I am fairly new to the Wh40K universe, having played Warhammer 40K a couple of times and read a little in the universe of 40K. I have roleplayed for many years. My group likes a mix of combat, roleplaying and mystery solving. Most are in their 20's and 30's. We are, if anything, a little light on combat and heavy on roleplaying. They are all fairly experienced gamers too. I want to get off to a good start and pull them into the 40K universe and get them excited about the game. None of them have any more experience with 40K universe than myself.

Now, finally to the question: Based on the above information, which introductory adventure would you recommend and what order would you go from there. Eventually I will be making my own adventures but time constraints at the moment prevent me from doing so now.

IMO, Edge of Darkness, hands down.

Shattered Hope is a dungeon crawl with no depth and only as much roleplaying as you bring to it. Illumination is a railroad track, albeit a somewhat interesting one. Edge of Darkness is a mystery, with a good mix of roleplaying, investigation and combat, while being enough of a sandbox that the players can choose which avenues to investigate and which enemies to fight (or not).

Of the published Dark Heresy adventures I have seen (which I confess is less than half), Edge of Darkness is the best.

I second Edge of Darkness. I've run it and I have to say it's a really fun adventure all around. There's a lot of room for PC freedom and it's pretty easy to run for the GM. It is, in my opinion, the best type of adventure: the sandbox. The PCs are sent to a specific district that has a nice map and characters inhabiting different parts of it. The villains are somewhere out there and they have an agenda. And then the adventure proper begins. The PCs have an enormous ability to influence what happens in the adventure and take on problems their own way.

Illumination isn't bad, but it's quite linear. I guess this should be expected since it's meant to be an intro adventure, but the PCs are just railroaded from one place to another. I don't like it.

I've run Shattered Hope once, and in a really silly way. I had just gotten the DH rulebook and wanted experience GMing (my first time) so I had my brother roll up a rank 8 Arbitrator and run him through it. It's really dull. There's some minimal action and then the Acolytes shoot stuff. That's it. It has none of the intrigue and investigation that Illumination and Edge of Darkness have and it's combat is pretty lame.

I have seen all the official, adventures, and I have to say Edge of Darkness is my favorite. It lets the PCs do their thing and advance the plot themselves instead of having it served to them on a silver platter (something that the adventures in Purge the Unclean are often guilty of).

Thanks for the feedback. Edge of Darkness it is. We have played a lot of D&D and Pathfinder, Star Wars, some Savage Worlds in a modern setting and not much else (though I have tried a lot of others) so I am looking forward to trying something quite a bit different. Edge of Darkness sounds like the perfect adventure for our group. Thanks again.

Late to the game, but I agree with LuciusT and Numb3rc.

-=Brother Praetus=-

Edge of Darkness is easily the best intro adventure for a group with lots of RP potential and halfway decent investigation skills. If you have any plans on moving into the Purge the Unclean adventures then I would highly suggest running Illumination before you start in on Purge. Things will make more sense to the characters and possibly have a more personal feel to events to come.

Welcome to your new addiction.

Edge of Darkness is the best intro, but a few things to consider:

1)Make sure the PC all have at least 3 points of armor. If you have a guardsman with flak and an adept with none the autoguns will shred the adept.

2)Make sure the PCs know they are under cover and their boss doesn't want them to reveal who or what they are. This is also a good adventure to drive home to the PCs how important it is to maintain cover. (As the bad guys will just release the plague, and run if they don't.)

Dalnor and Zilla, thanks for you help. Thanks for your advice Dalnor, I'll make sure they have armor and know they aren't to go around proclaiming themselves as Inquisitors. I think in the adventure it suggests they bring a lot of interest onto themselves if they do, so I'll 'encourage' them to be subtle.

If you can grab them, I advise you to read the Eisenhorn trilogy and the Ravenor book, especially the Ravenor one seems to me quite indicative of how acolytes should work (noting that the involved characters are rank 9+ in those novels, of course).

