Hello,

I have recently obtained the Dark Heresy corebook, and have more or less ready access to Inquisitor's handbook and a few other books. Now. when my gaming group (I occasionally play Exalted) heard of this, there was a question that one person voiced, and I think others wanted to: "When are you running a game?"

To be quite honest, that kinda scared me. I prefer playing, and my experience in gamemastering consists or running a few D&D/Pathfinder adventures, one of which me and a diffferent group saw to its conclusion. Now, I like the 40k setting, have a TT army I will one day finish, and like Dark Heresy more than the other games - but as I see it, I don't feel prepared to run a game. On the other hand - if not me, who else? I want to show people how awesome (if dark, grim, and insanely lethal) the setting is.

So I've started looking up the rulebook for ideas on how to start, and I feel a little lost. I intend to run a game for starting characters, However, I realize that I'm having a hard time thinking of what could challenge (but not necessarily kill) a starting party. Yeah, buddy, you are a Hereticus Minoris, but what's the chances of you, your brother John and his psyker girlfriend wiping the floor with five second-rank acolytes?

Overall, I'm having a hard time understanding how to make challenges work for the cell. I've thought about using a premade adventure - Edge of Darkness seems to have a good reputation here - but I'm not sure if it is best approached by brand new characters, or those already starting with 200-300 xp more that should be provided by another adventure.

Overall, my question is twofold. First, what is the best way to judge what opponents are acceptable against what characters, and second, is there something like a general list of what rank characters are fitted for what published or fanmade adventures?

Thank you all in advance and may the Emperor look over you.

Don't be afraid to start out small with the challenges - if they break into a building throw a couple guards up against them ... if they mop the floor with two, have another rush in, responding to the alarm late.

You can always increase the difficulty of an encounter without too much trouble ... hell, if having more people show up doesn't work, give one of them a couple more hits, increase the damage soak of his armor, raise his toughness ... the point being, it's easier on a new gm to scale battles up than it usually is to scale them down. Besides which, not all encounters have to be "bitting your fingernails" kinds of conflicts ... some challenges should be a little easy in order to make the players feel like they can actually succeed.

And don't be afraid to flub in either direction. If you worry about the players feeling unfulfilled if the fight goes too easily, make it seem worse than it is ... have the enemy take a couple more shots, then roll up one nasty shot from him right before he goes down - the type of thing which will leave your player reeling and counting his teeth, but feeling relieved for having survived it. Or, if the players are losing miserably, let the foe miss a few times he wouldn't have, knock his Hits down a bit without telling them, toss in a bit of terrain that the players can use to their advantage. And don't forget that most sentient foes are not going to stay to fight to the death if they can manage to escape when things look nasty ... if they get a few good shots on a demon, let it toss off a final attack and run for it; just to make that cooler, have the demon come back and interfere with their plans for the rest of the mission, until they can either destroy it or make it *really* rethink tackling the pcs right now.

Altering challenges is really the easiest thing a new gm can learn to do. Because the biggest secret that most GMs like to play close to the vest is, WE CHEAT. Sometimes we cheat to make the game harder, sometimes easier; sometimes we cheat simply to give the pc or an enemy a dramatic moment they wouldn't otherwise get ... or to prevent one or the other from dying at an inconvenient time in the story.

Being that you're new to GMing in general and the setting more or less, I'd recommend picking up one of those premade adventures you've heard good things about and adjusting the difficulty level so it is appropriate for the PCs. Give them help in the form of some hired guards provided by a party they've met who is invested in their success. Tame down the worst dangers so a group of players, working creatively, can do it some real damage. And here is an important part of the equation: don't let the players know these are weak challenges. Have NPCs talk about how X number of people were killed when last they ran into the foe; have a couple of those hired guns be torn down in just two rounds ... make the monsters *seem* scary in the way you describe the things they can do and the impact they have on their environment. (other npcs give the villain a wide berth even if they work for him, make people seem nervous around a "powerful" individual the players will have to fight later ... )

Creating the illusion of appropriate challenge is more important than guessing that challenge on the nose ahead of time.

