Hi! I am going to be taking my first shot at running an RPG game in the coming weeks. I have only previously played one campaign of D&D 4e. I realize the rules here are much different.

I have two questions that will help me prepare.

First, I have read at some places on the forums that it may be best to begin my Acolytes with more than the standard amount of starting experience. Is this a good idea, or not?

Second, could someone please help me create a list of important choice to make during character creation so that I can help my players understand? They are all as new to this system as I am, and I expect we will encounter some difficulties at first. My list would look like:

Choose your Homeworld/Origin

Choose your Background, if any. (Must backgrounds be chosen at the start of a campiagn or could they be added afterwards?)

Choose your Class.

Roll your statistics.

Spend the rest of your starting XP.

Thanks much! We are going to be starting off with the campaign in the back of the primary rulebook as a good introduction to what Dark Heresy is like and to help both I and the players to get accustomed to the rules.

In a final point, we are going to do something weird where we have two GMs. Both of us wanted to try it so we've worked out a system where we will switch off. The alternate GM will be a member of the party, playing a Acolyte appended to the party by the Inquisitor to watch over them, assist as necessary, and make reports to him. Essentially, he's their chaperone. We think having that guy will help us get the players more into the feel of the Universe, and also allow us to turn that guy into a traitor or get him killed to illustrate the danger. He can be replaced as necessary. And, hopefully, it will work out to let us team GM the game. Does anybody have any particular advice about this idea? Is it going to be a total disaster or does it seem to make sense.

Thanks much!

Caralon said:

I started with the standard 400xp, and it worked out fine. I don't see any benefit to starting with more; your players will arleardy be 2nd level after just one session.

Caralon said:

Your list looks pretty good, but I would roll up stats first - that can effect the background/class the player chooses. For instance, if you roll stats last, a player may choose to play a Feral World Guardsman, then roll up a character with inappropriately high Intelligence and low physical stats...

Oh, and, if you want my opinion, I would recommend starting with the scenario Edge of Darkness rather than the scenario in the back of the DH rulebook. I think it makes a much better introduction to the setting and the Acolyte's duties. Plus, it's more logical (to me, anyway) to start out on Scintilla, and then go to Iocanthos for the second mission, rather than vice versa. The only down-side is that EoD doesn't include maps of the key locations; you will have to draw them up yourself before hand...

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_content/dark-heresy/pdf/edge-of-darkness-(web).pdf

I did not start my acolytes out with extra exp, but I did give them full possible wounds and fate points. If you do plan on making it a very heavy combat oriented game right off the bat then maybe alittle extra could help. I did allow for a few extra items then the standard list, not so much weapons, but things like everyone had a vox to communicate to each other, gave out one excrutiator kit to the team, just little things like that. This game I started in '08 befor alot of the new books came out and what not, there are some neat alternate carreer advances out there now that can help beef up a character too.

The rolling stats before homeworld.etc.etc only becomes really influential if you do not allow them to assign their rolled scores. Homeworld also rapidly ends up changing around the rolls, so I tend to do that one first personally.

Backgrounds have to be chosen before the campaign starts, unless the GM deems otherwise I guess, but otherwise its not a very good background if someone just goes "oh and I happened to be an X". The player only gets one (once again, unless GM fiat goes otherwise and they happen to be VERY similar. I know I ended up deciding a Warp Touched Mara Landing Massacre victim sounded interesting at one point).

First off, I would highly recommend the standard starting experience only, because you have newbies to the system. If you had people familiar with the game, extra experience at the start would be ok... but if they start with a lot of extra experience, they may end up buying abilities that don't work for them, and never use more than once. So this can hamstring a character long term. It can take a while to get familiar with the system, players and GMs alike.

To put this in D&D terms, they might end up creating a Fighter in a chainmail bikini because they thought it looked cool, even though it wouldn't be very practicle for that system.

I'd recommend trying to get the players to get different character classes, like trying to avoid having 4 assassins in the group. While you might think that's a silly warning, don't laugh, it happened with my group. They continually pay for it as I have run my share of missions that involve more roleplay that gunfights.

As for a 2 GM system, it can work, but I'd recommend that each GM run a separate character, both when GMing and when not, and be fair about things... if after a number of adventures the GM's toons have 8 fate points and the rest of the players have 3, then you may lose players. Don't laugh, I just left a campaign where this sort of thing happens. One thing that upset me at the time, as I recently had to burn a fate point or lose my character from an ambush... as the enemy who had apparently been 'studying & spying' on us for days (if they were rank 7s spying on us and we have ascension level characters, how is it we never noticed anything?) decided that the rank 7 Psyker was a more valuable target than the rank 9 or 10 Inquisitor. But I digress...

As far as the chaperone idea, there's a alternate career path in the Inquisitor's Handbook p. 64, Legate Investigator, that would fit that role nicely. But again if any of the players express interest in that path, you might allow one of them to take it. Changing the party's leader every session or keeping it in the hands of the GM's toons can be viewed as heavy-handedness.

I'd also recommend you talk to your players, at least for a few minutes, and ask them what kind of campaign they would like to play in? By this I mean since they might 'know' the 40k universe well, are they looking for canon type games, or are they ok with the GMs who might occasionally be playing fast and loose with the rules, so long as the game is enjoyable, fair & consistent?

As with any campaign game you begin and continue, feedback from players is key. Often, especially if I'm running a game system I'm not 100% up on, I will take a few minutes after every session, to get that feedback. After running games in multiple systems since the mid to late 70s, I still continue that practice today.

Good luck!