Hello my fellow DMs.

I apologize in advance for this. This is because the topic is a lie. This is not my first campaign but my second. My first was a disaster. It started off by my players being under 18 so that did not help. But here are a few stories before I make my requests...

Within the first five minutes of my first session one of my players (an assassin) stuck her hand into an electro lock. This shattered all of the bones of her right arm. This happened to be her main weapon arm. That set her up for a loooooong campaign...

First planet the acolytes found and landed on they were convinced to go into a mountain stronghold to take out the leader of a cult called the cult of the four armed emperor. I know that anyone who knows anything about Warhammer 40k would know it was a tyrannic cult. None of them figured it out. One of my players was playing a sister of battle. This caused trouble when the acolytes eventually managed to knock the BBG unconscious. The acolytes picked up the BBG and took him for questioning. At some point one of the acolytes took off the BBG's hood and saw an elongated and enlarged cranium. SO the sister shot him point blank. No interrogation, no questioning, nothing.

On the way to the Genestealer cult HQ they were riding in a truck of some sort when they were attacked by several bikers. My most "extreme" acolyte thought it would be a good idea to leap from the moving truck, kick the driver off the motorcycle, and continue driving the hog without any difficulty. He rolled a 01 on his check... I had to let him have it it was awesome.

My acolytes were sent with a device that would divert a tyranid swarm (yes very kryptmonian). They were sent to take it to an Ork planet to hide the device in the lead warboss' hut. I thought this was a good campaign hook. BUT my players thought different. During the transition through space before the drop-off my priest character got into a scuffle with a Catachan jungle fighter. This could have been resolved with an apology and a have a nice day. BUT what do I expect from a player who is proud that his nickname was Hot Carl. He challenged the Sergeant of the squad to single combat (No weapons). This was stupid but after agreeing to the rules and almost losing the fight he pulled a gun on the Serge. This of course causes an eruption so he throws his pistol at the sergeant's head and knocks him unconscious. Yeah. I allowed this. I did not want a full on TPK.

After they convinced the squad to join their ground assault they painted themselves green and ended up in a Rogue Trader era Ork village. Somehow, I swear I do not know how this happened, they killed the warboss and took his real estate for themselves... Yeah... After that they were challenged to a race across the desert. They stole a motorbike. It did not work until the Techpriest made it work. Somehow they won. They ended up with ork armor and primitive ork weapons. When they got back to their ship they found one of their squad nailed to the prow of the ship with his guts in the shape of a chaos star and curses written in his blood.

Anyway I hope this informs you a bit in regards to my previous experience with Dark Heresy. And I was hoping someone could give me some tips?
Also I was hoping someone had a link to some blank inquisitorial documents? Dataslates, Parchment, anything like that would be infinitely helpful.

I am trying to run my next campaign in a more serious fashion.

I have new players (most of whom are un familiar with the warhammer universe) and they are all over the age of 18. Hopefully that helps.

Like I said: Any tips or blank documents would be so helpful.

MAN! Do I EVER feel your pain! I've been playing with the same group of guys for coming up on 10 years now and I've got to say "under 18" isn't much of an excuse. I have one player who commits suicide if his character isn't instantly awesome and another who insists on settling everything with a gun barrel. Makes for some LOOOONG games.

My suggestion is to start with something fairly straight forward to get a gauge of your players and how their characters are going to react to things. Giving them a solid "go over to that Chaos Cult Compound and eliminate them" for example. No question as to WHO the bad guys, WHY the bad guys are bad or WHERE the bad guys are likely to be. This lets you know if your players are going to kick in the door guns blazing, or try for a more subtle approach and inflitrate the cult, spend months making detailed dossiers on each cult member and finally assassinating the Leader whom has taken them into his closest confidence. Their choices will help you set the tone for what sorts stroies they'll want you to tell later.

They didn't fail the game, you did. You can't run a game as a competition style before you are at a level. You need to play on there side. Support them suppot them support them.

If the don't get something, you made it to hard. Fix it. Make them roll an easy roll for a skill, for raw intelligence, fellowship or intelligense and pass an note with the answer.

Let them have a voice of common sense around. Like an older acaloyte from some other cell, badly hurt, maybe even almost total body paralised, in vox contact from there temperary base, or the ship or the transport or something. Doing technincal stuff, monotoring the news flow, looking at sattilite images and every now and then giving the pc a advice. Or just say "What? What did you just say that you would do?"

Invent a common sense merit. Give it a low cost. The merit means that every time you want to do something that against the common sense the ST give you a hint. "Common sense tingling"

Support good playing, and get a system to show approval. This is my method.
Get a pile of glass pebbels, poker markers, non stops or something other small and light you could slide over the table. Every time a player does something smart/awesome/funny/whatever that deserves a reward (if you got a problem with sillyness you can have a no-silly rule) just pick a pebbel and put it in front of the table of the player that did it. Nice. Fast. Dosen't disrupt play. Shows all players that you thought it was good. Let the players reward each other too, same way. Pick a pebble from the pile give to the player that did something awesome.
Suddenly people will be jumping to hoops to get the rests appoval.
If you want to you can put a small reward to the pebbles. 10 xp or maybe 1 throne or whatever. Either you split the total number of pebbels won that night fairly, or you make it induvidual. I prefer to split it fairly. If you do that they will cooperate to make awesome scenes.
Typically during a good game the best players gets at most about 8 pebbles. And usually the rest is close behind. If someone dont get any, try to reward the small things that good, so the person isnt left out.
Even if the players are munchkins that want to level up fast they wont reward each other silly. The approval competion will be more important than the extra xp. Munchkins want to compete, they want to win and they won't reward there friends before they done something awesome enough.

The best thing about this system is that its rewards as soon as someone does something good, don't distube play and all posetive reiforcments.

I understand that it is not a competition between players and me. I appreciate all the advice and I will take it under consult. But I would like to state for the record that during the game I was having a fun time too. I did not discourage any of these actions. I only state them now as an example of how it was played and inquire as to solutions that will provide a more serious and game oriented time as opposed to who can be the most outrageous and get away with it.

Sit down and have a mature open discussion the first time you get together to make characters. Tell them they get to decide and agree on how they want the campaign, so that you can write it aw awesome as possible. Decide on a gaming style together. Define it together.

Ask questions like:

What do you want ans expect out of this campaign?

Whats epic?

How to handle humour?

How do you like ingame cooperation to work?

How "smart" do you want to play the game, how on the fly?

Do you like etical dilemmas?

Do you want epic scenes with lot of emotion?

How do you like to handle the strategical elements?

What sort od scenes do you enjoy?

What elements of play dont you enjoy?

What sort of movie/comic/tv-serie would you say is your style inspiration? (if they say "Firefly" they probably enjoy and think is important doing a few outragous stunt no and then and should be allowed to spending a fortune point, if they say "Prison brake" they might enjoy something grittyer and smarter)

What off game rules do you want? ("If someone later then x without calling he/she buys the group something to drink the next time".... and so on)

Ask open follow up questions.

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By doing this you get the group together on what everyone defines what makes an awesome game, and they start striving towards that goal rather then picking easy short term approval points by doing outragous stuff. People will behave better if they settled for a common goal.

And you will have figured out what makes your player tick and can write an awesome campaign.