Heyo, I'm a bit new to the whole GM/DM business, having only (grudgingly) run a group of 3 and 4 through two premade campaigns for D&D 3.5 when the regular DM didn't show. I've always been a fan of the 40k universe, so when I found out about Dark Heresy my wallet was immediatly emptied. I think I've got a good grasp of the mechanics and rules, and now I've got a hankerin' for running my own adventure, but there are some things the core rulebook can't teach me, so I've come here to ask those of you more experienced with GMing Dark Heresy campaigns for advice and help, so thank you in advance!

I've designed my campaign to present challenges that all the career/class types equally, that way I can keep the sense of variety fresh and constantly challenge my PCs with choices. The campaign itself takes place on a desert planet only recently purged of a burgeoning Ork infestation. Not really something worth investigating by the inquisition if it hadn't been for the fact that the planet had little to no Imperial Guard presence, and no Astares chapters were active anywhere near the planet. Also, the planet has stopped responding to any sort of interstellar comminucation, so yeah... there's that too.

Since this will be the first time me or my group will have ever played a Dark Heresy game, I've set up an "Obstacle course" onboard the ship the players are traveling to the planet on i.e. The Tutorial Level. This leads me to the first of my questions: What sort of weapon should I let my players start out with? I would like to offe rthem a choice of at least 1 of any pistol type, with maybe a chainsword/powersword thrown in for those who prefer melee. Would this be considered a "balanced" move on my part? Each player get's to pick only one of the offered weapons for the obstacle course, but I'm not sure if letting them use Bolt Pistols and Chainswords might be giving them too much power too soon.

Following the completion of the obstacle course, the ship arrives at the planet, finding nothing really out of the ordinary other than a bunch of trading vessels retrofitted with nasty looking weapons. The PC are shot to the surface of the planet in drop pods while their own now-heavily-damaged ship get's the hell outta dodge. The PCs land near a dusty mining town that sits on the edge of a vast expanse of Salt Flats. Here int his town the players will find out that this one town has no idea why they've suddenly been cut off from the rest of the Imperium, some NPCs citing that increasingly strange messages from other neighboring towns and cities prior to being completely cut off from everyone else, culminating in the revelation that the same day that they were cut off a strange tower appeared far off in the salt flats, with a vile smell being blown in by the wind whenever it comes from the towers direction. I have set-up one of those choice-challenges here: The tower is too far off to reach on foot, and there are feral gangs of raiders that patrol the edge of the Flats in a variety of armed vehicles to boot. The players have the choice of either A) If they have a tech-priest with them, or an Adept with knowledge of mechanics, they can obtain either an Assault Speeder or a pair of Motorcycles with sidecar and Lasgun attachments for use to get to the tower. Or B) failing option one, they can massacre a local gang that have a Land Raider in their possession. This leads to my second question: How the heck does vehicle combat work? I can't find any rules in the core rulebook for it, and I really need them as I have a whole High-speed chase-and-battle with the Salt Flat Raiders as the PCs make their way to the tower. Is there a seperate book I need, or perhaps someone has a PDF with the rules I need?

Lastly the tower iself is an amalgamation of old Ork structures held together by Chaos powers, with each floor of the tower offering a unique challenge to the players, culminating in a huge boss battle at the summit and forshadowing my next planned campaign. Which leads me to my third question: One of the tower floors makes my players fight what they fear most, which requires a Necron Warrior and i cannot find anything on those int he core rulebook and my friend who possesses the expanded "Beastiary" (for lack of the real name for it) says they aren't in that book either. Help?

Once again, my thanks for all the help you can spare!

What sort of weapon should I let my players start out with?

Each class has starting gear. I'd suggest having them use that unless you have a special reason to go for something different. If you really want to be nice, let them sell their initial gear at its purchase price, the ignore rarity as they buy new gear with their starting money.

- darkheresy.wikia.com/wiki/Necrons < fanmade Necron stats. There aren't any official stats for them.

- Vehicle combat doesn't exist in any official form yet, you will need to wait until the next Rogue Trader book comes out to get them.

