I am trying to make a campaign for the Dark Heresy, and I would like some help.

Here are my ideas so far:

• Group of 5 players
• Any careers are allowed, but not 2 of the same
• Starts on the day they meet the Iquisitor
• Brief meeting, then sent on a mission
• Mission given by servitor
• Not by Inquisitor as the group is not important enough
• Mission is as follows, go to a planet to meet up with a contact, and help the contact out
• Shuttle takes them to a passenger ship that will take them to the planet
• Mutant trouble on the ship

That is as far as I have come, any coments or suggestions would be greatly appriciated.

Seems a solid plan, also a good way to get into running edge of darkness.

but maybe re-order things a bit, like a session devoted to how they got recruited in the first place.
Example one of the campaign start up adventures I had used was the players being on transport ship blah for individual reasons XY and Z, its fairly easy to give reasons why any character would be going to scintilla. what brought the party together was when things went horribly wrong about the ship.
In my mission a horrible Xenos Parasite queen thing had been smuggled on board and is slowly taking over the crew with her parasite insect things, this was engineered by a cult as a way to assassinate an interrogator (who is also aboard the ship) and test out one of there new weapons at the same time, so when **** hits the fan and they essentially rescued him and helped vent the Parasite queen into space, the interrogator decides to offer to recruit them with all the upside and downsides being an acolyte has, at this point the individual characters are entirely free to decline the offer and it wont be mentioned again (but they will be rolling up a new character, not because they are killed but because they had there shot at being an acolyte and blew it) and if they accept successful start to the campaign.

I find having a proper how they got recruited story much better than the essential you all met during training and now got a mission, which stinks of you all met in a pub.
Feel free to steal my little adventure idea above or consider doing a few individual mini-sessions with each player about how they get recruited either way hope the advice helps

I think Dark Heresy is a game about moral athority among other things. I would add a moral choice to the mutant thingy.

I would have some real mutants on the transport vessel. Bad, ugly, tainted and so on. Shot down and splatter their brains material. That had sneak onboard trying to avoid being hunting down where they come from. Yet i would have some some refugees thats not even mutants but hunted down as mutants because of ignorance.

Like a child or a young women (anything that gains a lot of sympaty points) that has hidden away in the kitchens. Some of the ships crew alarms the PC, and is hammering at the door, wanting to kill there freak. On the other side of the door someone is shouting telling them to go away and thats is only a polite and kind girl/child and they should be ashamed of themself.

The PC make their way in, and the cooks reluctantly stands aside if the PC is armed but begs them for mercy for the child/girls sake.The girl/child is sobbing and hiding her face but the pc get a glance of the face. She just got a cleft lip or a portwine stain and anyone will medicae skill knows that isnt a real mutation and it takes only simple surgery to fix on most worlds.

Either they kill the girl/child and get to defend verbally why they did so to the cooks, or they show her mercy and got to defend her verbaly to the crew that alarmed them. Either way you players must argue their choise.

If they let the girl/child live you and your player might keep her around as a handy slp doing the boring stuff. Like go buy food, gaurd the back door while the pc go in. And for you to use during adventures, the PCs food get poisioned by an enemy and since she was the one doning the cooking tasting the soup she falls down uncosious befor the PCs taste it, gets kidnapped, gets tourtured etc. Keeping an innocent and useful for boring stuff PC around is the win.

w176 said:

Good start. Now once the team is good and attached to that innocent, she needs to either:

1. Develop psyker powers so they have the moral dilemma about keeping her or turning her in.
2. Become a daemonhost, so now as the saying goes, "No good deed goes unpunished".
3. Be a spy for either a cult or a rival Radical/Puritan Inquisitor and betrays the group to them.

Now you have something to work with.

Or you could just use her to get the characters furious. Find their hideout been raided, all the useful stuff stolen, then find their innocent hiding in the corner, eyes cut out, fingers chopped off, sobbing, wailing in pain and still trowing up pieces of her chopped of body parts.

But you need to show her and have them interact with her quite a lot befor they start caring.

I am a huge fan of Inquisitor as a game about detectives so for my games the "truth" is always buried pretty deep. Even when the party has successfully completed their goals there tend to be a lot more questions than answers unless they devote time to "the leg work". I also leans toward The Enemy Within theme rather than The Enemy Without because it tends to bring a lot of those ambiguous moral issues into play naturally. By that I mean enemies that are Imperials themselves and in positions of power/authority that are looked to support Man rather than destroy it.

Perhaps the Mutants are just the tip of a juicy iceberg of industrial espionage between warring Noble Houses? Maybe a local Governor is looking for a larger Imperial Military presence in the region so that he can weasel his way into higher power circles by becoming a "war hero" and has decided that loosing mutants on unsuspecting civilians is his best shot of getting the Navy to come?

Well, Jrlie2000, what would you or your players like?

Conversation/rpg even if does not many anyting for success or even dice roling?
Combat, because you like combat (and NOTHING is wrong with this!)
Lots of horror?
Lots of puzzles and riddles?

and please do not say "all of them"!