Meaning, how much is your Inquisitor around? How much contact do you have with them?
How often are you babysat?
Not at all
My group met the inquisitor for about 5 minutes, he shot a servitor disguised as the guardsman to see if we reacted badly, if we had, he'd have us detained
Then he told us to sod off
I've never paired my group with their Inquisitor for a few reasons, the main one is that he would probably make the players feel unnecissary. The other main one is that I cant be bothered stating him up.
In the game I play in we have only been paired with our Inquisitor once and that was when we were busting him out of a prison (he would have prefered someone more compitant but we were all that was left).
So yeah to answer your question, not often.
So far my PCs are not familiar with inquisition (and they're happy about it).
They "work" for some Adepta Sororitas fighting off heresy and that only because they fear retaliation from Temple Tendency (they managed to stop TT assault on AdMech sea cruiser/destroyer and assasination on local Ecclesiarchy official).
I recon that keeping them from the big ][ for a while and allowing them some free space will allow them to find more of who's who in 40k galaxy more by themselves, as they not so familiar with the setting.
Besides, I consider the whole idea of "O'kay, you work for Inquisitor What-his-name from now on because he says so" quite unrealistic.There should be some reason for PCs to do so and not every Player creates a pious Cleric/Adepta Sororitas/Imperial Creed zealot - Character.
My group has met the Inquisitor twice now. The first time because she wanted to meet them personally and take their measure. The second time was on the way to another investigation she questioned a few of them after a particularly warpish encounter. Both times the inquisitor has had no stats and I'm only playing her personality. The group's too scared of her to do anything stupid.
My party sees their Inquisitor (who is an Inquisitor Lord) on occasion, but more often they interact with his extended network of agents. These people rarely accompany them, but they come up a lot between adventures, because I try to keep a part of the game focused on personal and Inquisition politics.
My group haven't met their Inquisitor and they won't until after the events of Dusk and Ash and Tattered Fates.
When they finally manage to leave Quaddis they will be arrested by their inquisitor and interrogated on how and why her interrogator died.
The interrogator is the one who oversees them.
They wil so hate her...
Well my character only meet her inquisitor 3 times during game play and that is betwin missions.The first times it has been under 5 minutes but last time we actualyl sat down and had a meal with him. So our GM runs him very much in the background, he espects us to sovle all problems ourself and does not ask futher questions to the reports we send to him. In my background story I meet him 1-2 times.
As my character is currently the longest survivor the others only meet him once.
I'm currently just getting into the game and haven't been able to flesh out an Inquisitor yet. However, I was kicking around the idea of letting the acolytes lead a small group of Inquisitorial Stormtroopers for an especially difficult mission when they progressed further. This way they could maybe feel a little more important, and have more then their own lives at stakes. They'd probably be NPC controlled, but given orders to follow the player characters. For meetings with the Inquisitor I was thinking of having semi-important ones being done over some sort of holopad system for the majority of the time and perhaps when they are more worthy a face to face meeting.
Ofcourse, I have to finish reading the rulebook before all of this; and convince my gaming group to try it out. :/
My group has only met their inquisitor once, and they will hate him at the end of this story arc (I want him behind something big and nasty, or at least someone high in the thing). They have met the interrigator every mission and two of them have done a mission with him (the rest of the group cancelled last minute, so I had them go aboard a ship with infrasound playing in the background and the interregator got kindnapped in a flash of maggots and screams).
My group hasn't dealt with an Inquisitor yet- their contacts have been =][= agents, mostly StormTrooper escorts and Adepts. Being still under 4000 points Im waiting for the right time to bring the as yet un-made boss in. Depends on how their first mission in a hive bottom pans out.
I use Globus Varak, so they only meet him at the briefings and debriefings of missions - possibly 5 times now in total.
They have never, ever been babysat- they are on their own until they can prove the existence of a threat greater than they can reasonably be expected to purge by themselves (so they can call in Sororitas assault troops to take down the Magistratum fortress in Coscarla, Arbites capture teams for the entire cult at the Alabaster Court, and 3 Guard and PDF regiments for discovering an Genestealer Cult in a agriworld province). But only after they have risked death, dismemberment in madness in getting sufficient proof to convince Varak that a cult is present and presents a threat to the Imperium.
SJE
After only ruinning a single session, the group I GM has met their inquisitor in the introduction. After this, thei'r not likely to meet the inquisitor for a long time. But I am babysitting them with an interrogator, who is traveling with them and assessing their abilities. Mostly because the last group my players played (when I was a player, before switching seats with my GM) was totaly and utterly useless. He'll leave them to their own devices if they prove themselves to be capable. After the first session, it looks like it won't take long for tem to break out on their own.
My group saw their inquisitor between each mission.
My group "one" (who is already an official I-cell) has not met there =I= yet. Since I started them with "Edge of Darkness", all interaction is through the Interrogator. I plan to keep it this way till they achieved rank three or four. I hand the players "Rapports" the Interrogator gives to the =I= (named "Heidrecht") and I am going to hand the players some of the notes from Heidrecht. They are good enough to keep player/character appart. In addition, I will open further sessions with some "in-the-meanwhile" description where they will get some picture about there =I=.
Hopefully, this will lead to a "denser" atmosphere as soon as they will meet Inquisitor Heidrecht the first time "in person".
