Hi guys,

not am I new to this forum but I am also completely new to RPGs (if one forgets about a short excursion to 'the dark eye' in my early youth), though I am a longtime war game veteran.

I recently picked up the 2nd edition rulebook of DH and have a few guys around that would like to play a campaign with me. Obviously I will have to do the GM as I have the book and my friends don't have much more RPG experience than me.

So my question is very simple, yet I apologize if it is the wrong forum topic to state it:

What rules should my friends (PCs) learn to play a campaign?

(Obviously I will learn the whole rule set)

You should know the rules as about wholly as you can. You're running it and looking in the book every minute will bog things down. But if you want the bare minimum, know combat and skill use. Influence can be glanced at for the sake of buying things and subtlty for the nature of the game you want to run.

Your pcs on the other hand should know in and out the rules that pertain to them. Someone wants to be a psyker they should know the psychic powers they can use and how to use them. Got a heavy gunner, he needs to know the various combat manuvers he wants to use, got a talkie guy he needs to know the skills and interaction rules.

They don't need to master the system, just the things they will use. It will help you out too because you might forget something, and they'll remember it.

Echoing the doctor:

Whatever they need to play their character. The rest as they acquire new skills. If they have a varied skillset in the group, they'll eventually learn the entire thing just by watching the rest play.

Read the rulebook. Understand how the d100 system works with degrees of success and failure. Read the combat section twice and be able to explain the basics of acting on a character's turn (movement, aiming, and rate of fire are the big one). If you feel like doing some homework, put together an encounter or two (there is advice on how to do this in the book).

If they're brand new to RPGs, character creation might take a long time, so you should bring a set of pre-generated characters so that if you all decide to just jump into the game you can. That way you don't have to explain the character creation rules to them. If you go this route you'll know what skills they have and plan around it, like calling for an obscure lore check and one player says, "Oh, I have that!"

The most important advice I can give isn't about what's in the book, however. Remember that the point of the game is to have fun. If you don't remember how something works, don't spend time looking it up in the rulebook - figure out an answer that's fun and fair and go with that. Nobody wants to sit and watch you read the rulebook. Look it up afterwards. Also, improvise. Your players will do something you didn't think of. Roll with it. Don't say no - figure out how to make it work and make the players feel like badasses for trying it.

Thanks for the advice so far! Very helpful. Personally for me, I was going to learn the whole thing anyway. I am just looking for an effective way to tell my guys what to learn in order for us to have a good gaming experience and not scare them by dropping the big book on their table and say 'read this'

But I guess I have an idea now. Still, if somebody has further advice let me know

Only thing I can really think of is that it helps to copy the tables regarding combat actions, critical hits etc. from the book and having them available where everyone can see them, rather than in the middle of a big book.

Yes, I got myself the GM set as well, which has this nice screen with all the tables on the inside

Awesome. Sounds like you're all set then

Rulebook (check)

GM Set (check)

Motivation (check)

PCs (check)

Account for this forum (check)

ready to go

Rulebook (check)

GM Set (check)

Motivation (check)

PCs (check)

Account for this forum (check)

ready to go

Hiyas!

One last check: Patience.

& welcome!

L

-Add to the above list 'Familiarity with the 40K setting'. You said in the first post that you were a long-time wargamer; did that include 40K? If so, now you are ready. If not, a crash course on the 40Kverse will probably be necessary.

That brings up a question I have, adeptus, I have been showing my PCs pictures and telling them stories from 40k but I'm the only one familiar with the universe in our group, what would be a good crash course for my little nooblets for economy, social structure, religeon etc? This is especially important for DH since its usually on imperial systems. I showed them 40k in about a minute on YouTube ...

As others have said.Familiarize yourself with the core concepts, Even scan and print out some cheat sheets for easy reference. Get your players to memorize/ familiarize themselves with their characters most used stuff they will use. The rest will come from familiarity via play.

Most of all. Make sure you all have fun. If someone isn't having fun. Find out why and sort it. Hope you all have a great time!

If you prefer video content:

There is a short movie from 1996 by Games Workshop called Inquisitor.