- Rank 1 PCs are among the lowest type of minions an Inquisitor has. According to the fluff, most don't survive long. Anything beyond las, SP and primitive melee weapons should be something they have to work for.

- Combat can be pretty brutal on PCs. Do not be afraid to have them burn fate points to avoid death. If they died because you miscalculated the difficulty, you can find an excuse to give them a fate point later on.

- There are a lot of enemies that they will be unable to take down without some serious help in the form of expendable allies and/or weapons they couldn't afford normally.

As for equipment, it really depends on the Rank you're starting your PCs off at. If you're starting them off at rank 1, giving them Powerswords, Bolters, and Chainswords might make their day at first only to have them casting incredibly dirty looks your direction when you slap them with the -20 modifier to using the damned shinny things because they do not yet have the weapon training talent for those weapons yet ;-)

As for vehicle rules, I have the old ones HERE (these are bing updated by FFG to appear in an upcomming RT book and in thge DH Guard book).

@Graver & the Apocrypha
Didn´t they said they are NOT goint use the "old ones" as a basis?

@Back2Topic:

Two things give a pause: your choice of having a gang operating a (derilict) landraider (?!?!?!?!) and the tower which appeared being descriped as an amalgam of ork & chaos.

But his wasn´t your question:

The only actual available rules are those posted by Graver. Otherwise, you can simply start to screw rules and get the thing done completely narrative, making tests up as it feels "right" to you. While it is something one has to get used to, it has proofen to be much much quicker then anything else. Won´t be balanced so. But will be fun! The only thing the players have to get used to is that they can only ask twice "what will I have to role if.. " and then stick to one of the decisions. Everything else will bock down the game much to much.

@The Necron
Their are no rules for Necrons yet. But why does it have to be Necron your pc fear must? Their are towns and loads of other things a pc can fear reasoanbly. Simply use some chaos spawn monstrosity or a very scary daemon thing. Make it look similiar to a necron (perhaps a silver-and-brass mechanical construct using gore instead of oil) and give it stats you would like.

Gregorius21778 said:

The Land Raider puzzles me too. Those things are supposed to be Astartes-only issue. It's a bit like having a Mara gang with access to Apache helicopters in a modern-day campaign. Now I hope Michael Bay doesn't read this forum...

Gregorius21778 said:

Yep. You don't have to know every single rule by heart in your first games. If you don't remember exactly what skill does what, just make it up. Keep the game moving and keep the book-flipping to a minimum, even if that means going astray from the rules. You can always check the rules later in order to be ready if a similar situation happens in a later game.

Gregorius21778 said:

Good point. Only a tiny portion of the Imperium's population has heard of the Necrons, after all, and most of them have absolutely no idea of what they are.

IMO the defining feature of a RPG is decision making. That is the only thing that distinguishes RPG from reading a book aloud. When your players are confronted by choice they have to make a decision, and then they have to live with that decision. Choice and decision making should be the skeleton of your game. The meat comes from roleplaying; the way that your players roleplay their characters and just as importantly how you roleplay the NPCs. Interesting characters and interesting NPCs make a game come alive. Everything else; the descriptions, monologues, die rolls, equipment and book-keeping are merely the skin of the beast.

Every story should be a mystery. It should have a beginning, an end that is forseeable in some shape and form to the Gm and in-built motivation for the PCs to get there. What happens in the middle does not have to be heavily scripted.

Every story should take place in an interesting environment. In a sci-fi setting this should be easy.

Whenever you have an idea for the story, think hard whether you are adding a choice that will improve the story or just putting in hoops for your players to jump through. Choice is good. Hoops are bad. A few hoops here and there are okay but even these should join choices together. Otherwise you are just writing cut-scenes.

One important thing that can be overlooked is character design. Don't be afraid to guide your players into the sort of characters they can have and even the skills they can have. Not all characters suit all settings. In general, be wary of overpowering your characters early on. A melee character with a power sword doesn't have much to aspire to. For the same reason you wouldn't gve a starting D&D character a magical weapon.

So,

The desert world you describe has just been through a war. Presumably it is littered with corpses, smashed vehicles, expended ammo, trenches, craters, barbed wire, mines, etc.

