Hi folks, I started lurking on this board a few weeks ago when my friends sprung a DH campaign on me out of nowhere. Now that I've had some game sessions and time to research the system, I've got all kinds of problems that could use some work. Given all the quite excellent and creative suggestions I've seen on here so far, I figured it couldn't hurt to ask for some assistance. Since I can get pretty long-winded, depending on how long this gets, I may have to split the post into a couple topics.

1. The first problem I've got is unfortunately very fundamental, I'm not a very solid role-player. Generally it wasn't a huge issue, my group has been playing only D&D with a bit of white wolf stuff on extremely rare occasions periodically for a decade, but never with a huge focus on role-play. I could sorta just do my best and roll with it, and that was fine, most of the rest of the group isn't great either. But due to the setting, I now feel like it's really detracting from my game experience. My characters are often a particular facet of my own personality amplified, since I feel like portraying something you are inherently familiar with is orders of magnitude easier than something alien. The problem is that I have difficulty fleshing out the character, and separating them from myself. The setting complicates the issue in that player/character knowledge is more segregated than in other systems AND due to weird fluff irregularities these boundaries can be pretty fuzzy. Have any of you had experience with problems/players like this that you've overcome? General role-playing tips would also be appreciated.

2. This particular character I see as something of a blank slate. He's a little naive, but not overly so, fairly moderate and logical. This makes him pretty boring at the moment, but I'm hoping to develop his character significantly as the game progress, I just don't know how yet. What kind of things have changed how your characters thought/acted/viewed the world? Obviously many examples will be character specific, and I'll describe a bit about my character in the next point, but just having a place to work from would be useful.

3. It seems like I've accidentally created a character focused on things that are virtually impossible to achieve via game mechanics. He's a tech-priest from an agri-world, mentored by a lone malatek outside the mechanicus framework. As a curious individual who was encouraged by his mentor to seek as deep an understanding as possible, as well as to use that understanding creatively, his philosophy is quite similar to disciples of thule or even the logicians (albeit without any of their interest in overthrowing the existing system). So he loves archaeotech, taking things apart, and building new patterns for whatever he happens to think of. While he's totally open to tech heresy, especially regarding innovation, but daemons/warp stuff holds no interest for him, xeno tech is only good for what he can learn from it, and AI is bad for obvious logical reasons, so he's not very prone to most of it.

Since he also liked the idea of approaching perfection via augmentation, he got focused in on bionics as well. After looking at the rules though, there are all manner of bionics, all of which are absurdly expensive to purchase. Here I am, rank 1 and wishing I had 30k thrones for all the amazingly cool stuff I want, little of which is worth the cost for someone just replacing functioning biology. Meanwhile, our guardsman and assassin are perfectly happy with the equipment they started the game with, minus the heavy stubber the guardsman really wanted, which he has already picked up. I just can't imagine a situation in which my character would have the resources available to go where I'm wanting with him before everybody else has their bolters and power armor and ran out of things to buy a long time ago. The only thing I can think is maybe if we have a lot of downtime, which I doubt, since most of the other characters have absolutely nothing to do during it, maybe the gm would be nice and let me somehow make most of it at reduced price or something.

Layer this on top of the fact that my guy has no access to facilities, no mechanicus contacts, and of course no access to archaeotech to study, and I seem to have stupidly boxed myself into a corner with an unreasonable character. At this point, I'm open to any ideas on where to take things. If anybody thinks it would be helpful for me to post a more detailed background I can do that, I figured this post was long enough as it is though.

Anyway, sorry about the wall! Thanks, and I look forward to hearing your responses. If I think of anything else I'll add it on to the huge list...

I think deep down we all play facets of ourselves. (Seriously: Some shrink should do a thesis on roleplayers and the characters they make.)

I kinda like your character: No problems with your background. His views on technology seem to be closer to the way we today view technology, rather than the hidiously ritualised systhem of the adeptus mechanicus. It would certainly make for some intresting roleplaying when your pc meets other more traditional techpriests.

Npc techpriest: "How did you start up the cogitator so quickly? the chants and machine-prayers alone take hours!"

you: "I just pushed 'start'.My experiments on combine harvesters have shown one can skip 90% of abulations on simple devices."

