First as a new forum member i will introduce me and my gaming experience...

Im an old rpg addict and currently playing games of Star Wars Saga and D&D, call of Cthulu. Played Vampire/werewolf in the past but dont really like this game setting.

Im an avid fan of Darker Game Tone as a GM which makes my game always more realistic and survival heroism is a common theme. My fantasy game are brutal and im quite happy with D&D 4e and the different setting released each year right now for fantasy. Would like a system less grid/mini-based but i like the oldschool openess for RP of this game even if those class power may be sometime over restrictive.

Ok for Science-Fiction...

Im currently playing SW saga and with the ending of the line which was absolutely a great system for a space opera and one i will play for years (dont plan to buy any new SW system after, this one is just perfect), im looking for a new gaming system to support.

Im looking for a really darker horror/ post-apocalyptic system and warhammer 40 000 brought my attention. It looks like it is a really interesting setting who can suppost galactic campaign as well as a more local story.

So...

With that in mind i would like the feedback of the community about the Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader and Deathwatch game setup.

Whats the pro and con of those system? Is the system really supporting a darker game setting? I heard about mutilation, easy death and insanity... how is this system integrated with action? Im really looking for an horror survival type since SW saga do really support my space opera heroic action theme.

Finally, i heard about how the three are different tiered and themed game with the same system. Are they really compatible? Can i mix class of both 3 in a single game, like running an inquisitor in a ship with a trader? For me thats something really important. Whats the best supplement for Dark Heresy already out if i only consider buying 1 or 2???

Thx for your feedback, im listening

While Rogue Trader and Dark Heresy are mostly compatible with one-another (and most things can be ported between the two games with little or no modification), the settings are made to tell very different stories, which is underlined by the variances in the system (the monetary system being the main difference).

Dark Heresy is more inspired for Call of Cthulhu stories. Investigators confronted with things Man Was Not Meant to Know and explores such themes quite well.

Rogue Trader seems to cater more to sandbox games and the actions of the characters will affect millions and billions.

As for Deathwatch, I haven't a clue. It's probably going to be more combat-centric than the two previous, but other than that I don't know enough to give any impression of the system.

As for supplements, it depends on what you want. Personally, I think the Radical's Handbook is fantastic and I've used Disciples of the Dark Gods eagerly in my old campaign. Inquisitors Handbook is a solid book, but it caters more to powergamers than roleplayers in my opinion (which is not necessarily a bad thing).

Harboe said:

Though, oddly enough, if you wanted to modify The Call of Cthulhu into a 40kRP scenario, the exploration and discovery angles (finding an island not on any map, where sleeping horrors lie) is just as much a Rogue Trader concept as a Dark Heresy one.

There is a good deal of room for overlapping themes between Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader...

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Indeed, as N0-1 said, there's quite a lot of overlap between the two games and what can be told with what. However, if it's Survival Horror you're looking for, DH is a much better system to go with as, by default, RT tends to give the PCs a lot of cool toys, vast resources, more men then can fit into an industrial meat-grinder running continuously for a week, and one big honkin ship with cannons the size of skyscrapers. DH, on the other hand, in it's default setting gives the PC's a hand-full of bullets, a gun, enough money to restock their ammo half way to what they'd actually need, and the promise that they wont be missed when they die a horrible screaming death (probably in that meat-grinder that the RT PCs are sending their men into on a bet made in boredom the other day).

Graver said:

Oh, you can run survival horror with Rogue Trader. You just do it with starships, abandoned xenos cities and continent-sized mausoleums, with the promise of unimaginable wealth... having a starship matters little if you're cut off from it, and vast resources swiftly become irrelevant when you're a long way from civilisation.

You change the scale the players operate on, and you change the scale of the threat. Ghost ships and haunted stars, dead worlds orbiting unnatural suns, the whispering voices of dead gods, and the resting places of sleeping terrors that can never truly die.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

You make a definite point there. Survival horror can most definitly be done with RT, but it's a bit harder to do then it is in DH from the get-go. I guess i should have said that survival horror is easer with DH as opposed to RT.

Survival horror tends to depend heavily on insufficient resources and an over-whelming feeling of isolation. While you can get these with RT, it takes a bit more work then with DH (of which insufficient resources and a very personal isolation seem to be the norm). In RT, the PCs ship can be made to feel insufficient in comparisons to other things out there and they can feel isolated in the void but the scale changes these feelings in subtle ways. Survival horror just dose better and is easer to execute when done on a tight personal scale in relation to the protagonists, something that's hard to do when the protagonists in question have armies of men at their disposal. Due to the massive scale of everything, RT dose much better as gothic horror in tone and execution and when the horror elements are played up, it will tend to fall into the gothic category as opposed to the survival category more times then not.

In some ways it is, some ways it isn't, the easiest way to motivate characters in RT is simply to attack their assets on a personal level, being that for the majority of the time they do share their property with sometimes 20,000 + people in a confined space there is all sorts of potential there to bother them with everything from starvation, cannibalism, mutation, union uprisings, mutiny... gene-stealers etc and just plain, good old fashioned lost as hell in a universe where fairly much everyone hates you on some level because you're a rich, privilaged and mostly selfish *******, being knocked down a peg satisfies some sense of justice in the common man. Of whom was probably enjoying a quiet, boring life before your red-shirted minions belayed him outside a pub and dragged him off somewhere dark and horrible on your ship where he'll never see his wife and kids again.

And if they're coping personally well with the threats on big tin can, you can always have any number of factions just start shooting the same said tin can while they're similtaneously trying to sort their problems.

DH I find easier to run games for, its a lot more vicseral, simple and needy in a lot of ways, but very demanding on me because I basically have to have the Inquisitor point them in the direction of where I want the story to be, its a lot of work to back end all the details of an adventure. But in the same sense if I was running RT I think I would simply let the PC's go find their own trouble in search of profit factor and just adjudicate the mess they invariably cause with a few extra problems thrown in for good measure if I think theyre doing it too easily.