As for interstellar communication, in DH there really isn't any anyway. Only astropaths. So presumably the planetary astropath isn't responding. Is he/she ill, dead, captive?

Does the ship have to be shot down? Can't see that this adds much to the story in its own right. They could just be delivered by pod to the same effect. If the ship is going to be attacked by the traders, this should form part of the mystery. Why would traders open fire on an imperial ship? Even better, why not have the PCs find passage on a trader to get to the world in the first place.

Who are the traders? Maybe scavengers; combing the world for battlefield detritus. Such people probably wouldn't want to provoke anyone unless their business was interfered with.

What is the mining town mining and how did it survive the ork incursion? Must there be cities? On a desert world a city would have to do something pretty important to justify its existence. Maybe there are just a couple of outposts and these have been cut off. They mine/harvest something valuable. There is still the business of how they survived the orks.

So to the choices. Do the PCs go to the tower? Not an obvious choice, if they can just wait around and report it to the inquisition. It is pretty obviously chaotic and probably easier to vortex bomb it from orbit.

Personally I would backdate the ork invasion by a couple of hundred years and say they were wiped out by the imperial guard. The forgotten war moved on, leaving a world covered with battlefield detritus in its wake. The desert has swallowed much of the debris but scavengers work the dunes with hovers, fishing out smashed vehicles, weapons, etc. They control the wilds. The PCs are sent to a friendly contact; a water miner who lives in a tiny settlement and who sells his water to the city. This is not a real city - more of a town and this where the corruption is. The town mines something important and so it has its own astropath, who has stopped communicating. Apparently he is ill. The behaviour of the governor has become increasingly bizarre. He sends patrols into the dunes to dig things up. This brings them into conflict with the scavengers. The water miner is on okay terms with them. The governor is trying to reconstruct a destroyed artefact that the orks had brought to the planet, not knowing that it was a chaos portal. The scavengers have found the missing piece but want an outrageous sum of money that the governor does not have. Enter the PCs who can choose who to speak to, who to visit, whether to use diplomacy or force. Both sides have agents in each others organisations. Neither much appreciates a visit from the inquisition. The astropath has been drugged. If the PCs look likely to get to him the governor tried to murder the astropath. Lots of choices, a complex conspiracy and plenty of opportunities to fall foul of scavengers an have firefights in the desert. The water miner is trying to build a better truck from scavenged parts. Maybe the PCs make it work and then they have a vehicle of their own. Maybe they can scavenge some weapons/armour for it mad max style.

Just some ideas : ). Constructive I hope.

DavidJones said:

Well, actually you were pretty spot on with the astropath. The PCs find him at the top of the tower, completely overtaken by chaos, forcing all ships in the sector to refit themselves for war and defend the planet (If they refuse, he'll just abandon them to the warp if they try to perform a Jump, so you can see why they might be cooperative) while he contructs more towers for a ritual meant to create another Eye-of-Terror (only on a smaller, more stable scale)

As for just reporting the tower to the inquisition, I thought that one out already. If the PCs linger too long in the town waiting for pick-up or trying to get ahold of their patron inquisitor a wave of demons will overrun the town hopefully forcing them to flee towards the tower (So long as I spell it out to my players how hopeless any form of resistance would be) Plus I'm planning to litter all NPCs with bits and pieces of the Towers lore, to pique their interest (I'm trying not to just motivate the Players with something like "Oh I heard that totally awesome mega-weapons and treasure lie in the tower")

And the entire world isn't a desert world, they just happen to land in an area that is a desert. The rest is either scorched woodland or charred farmland, with maybe some burnt suburbs thrown in for variety XD.

And the ship doesn't actually get shot down, more like it's shot at. But since the attack (from a trading vessel no less) catches them off guard (and also the fact that there is a lot of them) forces the ship to flee, launching the players to the planet as it exits stage right.

However, backdating the ork invasion makes more sense than what I have written, especially seeing as the planet is pretty cleaned-up of of detritus and dead bodies...

Bilateralrope said:

What sort of weapon should I let my players start out with?

