I'm just waiting for another opus like Haarlock's Legacy. I can't stress how many hours I've donated to that series and that man/monster. What a masterpiece.

I also really liked the old format of bringing in a new world with campaign. This gives you these rich worlds like Sinophia, Solomon, and Quaddis.

One could argue they brought in Thaur this way, but I really didn't care for Thaur that much. To me it was just 'ending punishment crazy religion world' for my FG group.

I ran book one for my group and everyone involved agreed it was a boring railroad. The plot was actually kind of interesting but the execution was boring. Are books 2 and 3 any better?

You have to see what they actually created. Haarlock is a profoundly fantastic 40k villain. It sounds like you ran 'Tattered Fates'. TF puts a lot of work in the GM's hands and the villains are really good, if you develop them. The best modules are 'House of Dust and Ash', which is basically the 40k version of 'Murder on the Orient Express' and Damned Cities, which is a solid Arbite murder mystery. They aren't beginner modules. You really have to read ahead and have a solid plan before you start GM-ing those adventures. You also can't GM them for a group of munchkins asking 'when is the next battle ?'

You have to see what they actually created. Haarlock is a profoundly fantastic 40k villain. It sounds like you ran 'Tattered Fates'. TF puts a lot of work in the GM's hands and the villains are really good, if you develop them. The best modules are 'House of Dust and Ash', which is basically the 40k version of 'Murder on the Orient Express' and Damned Cities, which is a solid Arbite murder mystery. They aren't beginner modules. You really have to read ahead and have a solid plan before you start GM-ing those adventures. You also can't GM them for a group of munchkins asking 'when is the next battle ?'

It was Church of the Damned (I think was the name). I made it as interesting as I could, but the module boils down to a room-by-room search in the upstairs and combat in the basement. I actually did want to run the others, hoping they'd be better, but my group is done with DH1.

edit: Haha welp, the thing I ran was a different trilogy altogether (Apostasy Gambit). Nevermind!

I'm just waiting for another opus like Haarlock's Legacy.

I ran book one for my group and everyone involved agreed it was a boring railroad. The plot was actually kind of interesting but the execution was boring. Are books 2 and 3 any better?

I bought Tattered Fates , and refused to run it based on the crappy "rolls/skills/precautions are irrelevant- you get captured no matter what " opening. I heard good things about the second one ( Damned Cities ), so I ran it as a stand-alone non-Haarlock adventure. It has a true mystery structure without railroading, but there are a few elements that make me cringe (using telepathy on one character would tank the mystery, so it's stated that telepathy simply doesn't work in that location- no explanation given), and there are some flaws in the presentation (the PCs are looking for a fixed number of items, and the book details where most of them are, but not all- one easily missed sentence buried a third of the way into the book says that the GM needs to make up the rest; one chapter contains a key encounter intended for the previous chapter; the location of the main combat encounter is vaguely described as 'maze-like'- period). It's not bad overall, but it needs a lot of GM supplementation.

You have to see what they actually created. Haarlock is a profoundly fantastic 40k villain. It sounds like you ran 'Tattered Fates'. TF puts a lot of work in the GM's hands and the villains are really good, if you develop them. The best modules are 'House of Dust and Ash', which is basically the 40k version of 'Murder on the Orient Express' and Damned Cities, which is a solid Arbite murder mystery. They aren't beginner modules. You really have to read ahead and have a solid plan before you start GM-ing those adventures. You also can't GM them for a group of munchkins asking 'when is the next battle ?'

It was Church of the Damned (I think was the name). I made it as interesting as I could, but the module boils down to a room-by-room search in the upstairs and combat in the basement. I actually did want to run the others, hoping they'd be better, but my group is done with DH1.

edit: Haha welp, the thing I ran was a different trilogy altogether (Apostasy Gambit). Nevermind!

The Apostasy Gambit trilogy is a complete abomination. It it's really hard to bootstrap together anything from that mess. Really all you can use it for is enemies for other games.

I bought Tattered Fates , and refused to run it based on the crappy "rolls/skills/precautions are irrelevant- you get captured no matter what " opening. I heard good things about the second one ( Damned Cities ), so I ran it as a stand-alone non-Haarlock adventure. It has a true mystery structure without railroading, but there are a few elements that make me cringe (using telepathy on one character would tank the mystery, so it's stated that telepathy simply doesn't work in that location- no explanation given), and there are some flaws in the presentation (the PCs are looking for a fixed number of items, and the book details where most of them are, but not all- one easily missed sentence buried a third of the way into the book says that the GM needs to make up the rest; one chapter contains a key encounter intended for the previous chapter; the location of the main combat encounter is vaguely described as 'maze-like'- period). It's not bad overall, but it needs a lot of GM supplementation.

