As a mate of mine has taken the GM reigns for the next couple of months. I thought it would be a good idea to work on a different kind of campaign. After rereading Dan Abnett's Traitor General, I thought it would be cool to have a group of acolytes dropped into a world under chaos control to complete a few tasks. I have speculated different ideas as to what these objectives should be, and I have limited them to three broad catagories; Assassination, Sabatoge, and Information Gathering. Having them drop down and fall into a group of resistance fighters loyal to the emperor seemed to be a fun touch. And I'v speculated a few prereqs for the group before the group rolls up their characters and gets the mission specs.

*Starting 1500 exp, none but the best will be sent for a high priority mission such as this.

*No psyker characters, as the enemy psykers will sense their presence easier then the blunts.

*The group must have atleast one Cleric, or Sister of Battle. The acolytes will need a spiritual leader to keep their loyalty and sanity in this harsh mission.

I was also thinking of sending an interrogator and a unit of 10 veteran guardsmen with them. But I may not.

Questions and comments are quite welcome.

This sounds like a very unique and playable Dark Heresy game. I feel it requires a lot of pre-game preparation by the gamemaster ( even more than your typical DH game), but nothing that will discorage a dedicated gamemaster. Have you seen the first part of the third season of the Battle Star Galactica series? This is the part when the humans are stuck in New Caprica under Cylon rule. I think the first few episodes of this season offer a lot of inspiration as to how to portray a guerilla war while paying attention to those involved in it.

OK.

Um.

Reservations first.

This seems to be essentially a military interdiction mission. So i'm wondering why an Inquisitor would send his acolytes in, when the Imperial Guard will have entire corps of troops skilled and specialised into this form of warfare?

This is a combat game essentially. Pretty much every part of gameplay is likely to be combat, or combat-related.

However, if your group is happy to play such a fight-heavy game, and you're happy that an Inquisitor will throw away his skilled investigators in a warzone, this idea has merit.

Personally i'd make them Imperial Guards, not Inquisitorial acolytes.

But, i think the campaign could be very interesting;

Assassination - very nice little mission, perhaps they are trying to find the Chaos General an kill him, but also have orders to eliminate any commander they find...or prioritise enemy psykers?

Sabotage - i really like this idea. Cutting communications, destroying bridges, wrecking fuel dumps or power plants, poisoning wells, breaching fortifications, transmitting false orders, etc. Very nice.

Info gathering - again very nice idea, requiring stealth and subterfuge. Capturing enemy officers and HQs for battleplans, etc.

I'd also suggest the following:

Finding loyalist enclaves - those desparate survivors hiding out in the ruins, acting as partizans, etc. Also freeing prisoners penned up in concentration camps or wrking on slave0gangs, etc.

Target painting - planting homing beacons for orbital or artillery strikes...can the PCs get out of the area before the bombs drop?

Kellys Heroes - well..the banks will be full of gold with nobody guarding it right?

I can see having all sorts of fun with limited supplies, nowhere safe to rest, suspicious locals, etc...

Well I'v mapped out a few of the "whys", for having an inquisitor send his acolytes into a warzone such as this. The enemy may have a traitor inquisitor in their ranks, or plan to use a large daemonic insersion against the forces of the imperium. Either of these will merit inquisitorial involvement. Especually assassination, as a virus bomb is messy and the inquisitor may escape.

And depending on how the acolytes play determines how much combat they will face. If they can lay low and stay under cover I would imagine that the number of unnessisary combats could be few. I want alot of interaction with local resistance fighters. Corruption and insanity will be abundent.

Luddite said:

Following up on this the key quote from the initial post was 'under complete control' which indeed would merit planetwide cleansing/eradication. Now if it is in danger of falling under control that is a different story. This seems one of the drawbacks of DH - you always have the epic WH universe to handle the big problem.

Perhaps such elements are taking control of major manufacturing or agricultural plants or zones or a trade guild.

Perhaps you can look at this from a different perspective. Perhaps the groups are unknowing acolytes of a radical inquisitor who sends them to a world the he believes is key to starting a cleansing fire in a particular subsector to build up Imperial military forces to face off against the growing threat of the Slaught (or some other xeno enemy.) The characters would then be accomplishing same missions you discussed, but they will actually be creating the crisis, as opposed to adverting it. Perhaps the characters are told the story you created that they are attempting to help, and perhaps the radical inquisitor has another group of senior acolytes creating the appearance that a chaos cult is attempting to break the world away from the imperium.

Salcor