Each class has starting gear. I'd suggest having them use that unless you have a special reason to go for something different. If you really want to be nice, let them sell their initial gear at its purchase price, the ignore rarity as they buy new gear with their starting money.

- darkheresy.wikia.com/wiki/Necrons < fanmade Necron stats. There aren't any official stats for them.

- Vehicle combat doesn't exist in any official form yet, you will need to wait until the next Rogue Trader book comes out to get them.

- Rank 1 PCs are among the lowest type of minions an Inquisitor has. According to the fluff, most don't survive long. Anything beyond las, SP and primitive melee weapons should be something they have to work for.

- Combat can be pretty brutal on PCs. Do not be afraid to have them burn fate points to avoid death. If they died because you miscalculated the difficulty, you can find an excuse to give them a fate point later on.

- There are a lot of enemies that they will be unable to take down without some serious help in the form of expendable allies and/or weapons they couldn't afford normally.

Thanks for the link to the necrons, although I may tweak it to be a bit easier seeing as the whole "fight your fear" thing requires my players to be isolated from eachother.

The group that have confirmed they are able to play my campaign so far is about 4 (but life might get in the way, you never know) Would it be considered fair if I rolled a few extra characters to accompany their party as NPCs? Or allow the players to control more than 1 character at a time?

As for equipment, it really depends on the Rank you're starting your PCs off at. If you're starting them off at rank 1, giving them Powerswords, Bolters, and Chainswords might make their day at first only to have them casting incredibly dirty looks your direction when you slap them with the -20 modifier to using the damned shinny things because they do not yet have the weapon training talent for those weapons yet ;-)

As for vehicle rules, I have the old ones HERE (these are bing updated by FFG to appear in an upcomming RT book and in thge DH Guard book).

Vehicle Apocrypha? Score! Thanks for that, should help me out immensely, even if I may have to tweak some of the rules a bit.

As for the players, I'm debating right now whether or not to allow them a "free" rank up immediatley following the tutorial portion of the campaign, so everyone can get a feel for the system (It seems different from the "level" system I'm used to) Considering how difficult combat is supposed to be, even on a small scale, 1 free rank wouldn't be out of line or overpower them, would it?

(deleted for redundancy)

A lot of the decisions you make will depend on your players. Some groups like investigation more than combat and vice versa. You should also account for their experience of RPG. If they are new to RPG then springing something massive on them right away could be overwhelming. If you have some epic ideas then in this case there is nothing wrong with filing them for now and focusing on some more elementary scenarios so they can get used to the system, their characters can gain experience and gear and then you can bring in the epic stuff when they are ready for it. Since the epic stuff is harder to Gm well this would allow you to build up some experience with the system too.

There is nothing wrong with working on a smaller scale. It is much easier to roleplay a small number of NPCs well, the PCs are more likely to remember who they are between sessions, etc. But, each to their own and you will know what your group is ready for best..

It is nevertheless very important that you consider the characters your players will have. If they are starting out with new characters then throwing demons and big jobs at them is unfair and pointless, because they won't have the stats, skills or gear to stay alive. Likewise the tower. What is in it? If your players have brand new rookie characters then it had better be something weedy. A big chaos tower with weedy guards is going to seem a bit odd.

If you want to go ahead and give them 2000xp, tons of armour and heavy weapons then they will be better prepared, but there is something a bit demotivating about having everything handed to you on a plate. People will enjoy their characters more if they earn that experience and work to acquire their weapons and kit.

I wouldn't let them play more than one character. If people are going to play with lots of characters in order to take down lots of enemies you may as well play the tabletop game. People need to become immersed in their characters and roleplay them. Not easy to see things from two perspectives. A bunch of NPCs to help them out can work, but really you should be asking yourself in this case if the adventure is too hard for the characters or if the characters are ready for it yet. There is not a lot of satisfaction to be had when an NPC flunkie takes out an enemy. The PCs should be the heroes, not the NPCs. I would limit NPC aid to one or two situations, with appropriate context.

DavidJones said:

Hmm, so it would be better if I didn't shoehorn in some NPC backup in? Since I'm looking at a group of 3-5 players (probably 3) I suppose I could have the important NPCs I intended as their back up become more plot-oriented devices.