Hi "Shaman",

to give you an unasked advice: do not GM it.

You really should not. Because you actually do not really like to.

In your post, you said you are afraid, lost and confused. It seems to me that you simply want to do it because you feel you have to do it because you have been asked.

Don´t.

Sex is not the only thing where it is important to tell somebody that you are not ready for it.

Shaman, if you've thought about GMing Dark Heresy and like the idea then great! If not, then don't run it. These days I *only* run a campaign if I'm personally enthused about the idea, otherwise I risk stalling halfway through through apathy.

The threat ratings in the Dark Heresy books are often misunderstood to be "threat to players", when they are in fact "threat to Imperial planet". There is *some* correlation but it's not exact. A "minima" can still kill a PC if they're not smart about it. That said, there's some good advice earlier on the thread about starting small and ramping up as needed. An example. When I started running Deathwatch a while back, I wasn't at all sure how the horde mechanic would work so I only used a few hordes which I judged to be relatively weak. When those were wiped out, I felt more confident about throwing more and harder enemies at the killteam later on.

You might find this thread on the published adventures useful.

Hiyas!

If you wanna run it, starting with Edge of Darkness is a win win situation, provided you really read the adventure throughly & are aware of what are the consecquences for acolyte's actions. It's a really fun, starting adventure, for both the GM & the players. The GM can flex his/her thespian muscles (the various NPCs are pretty cool to rp & have logical reasons & plans to be) & his/her art direction (describing such a gloomy offbeat setting as Coscarla) & the players usually love the twists & turns that this mission throws at 'em & the antagonists are (most of them) purposely made for starting groups. Be aware that this adventure needs a balanced group, tho'.

HtH

L

Hey, I'm a relatively new GM to Dark Heresy having only just completed my first story on a planet infact system of my own design. I found that what you think might be a challenge for your players aren't, remember that it's a percentage game, you average scum has a 23% change of hitting your players, even at pointblank range and on fully auto that only jumps to 73% but that means he's go to get that close. Most fights are resolved in a few rounds, tact-tiles or battle maps favour your players and help difine combat areas, 5 players against 12 ganger(scum with a skulker boss) took less than 8 rounds of combat even with the gangers ambushing the players, the gangers did a grand total of 5 points of dam before either fleeing the scene (fear aura psy power is op) or getting killed.

Don't be afraid of stacking things against your players that's way they have fate points. If they start spending them too quickly you can dial back.

Most importantly you as the Storyteller should be involved with the characters, setting, bad guys, villians and everyone inbetween, you have to want to run, and be having fun too, if it not fun for you, it will be no fun for your players.

Gregorius21778 said:

Correction: don't GM if you don't want to, but if you think you'd like to give it a try don't let people talk you out of it or make you feel insecure either. GMing is difficult, no matter what setting you're in, but it can also be very rewarding. (and frustrating, and anger inducing, and stressful ... but after 20 years I'm still doing it, so it must be fun somewhere along the line.

One of the most important things to do early on is get a good grasp on the setting and its feel. Write a cheat sheet down with the names and relationships of the various power groups within the Imperium. (Mechanicus, Ecclesiarchy, Adeptus, etc.) Then make sure you have the basics of science and setting down: What is a servitor and what does it do? How do the Mechanicus and the Ecclesiarchy view one another? What constitutes heresy? What is Tech Heresy? What is the Warp? What is Warp travel like? What does it mean to say "there is always war"?

Once you have these core ideas down, focus on knowing the adventure you plan to run. Get to know the npcs and locations the players will interact with in the first session. It isn't necessary to memorize everything, you're PCs are likely to only get so far - typically I'd say don't bother memorizing more than 1/4 - 1/3 of the pertinent information.

