So...

I love the 40k universe... But I don't have a bonner for the Inquisition.

I was wondering if the book offers support to create campaigns outside this scope and if any of you guys have done it.

Cheers!

My current campaign, though eventually it does become Inquisition-centric, started out on a penal colony with the players each portraying inviduals sentanced their for one reason or another. Their professions were those they had worked in prior to their arrest and provided them with tallents they could bring to bear when that same colony was scooped up and forced into service as a penal battalion.

For the last couple months they have been traveling with a battleship, deploying as the foreguards/mineshaft canaries, for the larger force of the army. They and their unit (the self named "Blackbirds") are entirely expendable and as such are often sent on near suicidal missions to gather information or take out hard targets while the rest of the army swings its might around. (if they weren't prisoners they might be called scouts and commandos)

So far the adventures have been entirely based around their service in the army and while they've been fighting heretics, xenos and warp creatures, they have not had even a brush with an Inquisitor or his staff ... and won't until they are 4th level.

It shouldn't be too hard to use Dark Heresy to do a non-Acolyte game. I've long toyed with the idea of doing a campaign about a squad on Imperial Guardsmen trapped in the wrong side of a warzone. You wouldn't need to change any of the classes either. If someone plays a Cleric they become the squad's Chaplain. If someone plays Scum they are either a drafted criminal of a conscript from a penal legion. An adept becomes a Munitorum official. And so on, and so forth.

With some minor tweaking you could also run a successful Necromunda campaign.

Awesome Ideas, guys!
I've just ordered the book. I hope I wont regret it!


Do you guys think Rogue Trader will expand the possibilities of games when it comes out?

Oh, certainly. Although Rogue Trader is totally oriented towards... rogue trading, I'm sure that it's wealth system could be adapted to a number of organizations including Inquisitorial fronts. Also the space battle rules will be a good addition to any game. In fact, one of the most obvious combinations I can see is to have the PCs start as a squad of junior officers on an Imperial destroyer or the like that may, unknown to them, be operating under Inquisitorial orders.

Also, you could have some acolytes work with a Rogue Trader, scouring the dark frontier for new threats to the Imperium to identify and destroy, or add an "Inquisitorial representative" to the Trader's advisers, though that might be better done when Ascension comes out.

Plus, all those shiny new weapons and items will be easy to place into any campaign.

I'm still waiting for more complete Info on the Xenos...

Orks, Tau, Eldar suplements and all that.

I'm not so sure the Tau will make it. The Calixis sector is a long way from home for the blueskins and their slow warp-tech. After all, they haven't even seen the eye of terror. If they had they wouldn't be able to deny the existence of Chaos so easily. However, I'm sure the others will roll in.

numb3rc said:

Kroot are already around as of Rogue Trader. Not sure how far behind the space communists can really be.

I've always liked the idea of taking a campaign entirely into an Imperial hive and playing a cyber-punk/film-noir/grimdark thing. Part Maltese falcon, part necromunda, part bladerunner. A search for fortune and glory, without any Inquisitorial Obligations. Perhaps the characters will end up trying to scav in that abandoned Hive on Scintilla, a-la-dungeon crawling. Who knows what they might find....

Drakar said:

Drakar said:

I seriously doubt you'll regret it (it is an awesome game) unless:

1) You want a D&D/Savage Worlds type game where the characters just wade through bad guys with no risk to themselves. DH is much grittier and more lethal than most high-fantasy RPGs. Much more akin to how easy it is to buy it in WHFRP, only more so; or

2) You have your heart set on playing a Space Marine or non-human, they just aren't covered in the rules at this point (although if you do a little digging around you can find some excellent fan supplements for this sort of thing).

Drakar said:

As one of the fortunate few to have gotten his hands on a Gencon copy of Rogue Trader I can confidently say this is an absolute unqualified yes.

AHuahhuauhah

Thanks for the feedback, guys!

I'm a 14 years veteran of WFRP, so I'm very familiar with Gritty and Grim.

Lets see how this ends up.

(I'm already thinking about stealing Jack's penal company idea. Dirty Dozen was awesome.)

