Ive been playing Dark Heresy from day one. And my party and I get together alot to play. Well its been a while since the last time and we finnaly decided to start up a new campaign. Im the GM as usual, and this time we have a new player. A brand new player, whos never played any pen and paper. Im so compleatly drained of ideas for a new campaign. and have run all the published ones already. I need the collective minds of all the amazing people on the Dark Heresy forum to help me design and plot a new campaign that will really knock the socks off of the newbie. My favorite ideas ive been thinking of are just core plot points.

1. Large consperisies. somewhat of a whos playing who in terms of government or factions on a hive world. Maybe some sort of new religion thats claiming to be the "good" one. i love plot twists and delving into a crazy cover-up or something. I would like to keep it low in the threat level of the badies... ( more of crooked mayor or such and not CHAOS GODS ARE EVERYWHERE!!!! kinda gameplay...) I just want it to be new and exciting. Tense and fun! Any ideas or help? I NEED YOU!!!!

I'd reccommend starting small, with at least one or two adventures that have no connection and only a few threats so your PCs can get to know each other and get a feel for their characters.

The "new religion" angle is a problematic one - everything that doesn't ultimately venerate the Emperor is heretical and to be stamped out. If you want your PCs to interact peacefully with it, make it another cult of the Imperial church that merely differs from the main one in a few pieces of dogma. For example, your hive world may have two continents with comparably few communication between them, with two slightly differing cults. Now, one of the cults tries to expand its sphere of influence into the other part of the world. They can't really declare it heresy since it's an accepted part of the Imperial Ecclesiarchy (and because it could likely lead to costly war), but they don't exactly like it either.

Do you Have Disciples of the Dark Gods ? If so, the Temple Tendency seems to be a great candidate for the type of game you're going for.

Sorry if this is too old but here goes;

I like to start with what I call the "Big Plan" . What is the overall goal of the villain. For example, plung the planet into the sun. Then work backwards. What are the little steps the villain need to do to get his plan to fruition. these little steps are what the PCs stumble across and thwart. They learn of the ones they stop but others still succeed, thus unravalling the "big Plan" and leading to a large showdown or stealth mission or trench run. Anyway, that is the short and dirty way I come up with campaign ideas.

As said before by others campaign ideas are numerous. Get Disciples of the Dark Gods and you will be over flowing with ideas for the big bad guys in a campaign.

Converting a good campaign into a string of decent adventures will be harder. If you are completely stuck try getting hold of some adventures published for similar systems and converting them; Call of Cthulhu is perfect for this.

Another idea. Something I'd wished I'd done is start off my party before they joined the Inquisition. As in put them in a minor incident which they save the day or just survive. From that they get recruited.

Or, once recruited, have them do a really menial task like escort a Adept with a cursed item from A to B, help investigate missing psykers for the black ships, or any of a 1000 boring tasks that can blossom into a full blown campaign.

for a good villian device and allows for the addition of hooks that are not Chaos related I would use the beast house. Those are the types that are really going to appeal to the nobles seeking new things. As for something added to cause a twist... for new players I keep it a little simple....for example its a jack the ripper type character that is killing in the middle hive. Thus they are getting away with it since there are no real deseriables that are living there, but what happens when the killer moves up the hive? You could then loosley connect it to the beast house or even to a noble family that has a "troubled youth".

Keeping with noble corruption and best house maybe the noble is a hunter that has begun to devlop a taste for the hunting of human prey....

Just a few simple things to start off a new player...nothing really world ending but gets the idea of how grim humanity is becoming in this setting.......Good luck to you.

When I want to GM big conspiracies I do it by following these steps:

1 Create or choose at least three mighty factions, each represented or fronted by an iconic individual. Put some thought into these, like what do they want to accomplish, how do they go about it etc. These will be the GMs main characters for the campaign. Choose factions that are appropriate to the plot you want. A tyranid fleet vs an orc klan vs a Khorne cult will not have much room for conspiracy and intrigue.

2 Make up or figure out one major thing your factions could be in conflict over; resources/money, influence/power or religion/philosophy are pretty common and easily understandable issues. Specify and limit the scopes a lot for a more down to earth campaign. Let it be something like "controlling the lords of Terra" if you want a seriously epic campaign.

3 Write up a history of how the struggle has evolved to this date, and how the factions would want it to evolve in the future. Does not need to be extensive, but try to involve each iconic individual, at least at the later steps.

4 Start the campaign with one faction attempting to use the PCs as pawns. Think about how and why the characters were chosen and what the faction hope to accomplish by them. Some of this is pretty easy to explain if the characters are bound in service to one of the factions, for example by being in service to an inquisitor. This can be played with a classic "Those are the bad guys, we are the good guys"-approach.

5 Step five is to reveal more of the big picture to the characters and give them the possibility to be used by several factions, alternatively to allow the characters to play out the factions against eachother for maximum fun and profit. What style to go with is pretty much down to how your group prefers to play. Do they want to take the initiative and control the meta-parts of the story, or do they want to be a bit more railroaded by the GM.

6 Keep your factions acting and reacting against eachother and the character partys actions. If you have pretty well thought through factions, this should go pretty much by itself. Just try to have the faction leaders do intelligent choices that are in character for them.

7 Finish it off with a big faceoff, where at least two factions have allied against the PCs and the rest have been neutralised, at least for this conflict. Leave the players as winners. This step is strictly not neccessary, but a feeling of closure is good for any story, and a happy ending (= the heroes winning) is good for the ticket sales to the movie ;-)

You could start with an item and then figure out why all the factions want it/who has it/etc.

For example: Geneseed. A guy on the RT forum started this idea. Perhaps a Rogue Trader is rumored to have a genuine cryo-stasis preserved Geneseed. Or is looking for one. Or knows how to get one. For extra fun, have it come out during play that the Geneseed was harvested from a famous Space Marine.

Rogue Techpriests interested in biomancy would want to get it to experiment on.

The Space Marine Chapter, naturally would want to get it back.

There's a faction of the Inquisition that wants to "grow" or otherwise genetically engineer a biological vessel worthy of holding the Emperor's soul...

Chaos Cultists/Chaos Marines...naturally.

Xenos, like perhaps a Tau scientist who's never been able to study an intact Geneseed before...

Mmm...sounds like the beginning of a good adventure to me!