Situation: The group has just completed their previous mission (what ever campaign they last worked on) and are now awaiting new orders from their Inquisitor. But the orders never come... The group soon realizes that they have been 'forgotten'.

Reality: The Inquisitor has been removed by some plot by an adversary or some other twist of the Emperor's whim and now one of his groups of acolytes have no orders, no information and nothing to go on except maybe a few clues. Other than that they are on their own. No funding no nothing.

How would most GM's try to handle this situation? (Given that they were working with seasoned and mature players.) For the sake of an overall plot device say they have to figure out what has happened to their superior and foil some intricate plot that involved his/her removal/disappearance/death.

But for all intents and purposes the group is on their own and left to their own devices. Would this be doable?

This is indeed doable. In fact this storytelling style has a name, it's commonly called "Sandboxing". As in, place the players in a sandbox of a world and let them play and build as they wish. This method can work very well with groups of experienced players who feel comfortable with the world and who like to be in control of their own destiny.

I commonly find two major difficulties with this style of play. The first one is that the group of players may feel that their characters lack a uniting goal. Unless the acolytes care very much about their inquisitor, have a significant sense of duty or have very good reasons to stick together there is a good chance the players feel that it would be very much in character for the team to split up and settle down in a nice upperhive neighbourhood somehwere, selling thier impressive knowledge and fighting skills as teachers to someone who can pay them well. No risk, a sweet life. This is a very reasonable thing to do, but doesn't make for much of a story. The solution to this is of curse to talk with the players about what kind of story they want to create, and then cooperate to invent motivations for them and have them play according to these motivations inside the acolyte group.

The second difficulty is that as a GM you have to constantly react to what they players wants to do, wich leaves little room for plans. You have to be able to make up lots of places, people and plots more or less on the fly. It helps a lot if you are very familiar with the world and if you have a readily described place to be in. If you feel like this would be a fun challenge for you and your player group, go ahead! It is quite possible to craft the most wonderful stories while sandboxing. Good luck!

Maybe they were forgotten, but not for long....

An Inquisitor shows up, looks them over, and says something along the lines of, "Which of you is going to succeed your master?" Whoever steps forward first becomes the new Inquisitor.

But is this for real? Is the character a full-fledged Inquisitor? Or is this merely some sort of Xanatos Gambit designed to serve the ends of someone the characters don't even know about?

Awesome. I just wanted to get a general idea about this type of campaign because I remember reading a thread stating that in DH an open ended campaign would be impossible or that in DH you must have an Inquisitor telling you what to do... blah blah blah. This actually colored my opinion of the game before I even played it, so I shied away from DH because of it. But as I began to play more and more I found this to be untrue. I'm not GM'ing the campaign but the GM of the current group that I'm in has expressed interest in this type of campaign. So far we have worked through a few prepared campaigns and have done well so far (we're still ironing out our newbish tendencies ). I have confidence in the ingenuity and creativity of my GM in such an undertaking and just wanted to know others' feelings about such an endeavor. The ideas I threw out were just me throwing out stuff randomly. In truth I have no idea what my GM will have planned and am eager to get started. I do know that open ended campaigns or sandboxing is most definately not easy for a GM.

What would some of you try to do? I'm afraid my GM'ing experience has been only in the old Shadowrun, D&D (2nd ed.), Rifts and a few other goofier RPG's.

DarthM said:

Wow! Now [as a player] I am neurotically paranoid! What is REALLY going on here? Should I leap into the abyss, or excercise prudent caution? If I am a true and faithful servant of the Imperium (read ... the God-Emporer, the fate of Humanity, whatever), and if I am even faguely as paranoid as any good servant of the empire should be, then I should step back and ask WTF is going on? I might even be inclined to wax the bastard that dared to imply that our illustrious Inquisitor has met his end. However ... if I am less puritanical, I might be inclined to take advantage of the vacuum, and step up. Given this ideology, I might even seek to take advantage of the situation ... I might actually step up. In fact, I might try to kill anyone who stepped up before me ... might.

It just depends on the character I am playing.

In any case, this is a wonderful conundrum for players. It is also a potential "mad-cow" for GM's ... when you give player-characters this much autonomy, you need to understand that they will often [if not always] gank your game. So, my only [humble] advice would be ... be careful with this line of thought.

Sister Cat said:

Hehe, even puritanical acolytes might try to step up. It's all a matter of confidence really, since even the extreme puritan can in fact consider his or her Inquisitor as being extremely incompetent and useless and that they would make a lot better job as an Inquisitor themselves.

Varnias Tybalt said:

True that.

However, I guess it could depend on how much the character/acolyte is "in the know". In this game, your paranoia level is directly proportional to how much you know ... or it should be, if you're a wise acolyte.

Mellon said:

I really felt the need to quote this whole post, it truly exemplifies the difficulties with this sort of game play. I know with my group we have had some regular problems with this type of play style. For the most part, my PC's are usually completely overwhelmed and soon end up causing trouble for themselves just for something to do. If you do try this play style I would suggest keeping it brief. Let them mess around for a little bit, perhaps a mini side quest or a nice out of control bar fight, but put them on the "right" track after a couple of hours or less (if they are not enjoying themselves).

But, if you have the story telling ability to react to your players or the will power to keep them together, go for it. Sometimes it leads to amazing results.

Whatever you decided, good luck and happy gaming.

Thanks for your compliment fuzzy. *happy*

One more easily approachable version of Sandboxing is the "Empire building". Let the player group agree on what sort of "empire" they want their characters to (attempt to) build. It can be a bussiness, a criminal cartel, a network of traders in xeno artifacts, the best hotel in the Spire, their own starship with crew, become planetary governors, and so on. They will then have a common goal and purpose. This story can work as a background theme and give extra degrees of purpose to the players while they are doing their inquisitors bidding as they gain the contacts and resources needed. They can often spend "downtime" doing clever things relating to their Empire. Eventually the players might be so interested in this project that they want to spend more gaming time devoted to it, and less to the inq side of the plots. At this point they usually have a pretty clear idea about how they want to go about building their empire, and you as a GM have to prepare the challenges on the way. Be an attentive GM, listen to your group and create together.