On TF -

Refusing to run a story because of the group getting captured is stupid. It's a constant trope in literature for heroes to find themselves captured. The whole idea is to create a survival type adventure where players are stripped of their gear and have to survive. Obviously, some players act like five year old children when you take their toys. I dealt with it. I told them they were captured. Some of them complained. The whole point of the opening is that the players aren't inquisition agents when TF starts. They are just people that were abducted. When they meet the inquisitor down the road they become acolytes. It's actually a really neat origin story.

On DC

There is actually a very good explanation as to why telepathy doesn't work. Probably one of the best plot devices. You're in a Haarlock linked location. The guy was a mad genius. A tower that messes with psyker powers is one of the tamer things he built. I do agree with you on the GM having to do a lot of improvisation especially in the second and third chapters. The truth is though almost all Fantasy Flight pre-gens are like that. They come out of the gate well then just say in small print 'the rest is up to the GM' to avoid having to write.

I too think the Apostasy Gambit is kind of a mess, but there is a lot of good hidden in there if you know how to use it.

I too think the Apostasy Gambit is kind of a mess, but there is a lot of good hidden in there if you know how to use it.

I have used a lot of the notes from the OP in "Correcting the Apostasy Gambit" in the DH1 GM forum to "rebuild" the trilogy. The Black Sepulchre is a complete mess for sure, but with fixes/additions, it is palatable and I think the latter two books are decent, if not good, with the hidden games as you mention.

I plan on running it relatively soon along with some other adventures in between the main books. Hopefully it is a success.

~ alemander

Shall we take bets to see how long this thing will stay on the boat?

Shall we take bets to see how long this thing will stay on the boat?

Another 2 weeks. I don't understand why they don't just release the pdf now, if the book is ready!

Wager: 1 holy bolt shell, inscribed with sacred scriptures and thrice-blessed by the Holy Cardinal of Undying Light, the Honourable Forge Lord of the Mechanicus and Our own Chaplain.

Here's me hoping they've added more talents that are based on the Leadership aptitude.

If they release the PDF now, then it will get on 4shared and the other free platforms. That's why they delay the release. Also, it helps people selling the physical book in stores.

Shipping now!

If they release the PDF now, then it will get on 4shared and the other free platforms. That's why they delay the release. Also, it helps people selling the physical book in stores.

People should be fortunate that they don't do it like Catalyst and first sell the Collector's Edition of the book, then a few weeks later the PDF, and then a month after that the normal book.

I love Shadowrun and Battletech, but ... man, that distribution model is making me rustle my proverbial jimmies.

...is making me rustle my proverbial jimmies.

...zuh?!

Since I'm propably gonna get the pdf as soon as it's out I wonder if there's any information on when the DH2 DCS App will get the data.

I use the App for all my characters and I love it because it's so simple and you get high quality pdf Charsheets, but I want to use it for Ordo Xenos Characters (actually for an Ordo Xenos Inquisitor) asap.

The answers to several things on here is simple.

1: Tyranids are in it in case you may want to relocate the campaign to say, Ultramar dor example. Also, don't forget those Genestealer Cults can hijack a ship, jump into warp, meet with their hive fleet and can return anywhere from a Millenia before they left to a Millenia after they left (I know, it's an exaggerations, but still). Remember, in the warp, time is nothing except the flash of the : on a chrono. Part of the reason why Warmaster Abad(feminine hygene product name here) is still young and vibrant while on the imperial side any Loyal Space Marine veterans who saw the Heresy play out are trapped in Venerable Dreadnaughts.

2: The PDF thing was already covered. Who can blame them for wanting to cover their initial investment in creating the PDFs before putting them into the pirate-ready format that is PDF? It isn't like you and your buddies sitting around creating a homebrew 40k system. They have game designers, artists, game testers, office staff etc. to pay. Not to mention producing enough profit to create an initial investment to start on their next product. They get that money by selling copies of the Books. If this was a perfect world where nobody pirated, or at least waited for older games to go out of print before they started, i'd be joining in the complaining. However, enough people do pirate to make simultaneous releases suicide to the profit margin. Without profits, quality on future releases drop or future releases are cancelled and game lines are terminated.

3: Them only going so far into detail with their Pregens? That is to make it easier for you to customize them as much as you want. It is not laziness. Look at the old AD&D... They were mostly so rigid that when they were multi-part sets that if you messed with them (Look at the Dragonlance Modules) without them being made to be messed with (Like choosing if Sturm Brightblade or one of the others Heroes of the Lance died) then you break the adventure. Would you rather see future story suppliments wind up like that?

