Dark Heresy Thoughts and Notes

Posted by Brett on June 24th, 2008 filed in Game Reports

We had another games of Dark Heresy last night and it went well. Players did as players do and got them selves into a deep mess then dug out as best they could. Played later than I thought, my mental clock was about an hour behind the real one so I apologize for keeping everyone up. Summary is up on my game site for those who were in the game. Just some thoughts on the game rules and my handling of them last night.

  • Clearly I need a better handle on combat, specificly what happens when a player goes into negative hit points. Jeff called it right, sorry for my confusion. That said, I am not entirely happy with the game mechanics here and may very well muck with them. If I do I will give the players a sheet showing where I deviate.
  • I have trouble when the players know more as 40k fans about things than their characters probably should know themselves. This will be a constant problem I fear, so I will just have to learn to deal with it. No biggie last night, it hasn’t really impacted the core story, but I will need to be on my toes here.
  • I still feel the weapons damage is all over the place, but this is right at the heart of the game and I may not be safe mucking with it. I felt for Dave last night as he plugged away with some terrible dice, but the dice variation on damage is pretty extreme at times.
  • Reading the play summary I think I have over complicated the core story, but the players are near to twigging it so I will just watch this one in future stories. Not sure how the players feel about this one, my goal is a story with mysteries but one that keeps moving, last night was ok, but there was a fair bit of tooing and frooing.
  • The game is good fun when players make important realizations, a couple turned over last night and it was as much fun for me as the game master as the combat was. The players are however, battle happy and this may be fatal soon. Don’t stop though, it really is fun but I had expected a bit more detective work. Again, I can adjust here going forward.

Overall the setting is what sells the game for me. The 40k universe is brilliant and good fun to romp around in, the rules themselves are serviceable, but with some things that just rub me the wrong way. The new supplement reminds me of the old D&D supplement, it is just more rules to wedge in, rather than a clear addition. The new scenario book is good, though I will most likely never run them straight as written they do have some great ideas which I will pillage ruthlessly.


6 Responses to “Dark Heresy Thoughts and Notes”

  1. Todd Says:
    June 25th, 2008 at 3:02 pm

    Battle Happy?! Us?! Is it really our fault if there are Wire Men and Necrons around every corner. :)

    As for 40K knowledge, was there something in particular you felt we wouldn’t have known about?

  2. Brett Says:
    June 25th, 2008 at 10:13 pm

    I am not convinced that there is broad knowlege of Necrons around the Imperium. From reading the backstory they don’t seem to be well known at all, as such knowing that they could get back up again is likely beyond what an average acolyte might know, certainly without a know xenos type roll. As I said however, it didn’t change anything at all, just reminded me that I will have to be careful, you all are much more knowledgeable about much of the 40k universe than anyone who actually lived in it would likely be.

  3. Jeffrey Says:
    June 28th, 2008 at 1:01 pm

    Yea I agree about the Necrons. There has not been very much contact at all between the Necrons and the Imperium.

    I think it would take a Forbiden Lore Xenos to know much about them.

  4. Jon Mattison Says:
    July 13th, 2008 at 7:40 pm

    Hey guys, I’ve subscribed to your DH discussion. I too have concern with the weapon damages but am reluctant to start messing with it as it would require some subjective going through dozens of weapons and making decisions.

    I recognize the simplicity of sticking with d10s in the game and that a laspistol could get lucky and kill you and a bolt pistol could get lucky and only graze you… but since the “majority” of the damage is left to the randomness of a dice roll?

    Solution 1 is to increase the base damages across the board from the +2 to +5 range to perhaps +5 to +9 (arbitrary) and then changing the 1d10 to other polyhedrals: 1d4, 1d6, 1d8 etc. to help ensure that “on average” laspistols will be a small to medium damage weapon while a bolt pistol “on average” will be a medium to large damage weapon.

    However, upon further consideration I’ve realized that bolt pistols, among others, do have other stats, such as a Penetration value that will consistently make a bolt pistol “better” than a las pistol.

    At the least, we’ve skimmed through the list and added the “Impact” special rule to several of the weapons borrowing from the Fantasy RPG where you roll 2d10 and choose the highest. All bolt weapons were given this trait.

    We’ll test this and see how it goes.

    Jon

  5. Edward Says:
    August 9th, 2008 at 10:52 am

    The cheap & easy way to upgrade some more reliable weapons for damage without going crazy would be using 2 D-AVG (2,3,3,4,4,5) instead of 1 D 10, that way you won’t get the “1″ damage result and average a 6 or 7 damage result for most hits but still have chance to get a 10.
    I spend a lot of the game with my priest character acting ignorant to try avoiding the omniscient “encyclopedia of knowledge” from reading Rogue Trader on. The “battle happy” response I think is from reading too many accounts in flavor texts of executed / “re-educated” (usually Impi Guard types) who always get nailed from returning with bad news battle reports after being the sole survivor of some brush with xenos

  6. Brett Says:
    August 9th, 2008 at 4:47 pm

    That is a good idea Ed. Lets give it a try next game.

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