Don't be afraid to let the players wander a bit afield ... ask yourself "what will I do if the players want to spend more time exploring or getting to know people?" and have a few scenarios or encounters thought up. (possibly with some notes jotted down to remind you of the details)

And don't expect to be perfect the first time ... or even the first adventure or campaign or year. GMing, just like playing, is an experience we get better at as we go, and while it is easy to get discouraged at first, if you remind yourself that it is a game and everyone is coming to the table with the intention of having fun, you'll realize that little mistakes aren't going to ruin anything. (and even big mistakes can be fixed later)

If your GM is good, get some tips from him as well. Remind people that you are new to this, if you feel there is too much pressure when the game starts.

Most importantly ... have fun, and try to make sure everyone else has fun too. (oh, and it is a common mistake of new gms to give out too much free or powerful gear early on ... they tend to think, "if I were a player, I'd love having this, and that!" try not to get drug into that.)

Another thing, if you can make yourself a photo copy of the adventure, do so and then use a highlighter to indicate important information and/or descriptions; this will make using the adventure during play a lot faster and easier.

Also, I'd recommend photocopying the combat modifiers and any charts you'll need quick access to. (the Crit chart, the Psyker phenomena charts, etc.)

Of course, if you have access to the GMs screen a lot of this is there for your convenience.

It's normal to be nervous about GMing a new campaign- but yeah, only do it if you really want to and not because you are being preasured into it. The main skill that you will need- beyond a working knowledge of the rules- is the ability to improvise on the fly when your players set off in an unexpected direction (as they inevitably will). This is especially important in an investigation-themed game like DH . If you are confident in your ability to keep the session going when your players wander off the established path, then you have nothing to fear about GMing.

Edge of Darkness is a good place to start, but be warned that it takes some additional prep work. You will want to draw up maps of all of the key locations well ahead of time (it boggles my mind that these were not included!). Even if you don't get into a shoot-out in, say, the reclaimator's shop, keep the map to drop into a later scenario! Having a bunch of generic maps handy to use for impromptu episodes can be invaluable to a GM. And, in the smae vein, have a bunch of pre-made NPCs handy for random encounters. These can just be "archetypes" from the back of the Rulebook given specific names and occupations- but write them down ahead of time, so your players can't tell if they are "placed" NPCs with valuable info, or just faceless masses.

As for combat, there is no real "challenge rating" system to scale encounters- you just have to use your best judgement. Start small, with a few relatively minor encounters (scaavs picking through the ruins, or a couple of giant rats) to get a sense of how effective your group of PCs are, and adjust the "real" encounters accordingly. Since both you and your players will be new to the system, you might want to run the Shattered Hope demo adventure with the pregenerated characters- not actual PCs!- to get a feel for it before beginning the real campaign.

Good luck and have fun!

Ok, thanks everyone. I think I'll check with my friends how many would play Dark Heresy or if they'd prefer if over Pathfinder, and make sure I have enough dependable people to run either - but for now, I'd rather try Dark Heresy if there are enough people I can count on. There are bound to be some upsets, but I think we can manage.

In either case, best of luck with the campaign.

Hello again, I have a related question and I couldn't find anything useful with the search function. Is there a shorter primer for new players on playing in the IoM than the one in the book? Most of the players that have so far confirmed they want to play are new to the setting, and I'd like to give them printouts to get them started.

I seem to remember seeing one before, a 30-ish pages of a document that I thought was quite good for someone who has never known the 40k universe, but I don't remember the name. When I google "primer" all I get is the Infantryman's Uplifting Primer, which although useful read for a player with a guardsman character might not be the best introductory source of lore for the setting.

Gregorius21778 said:

But games are not on the list.

Greetings,

This is my first post on this forum and this was the last thing I thought I'd be doing but I was in a similar situation about 8 months ago.