4: The Core Book focused on a sector overview and the game mechanics. Not much time to 3D the Ruinous powers or work on building up horror when you are explaining a rebuilt from the ground up instead of a tuned up system. And Enemy Within was focused on the Hereticus. And the Hereticus focuses on the Cultists and their Views on the Gods. Plus, it is Chaos. Do you think that Khorne is going to describe every detail about his Skull Throne to his followers so the secrets can be gleamed by Tzeentch? No. They focused on the basics so that Slaanesh Cult A would be different in their approach to worship than Slaanesh Cult B so that every cult would be unique and enjoyable instead of becoming a formula like "To Stop a Slaanesh Cult's ritual before they can summon their Daemonettes you have to shoot the high priest/ess in the crotch, Break the Phallic Rod that is the center of their ritual into inch long pieces then focus on purgation of the cultists."

5: As for not showing anything at Gen Con, look at my rant on profits. With Enemy Within, I saw crappy pdf copies of it out for it on certain sites within 24 hours of the Book's release in my local store. That probably hit them hard in the pocketbook. With a hit like that, they probably got messed up on being able to start producing anything in time to show anything at Gen Con. So I say this again. Please quit the pirating.

6: It took 17 suppliments to get D.H. 1 to be the expansive as it was. Please give D.H. 2 that long to do the same thing.

Final Item: They redid D.H. as a second edition and have been making a lot of references to Rogue Traders. How long do you think it will be before Rogue Trader, Deathwatch, Black Crusade, and eventually even Only War will be getting a 2E treatment to modify them for the Askellon sector and to fit better with 2E rules? I wouldn't sweat the idea of the Deathwatch getting the Gray Knight Treatment to be fit into D.H.

Black Crusade and Only War already are the 2E rules. DH2.0 is based on OW which is based on BC.

Anyway, I know someone whose contributor copy showed up today. Not me sadly...

BYE

True. However, that means that when it is their turn to be updated that all they need is a tuneup and allow for their focus to be more on expanding the Askellon/Adjacent regions than on tearing down and rebuilding... (For example: Black Crusade overpowering their Tomes archetypes by so much).

Plus, for those of you who can remember when DH 1 was coming out, they were not shooting out Scenarios left and right in the beginning. They were more focused on Campaign suppliments at first so that they could build upon the setting and the Ordos. Once they can get the Enemies books of the way and get some supplements out to expand more upon the currently known worlds and a Bestiary of creatures, we will probably see a continuation of the Forgotten Gods story.

6: It took 17 suppliments to get D.H. 1 to be the expansive as it was. Please give D.H. 2 that long to do the same thing.

I would be shocked if the DH2 line gets even half (rounding down) that number of products out before the line goes dormant.

6: It took 17 suppliments to get D.H. 1 to be the expansive as it was. Please give D.H. 2 that long to do the same thing.

I would be shocked if the DH2 line gets even half (rounding down) that number of products out before the line goes dormant.

This, so much. Better be grateful for every supplement they bring out, especially after Enemies Beyond has been released.

6: It took 17 suppliments to get D.H. 1 to be the expansive as it was. Please give D.H. 2 that long to do the same thing.

I would be shocked if the DH2 line gets even half (rounding down) that number of products out before the line goes dormant.

This, so much. Better be grateful for every supplement they bring out, especially after Enemies Beyond has been released.

Yeah, I hate to admit it, but I suspect you guys are right...

6: It took 17 suppliments to get D.H. 1 to be the expansive as it was. Please give D.H. 2 that long to do the same thing.

I would be shocked if the DH2 line gets even half (rounding down) that number of products out before the line goes dormant.

This, so much. Better be grateful for every supplement they bring out, especially after Enemies Beyond has been released.

Yeah, I hate to admit it, but I suspect you guys are right...

Not really up to date with the gossip, why would people think that?

Dark Heresy first edition:

Total amount of supplements: 17

Last book release: 8 August 2012

Rogue Trader:

Total amount of supplements: 13

Last book release: 4 December 2013

Deathwatch:

Total amount of supplements: 11

Last book release: 9 August 2013

Black Crusade:

Total amount of supplements: 5

Last book release: 7 July 2014

Only War:

Total amount of supplements: 5

Last book release: 9 May 2014

Noticing a trend here?

Based on history, there is a good chance that there will be 1 more supplement after Enemies Beyond, and that's it. If not, this would be the shortest line of them all in terms of supplements. They could stop immediately after Enemies Beyond since all the Ordos have been released then.

That puts it straight.

Only War and Black Crusade are the most unpopular of the line. I would expect Dark Heresy 2 to get more than 5 based on that.