I have two new players for my new group in dark heresy. I am wondering how much understanding of the universe they have, and their role in it, so I am thinking of asking them to do a simple hunt the tech heretek down for a first mission.

The premise is simple. A tech heretek, using forbidden tech set fire to, and burned down a habstack, killing hundreds of people. The group are tasked with bringing down this dangerous murderer.

The reality would be this heretek was fixing a form of heating system in his hab, when it unexpectedly caught fire and burned everyone. He is still guilty as he tampered with holy machinery, but he did it to save the lifes of his family who would have frozen to death. If the players decide to attack him the rest of the family might fight back, with improvised weaponry. Just to see what they do.

Is this a suitable starting idea? One of the new players has never done any roleplaying, or wargaming in warhammer 40k universe so might not be used to the somewhat unusual laws over machinery. The other has played a game, but from what I can gather it was a "hunt the alien loose on the space ship" type mission, not involving any moral choices.

Where it gets to the moral bit, it turns out that the young girl who is about 8 years old, is actually a pyromancer, and should either be taken into custody for the black ships, or eliminated for murder. I will leave that choice to the players. In this story they will also brush up against the main villian of my campaign, although at this stage they do not know it.

The claims of tech heresy were made by a neighbour who was owed money by the family.

Don't have the family attack, instead have them plead for the man's life ... make him a real person, not a combat encounter. Normal people are not going to leap into battle with an experienced combatant - especially a servant of the inquisition.

I once had a party tracking a beast which had terrorized the local towns. As they tracked the woman who created it they discovered that her son had died a few years prior and learned that she had made the creature in an effort to replace the son she lost. When they finally encountered her she was sweet, sincere and helpful - understanding her mistake but unable to do anything about it. By the time that encounter was over the pcs fealt so bad they were hoping she'd poison the tea she'd fed them ... which, of course, she did not. They still talk about that adventure ten years later.

The man is trying to protect his daughter who caused the fire though. I think he would probably sacrifice himself for her. Of course if the players do not work that he is innocent they will cause ripples on future plots.

Ideally I want them to discover the tech device that allegedly caused the fire couldn't have been the cause. Then the groups psycher might be able to detect her power when they go close. Im hoping they can work out a fairly simple plot.

But you may be right, perhaps they should not have any weapons to defend themselves. so that any death dealt by the party can be rewarded with corruption points or something if they just mow down an innocent family.

Ideally, following inquisition orders, they should take the child to the Tricorn building and send her to the black ships. No deaths to any of the family. Any deviance from this might be punished by the groups inquisitor when he returns from his current business.

I would also advise to ensure, that there´ll be someone ruthless/dedicated enough, who will carry on the mission (eg. capturing psyker-girl) even if it means to kill father and seriously hurt girl, while putting on null collar/injecting psy-dampering drugs. It doesn´t matter if it´ll be NPC or other characters, just to be sure, that newbies to the universe will be shocked of it´s cruelty. I also don´t like the idea of Inquisitor punishing Acolytes if they kill/seriously hurt girl´s family, one wouldn´t gain the Seal if she/he´s weak-hearted in such manner, that he/she consider life of few hab-dwellers above capturing unsanctionated psyker.

TorogTarkdacil said:

My Inquisitor attempted to slaughter 3 (questionably) innocent children whom the acolytes had previously rescued, in front of them as punishment for mouthing off to one of their superiors in the previous adventure.

... it was quite telling to see what everyone did in response.

The main party responsible for the original affront later tried (out of her same troublesome morality) to protect a psyker from being captured / killed. Her fellows shot her dead. I was most impressed with them.

Moral dilemas are tough in 40K. While a player might cringe at something, a person raised to hate all witchcraft all his life would hardly quail at putting a bullet in a dangerous rogue who has already killed, even if she is 8.

What I probably should have said is they would be punished if they let her get away with it because she was a young girl. I guess im using the short mission to gauge just how dedicated the group is to their cause.

Ideally they subdue the family, or otherwise placate them and take the daughter away.

While I definately like the moral dilema arc that you are working on I would probably not make your first adventure with a person brand new to roleplaying and someone inexperienced with the world of 40K. I would probably start out with a more straight forward adventure where the players get the feeling for how embattled humanity is. Get them use to the idea that everything out there is trying to enslave, corrupt, or eat mankind and make the adversaries appropriate to that (Evil men and woman worshiped the warp, the maggots in the meat adventure, etc.) However, I would try to keep your enemies psychic free to make it fresh. Then throw them this adventure to see how they deal with one of the major adversaries within 40K, those ignorant of what misery can be caused by an untrained psyer can do. If the characters do not take her into custody, later have them be called back to the same hab-block to defeat the demonhost that the girl has become (They arrive at the hab-block inflames, and dozens of arbites fighting the creature with hundreds dead and or injured.) Then the will realize the cost of their moral dilema.

