey, if they are already efficient, they don't need the exp that much). Also, my players get their wages, and being an almost exclusively nobles-only cell, money is never an issue.