Like the Boss fight once they reach the top of the tower, I have multiple outcomes planned. If the group has a psyker (or any PC with the most connection to the Warp) The malign entity driving the rogue Astropaths actions will offer to call off the whole thing if the PC pledges their soul to them in place of the astropath. If that situation doesn't occur, and the Pcs played their cards right in the town earlier, then they'll recieve some air support that'll help them by bombarding the demonified astropath so long as the PCs can lure it to the correct "hotspots" I place on the map. Thirdly, depending on whether or not they possess the correct Lore skill, they can spot the bosses achilles heal and hopefull take it down by removing/destroying the artifact it posseses.

As for the tower istelf, the challenges vary from being mere puzzles to minor mazes and combat challenges. For instance, on the fifth floor, all the Pcs will find themselves in small adjacent rooms isolated from eachother, with a "Metal Dummy" sitting on opposite the PCs. The trick here is that any action a PC performs in their own room will cause the Metal Dummy in the clockwise room to perform the exact same movement/action. The idea being that the players need to really think about how they plan to destroy the metal dummy lest they accidentally kill their team mate in the next room over (Additionally, if anyone has any sort of restorative ability/skill then the dummy would also heal the person in the next room) Another room is a small maze with dead ends the players won't know about until they run into them, and while there are no enemies or other dangers for every full round that passes (after everyone has taken one turn) everyone gains a certain amount of insanity depending on how their roll or what abilities they apply. Then there's the "fight your fear" room, with enemies they each have to fight based on their background information.

I've even set things up in such a way that if the my players are clever enough and have attained the best possible outcome in the mining town after arriving (doing all the sidequests, not killing the good NPCs while destroying all the bad ones, etc.) they can, instead of travelling all the way up the tower, either go below the tower into the basement level and destroy the chaos machinery powering it and topple it, going to the boss immediately, or they can escort the planets newly appointed astropath to the Starport whereupon they can convince all the hostage trading vessels to open fire upon the tower from orbit, bypassing the boss battle but losing the relic and destroying the mining town in the process, giving them all a pile of corruption points and a large monetary reward, as well as altering the beginning of the enxt campaign in the Chaos Tower series of campaigns I have planned.

All the advice and links you people have generously provided me thus far have been incredibly helpful and I've already made numerous changes to my campaign, and I continue to appreciate any further advice you might offer.

Sounds like this game is Rank 5 or higher.

I wood suggest swiping the Land Raider for a Chimera from Apocrypha: Vehicles & Riding Beasts.

A character should only get corruption points from interactions with the warp, psychic powers, and warp creatures. Not from orbit bombardment of a mining town.

Astropath =/= Astronomican

An Astropath is a psychic capable of sending and receiving psychic messages across interstellar space. The messages travel through the warp, and are faster than light, but not instantaneous. See http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Astropath

The Astronomican is a psychic beacon which the Navigators utilize to pilot the spaceships through the otherwise unnavigable chaos of Warp-space.
See http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Astronomican

Navigators are a very particular form of human mutant, possessing the navigator gene, which gives them the unique ability of navigating through warp space. See http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Navigator

As Isaia said the part about the astropath threatening ships doesn't make sense in the DH-universe. Ships can't navigate based on astropaths and astropaths can't interfere with ship navigations. Only by getting to the ships navigator or blotting out the astronomican could you do that, and thats not easy. Certainly not something a mere human, even a chaos tainted astropath, could do.

He could however send out false messages. Tricking vessels to open fire on each other by making them think they are dealing with infiltrators. Ships from the Navy would have protocols for that (or it would happen all the time), but trade ships might just panic and start acting on the information.

As for NPC backup or multiple characters I'd advice against it. Most RPGs are designed to be played with 1 GM and 3-5 players, so there is no real need for extra character in a general respect, and its hard to roleplay more than one character at a time. They might need backup if they are facing really tough enemies, but be carful with this on the first adventures. If the players get a lot of help during the first scenario they might just feel robbed of their victory when other people show up and do half the work. Adapt the scenario so that they can take care of it on their own and then let them be the heroes. It will also make it easier on everyone since large battles are harder to run.

