Hi all,

This is my first post to the forum, but I've mulling this idea over for some time. One thing I've noticed with every iteration of WH40k RP that I've played is that character creation is relatively time consuming, and the setting itself with RAW can be fairly deadly. I love that sense of danger, but I also have some concerns about people spending a great deal of time crafting characters and then running into the high mortality rate and getting disconcerted.

The solution I'm proposing is heavily inspired by the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG, of which I'm a huge fan. What if, instead of generating fully fledged acolytes at the start, the PCs are presented with a set of 3 or 4 randomly generated non-acolytes. These characters would be simple, with ability scores, divinations, homeworlds and backgrounds. They would not have defined skills, talents, names, etc. When it comes to doing things that would normally call for skill checks, I'll probably aim for related characteristic checks with bonuses depending on background. I've written up a program in python to generate these non-acolytes, based on materials from the DH 2E core book, Enemies Without, and the 1st Ed Inquisitors handbook (I couldn't ignore mindwiped or Schola Progenium).

These characters would then run through an introductory adventure full of mortal danger, and the survivors would be recruited into the Inquisition due to their success. The intro adventure I've written involves the PCs awakening from cryogenic sleep/stasis aboard a Heretek's research vessel that has suffered catastrophic systems failures due to Inquisitorial influence. The adventure itself would function more like a dungeon crawl than a classic Dark Heresy investigation, with the group making their way to safety through various environmental systems failures, surviving cultists, broken down sentry guns, and escaped experiments. Ideally, this adventure would have about a 50% mortality rate.

Following this, I'd allow the players to take their favorite survivors and finish building them into Acolytes, with some possibility of bonus XP based on their performance.

I'd love to hear any recommendations, and if anyone is interested, I can share a link to the python code I've written (which I admit is rough, I'm not a developer, just learned Python in a linguistics class)

-Jon