About the "best" classes for a group, a Techpriest, a Psycker and an arbitrator make a good investigation team without internal conflicts. It tends to be a bad idea to put a Sister of Battle in the same group than a Techpriest (they just speak different languages, metaphorically speaking), and it can be tricky to have a psycker with a witch hunter like a soriritas. I think those three (techpriest, psycker and arbitrator) make a good group, maybe lacking a little in the way of conventional combat power (the techpriest with the right implants can be a glacier tank, slow, taking a lot of hits, but as certain as the night and the day; the psycker is a "mage", and can even play telekinetic tricks with some special swords..., and the arbitrator is a policeman/policewoman). The scum is a glass cannon or a social specialist, the Imperial Guardsman is a soldier (with all the implications that carries, including contacts and knowledge of procedures), the adept is little more than a bureucrat with ton of knowledges and the Assassin is just a freak centered around melee in a world with laser guns... (that is, like the Guardsman, but to melee. Also, a fragile runner). The Sister of Battle is like the guardsman, but in another level entirely (usually 0 subtetly, and a strong pyromaniac preference ^^).

Personally, our group is made with a Guardsman (muscle & contacts with the military), my techpriest (surprisingly the mastermind in the group) and a psycker (the current GM's character, little more than background until the position rotates). So far has been good, but we have "conscripted" muscle anytime we thought there was going to be problems. We are currently "expanding" our pool of PCs, since we'll reach the 5.000 PX soon and will have a whole starship's crew to take to landing parties.

Shattered hope does do a good job of setting up situations to allow new players to learn the system and understand the numbers of playing. Edge of darkness is the better "immersive experience" for understanding the world of the 40K. I would steer players with no roleplay experience to shatterd hope, but otherwise Edge of Darkness is great for experienced roleplayers who want to start Dark Heresy, IMHO.

Argus Van Het said:

I can´t be the mastermind because I´m the damned GM, and the guardsman....well, you know about him, my old friend.

Relating to the assassin: I think you can evolve the assassin´s career path like a sniper if you choose the suitable talents and skills.

Well, in WH40k the sniper "par excelence" are the Vindicare Assasins. To becaome one in Ascension you have to be either an Assassin (which by the way is the class with more options... 6 of the Ascended classes can be entered playing an assassin. Who said they had no future?) or a guardsman.

Nihilus, I already told you: make him be the GM for once, and try to be the mastermind. Of course, I would be just behind you, pulling the strings and enjoying how the job is being done without me having to do it ^^.

Ha,ha,ha......good attempt, Argus, but I´m not sure of what could happen if I allow him to be the GM. My precious campaign....destroyed by that freak....

Shattered Hope is a limited adventure that amounts to moving through some caves, killing some stuff, doing some search tests, and trying not to get yourself killed with either the Fuel Tanks or the Antithesis Stone.

When I ran it, I changed a lot of it. I changed the Guard Encampment at the start so there was lots to do (help a repair crew with a Russ, help out a Medic tending to Guardsmen wounded in the mines, and so on) - my players ended up spending about 3 hours in the Guard Encampment alone, so that worked well. For the mines, I made the terrain hazards (the climbing, the 'dreadful gap') a part of the main map, rather than having the distinct "Learn the movement rules" and then "Learn the combat rules" as Shattered Hope tries to do (it is a demo scenario, after all). I beefed the combat up a bit, added more big abominations and made the mutant ambush more dangerous (6 guys with decent weapons).

Finally, as my aim was to take Shattered Hope and make it the first part of a bigger plot, I changed the ending. No more Plaguebearer, but renegade Tech-Priests studying the Antithesis Stone. They had to fight them and their Servitor Guards, and then stop an Intrusion Spirit from wiping the data-logs. This gave them more information on where else the Tech-Priests were conducting these experiments (I actually wrote and printed a Project Log to give to the players) and gave them hints about what to expect in the next part of the story.

All up, about 12 hours of play (though for some this was only their second game of Dark Heresy - it was only my 4th).

So the scenario, as printed, works for what it is intended for - a demo to Dark Heresy - but to run it as a real scenario, it required modification to make it more interesting.

BYE