I LOVE the Warhammer 40K universe and enjoy reading stories and histories set within it. When I got my rulebook I was similarily daunted when asked to run a game. I found that the best thing to do is just run with it. Challenge ratings in DH are pretty fluid with your GMing style. For example I found that my ork challenges are hellish compared to when my 7 player (still don't really know how it got so huge ) faced off against a twice-bound daemonhost and its creator.

I know I don't make much sense atm, so I'll try to explain it slightly differently: the challenge of the enemies the acolytes will be facing is largely dependent on how you, the GM, play them. A group of heretics played to their full potential can pose much more of a challenge than twice their number of Orks played poorly.

I guess the best advice I can give you is this (mostly based on my personal experience): start with an investigative mission with a few, small encounters to gauge your groups tactics and teamwork. Then start working your way up to larger and larger encounters designed with your group's strengths and weaknesses in mind.

Another word of advice comes in the form of a quote from one of the best GM's I have ever had the honour of playing with:

"There are three rules to GMing: Rule 1: The GM is always right. Rule 2: The GM is ALWAYS right. Rule 3: If the GM is ever wrong, please refer back to rules number 1 & 2." Remember, when you GM, its YOUR game, not the publisher's game, just their rules. If a rule requires changing or omitting to suit your game, do it.

I do apologize, my thoughts are a bit disjuncted atm and I'm really out of practice when it comes to forums. I do hope at least some of this makes sense and helps.

Have an awesome day!

The ArchGerbil.

Hi shaman,
I'd suggest to write a few lines for your players as a primer - you as the GM know best what you want them to know, and frankly, the WH40K Universe is not hard to describe, especially considering that most of the Imperial citizens do not know that much about history. It's more about conveying a feeling than about actual information. And it might also be fun for your players to explore the setting while playing instead of reading a pile of paper in advance. I wrote two pages for those of my players who were not familiar with DH, and it worked out pretty well. Sadly I wrote in german, but if you like I can exctract the main points of the excerpt for your own reference.

About Gamemastering in general:
I myself am not THAT used to GMing, I only started some two years ago, but based on my player's feedback I fancy myself to be fairly good, and I've extracted a few lessons from my first scenarios, first pre-written, then homecooked. GMing can be really fun, even a lot more than playing, and A LOT more rewarding. I was the hell of afraid the first time, and out of fear I put an insane amount of prep into my first story (Call of Cthulhu, btw), and wow, what a revelation. I've been addicted to it ever since. People always fret about the GMs position, and of course it's challenging, but there is also a great opportunity to be had as a GM: to experience a story of your own making together with your players, to include all the themes you feel appropriate, in the way you feel is coolest, most dramatic and interesting. I know that sounds egomaniac, but one of the lessons I think I've learned so far is, if you, the GM don't have fun, noone else will. And if you enjoy the game, most probably the players will too, even if its about themes they normaly would not touch (or maybe even because of them), and you can sweep along indifferent players if you yourself feel passion for the story, the people therein, and the characters your're dealing with.

So, to boil it down, my two cents:

1. Don't let anybody talk you out of trying it. Maybe it’s a desaster, maybe its heaven, most probably it will be simply okay, which is a perfect place to start for improvement. Don't expect too much of yourself and of your first scenario. It comes with practice.

2. Be prepared. Especially for your first time. Pick a short story for your first scenario (Edge of Darkness is cool that way), and be sure to know and understand all of the background, all of the NPCs. And, of course, that you can relate to the scenario, the NPCs, find something you can invest some feeling into. Don't be afraid to take a short timeout to refer to your notes in game. I personally write down literally everything, even those things that I judge laughably easy to memorize - once in the GM role I tend to forget the plot over creating the atmosphere. I've had good experiences with picking background music in advance, taylored to the scenes I want to play, but that’s optional (though I would strongly advise to use selected music or none at all).

