Dark Heresy Update

We have finished the first segment of both our Dark Heresy Campaigns and both games seem to be running well. We have two games running, one is held monthly only to allow some of our members who can’t meet weekly to join in and one is held in between miniature games on our usual Monday nights. The Monday game is the more traditional Dark Heresy game, with a pretty random team of acolytes all of whom started with no experience. The team is investigating a plot for revenge by a high tech human world on the Imperium that they knew would conquer them. The planet fell to the Imperium long ago, but now the long dead world is striking back and the Acolytes are chasing after Wire Men, who take control of human bodies and use them as puppets. The players investigated the ruins of the human civilization and now have realized the danger and are following the trail of the Wire Men to Scintilla Sibelious hive.

Cover of the Dark Heresy Roleplaying Game Rulebook

The Monthly is a bit of different flavor. The investigations are more direct as the sessions are less frequent and sometimes shorter. The players are all playing squad members of Planetary Defense force who got drafted into being an acolyte team after finding the remains of another Acolyte team and rescuing the captured inquisitor. They are investigating an attempt by a mysterious chaos ‘missionary’ to seed a quiet world with chaos cults using four powerful chaos artifacts. The first they investigated was a machine of Nurgle that allowed a ‘mad’ scientist to assemble a small force of twisted creations assembled from the bodies of local peasants. This was also where they rescued the captured Inquisitor who was badly hurt. The Inquisitor knew he needed this investigation carried out while he healed so he used the squad as his replacement acolytes, immediately launching them at another possible chaos incident.

Rules wise both groups seem to have settled into a nice place, with only the occasional need to dig out the rulebooks while we play. Talents can trip us up, the players are on their own to remember to apply their bonuses and the like and it is sometimes the middle of the fight before everyone remembers what it is their abilities do, but it hasn’t really hurt them so far. We have had only one ‘fatal’ fatality so far, but both groups have had a number of permanent fate points blown and so far no new fate points have been issued so I suspect the vultures are watching both groups now.

Things I like as the referee.

• I love the flavor of the game, the 40k universe is a great place to role play in as well as to play miniatures battles in. The GW studio has put a depth and width of feeling into the game over the twenty plus years that never ceases to impress me.
• I am pleased overall with the player development method used in the game. I like adding skills and talents rather than more and more hit points. This means that a rookie can play in a veteran group and still have effect and even henchmen thugs can hurt an veteran player and I like that.
• The combat system works well, the pacing is good and it is easy enough for players to figure out. The only thing I don’t like about it is the damage, see below.
• The rules are fairly deep, they cover most likely events, but they are not stupidly detailed. I loved Aftermath, the old post apocalyptic role playing game, but but was it stupidly detailed and that really hurt game play. Dark Heresy hits it about right.
• The psychic rules are interesting but not so overpowering that the psykers completely dominate the game. This is a tough balance to reach, but they hit it well in the game, at least at the low levels.

Things I don’t like:

• Damage. Damage is either completely ignored or horrifically large. There doesn’t seem to be any middle ground. My players are all armored to a decent level, this plus their toughness bonus means that they ignore between 5 to 9 points of damage for every hit that comes in, mostly from weapons that do 1 to 10 points. It is easy for me as the ref to get around this by using attacks or weapons that do +5 to +9 damage when they hit, but that is gamey and a bit of a pain.
• Character roles are awkward. They are used to reading about inquisitors who order the destruction of whole planets, how do the player characters fit in to that? The non-player Inquisitor is also an awkward dodge, once they uncover some real plot or danger why doesn’t superman clean it up himself? The focus should be on the players, not an NPC. They are doing ok with this balance, but it always feels a bit out of place in the background to me.
• The 40k Universe works for and against you as a ref. The players know all about things their characters shouldn’t from the types of aliens and demons to the inner workings of the 40k universe. This can be awkward for the ref to work around and for the players to work around as well. If I were writing a game base cold I might set it in a part of the Imperium long cut off from the rest or newly explored just to get a bit of mental distance.

Overall the games are both going well as we enter the intermediate phase of play. Everything isn’t shiny and new anymore, but the game is holding up where many poorly put together games fall apart, a good sign that the Dark Heresy authors did a good job. The monthly group is a little less than halfway through the planned campaign story line, the Monday game isn’t quite that far but not too far behind, at the moment I expect both to complete by early 2009. I will post up both storylines when they players are done with them.