Hi guys, i'm gonna be running the House of Dust & Ash soon and at the title says any tips?

I've written up a few NPCs and wacky items for the Auction. Decided that Haarlocks Crypt shall have thermite plating on the doors so they can't just melta-gel out and rolled up a crazy gilded widow in case they get stupid.

I've also been considering the Haarlock lineage conection for one of my players as it sounds interesting for the future (wish we had more info though).

SPOILERALERT!

Remember to keep a straight face if one of the PC's remove the "copper gorget" from the Onyx Statue and then proceeds to "see how it fits".

(my PC did just that during Dust and Ash, and it eventually lead to a world of hurt for everyone involved. It actually lead to a whole new campaign of adventures, just because of his little slip up What can I say? It looked so harmless! How was I supposed to know it was a Halo Device?)

Haha that's brilliant! I never actually considered the gorget as I don't think anyone will grab it... then again I do have a Redemptionist who likes mementos from adventures and a young assassin who like to keep stuff especially from her kills as part of a superstition.

I put in a bunch of weapons that supposedly belonged to the Harlock line as well as things like clothes and exotic vials. I also put a highly compitent NPC in and as soon as things went wrong they ran and grabed all those weapons for themselves (It was a pair of laith power swords and a best quiality plasma pistol). It was some nice rewards if they could get them without it being too easy (they only got the plasma pistol).

Remember that everyone is working against them and so you should make it feel like that, dont give them an easy time of it and come down heavily on mistakes made. I read of someone here who's players guessed everything and then wielded Inquisitorial power to allow them to take weapons into the auction. I would never have allowed that, at that point Grave would have found out and replaced the guards with mourners claiming the PDF were suspect of the murders that have been happening.

If they go into the catacombs streach it out since you can make them lost down there but give them pleanty to do, Nonesuch is pretty devistating in a confines space and is really good at concealment.

Kaihlik

if you want them to succeed either scrap Nonesuch or give them insane weaponry. He allone ripped my whole crew appart. if he has his "zombies" with him, they won't stand a chance.

Nonesuch's weapon has like 100meters reach and does an insane amount of damage. in melee he is even more insane.

Before that, I let the Beast Slaver hunt them, and he alone killed almost all the characters. He was hidden and sniped them down with his Hunting-rifle and special ammo (X)

If you play the NPC's like PCs you have an INCREDIBLE hard adventure at your hands. (assassin with MIU controlled hidden needle pistol, that alone kills a PC outright if they let the assassin sneak up on them -> +30 BS for the surprise +20 for aiming, if the assassin rolls 40 under his BS stat he does 3D10 dmg + toxic)

then you have servitors with meltas, children of the kingdom, a sorcerer, a huge amount of lackeys, Greel with a one-shot-kill weapon and so forth. I found the adventure to be extremely hard to survive.

vogue69 said:

I got rid of the shoulder mount since it didn't seem concealable, I just gave her a needle pistol. Why was the beastmaster hunting them, he didn't seem to have any reason too unless one of them was the Scion and even then he needs to get the blood in the cup not on the walls and floor. The players need to make friends before the scenario and you need to give them that chance. Also let circumstances during the crisis determine allies. During the last section my group made friends with the PDF troopers, an NPC noble and his retinue, Rubio and his one surviving bodyguard and had a truce with Vymer and Quill who were only interested in their target (who coincidently was Rubio). The fact that only half the NPC's were trying to kill them and many others were helping made it easier. Even the Beastmaster came round when he offered them a way out. Oh and Lanus Cisten was on thier side although he was the Scion, they didn't kill him, instead the Techpriest jury rigged the melta gun to melt the door down and the void shield was taken down by premeturely blowing up the generators taking the void shield down although very quickly after setting off the Volcano. I let it fly because a player had to stay behind to overload the generators. Whent was dead.

The mourners were not much of a threat and I only put 1 melta gun servitor in as they are hard. Nonesuch was killed by a plasma pistol I put in although it was a buffed up one because I think the basic plasma rules are too weak. Greel was one shoted by a Grenade launcher after an awful Rosarius role although that blew up the key as well.