3. Know what your players want. Probably the most important rule ever, yet often overlooked. There are as many approaches to roleplay as there are players. My players and I mainly go for character- and dialogue-heavy roleplay and loads of drama, but if you and your group have fun gunning down mutants listening to Bolterthrower, that’s perfectly okay. Only important thing to know is, what does everyone want, and then to throw your players a goodie from time to time. Funny thing is, most players do not know what they actually want until you really spell it out for them…

Inspite of me preaching philosophy here, I strongly advertise RP is a hobby, its about fun and not about a right or wrong way, it might be handled as an art, but it does not have to, as long as everone involved is happy. Whatever the case, I wish you the best of luck and would like to read how you fared.

The good news is that the DH system is actually fairly GM-friendly once you get a few core mechanics down. The first and most obvious stumbling block for new players and GMs are skill tests. New characters have a very short list of skills and even the things that they are good at are not exactly at "mastery" level. The key here is that a "flat" +0 skill test is intended to represent a challenging task, so a common difficulty should be around +10, an easy task should be +20, a difficult task would be -10 and so on.... Likewise, the game rewards strategy, teamwork and generally thinking things through, so there are lots of things players can do to make things easier for themselves or their buddies. Appropriate use of gear intended for the task at hand can often grant a bonus to the skill test or might open up options that the characters otherwise would not have.

The other concept that really twists minds the first few times is Opposed Rolls. Quite simply, when two characters (PC or NPC) are testing skills against each-other the one with more degrees of success (or fewer degrees of failure!) is the winner. So if a PC Scum character is attempting to sneak past a few guys guarding a building when they are distracted by a convienient traffic accident nearby needs to beat a 55 (say 35 skill, +10 for stealth gear, +10 for the distraction) but crap! he rolls 62, a basic failure. The Player decides he will ride out the result, as he thinks he will need his Fate Points more later in the session. The guards think they are pretty hardcore, but reality is that they are at best "competent" and have a mighty 30 Awareness skill and lack any special gear besides a uniform and a few weapons. The GM rolls for the guards and they get a 51, two degrees of failure. After describing the scene and making the Scum player sweat it a little, his character manages to sneak past the guards without drawing their attention. Perhaps at some dramatically appropriate moment in the story a more alert guard supervisor might review the video logs and "Hey, what was that?"

When in doubt, throw a modifier at an unexpected development, pick the most suitable skill or attribute to test, and go with it. If the adventure as written says a door is stuck and it takes a challenging (+0) Strength test to force it open, but the Guardsman player has the bright idea to have the Arbitrator help him pick up a heavy concrete bench from nearby and use it as a ram, great! Call it +10 for teamwork and another +10 for having an appropriate tool to aid the task (for example) and allow the character with the higher Strength (probably the Guardsman) to test Strength at +20 to force the door open. If there is a surprised baddie behind the door then there are decent odds that he is going to face an improvised melee attack from our charging accolytes in the form of a concrete bench to the chest! Not to panic, there is a weapon listing for "improvised weapon" in the combat charts, in this case I would probably inflict a -20 penalty to WS (and probably a +10 charge bonus) since the characters are not likely to have trained "concrete bench" as a weapon proficiency and it is a bit awkward and unwieldy, but reward them with a nice damage bonus from the thing's sheer mass (say around +4) should they land a solid hit. The players in my game have made more than a few coroners have "what the ****?!?!" moments.

FATE POINTS!!! Yes, players have these and most NPCs do not. They allow players to survive the occasional bad idea or stroke of sheer bad luck. They also allow characters that have them to invoke Emperor's Fury on damage rolls from time to time, inflicting brutal hits that less blessed individuals are just not capable of dishing out. If a frustrated player backs themself into a corner don't be afraid to remind them of a few useful uses for Fate Point expendature, especially if the group is new to the game. The other factor here is the Fate Point BURN. Should a character get smeared all over the wall, all is not necissarily lost... If the player can come up with an improbable but POSSIBLE explanation for how they just survived certain death, then they can BURN (permanently remove) a Fate Point from the character. Cool descriptions, creativity and roleplaying are of course encouraged in this. "I burn a Fate Point and survive, so there!" is lazy and more than a little boring. "Jonah is laying on the decking with a smoking hole in the front of his flak vest unmoving. With a groan he slowly sits up and blinks his eyes a few times. Tearing open his damaged vest, he discovers the steel Aquilla pendant that he wears on his dogtag chain has a nasty burn mark right between the wings. With wide eyes Jonah grunts ' The Emperor Protects!' and leans back against the wall." Now THAT is worthy of a Fate Burn!

