Hey Board!

Well I am starting up a new DH game and I only have two vets in my group. I have one more person who wants to join up and am looking for another at the moment. So I have one confirmed new guy - not only to RPGs, but he hasn't even heard of the 40k universe.

How do I explain the 40k universe to someone? I got into the 40k universe because I loved the war game and immersed myself in the world. I can't reasonably expect the new guy to do that. So how do I give him an idea of what the 40k universe is like? The only thing that comes to mind is having him read the small blurb at the beginning of every BL book - and then just explaining things as we go.

I really do appreciate any help I could get.

Others have suggested, and I tend to agree, that certain of the novels are very useful for introducing people to the 40k universe. The Eisenhorn Omnibus is a popular recommendation, as it is well written and has served to get many unfamiliar with 40k interested in the setting. (it worked for me and in turn pretty much my entire DH group) I would also recommend the Shira Calpurnia books, which offer a non Inquisition-centric look at the setting and provide a lot of descriptive details that I wasn't able to get from Eisenhorn itself. (such as what a Tech Priest temple might look like; Astropath organizations; Rogue Trader politics, etc.)

If your player is strapped for time, the fluff in the GM and background sections of the core book is actually excellent theme materiel. If you need it it even quicker than that, try this hnady cross-genre cheat sheet:

1) Mankind is a theocratic feudal bureaucracy, ignorant, mystic, and violent in outlook. Faith is everything. This is a universe where an impossibly large feudal Empire is tenously held together by Faith and War, which are inextricably tied. The teeming masses are controlled by the few who direct their labors in one of those two directions, battling for the very survival of the species against an ever mounting array of mind shattering foes.

2) Mankind hates the Alien, the Mutant, the Heretic, and the Witch. This isn't "we don't let elves in our bars", "never trust a magician" or "stupid humans, you do not understand mother earth." This is a dedicated culture wide policy of the violent eradication of those who are different, and extreme persecution of those who can't be killed right now. And the kicker is, it has to be, for to fail just once in that duty can mean the extinction of a planet.

3) The average individual is a resource to be exploited. Not ala "heartless megacorps make money off the consumers whiel ppor people eat ramen noodles", but in a "from the day you are born to the day you die, you are indoctrinated that the greatest honor you could be igven in life is the right to serve the Emperor's plan. If that means you scrub rust off a bronze statue of a Space Marine for 16 hours a day, until you die, you should, and would, consider yourself lucky to be so honored as to get to scrub the effigy of one his Angels. If that means you spend your life mining promethium and only see the actual sun once a year, guess what? You do that until you die so that somewhere someone has fuel for their tanks. If your life is best spent dying in the desert so that ghost pollen grows where you fell, you bloody well fight and die in the desert. Never get ideas above your station." Obviously the players are above this, and higher social classes and certain planets experience more leeway, but as someone else said, in the Imperium your average man doens't have a job and a boss. He has a Duty and a Master.

4) The world outside is terrifying and bleak. Not "brave knights go slay the scary dragon, my, all it takes are a stout heart and a sense of adventure to face great peril." Populations die hideously, without hope. There are things out there that cause the average mind to snap, trained and hardened men to quiver and vomit at their sight, and literally twist your mind and your soul into a vision of hell that would outstrip anything a paltry fundamentalist preacher could throw at you. There are plenty more than will "only" make you wish you never had to sleep, because the dreams you'll have forever are the equivalent of being somewhere around Dante's lowest levels. If you do become corrupted, the quickest thing you can hope for is a merciful execution, because otherwise you will eventually kill and destroy everything you love. From the start, players can only hope top serve the Imperium the best they can before their eventual demise.

5) to paraphrase another poster : An Inquisitor would have killed every living soul on Coruscant, and burnt the planet to ash for good measure, rather than allow Palpatine or any he influenced, to live. That is the strength of will, the dedicated moral clarity, with which they operate.

AppliedCheese said:

I'm not so sure about this one. Coruscant is like Scintilla, or maybe even Earth - it is the capital of an Empire spanning tens of thousands of worlds, housing the ruling bodies of thousands of organizations, businesses, special interest groups, etc. It is home to representatives from the far flung corners of controlled space and the place from which some of the most important decisions in the galaxy are formed and brought to bear.

While it would be intollerable to an Inquisitor that a Chaos Cultist (approximately the equivalent) gain political control over the planet and its resources, destroying the planet would be at least as disastrous to the operation of the galaxy. More likely he would have called upon his own vast resources and taken a very personal, very aggressive interest in eliminating Palpatine as quickly and brutally as possible ... but declaring Exterminatus is a very final, very last resort even on less important planets.

Now Korriban ... well, there would be no Korriban.

Jack of Tears said:

...or Naboo...stupid Gungans....

Read Dune

But really, if you start them off small and simple you can usually get them to learn the ropes and nature of the place they're in as they play, rather than trying to digest big blocks of text to try and understand.

Or you could always have him (her?) do what I did when I joined a group... I played a character that was a kid, a teenager really, 14 years old. Still learning what the universe was about. Of course that would require one of the other players to RP as a mentor for the character.

That works well as you don't have to have the GM take a ton of time trying tell them about the universe they're in, just good old fashioned on-the-job training. Which will leave you freed up to concentrate on your story line.

Thanks for the replies guys!

I don't think having the new guy play a teen will be alright, he is older than any other player at our group - and we aren't strong enough RPers to break through the awkwardness.

I think I will just explain concepts as we go, and the other veteran can help as well.

Grimsson said:

Yeah, well totally Naboo - that goes without saying.