The character doesn't seem unreasonable, atleast not his background.

Talk to your Gm about it. Maybe he or she might throw in a side plot about a cache of rediscovered archeotech that has turned up.

Herein lies some of the fun in playing an Acolyte: You must be self-sufficient. You have no workshop? Build a wishlist. For now, just write your wants on a list and set it aside. You my friend need a proper heretical workshop. Make a little list of what your workshop needs, and then seek it out whenever possible, Tech-Priests, ecspecially of the Heretek kind like you are, are not at all known for being reasonable.

"We must kill off this cult."

"Only if we can briefly side-track, I got a rumor of this *insert device here* and it would do WONDERS for my workshop."

OR

Get yourself some lovely Mechatendrils from Tome of Decay. Now, you don't need that book, because what said mechatendril does is give you a +10 to tests involving crafting Fun stuff. SO, you can get like 4 of them, and you become a mobile workstatiion yourself, and each one does a d10+3 damage in close combat, and you can attack with one as a Reaction. Where do I get one of these beauties, filliman? Well, if you had a genuine Malatek mentor, you might have some "friends" you ca call on, d**n the consequences, or just, since i'm reasonably sure they aren't heretical, just try to sweet-talk your inquisitor, and claim its "Mission Critical" to ensure the squad is at peak efficiency!

A couple of house-rules/rule-ports for Tech-priests that I suggest you ask your GM to consider: ripping the Heart of Iron and Skin of Steel (or is it Heart of Steel and Skin of Iron? can never remember) traits from the Crimson Guard alt-rank in the Lathes Worlds supplement and giving both of them to all tech-priests, not just their minions.

Heart means that you can use your Intelligence instead of Fellowship when interacting with other Tech-priests/members of the AdMech/Machine cult. It's also something that was inserted in Ascension for the Magos, and frankly really should have been errata'd in.

Skin grants a 'free' cybernetic/bionic implant or quality upgrade by one level of an already installed implant or upgrade on every odd-numbered rank. This, in my opinion, should have been granted to all tech-priests/bearers of Mechanicus Implants, not simply the Crimson Guard, as huge portions of the tech-priest skillset are based around the various mechandrites that can be acquired, and none of them (or any other implants) are cheap, and tech-priests still have to kit themselves out in other ways as well.

As for how cortex implants came to be? The AdMech was not originally as secretive as it is in these later days of the Imperium. Also, cortex implants, along with almost everything else the Imperium has technology-wise, was invented millenia before the AdMech came to be.

The AdMech/Cult Mechanicus only came into existence after/during the fall/collapse of the Golden Age of Technology.

As for the roleplaying element, I think we should all realize and accept that we're not professional actors, and not going to win any Oscars (or whatever would be an appropriate equivalent for improv-theatre).

I'd recommend to make it easy for yourself by not making a very complicated, nuanced and/or subtle character.

Embrace stereotypes and clichés, and make the characters distinguishing traits very noticeable.

We're not striving for deep art here, it's supposed to be fun and immersive! I like to think of an actor, or a particular character from a film or series, and steal some of their noticeable traits when I make a character or NPC. It doesn't matter if everyone realizes you're a variant of Dirty Harry, spewing Eastwoods oneliners everywhere. It will identify your character, and give you an aid in sticking to a consistent and identifiable character.

Have a favourite saying, that you repeat at all times. "I have a bad feeling about this!" or "Oh, it wasn't supposed to do that!"

Have fun, don't expect too much of yourself or your friends, and take baby steps! Good luck!

1. That just takes time and experience, you'll get the hang of it as you go on. If it's bothering you just keep trying, eventually you'll find a way that works for you. Do your best to read about your homeworld and understand it, think about the character's life up until this point. What made him attractive to the inquisition? Does he have a family? Loved one? Ect.

2. Blank slates have to be written on by the story before you can develop them, so see where the game takes you and go from there. Try and explain why your character is taking a particular advance for example, think about how the character goes about it.

3. Interesting, well you'll have to do it in secret. Ask for access to facilities and tools under the guise of maintaining the groups armor and weaponry. As for bionics, you can try making it yourself (there is a crafting system), stealing it, removing it from heretics, or eventually you might loose a limb. It's alright for a character to want these things, but realize it will require work to get them.