The starting power level is really up to the group. If the group is new with DH I would suggest just going at Rank 1 since that means less rules and abilities to remember. But this is mostly a question on your style of play, your scenario sounds a bit like a good old-fasioned dungeon and in that case they might need the extra power unless you are careful. One thing to remember is that a starting character will advance in rank after just 100 xp. The guideline is to give them 200 xp per session (or 4h), and its probably going to be at least one session before they reach the tower, so they will probably have advanced a rank either way when they reach the tower.

isaiah said:

Arrrrrg, back to the drawing board.... Er, writing...board.

I'll ened a plausible reason that the ships in the system can be both trapped and blackmailed... I suppose the astropath could have a chaos cult backing him up? Maybe they have agents planted on the ships to hold each ships navigator hostage?

Syzygy said:

Maybe the local PDF, who are severely infiltrated by Chaos, have some sort of BFG with which they threaten the ships. Or maybe the cultists have found some way to neutralize the Geller field generators on the ships so they can't escape.

Knocking out the Geller fields sounds better, few planets have guns large enough to shoot down ships that are trying to move away.

On option, if it should still be tied to the Astropath, is that he found some chaosy mind-amplification thing. Astropaths are powerful psychers an with the right (wrong?) kind of boost it's not unthinkable for them to mind control people on the ships. People like navigators might be though, but get control over enough grunts in the right places and you can pose a very real danger to a ship. The captains might not even have wanted to open fire on the Acolytes ships, it was the people in the gun-bay who acted on their own.

In this case I think there is a lot of fun to be had with the setting. People acting oddly as the Astropath pushes against their mind, mental attacks on the Acolytes and a permanent sense of being watched.

Syzygy said:

How about...

The planet's Astropath could have a chaos infused Astropath Relay* that was recently found on the planet. The chaos tower could be the original Spires of the Astropath andis function like the Forge of Nightmare from the Radicals Handbook p.176.

If the trading vessels are your common inter system traders, as opposed to Rogue Traders, they should only have one may be two minor Astropath on board. This would mean that they are incapable of communicating outside of the solar system. All their information/orders would be coming from the chaos empowered Astropath, who can just send them "new" orders from their merchant guilds and/or Imperial Navy telling them to retrofit their ships and to defend the system against some threat.

*Astropath Relay are described in Rogue Trader p.163.
Loosely paraphrased- a Astropath Relay is a techno-arcane installation found both aboard Major star vessels and an Spires facilities on Imperial worlds. An Astropath relay is designed to boost the Astropath's gifts and allow Astropath's to work together as a Astropath choir. It is only through the use of the Astropath choir are Astropath's able to communicate between distance solar systems, subsectors, sectors, and Segmentum.

If you can, get a hold of the Rogue Trader book. It has lots of good rules for Astropaths and Navigators along with starships travel times. You also might wanna take a peek at the rogue trader forums.

All good stuff here, good stuff indeed. This campaign is going to take longer than I thought... But at least now the locations are more varied what with the addition of a ruined meat proccessing plant to investigate, a new town to explore (larger than the mining town at least) The vehicle section I have planend is rather difficult, though. I don't really have a big enough map to cover the distance between Desolace (the mining town) and the Tower, so I've developed a system whereby it is assumed the vehicles are always in motion(Even when standing still) and that within X amount of turns they will reach the tower (My group can't use timers because we tend to get into arguments often over ridiculous things like who can kill whom and whether or not arson and kidnapping count as a viable skill set)

A few other questions I have that the core rulebook didn't really explain:

Wounds. So do individual limbs have their own wound limits like AP?

Critical damage: How do I determine how much critical damage a character can take before dying?

AP: Do piercing weapons reduce the AP of someons armor permanently, temporarily, or does the pierce value just ignore an equal amount of AP without actually modifying it?

Psychic Powers: Are these always executed immediately or does the player/NPC in questin have to spend X turns "focusing" or whatever? The desription of psychic powers says Psykers need to focus, but it didn't say if that consumed a turn or not.