Basically if you and your players are having a good time then you are doing it right! For intro player handouts I made several copies of the standard "It is the 41st millenium..." text that appears in just about every 40K book and novel as well as a handy "actions cheat-sheet" that someone posted on the Dark Reign website. I have not looked recently, but I believe there is also a much more extensive "new player primmer" that someone put together (20-30 pages!) that is probably also available on Dark Reign. If you have more time on your hands before the first session I have found one of the best intros for Dark Heresy is to loan the new player my copy of the Eisenhorn trillogy.

One trick I used when my group was first forming: I picked a few of the pre-made Inquisitors from the core book that I was willing to portray as the GM and then allowed my players to pick which one they serve. It allows you to take a basic measure for what overall campaign theme or style your players are interested in (picking Reikhuss vs. Caede for example) while giving the feel that they are making important decisions for the campaign too (which they are in-fact doing). This also helps shape character creation choices and options, since some character concepts are simply BAD ideas depending on who their Inquisitor is. Quite simply, Reikhuss is more likely to recruit that fanatical Cult of the Red Redemption character concept, while Caede is more likely to recruit that "extra-weird psyker" that you dreamed up when you had a 104' fever. This cunning GM trick is designed to get the players thinking of compatible character ideas that hopefully have a chance to form an effective team. A warrior, thinker, investigator and face-man is a MUCH better team mix than four big thugs and an agile killer. EVERY career in DH can very easily be "bad ass!" in the hands of a creative player, so getting some variety is usually a good idea.

Well, I started by providing them a translation of the classical "It's the 41st millenium, and for a hundred centuries the Emperor has been immobile on the Golden Throne" bit. Perhaps I should have just copy-pasted the original - all of us are fluent in English, it's hard to play most games otherwise - but it felt too lazy. Then I put in a bit more about the "only war" they will see - that in some worlds it is overt, but in many more it is covert, and if left unchecked it would tear worlds and systems away from the Imperium that can only be reannexed by more warfare, more deaths, and cause yet more fractures in the cracking colossus that is the Imperium. Basically, I was trying to convey to them that their job is to lead a war in the shadows, be unsung heroes whose certain death will be only for the Emperor to remember - after playing Exalted (where everyone is basically fantasy superhero) it felt like an important warning.

Of course, I will try to make sure they realize that not everything in the Imperium is how it appears on the agitprop posters, that often their greatest rivals and enemies may be from other adepta, and that if they are lucky, before their inevitable death they may accumulate quite a bit of power and resources.

Speaking of primers, does anyone know of any good sites for setting material? I linked to one article detailing what 40k is, the TV Tropes article, and the Lexicanum's 40k section.

Hello, it's me again. I'm still making primers for the players, and I'm looking for some more detailed info on the relatively recent Imperial history (post-Apostasy), does anyone know of a place with more information on it than the Lexicanum has?

The_Shaman said:

Hallo Shaman,

are you sure Lexicanum is scanty in information? Did you check the timeline page? wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Timeline

As for your previous question about setting material, Dark Reign ( www.darkreign40k.com/drjoomla/index.php ) is the right place to look into: and, by speaking about "Primers", there used to be an "Imperial Primer", an easy and detailed introduction to the setting (my players and I found it very helpful). I wasn't able to locate it on the site (where I seem to remember it used to be hosted as well), yet you can find it here: www.scribd.com/doc/44236213/Imperial-Primer .

