There is also a really handy "cheat sheet" (I think available on the Dark Reign website) that lists all the available actions in the game and a short summary of what they do, as well as the ever handy half/full designations. It includes the vehicle actions from the Apocripha as well. Before my first game session I made sure to print out a stack of these as well as some good intro "fluff" material and handed a neat little bundle of pages to each player. Since they were all new to Dark Heresy and some of them were new to the 40K universe it really made things alot easier as far as the learning curve is concerned.

After a few games they all pretty much got a good solid grip of the rules, as they are fast, fluid and pretty simple to remember. Gotta love percentile-based game mechanics with decimal-based modifiers! "Ok, that was a good idea to bring along a crowbar since the window seems to be stuck shut, add +10 to your check."

What I really love about Dark Heresy (besides the setting, obviously) is that EVERY character career in the game has massive "badass" potential. I am currently convinced that the Emperor LOVES Adepts since dumb luck seems to follow them around and gets stuck in their robes. They are all capable of sheer awesomeness, but each career takes a slightly different path to reach the awesome-sauce. When forming your group keep in mind they are best off if they include at least one hard hitting combat specialist (not a surprise for any RPG), but they will also really want a good investigator, a "people person", and a walking brain. Bonus points for medics, as usual.

Shattered Hopes is good for what it is indended for: It was the intro adventure for the game line... as in it predates the publication of the rulebook! It is pretty miserable as far as story and game flow are concerned so by all means tweak the hell out of it until it tastes good. Each scene and encounter is gimicked to introduce different game rules and mechanics: "This is how you make a social interaction test." "This is how you climb and jump" "This is how surprise works" "This fight causes fear" "This fight you should use your guns since the baddie looks really strong" "This fight you should use melee weapons since there is spilled fuel in the room". I ran it first as a bit of a throwaway adventure so my group could learn the game without major risk of thinking they were playing D&D still and blowing a more investigation and subtlety based mission (pretty much anything in print!).

Illumination is not bad. Edge of Darkness was an amazingly fun adventure to run and my players still have excited conversations about events from that mission. By ALL means give it a spin once your group is settled in. The official published adventures have so far proved to be very good quality, though keep in mind any time you see "mutants" or "psyker" in an adventure make sure to generate all of the stat-blocks you will need in advance, since these types of NPCs are by definition NOT "cookie cutter"

The Dark Reign website has several fan-written adventures posted. Some are pretty decent, others are terribad, so take your time and browse.

FFG also has 6 different fan-written adventures from a pair of writing contests that are available for free download.

Welcome to the Inquisition!