Finally, one of my players has created a character he calls BLASTO (yes, it's supposed to be in all caps I guess) A tech-priest with 2 manipulator mechdendrites that he uses (or plans to use) to allow his character to quad-wield pistol type weapons. While it seems plausible (and pretty badass now that I think about it), are there actually any rules for wielding more than two weapons at once? What sort of penalties/bonuses would he incur?

Wounds. So do individual limbs have their own wound limits like AP?

No, armour and critical damage is per body part and wounds are general for the entire character. Once you are out of wounds you start counting critical damage instead.

Critical damage: How do I determine how much critical damage a character can take before dying?

You're dead if you reach nine critical damage, but you could die sooner depending on where you are hit and so on. Death is included in the critical tables.

AP: Do piercing weapons reduce the AP of someons armor permanently, temporarily, or does the pierce value just ignore an equal amount of AP without actually modifying it?

The pierce value just ignores an equal amount of AP without actually modifying it?

Psychic Powers: Are these always executed immediately or does the player/NPC in questin have to spend X turns "focusing" or whatever? The desription of psychic powers says Psykers need to focus, but it didn't say if that consumed a turn or not.

Each psychic power has a focus time in it's description. Some are free actions and take effect at once while others take sevreal rounds.

Finally, one of my players has created a character he calls BLASTO (yes, it's supposed to be in all caps I guess) A tech-priest with 2 manipulator mechdendrites that he uses (or plans to use) to allow his character to quad-wield pistol type weapons. While it seems plausible (and pretty badass now that I think about it), are there actually any rules for wielding more than two weapons at once? What sort of penalties/bonuses would he incur?

The manipulator is a huge hydraulic arm, it can't do anything that requires fine manipulation. However, there's a ballistic mechanderite which is basically a metal tentacle mounted gun, you can use one such (but not more) mechanderite in addition to your normal combat actions if you spend your reaction on it. So BLASTO is going to need a slight refit. Also, for normal tech priests the ballistic mechanderite is limited to a compact las pistol. If he wants serious firepower he'll have to take the alternate rank mechanicus sectutor (from inquisitors handbook) or wait until ascension so he can fit other weapons on it.

Ah, good, I was under the impression that a piercing weapon would permanently reduce the AP of any given limb. Dodged a bullet there, or at least some very dissatisfied players.

Well, from all the advice I've been so graciously given, I think I might run my players through a premade campaign while I hammer out the details on my Tower campaign (especially the storyline) Now I know there's a free campaign in the core rulebook, but just out of curiosity, are there any beginner campaigns you guys would recommened/have made? Especially ones that play up the investigation side of the Dark hersy equation, as I'm too used to the D&D method of "Go to dungeon, kill things, get loot, save the day, the end" sort of thing.

Syzygy said:

Edge of Darkness would be what you're looking for. Also, there are more scenarios on FFG's Support Page which should help you out as well.

Thanks, Edge of Darkness was exactly what I was looking for. Ran it last night, went quite well, although two of my players had to burn one of their fate points when they were caught unawares outside during the night cycle. Big thanks to all of you for giving me all that helpful advice, we all had fun with during that session and everyone has agreed to come back next week for more!

Syzygy said:

I ran it a few weeks ago as an introduction to my campaign. My players also had a hard time during the night (they blew their cover in front of the bad guys and then decided to take a walk during the night to find out what was grabbing people. They even decided to split the group in two to increase their chances of finding it...).

I had one PC try to fight it out in melee with a pack of 4 narco-gangers that took exception to him asking questions and sneaking around in the workers union. He had left his pistol behind so that he wouldn't look out of place. This ended up accelerating the whole scenario towards the end quite rapidly as the acolytes ended up in a running battle with almost everyone in the middle of the night cycle. They ended up putting an end to the whole mess, but it opened up some other adventures and they have been hunting for answers for some of the questions posed in here and the logicians base for two adventures now.

Kyorou said:

Well, they did increased the chance of an encounter, so the tactic was kinda successfull, wasn´t it? Okay, foolhardy perhaps. But they had their encounter