They also had the good fortune to get Abbot Tamos killed before the end making thier job a bit easier later on.

Have NPC's work things out as well, if your acolytes can see it then there is a chance that an intelligent NPC can as well, I had the beastmaster work out Lanus was the scion and one of my NPC's work out that the key was a good bet for escaping.

In the initial confusion of when the mourners attack I would kill off alot of the lackeys at that point as it makes it easier for you to keep track of, also any NPC's that can die before that helps reduce the number of threats.

Remember that most of the NPC's just want to escape so they will have that goal in common with the PC's.

I would not make it possible to ally with Nonesuch, my players found him in the Vaults eating the brains of mourners to try and find Lanus to kill him.

Anyway hope that is some help.

Kaihlik

Kaihlik said:

I did similar - I put an Eldar Ranger Longrifle and a digi-plasma weapon in amongst the lots.

Then again, I had Abbot Tamas taken out of the picture early (the entire group was suspicious of him from the start, as they've played Illumination), and transferred his conneciton of Tsyiak to one of the players in a daemonic pact...

My group ended up almost dying to Nonesuch (one of them did, in fact) because they didn't suspect what he was until a fist-like mass of black tentacles punched the Sister of Battle into a wall (at which point, they all ran screaming - they'd faced the Slaugth before), but had otherwise killed their way through most of the other bidders before the Children of the Kingdom arrived and the group figured out how to escape (they were on the verge of sacrificing the voidborn assassin in their group, who was the Scion of Haarlock - the player had, at the start of the campaign, given me background about how he was the son of a Rogue Trader, so I took advantage of how little about his ancestry he really knew - before they remembered the mausoleum and Greel's pendant).

I had one player who ended up abusing game mechanics to kill Nonesuch in a one on one fight, every round he used an acrobatics check to disengage from combat making Nonesuch use a half action to engage him again or shoot him. Since he had an amazing dodge chance he could survive one attack a round but anything more would have ended him. It ended with him spotting a Plasma pistol that someone had dropped before Nonesuch had vaporised him and rolling a good righteous fury (my plasma pistols are really powerful). If Nonesuch had Fate points he would have been screwed as I could have used it for an extra half action and then it would have been bye bye assassin.

Kaihlik

My plans for running the harlock adventures have all the PCs being minor member of that line;-) Sort of a lead into RT.....

Well, one of the PC's in my game is the scion and I think that might be all their doom...

I actually started using the Haarlock line in my campaign a bit before DotDG came out. The blurb about Errasemus disappearing after the massive fraternacide really got my brain juices flowing though, in the end, his reasons for doing such in my campaign are a bit different from his reasons stated in House of Dust and Ash. I had also tied the Haarlock line to one of my PC's (one who has the RT mindset) and I thought it would be a good bridge into RT when it comes out. Then I finally read House of Dust and Ash and thought it was just too damned perfect of a fit into my game to pass up. It took about 2 months of playing, but we finally made it to Dust and Ash tonight.

I altered a few minor things to make it fit my game. I removed the whole Marr part as that was just an excuse to get the acolytes involved and in my game, they already have reasons. They are trying to find what the link between the Haarlock line and the Tyrant Star is. While trying to figure this out, a heretic they were investigating had the information on the auction in her ledgers. They got rid of the heretic, got their hands on the funds she had stashed with another noble family, and made their way to the auction posing as her agents with the intent on getting any ship logs or wittings they could find there.

Well, they found the books no problem but they also observed the painting and what it eventually did. Now, with one of their mugs plastered up for all the auction to see in that painting, though blurry, they are a bit unnerved and unsure how to proceed. Mix into that the fact that the scion has finally accepted his linage fully (after seeing the mad loot no doubt) and figured that he should announce his linage to put a hold on the auction (of his stuff) until it could be sorted out.

We left the session with the scion arguing with the groups adept as to whether he should out himself or not. Here's hopping the Adept doesn't cave... but I guess I still have to figure out what Greel and party will do if the scion goes public before the big unveil at it's scheduled time and place.