Oh, that's the one I remember seeing - thanks, I was starting to think it disappeared. Yes, it sounds useful. As for Lexicanum, it doesn't have quite enough information on the older eras as I'd hoped, but I'm using mostly it for the primers I make. I hadn't noticed the millenial timeline, it looks great.

The_Shaman said:

Gut instinct and experience. It's not the answer you'll want to hear, but it's the most honest one.

No amount of 'simulation' of combat or pencil-chewing while looking at stats and trying to work things out in your head will really cut it.

With that in mind, the best advice is to pitch low.

If you put in too tough an encounter, you'll either kill PCs 'by accident', or have to resort to deux ex machina or outright cheating the dice for them to survive. None of those are good things to experience as a player. You either loose all sense of risk if the GM bails you out, or get sick of generating new characters.

Start small, with easily controlled minor encounters in order to get the hang of the system.

Always aim for 'too easy' rather than 'too hard' to start with. Remember: You players will not be upset if they utterly destroy their foes with ease! And if they have an easy time... so what? You have plenty more monsters!

Another good approach is to use a staggered/wave encounter. Have them burst in somewhere to a fight that should be fairly ok for them, and plan for more reinforcements to turn up (ie by the bad guys sounding an alarm). If the fight is too easy, then bring in more reinforcements than originally planned, in a couple of waves.. If it's all going about right; stick with your original number of reinforcements. If the fight goes badly for the PCs then have few or no reinforcements turn up. After all: The alarm is ringing, but the only guy not fighting might be the guy cooking dinner!

Siranui i could not have said it so well. No amount of math can compare to experience. I'll give you an example, I have a group of players I've been playing with for ages, I know they are smart and can take things way out of their league. The best example is from a D&D 3.5 game, the players 4 players, level 4-ish encountered a level 9 sorcerer, now, normally that sorcerer would have cut most players down, the very first thing that happened was that the barbarian threw the kender at the sorcerer, he stuck, and kept him from casting. There were several miraculous rolls in this fight, but the point is that there didnt need to be for them to win, the players were smart, worked together well and new what they were doing and I knew that they could think creatively enough to take down something so much larger. In an opposite example I was running a brand new group of players in DH all of them in rank 2 and I put the 5 of them against 5 PDF with basic stat lines of 25, they should have had no problem, by the end only 2 of the players were standing but at least no one had to burn a fate point. I have since put this same mission / encounter against my seasoned gaming group and watched them massacre them with only 1 player taking 1 hit.

Start easy, learn your players and let them learn to work with each other. Then you can throw the big things at them.

But as Siranui said, waves are one of the best ways to do it, if things are too easy than when the reinforcements come give them more guns / armour / manpower, where ever it seems like it would make it the most challanging without making it unreasonably hard.

An example of unreasonably hard, a game i was in, we are around rank 2 im playing an assassin and my team of 5 end up fighting a greater deamon... WTF?? we're rank 2!! so after 3 of the players were 1 shotted by the Deamon I got lucky enough to roll up damage 5 times on one shot from a hot pack in my long las. that killed it becuase ic had enough damage to go past the armour and toughness and keep going. (it was like 56 damage before toughness and armour i think... it was a long time ago) That is an unreasonable fight, the only way we could do damage at all was to roll up, you should never need righteous fury just to hurt something.

I know that was kinda rambbly but I hope it was helpful.

Well, I've started the recruitment. We're playing EoD, players start at 500 XP - I decided to throw in a little extra since most players are new, and I never liked how most starting characters were still quite green in their field of expertise. So far we have a tech-priest, an adept, a scum and an assassin, and I am expecting one or two players more.

I did something for character generation that sounded interesting, although I'm not sure if always work well. Players could either roll stats and assign them, or if they rolled everything (in order), got a +5 to any skill and rolled twice on the divination, taking their preferred result. So far only one of the players - the one who ended up playing a tech-priest elected to do this and had about average stats, luckily in the right places.