Salcor

That is an interesting idea Salcor, I will consider it. I usually write my own adventures anyway, and tend to write scenes here and there, that I can use for stories later on. So I have bits and pieces already written that could get them more in tune with the 40k way of thinking.

Power wise im starting everyone off on 2000xp to allow them to be at least semi competant. My inquisitor wouldnt have just employed anyone, they have to have been considered capable individuals within their own professions. This should give them a range of skills that they can test and hopefully foster some form of co operation.

As I have an arbite, a techpriest and a psycher so far, im not having too many problems with setting it up.

My long term plans are to have the players inquisitor actually vanish, presumed dead. Without him, they have no official ties to the inquisition, and the various parties they offend in the earlier parts of the campaign will be hunting them down, while they try to find what has happened to him.

Also there is at least one noble who has enemies as per his vendetta, so there is to be no shortage of people wanting them dead. I am mostly planning on keeping it human at this stage, I don't want lots of aliens involved, although I had considered the posibility of coming across an eldar farseer who could guide them to find their inquisitor and provide some form of guidance. I will have to see how they deal with the first 3 or 4 sessions to see how things pan out in terms of group dynamic.

Then perhaps for your situation, if they don't bring in the girl perhaps their inquisitor goes to collect her and then the characters show up at the ensuing chaos of the demonhost and no inquisitor to be found. Or if they bring her to the inquisitor he decides to assess her on his own and sends the characters out to do something else and they return to find said chaos. Also to make the moral dilema a little more intense with the demonhost I would recommend you roling all of the psyker's peril of the warp roles and be kind to them for a little while so that the characters suddenly realize that not only are uncontrolled pysker's dangerous, but perhaps that could happen to their own psyker.

Salcor

The psyker and the arbite are hardened players of 40k though. Indeed the guy playing the psyker has been one in two previous games, so knows more or less what hes up to. I am not sure I can fool him.

The techpriest is new, as is one other player who has not had chance to look at his character. Something about christmas and it being his kids first one Given he usually plays a dashing swordsman/ conman/ entertainer/ bard/ duelist type character im placing bets on him being a scum, although he its not entirely unlikely he will also be a psyker.

The final character is likely an assassin or guardsman. If hes anything else I will eat my hat!

Your story idea sounds awesome. I understand all about having new players to the genre and setting. What I did was create a campaign notebook that gives the players a primer on the setting. It's not completely done (a work in progress), but if you would like a copy, PM me and I'll send it to you.

I would PM you, but I am unable to do so, as I can see no option. Perhaps I need to add you to friends first?

One thing I have done is allow the team unlimited purchasing options to start with, in terms of rare, very rare. I am hoping this does allow character building rather than munchkinism, but we shall see. So far the only character thats totally finished is the noble arbite, and hes got equipment from his home world, so I am pretty happy with that.

The first story has to be fairly short because I promised I would allow people to change characters with no penalty after the first session if they were not happy with what they picked. One of the new guys is not really sure what character type fits his bounty hunter concept best on skills and talents, which is why hes considering scum and assassin. However after reading the book, a guardsman also allows him a good bounty hunter build, so he might be one of them.

The other moral story I am considering using later on is to capture a psyker who has thrown a hive world into turmoil. On ariving they find out this guys powers allow him to spontaneously create life everywhere [for those who know, think Aekold Helbrass from warhammer fantasy battle and his creation of vast fields of cereal crops has thrown local trade into chaos, as this planet used to import its food, and the people were living on very poor rations as a result.

I think the choice between capturing/putting down a known heretic and damning billions of people to starvation will test their resolve, and take up the issue with their Interogator.

That one sounds great. Definately another good moral dilema for the 40K players, where the serfs are just a cog in the machine and the nobles seldom think about their welfare just home much they work. Another interesting psyker model could be Ned from Pushing Daisies, a man that can bring the dead back to life, but if they stay alive for too long someone else has to die.

Salcor

That sounds like the seed for an excellent adventure.

I'm currently just starting an adventure when the Acolytes hunt down mutants and rogue psykers in the bottom-most depths of a hive. Local enforcers do a pretty good job of hunting them down in the mid-hive forcing the mutants to go deeper and deeper into the underhive, to the point where it is totally inhospitable. In order to survive they have turned to Nurgle. At this point the cult is not espeically dangerous, they sacrifise chance wayfarers from the underhive, but they are still a chaos cult, exposure to the warp could do anything, and who knows what their daemonic patron will want from them in the end?

