How good is the adventure in the main book?

Any suggestions on how best to run it?

Thanks,

N00b

Jay H

The adventure in the main book is very solid, and is a good setup for the other adventures in Purge the Unclean.

As for advice, make sure you know all the NPCs very well, as they tend to interelate at unexpected points, as players come up with questions and unexpected connections.

It's worth running. Enjoy.

It's not as good as Edge of Darkness but, as schoon said, it sets up Purge the Unclean. It also introduces how wonderfully unfair Dark Heresy can be. The difficulty curve of the mission spikes into the stratosphere for the final scene and there's a very real chance of the entire cell being wiped out. Good stuff.

My players enjoyed it, for what it's worth, and they're all quite experienced roleplayers. They did figure out what was really going on very quickly, so my opinion is that it's just a tad too predictable. Still worth running though. It's a good intro adventure.

Its a good adventure, except for the final encounter, which will wipe your players if they dont do some pre-emptive killing.

you might want to mod the boss, or give some hints or something if they dont pick up on things.

Then again, you might just let them take it as a lesson lol

Running through the mission it seems pretty hard for the acolytes not to pick up clues. The multiple occurrences of eyeless corpses will only be overlooked by the most foolish and dim of players, and it's pretty easy to figure out that the crows are bad business. And all it takes in the final encounter is a few words about how massed firepower seems to do nothing for them to start trying to figure out a plan B. I wouldn't tone down the final encounter at all because the acolytes, at least at low ranks, really, really shouldn't be able to just brute force through it.

Ah, yes - the last encounter.

WARNING: SPOILERS BELOW

No kidding - really, I mean it...

You can make the encounter with the final daemon much more survivable - especially if the Acolytes have not picked up on the very cryptic clues thus far - by having the daemon cackle sayings like "You'll all be blind!" or "Take your eyes!" as he makes his attacks. Most groups figure it out, though it's still a very difficult encounter.

and if they do not figure it out after tons of clues......there are millions of millions of millions humans in the galaxy, who will miss these 4?

maybe roll a dice behind GM sheet so you can cheat but only if you feel bad killing in year 40.000

As Schoon pointed out, it is a nice setup to Purge the Unclean, it also fits in well with Shattered Hope. I'm not a fan of giving away clues (well, no mare that reason), and the twisted side of me likes it when players in a new game go down a very wrong road.

If players (will not name names in case they read this... but they no who they are) wish to treat it like a simple hack and slash, then I will let them, if only to have all the clues, twists, and plot points ready for discussion after the adventure... then I get to see a look of sudden realization mark their features. (I love that look)

It's good, but I'd avoid it as the 1st. If player aren't experinced players of other systems. They may miss all the clues. I'd lean to Edge of Darkness off the FFG web site then the one in the book. Then you can go with Purge the Unclean. I'd avoid Shatter Hope unless your group is very combat loving. It was mainly wrote to show case the rules before the main book was publish. Unless your PCs are careful, and lucky Shattered Hope will kill off the PCs. (And collapse the whole mine.)

PS- There are also some interesting adventures here: www.darkreign40k.com

I think Illumination is a stellar adventure. It is my favorite pre-write before Purge the Unclean (which was obviously a different scale of effort put into the adventures). But I echo the sentiments here about knowing the NPC's well. It makes for a much for impactful run of the tale if you play them well enough for the character to connect with them.

Well, with my guys, they didn't put it together to shoot him in the eyes until the last very second before all of them died...

With that aside, I thought it was a very good adventure added on in the main rulebook.

I didn't like it. There are bit and pieces I absoltely love, the skeleton of the adventure is great really. But there are scenes and ideas in it that just don't work and I think are frankly a bit clumsy and/or stupid. I didn't run it, but I might at a later date, though modified. Same goes for maggots in the meat. I haven't got purge the unlcean, sadly.

linearblade said:

I was actually rather disapointed at how easy that last encounter was. I was expecting a real struggle, but the players put it down with little trouble.

Probably a combination of them figuring out its weaknesses right away, and it only hitting once.

Either way, I liked the intro scenario. My only real beef with it is that it tends to throw, like, full-scale warp incursions at your players a little sooner than I'd have done otherwise. For my own scenarioes they're still dealing with low-level not-so-supernatural cultists.

The adventure looks pretty good but one drawback is that the group I play with has the main book and will have read *** or may read it if I run the adventure. If I do use it it will be with flas names and changes items to be sure that things are kept surprising.

I found the timeframe and lack of detail of the adventure to be flawed given the amount of paranoia and conspiracy theory present in my social circle.It seemed like they just assumed novice acolytes would be idiots who would do nothing but follow orders.

Basically, Aristarchus becomes a suspect the moment he unconsciously fingers his tarot deck and inexplicably dismisses a walking corpse the characters encounter on their way to Stern Hope. The characters are then given far too much time to mill around Stern Hope before things come to a head, allowing them to thoroughly exhaust all leads (forcing me to add quite a bit of misdirection to just keep them occupied) - most of which come to dead ends anyway. It's a real stretch that, by the time of the mysterious attack on Abbot Skae, the characters do not have a good idea that he and Aristarchus are up to no good, particularly if they pried the detail of the Abbot's late night visit to the Cathedral out of Brother Lamark.

The idea that Esha Raine would have something useful to share with them occurred to the players, but they just split up and sent only one character to contact her. I ended up unable to force the entire group to follow Aristarchus' order that they pursue Esha Raine (and believe me, I tried). Their tech-priest cleverly disabled all the remaining vehicles in the camp (blaming the Voicers' attack) and the group challenged the rationality of heading out on foot rather than remaining behind to protect the Abbot and the consecration, particularly given that one of their number had already gone after Raine.