DocIII said:

Kroot are itinerant mercenaries who wander the galaxy far further afield than the Tau are able, while the Tau themselves are essentially limited to their little corner of the galaxy due to an inability to create true warp drives and their lack of faster-than-light communication that isn't reliant on messenger ships. The Kroot alliance with the Tau is only one of the ways humanity have encountered them, and hardly the only place the Kroot could ever be encountered.

The Tau might make an interesting seperate game once Deathwatch is done. I rather like that DHs' "races" are highly specific to origin and not just "this is how species X is different than a human."

The Tau caste system, combined with their alliances with other races and their own variation by world, along with the additional possibilities offered by the Farsight Enclaves, and you'd have an interesting game. Especially since "the Greater Good" has a dark side that would be fun to explore, the Ethereals are quite possibly the tools of any of several races, and the Tau know prettymuch nothing about several of the more nasty things the galaxy has in store for them.

Dark Heresy has an Inquisition-centric slant, but you can easily use the rules to run a game where the players are minor crew in a Rogue Trader fleet, or members of a Hiver gang, etc.

Well, "Das dreckige Dutzend" (Dirty Dozen) was very awesome indeed. But the 41st millenium has a lot of things going BESIDES war.


One thing that came to my mind (and is very rpg player friendlay) was head hunting. Give your guys a planet with enough population (doesn´t have to be hive), give them accounts with the "Warrant Guilders" and they are on. Investigation, fun and all with a tried-and-true easy formular every is familiar with. Plus, you can spend more time "imperial society", if you like.

Another idea I came up with a a "get-to-know&kick-off" sessions for people being pressed into the =I= was working as an archaeo pirate crew. Again, this "raid that dungeon/place for stuff" is very familiar with most of us rpg-guys so new players can focus on the differences (languages, difference in "view" of tech in general and so on). And remember, you do not even have to leave the planet! On worlds like Scintilla, you would not even have to leave the hive...

Being local enforcer cadre at a station on a frontier world can be fun, to. I imagine the "scifi-west" feeling the good old Firefly / Serenity had...but this time you are not law breakers but people whom are there to "keep things together"... while not being local themselves ("Last enforcer group?...aehm... see, there was this raid...."). Give them a "station house", a vehicle (or two), a salary that comes in with the guarded loan couriers from some of the major cities and some standing oppoentens/trouble spots (a slave mine, the settlement itself, some raiders etc) and allow the to "settle down and defend".

Talking "serenity"... give them a captian (npc or one of themselves), an old guncutter and set them on a mission to make a living. Trading, black marketering, armed transports..you-name-it.

To kept it variable, perhaps the pc are part of the retinue of some excentric minor noble. With this "set up" you can tasks them with a lot of things. From "retrieving something" over "help me to me get this deal done!" to "join me at the festival, amuse me, keep me safe... and look nice while doing so! Do not want my social live by your doings!"

Working for the guilds could be nice as well, since the guilds seem to have regulators as well. More similiar to "shadowrun", but this time you run on the "corporation side". But besides black ops, you could simply being around to stake claim to new mining grounds in an asteroid belt that will soon be openend to the guilds.

Funny you should mention Serenity. I mentally statted out the characters a week ago at work, just for fun. River was the only one who needed many special rules (mostly to govern when she can engage in combat).

The settings are more than a little compatible, if you think about it. It would be a fun way to play out a game, especially since roughly half the characters are basically non-combatants.

I've always considered DH to be a great game for IG war stories. Every class fits, with enough creativity. And there is a lot to be said for Trench Warfare with Insanity Points XD

Dark Heresy actually lends itself very well to any specialized "Kill Team"-like group.

You can make them a team of Crime Lord Enforcers

...or an Ecclesiarchal Artaefact Recovery Team

...or a Mercenary Contract Enforcement Crew

...I'm sure at this point you get the idea. Virtually any 40K organization is going to have specialized teams for when things need to get done under the radar!

If you want the feel of the characters working for an 'above the law' organization without being Inquisition, try having them work for or be members of a Navigator house. It is a great starting point to a lot of possible plots.