Not so much grey, they are stil an Evil Cult, but not by choice, the imperium has forced this as their final option.

Crimsonsphinx said:

I went ahead and sent you a request to join my friends. If that doesn't allow you to see my contact data let me know and I will post my email address (but I will be quite angry if some joker uses it to sign up for stuff). The notebook is a great primer for new players. Also, I was thinking about your dillema with getting new players up to speed with the setting (I have the same problem) and I totally forgot that GW put out a book a while back called The Inquisition . It's a great little $20+ encyclopedia on the Inquisition and has a bit on the 40k Universe. I make extensive use of it. Also the old game "Inquisitor" had a sourcebook called the Thorian Sourcebook - excellent source material too. Just a thought.

Let me know.

It says your email address is set to hidden. You could change it? I can see no other way to PM you, sorry.

I am working on a second half to the introductionary story, a slightly more straight forwards investigate who is producing guns which are arming various factions in the underhive. This is partly so the group can actually carry out this investigation, partly because I can involve an eccentric gunsmith as a contact for the group for later on, and partly to give them choice.

My investigator will ask the group to choose to investigate either the heretek or the rogue weapons first. Whichever they do second will have escalated, as they clearly took priority to neutralise the other problem first. They will then be expected to explain their choices to their masters, who will evaluate if the correct decision, based on information available to them was made.

Crimsonsphinx said:

Sorry! It's fixed now so you should be able to see it. Send me a message and I'll shoot it your way. Let me know what you think of it.

BTW I really like what you have so far. Giving the players choices, especially ones that have serious repercussions later is awesome! Having a moral dilema with the "heretek" is a great move, but if these players aren't careful they may end up cappin' the guy off without thinking about it. I know that's been brought up. Keep the two parts and develop them out, but you probably won't want to make it much more complicated than this - new players, and all that .

Let me know how this turns out.

I tend to have to put a bit of choice in my games, and a visable one at that, or players claim they are being rail roaded

Depending on choices made and/or how things go they may be rewarded with a choice of options too. I still have probably a month or so before I need these first two sessions written up. My group tends to do an 8 hour session once per week, but currently we are playing WFRP so I have a while to weed out problems.

If they do just blast the chap and thats it, then more buildings will be destroyed, more people killed, and the group repremanded for tardy work. They would do better to execute the whole family than leave the girl.

Rewards will probably be some form of good quality pistol, by one of the gunsmiths for getting rid of their illegal competition, but they may choose some other option I havn't thought of yet, such as contacts within useful orginisations, access to certain forbidden texts etc. I am adverse to just handing over a pile of money, it doesn't really fit with the image of the inquisition I have in mind.

Im still waiting for confirmation of character types. It s a pain not knowing if there is a techpriest or some other specialised class, as I need to include different bits of plot to keep them interested and make their characters worthwhile, as well as not including these things if said characters do not appear.

Well certainly no one knows your group better than you. I like the idea that there are serious consequences (good and bad) to the player's actions. The fact that your considering the character types and players' personalities into your adventure is AWESOME. It seems to me that too many GMs fail to consider these when writing their games. I know it can be hard to do this, but the payoff is so much more.

Go ahead and PM me (if you want) and I'll send you out that Campaign Notebook I have. It should make a great primer for your players' introduction to the setting.

I have sent you an email arcangel Thanks for the help.

Due to my group deciding to have two virtually useless assassins I am having to re think what I can and can't include in my plot. Sure they can shoot people, but that is about it. The others are more useful but I am still restricted.

I now have two nobles to deal with, who theoretically should have different morals to the others, but we will see. I am not sure how exactly I should deal with the vendetta either. Its either one big vendetta after both of them, or two smaller ones. I think a larger one after both will encourage them to work as a team, but it will be realistically hard to design an all powerful orginisation who has vendettas against two completely unconnected nobles, without it having the resources to snuff them both out.

The Emperor, bbuH , has already brought down His holy wrath upon the hereteks and his co-conspirators by burning down the offending machiners. You should rejoice that such blasphemous actions did not cause further damage and kill members of the faithful. Such offenses cannot go unpunished and those responsible should be hunted with utmost diligence before more damage can be done and innocent blood spilt.

The only problem to that is that you can't go around executing people without proving they are hereteks in the first place.

Possibly - just started reading Cain - Hero of the Empire where he calls Inquisitors the 'Emperor's pet psychopaths'.

However, is not his guilt obvious with the modified tech?