To all the experienced GM's out there, as a new one myself, will I be better served with Purge the Unclean or Tattered Fates? I plan on buying both books, but which should I try first? Your advice is greatly appreciated.

I am sorry to answer a question with a question, but will your group consist of "resh Rank 1 Acolythes or have all of you already run a couple of games of DH and this merely the first "bought" module you will stick to?

If you groups start fresh and you intent to buy Tattered Fates anyway, start with Tattered Fates. If this modul is good for one thing, then for forming a party.

SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is mostly due to the fact that the pc are thrown into an arena, manage to escape and become oath-bound by an dying Inquisitor. More then a little cheesy, but better then depriving them of all of their gathered Equipment at Rank 5 (when they are persons of pc of power and the players are less likely to easily stomach that these pc where subdued without a chance).


Otherwise, go fo PurgeTheUnclean. Each and every of the adventure needs tweaking, but two of them (Rejoice and Twilight) are rather usable.

My 2 cents

Ooops, my bad, my bad. Yes, my players are still first rank, but they have had a few games under their belts.

I would actually start your group off with Edge of Darkness (free download from FFG). It is a great intro adventure and honestly one of the best RP products I have ever not had to pay for! From there either run something of your own design or dive into TF or PTU. If you have a few missions logged then you might want to run a "bridge" adventure where the team gets captured and then immediately move into TF... Something to explain the "hey wait, how did we end up like this?" if it helps your story continuity. Alternately you could start with a HEAVILY rewritten Shatterd Hope (another freebie) and replace the goofy chaos crystal at the end with some sort of horrible but non-lethal xenos-tech trap! (The Beast House wanted to capture some really BIG muties for the cages, but hey, lookie wha we found here!) and again move into TF. PtU has alot of potential, and the first two adventures are pretty fun! If you are wading in here it is best to do Rejoyce! once a few of the characters have had a chance to develop a few social skills and talents. Shades is pretty much a "Get on the shuttle, duty calls NOW!" kind of thing, so it fits into just about any time slot where the team is in the Scintilla system. Baron is one with alot of potential but it really needs some loving GM reworking. In particular the waves of "bad things" (avoiding spoilers) would be much improved by the horde rules in Deathwatch if the team has much gear.

When I ran TF most of the team was rank 5-6 so I ran an entire mission as "setup" for it, the endgame being that the team gets captured investigating a pleasure cult (the point being to get them out of armour so I could go non-lethal!). They put up enough of a fight that they didn't feel like chumps AND they went in already with a big grudge to settle against the baddies. About half of the survivors took elite advances in Hatred (Beast House) after I was done, which makes my evil GM heart proud!

House of Dust and Ash is also a good one to run prior to TF if you want to lay some background down ahead of time. The general idea is to let them get to around rank 3 or so before you start stomping on their groins with the more brutal missions so they have a chance if they play things smart and use teamwork. Worst case, they all die horribly and the NEW group of acolytes gets to look into the mysterious case of their missing predicessors!

Ah, many thanks! I downloaded it and will try to run it tomorrow. Thanks for your help everyone. If the players survive, then I'll do PtU.

Tattered Fates at rank 1 is sheer suicide, they will simply not have a chance.
I would level them to at least rank 3 and still expect character deaths.

Do keep in mind they will leave Quaddis with good quality and power weapons, a good reward for a tough adventure...

Santiago said:

Tattered Fates is pretty long and you get XP throughout it. By near the end of the adventure the characters won't be Rank 1 anymore.

Santiago said:

Really?! My PCs left Quaddis with broken bones, a hell lot of corruption (as well as insanity) points and hardly their lives...

Luthor Harkon said:

Sounds like you're doing it right, then