Consequently, the majority of the group was on site for the entire ceremony, which required quite a bit of filling in of details left undocumented in the adventure. In the end, they were present for the apocalypse from starting to end and, though it all worked out okay in the end. I used a massive Hitchcock-esque Shale Crow assault to slaughter and/or drive much of the camp mad while forcing the survivors to gather within the security of the cathedral. There Abbot Skae delivered a sermon on how Saint Drusus rose from the dead once before and had come to him in a vision promising to return again in their time of need. The resulting prayers appeared on the surface to be a plea for intercession from the Saint but were instead sufficiently vague and desperate that they supported the rise of the demon Crow Father. Aristarchus turned into a holy roller, clambering onto the altar like a madman... at which point, of course, the players opened fire but the Tarot desk spun out and protected him... basically taking us to the remainder of the climax as originally detailed in the adventure. At the last second, the information communicated by the acolyte returning from Raine's steading inspired them to go the blinding route and things ended reasonably well.

It required a whole lot of tweaking to keep things even close to on track though. I think if I were to run the game again, I would compress the time period between arrival and the consecration as well as dampen some of the more bizarre behavior by Aristarchus. Regardless, without something more to cast suspicion on Raine, it's hard to for me to believe that any group will blindly follow the heavy-handed device intended to get them out of the camp at the time of the consecration.

See, from my perspective that's exactly how I would want my players to handle things. I'd be a little disappointed if they had to be led around as written. I generally take the scenario as written to be "what to do if the PCs brute-force through the plot". Given that it's an intro mission, I'd hope they pre-empted most threats before risking getting torn apart by them.

Then again, my general attitude towards any written scenario is to use it as a springboard to run a similar story, not something to try and run from the book, as that just never plays out as well, in my opinion.

Aureus said:

Agreed. I use the same approach to pre-written adventures as I do my original ones. For original scenarios, I try to make sure I have at least one path to completion in mind. A direction to nudge the PC's if they get stuck, and a course that will highlight the things in the scenario that are the most interesting. Sometimes they follow that path, and sometimes they make their own. I take pre-writes to just be the default path to completion.

aethel said:

This is almost precisely my MO. My scenarios are made up of:

• A situation
• A number of people
• Those NPC's motivations
• Some locations I'll need
• A synopsis of events up until the PCs show up
• A timeline of what will happen without the PCs intervention
• A handful of notes, including (as you said) at least one general path to an ideal (as is possible) completion.

Everything after that is pretty much off the cuff.

The last encounter in that adventure sheared the right arm, leg, and a fate point from one of my players. It made two more useless with fear. Then one player, with a very perceptive, very badass scum character emptied his autogun into the Skae-thing's eyes.

It was the most movie-esque ending scene I can imagine, with him as the hero. The other players were jealous as hell.

Corwin Stark said:

See, while I would have to point out the intelligence of the players in taking the course of action that they did, I would hope that they faced serious censure for saving the day in this way. They violated the direct order of someone who carried the Rosarius of their own Lord and, in so doing, directly countermanded the order of their Lord (to follow those orders). That's insubordination, and there should be consequences to it.

There are, in fact, times where the good idea is a bad idea.

Once in the British Navy a ship was trying to navigate around some shallows in a storm (I wish I could remember the name of the ship). The navigator, who has the power of God second only to the captian when it comes to course headings, gave a course to the helmsman. The helmsman, a long experienced seaman and long a hand on the ship, knew that this course would steer the vessel into the shallows and the ship would be lost. He failed to follow orders and instead took his own course, and just then a surge wave washed across the ship and took it just shy of the shallows (if they'd followed the original course, the ship would've been lost). The helmsman had saved the vessel from doom. The captain was informed of this the next day and gave the helmsman a commendation. He then had the man hung for insubordination and buried at sea with no ceremony.

Now, I'm not saying treat the acolytes with that degree of extremism, but keep that example in mind when considering the "ingenuity" of the acolytes in the face of a direct order.

I don't like to stick to the scenario too closely, using various scenes when they feel appropriate as opposed to when the adventure tells me too.

For example, after Raine stormed out my players actually chose to follow her to apologise and find out what she knew. So I simply played the meeting scene then, and moved the climax into the Now (the day BEFORE the ceremony).

"Sadly" when the big fight came, the two of them (yes, I only have two players) came soooo close to beating the thing in an all out brawl I honestly thought they were gonna kill it. Every one was taken down to critical levels, but a last ditch attempt by the antagonist killed the pair.

This wasn't so much a problem though, as they got to make new characters (something we all enjoy doing in this game).

I have yet to spring on them that their next mission will involve checking out what happened to the previous two acolytes, with the demon firmly entrenched and the survivors (including one of their NPC Acolyte colleagues) forming some kind of brain-washed Chaos cult...

Should be fun!

Corwin Stark said:

Basically, that was probably the intention of the author and actually my players also suspected Aristarchus rather early. Still, you have to keep in mind that Psykers act strangely in the view of an Imperial citizen most of the time and no one expects them to be 'normal'. More importantly, as Pneumonica said, Aristarchus is maybe the person with the most absolute authority on the planet and it is out of question that acolytes act against him except in the most dire circumstances. Additionally, our groups Arbitrator made a successfull Scrutiny test when Aristarchus was talking about Saint Drusus and his faith and thus realized that Aristarchus faith and loyalty was beyond arguement (he just seemed a little under stress and other-worldly). So the players knew that something was not right, but could not narrow down how and why.

The adventure works fine I feel. I have to agree that you only want to go through Shattered Hope if they really like combat or they are just learning the game and need something a little more straightforward. Edge of Darkness is great as a starting point. I do recomend playing Illumination if you're going to do the adventures in Purge The Unclean (wich I recommend), it sets up the first adventure beautifully.

I'd try edge of darkness of the DH site. It's a simpler adventure.