And a fan made movie called Damnatus, which could be worth taking a look into.

The Ultramarines movie from 2010 is also nice, though maybe a bit away from dark heresy.

And finally there is the lord inquisitor fan movie trailer (not sure what happened to that project):

If you like reading there is a TON of material.

First of all read the intro story in the new DH2 book it sets the tone quite nicely.

And then you can follow up with plenty of books from Black Library.

I find that the Shira Calpurnia novels are very good at giving an impression of life in the Imperium.

Vaults of Terra is a nice one:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCS14rofXz-WT305CKiu719Q

I'm going to echo cps a bit. Everyone's already said to familiarize yourself with the rulebook, which is important. However, here is some general advice about running rpgs so you can have a good time with your group. This is also important if you're coming from a rule-oriented war game mindset.

Never have your players roll something unless an interesting thing could happen for both failure and success. In general, if your players are setting something up, you don't really need to do a lot of rolling. The rolling should only happen if the players are doing something that is super-specialized (AND if failure could be interesting) or if they're in the middle of the action.

Sometimes you'll screw this up and have a player roll for something, fail at it, and then be at a loss for what to do. I'd suggest you print out this little list of things of moves you can make on players who roll poorly. Also, if the players do something you don't expect, feel free to use things from this list to complicate their lives.

• Reveal an unwelcome truth
• Show signs of an approaching threat
• Deal damage
• Use up their resources
• Turn their action back on them
• Separate them
• Give an opportunity that fits a character's abilities
• Show a downside to a character's weaknesses or equipment
• Offer an opportunity, with or without cost
• Put someone in a spot
• Tell them the requirements or consequences and ask if they want to continue

So yeah, just make use of those during the game to come up with interesting things to have happen to the players.

Also, as cps said, feel free to ignore a bunch of rules while in the heat of playing the game. Your players are, I assume, wargamers, so they'll probably be able to grasp the combat rules. If someone plays a psyker, have them read the rules, but feel free to just make stuff up if you forget it in the moment.

You may end up with your players just calling out skill uses rather than what their characters are doing. Try to discourage this by offering a bonus to their roll for describing things (outside of combat) and asking them what their character is doing and how their characters react to things.

Your players don't need to be familiar with 40k to play. All they really need to know is what every imperial citizen knows, unless they're playing a cleric or an admech. But for a lot of concepts, you can really start DH with absolutely no knowledge about the Imperium as a whole, just that little backwater planet you come from, and learn as you go along.

Works rather well!

wow... that escalated quickly

I will have to read up on all these posts. thanks for this, but to set one thing straight:

I am of course familiar with the 40k universe, as a longtime Wh40k and WhFB player. And of course I read Eisenhorn and Ravenor (among other 40k books) so thats the least of a problem ....

guys! your posts are awesome.. I truly appreciate..

I can't wait to start our first session – but I am trying to complete the list posted earlier with the missing 'patience' item on it

I am reading the rule book each night (ok, while watching US Open but still) and enjoy the system (up to minor things) very much.

It some what reminds me (and I am not going to compare or discriminate anything) of my days playing Mordheim. For those that are not familiar, it is/was a skirmish game GW (and later specialist games) developed where you had a small war band and it was a miniature game with semi-rpg feeling to it. But with DH, it is put to the more interesting universe AND there is about no limitations in what to do.. fantastic ... ok I should calm down getting overexcited.

I am planing on making a summary of each (relevant) chapter of the rules for myself and the players (its going to be in German), in order to keep track and to maybe speed things up in the heat of the moment. Do you guys think this is useful or a waste of time?

Regarding my PCs: 3 of them are war gamers and very familiar with the 40k universe (one is actually almost insisting on playing an Ogryn and I told him to wait until a later session when I am more familiar with the rules and one might take one from Only War), one has nothing to do with RPGs or war gaming but he is interested in joining us. This brings me to the question, whether it might be nice to create a character for the latter, beforehand?!

I'd ask him if he's interested in playing anything (skill guy, lore guy, stabby or shooty) and if he wants you to make a character for him do so, but if he wants to make one let him.