My group (almost Rank 4) only met their Inquistitor Vownus Kaede once or twice (not sure) in almost a year of game and real time. They met him before and after 'Illumination' (not so sure about the former) and are about to meet him now again before 'Rejoice for you are True'. Our progress: Shattered Hopes (part of them) - Edge of Darkness - Illumination - War Wounds (adapted Cthulhu adventure) - Maggots in the Meat - Gateway 17 (from Dark Reign) - Rejoice for you are True - ...
Mostly the PC's have to do with his Interrogators (Sand, Brandwig (soon dead), Elias (not so soon dead) in between the missions. The PC's group is actually one of 6 acolyte groups Inquisitor Kaede has at his disposal (and they are the lowest ranking one so to speak).
Actually my Inquisitor is a little like my Professor during my PhD-thesis (well, the Inquisitor is actually a little nicer), while the acolytes are the PhD-students and the Interrogators are the post-docs. The Inquisitor/Professor sits in his ivory tower mostly dealing with administrative stuff, travelling a lot for nothing, meeting other 'important' persons, squabbling with other Inquisitors/Professors etc (actually, they even have the power of an Inquisitor down here in Germany (apart from planet-wide Exterminatus maybe...)). The Interrogators/post-docs have some power and authority already, but are still at the bench and do the (field-)working. The acolytes/PhD-students are are the nameless masses that toil around the clock trying to get the Professors attention (or getting rid of it...) and noone can keep in mind what they are actually working on and for what reason...
SJE said:
I use Globus Varak, so they only meet him at the briefings and debriefings of missions - possibly 5 times now in total.
They have never, ever been babysat- they are on their own until they can prove the existence of a threat greater than they can reasonably be expected to purge by themselves (so they can call in Sororitas assault troops to take down the Magistratum fortress in Coscarla, Arbites capture teams for the entire cult at the Alabaster Court, and 3 Guard and PDF regiments for discovering an Genestealer Cult in a agriworld province). But only after they have risked death, dismemberment in madness in getting sufficient proof to convince Varak that a cult is present and presents a threat to the Imperium.
SJE
Same here. I figured Vaarak was the perfect Inquisitor of those in the core book, as he doesn't do field operations.
I did run a one shot once where they got to call on their inquisitor (not Vaarak) to do the final battle, and whoever had the most "roleplaying points" (I gave out during the game) got to run the Inquistior. I heard that was one of the original ideas for Dark Heresy when it was in development. But I prefer Globus, who I run as Nero Wolfe character.
Griffin said:
But I am babysitting them with an interrogator, who is traveling with them and assessing their abilities.
This makes sense and a it's a good idea.
I guess I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around letting noobs run amok and be responsible for the detection and elimination of such dire threats all by themselves. I see them as a group of Js (from J in MiB) who need to be supervised.
The group I play with formally met their Inquisitor once, shortly after being recruited, and run into him occasionally as a bookend encounter. But he's only ever assigned our cell a particular job twice in our career, the first time under the supervision of one of his Interrogators (we haven't gone on the second job yet). We've spent most of our career technically abusing his authority and creatively interpreting our mandate to deal with new threats as we stumble upon them - though it's usually somewhat justified as necessary to our attempts to return to our master and report on our formal assignments.
My group has met their Inquisitor once (just after he had them kidnapped/recruited); as part of an induction process, and simultaneously briefing them on their first mission. They would have been babysat for that, except he had no other readily available personnel, and time was something of an issue. They screwed up rather impressively, and their Inquisitor has had time to shuffle some other teams around (and recruit more), so next mission they will be babysat by one of his junior interrogators. In the meantime, they are going to get rather thoroughly 'debriefed' by the Inquisitor and some other members of his staff. They may well have scars...
Only one of the group of players i run actually meets their inquistor at all and then infrequentley. The other believe they work for an inquisitor who is in fact an acolyte. The one who meets the inquisitor doesn't know that the person in question is the person giving orders. Some of the other acolyte cells their chracters know meet their inquisitors far more often, its just that theirs is very machiavellian and beleived to be dead.
It all depends on the group really IMO.
For example the group that I have right now the Inquisitor needs to step in now and again just to keep the players from killing other players. Also having them check in their plans to give them a little bit of help. This is mostly b/c a few of the players that I have don't have any exp in the 40K verse. Plus having the ][ sort of looking over your shoulder on you 1st major mmission gives the air of "don't mess it up".
There is a fantastic indie game called "Dogs in the Vineyard" that inspires my DH. In that game, the Dogs are like wandering Mormon judges/cops who tour 19th century Utah, with power of judgement over the faithful. Their responsibility and authority is absolute - they get to decide what is heresy and what isnt- how the Faith should be interpreted and who has sinned if anyone. There is no appeal, no referral to higher powers, no kicking it upstairs to hide behind the boss - its all up to the Dogs to make moral choices and judgements. And that’s kind of what I want to do in my Dark Heresy games- to have the PC's make genuine moral choices and decide what is heresy- who should live and who should die without always being commanded, countermanded or undercut by their hierarchy.
So they go off to a planet and encounter a problem and they have to decide how to handle it- who to reward, who to punish, who to kill. Then afterwards they report to their Inquisitor, but they never have contact with the Inquisitor during the mission as that would constrain the Players choices. I havent quite gone to the level of whether to Exterminatus or not, but I'm working on similar moral challenges.
SJE
In my session (run by a GM who had hardly any idea what he was doing and kept making cameos for anime characters most of us never saw) we saw our Inquistor, a largely forgettable dude we just named after the GM, twice during the investigation. Once was to brief us, the other was to recieve the debriefing of our misadventure (it was successful, sort of) of what happens when you put Caster Shells (from Outlaw Star) into a Gothic sci-fi universe.