Hello all,
I'm a long time 40K player and roleplayer, but somehow I didn't get into Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader until recently. Now that I have, I'm really enjoying it. The basic rulebooks and the sourcebooks are great at fleshing out the background and setting the tone of the dark 41st millennium.
What I would like to know is how worthwhile the published adventures are considered to be. As a gamemaster I've always written most of my own adventures, albeit leaning heavily on story hooks in sourcebooks. However, I've also made great use of published adventures, sometimes as is, sometimes heavily adapted or strip-mined for ideas.
As a gamemaster I'm mostly looking for well thought-out plots, good suggestions on how players can take alternate routes while still advancing the central story, and interesting NPC's. I like hand-outs, but don't really care about maps all that much. It's nice if detailed guidelines for encounters are given, but I also don't mind filling in the details myself.
Like to hear your opinions. (Both on Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader adventures.)

For DH- Purge the Unclean, and The Harlook trilogy are decent sources of Ideas, but I did not think they stood alone well.

For RT- All of there premades I think are good for source books, but really RT is not a game I think works well with one-shot premades. I use Lure of the Exspanse and a few others as refferance for stats on Eldar and the like.

PtU: One of the three adventures is rather poor written in my opinion. The other two need tweaking and twisting, but provide a good ground to start on.

Tattered Fates: Is not to my taste, as is Dead Stars . I would not suggest it. Especially not Dead Stars. This was a most disappointing end to the Haarlock Series to me.

Damned Cities is a nice one in my book, even if it is railroading the pc. It offers good and inspirational reading about Sinophia. I would suppose it.

Lure of the Expanse: Looks good in my books, so I never played it.

If you are after hooks and inspiration, go for Disciples of the Dark Gods . it includes a small adventure (House of Dust and Ash) as well.

As inspiration and something to be "filled with your own ideas" I would suggest "Brutal Lament" (free in the DH support section; contest finalist). Again, I advise tweaking but it gives you a nice framework. "Idle Heresy" (from the same category) is a good freebee as well.

I would say the published adventures make for a good and solid base to write your own adventures on. They can be run as they are written now, but I found they need a lot of tweaking to be really worthwhile. That’s not a big thing, most GMS worth their salt would tweak published adventures anyway!

The Haarlock Legacy holds some very strong themes, scenes and prophetic ramblings, which can easily blend into a minicampaign with your own material. They have been getting a lot of flak but I really don’t consider them that bad.

Purge the Unclean holds some basic adventures, perhaps a bit too simple as they are now, but a good starting point.

It wouldn’t be a waste of money to get these books.

There are also some excellent scenarios and adventures in the "support" section of the Dark Heresy web page.

Gregorius21778 said:

You ol' flatterer Gregorius!

Tossing in my two pennies I'd say that the published adventures do a good job of inspiring ideas and they give a good chunk of usable source material, but they are by no means essential purchases.

I don't think I've run any of them "as written".

Nerd King said:

I love the general theme and mood of Hiveworld Thebean... and want to have a brainchild with it

Anyway, Back2Topic :
The adventure "The Patchwork man" (see here: http://www.darkreign40k.com/drjoomla/index.php/component/docman/cat_view/55-adventures?start=10 ) is a nice scenario as well.

If you are in need for "general ideas" and want to spend a little money on PDF, I would advise " 100 Dark Places" from Postmortem Studios (on sale via RPG DriveThru; on the internet). While it is only one page a location, it still manages to give the general idea of the place, the reason what creepy thing is going on within/around and 3 potential hooks. Of course, all of it is written for a modern world, but since it is without any stats it and all is rather general, it is not a hard thing for a good GM to fill in the deatils.

Thanks for sharing your experiences. I will be sure to check out the free downloadables in the support section.

I'm still on the fence about Purge the Unclean. Since it consists of three short adventures it shouldn't be a surprise that they're fairly simple. But do they at least contain some nice NPC's, locations or some such?

From here on, it s SPOIL-O-RAMA! KEEP OUT IF YOU WANT TO PLAY AS A PLAYER

Rejoice! For you are true has some quit alright NPC and some inside on Scintilla. But I would not say that this the characters are very well written or anything. But they are not bad, either

Shades of Twilight plays on a spacehulk, so no extra locations. The npc are...hm...well, it is not that much about social interaction.

Baron Hopes is the worst of all. It has good location, but on the other hand is rather cheesy and the worst of all.

To go a little more into the detail (!SPOILERSS!)

Rejoice has two NPC the pc will have some interaction with: a noble hailing from a military career (who is given some shining scenes) and his somewhat spoiled... I think it was daughter or nice ...whom will help the pc to go undercover as nobleman from a backwater world. Other then this, no NPC that is more then "off the shelve". Location is not that important in this adventure

Twilight is pretty much a "haunted house" thing..but minus the house (it is a space hulk) and minus the haunting. At least, there are only TWO scenes provided where the pc will encounter ghosts (and which are supposed to be eerie). The rest is (as always) up to the GM. Besides some tidbits in a sidebar that make nothing but side-notes unless the GM get´s inspired by them to make something out of it that will take a little more then 2 minutes of RPG moment (like...adding some something the pc are actually inteded to DO or NOT to do).
The pc will have interaction with four other acolythes they will encounter (which get full descriptions and pictures), but besides a turncoat that will betray them in the worst moment, the modul(!) says that said NPC will be likely to shut up and follow the pc...unless they and the pc fight each other to begin with. Other then that, there is an Dark Eldar Homunculi that will have a little chat with them over hologram...before he and his cabal tries to kill the pc.

Oh! It includes a Spacemarine Battlebrother for "kewlness". To get lost somewhere and to potentially re-appear as a Deux ex Magina (or however this is spelled).

Baron Hopes comes with a fine (if a bit general) description about the mineworks on Seraphis Secundus, a humanitarian noble, a wretched Enforcer leader (whom the pc might not have much to do with) and some good ol´boys...erm ...Arbitrators. As I said before (and will say again) the adventure itself is not much good. The pc do this and that till the final clue will be provide by a dream-vision of their Psyker. And then there is a final battle against hordes of warpzombies and an "evil villian" possie of mutants. Each of them has a nice description as well, but none assides their leader it is likely to be more then another special opponent that needs to bite the dust.

Gregorius21778 said:

Baron Hopes is the only one of the three that I've run so far - but in a HEAVILY modified form - to follow on form the HEAVILY modified version of "Shattered Hopes" that I started my original campaign with.

I think Sepheris Secundus is a great setting - especially with the added detail provided in the "Scourge the Heretics" novel which is why I used the material to inspire my own take on things.

Mostly what the others said.

However i think you should get this new adventure: Black Sepulchre. It starts a brand new trilogy and I heard from friends and on the net it is a really good one, even the best published so far.

Take a look at it.