Hello everyone

As the topic title states, I'm fairly new to Dark Heresy, however both I and my acolytes love it. So far we've only done one mission and that, overall, went well, considering that it was my first time as game master. I asked for constructive criticism and with that in mind I've begun working on the second mission.

My question is this, one of my friends wasn't able to attend the first session. As such, all the other acolytes are level 3 and he hasn't had a chance to gain this experience. Asking more seasoned game masters: should I introduce him as a level 3 character or should he come in at level I? It would make it more fair on him however he hasn't really earned the experience per say. Any advice would be appreciated

thank you in advance

Mr Hindsight

Hi,

I say allow him to enter at the same or somewhat less xp. Perhaps 300 less. Unless, the player would actually have FUN playing the "rookie in training"

ok, great.

Thanks

I think this is a question that is so often overlooked. I believe that the group needs to agree on what is best for everyone as a group. Some people think you should be penalised for coming in later, or for dying, but I always ask them "why, what has he done wrong" or '"why do you want ot nerf his fun'?

The penalty is already there, this guy is coming in late, and has to try to fit in to a group that has already worked together. In the cast of death you are already penalised by losing your character who you have a significant attachment to.

If you do this, and (for whatever reason) it is the same person who keeps losing characters then they will always be behind and that doesn't seem fair to me either.

I prefer to just give him as much XP as everyone else. Sure he hasn't 'earned it', but then so what?

Too often stuff like this gets left to the GM to decide, or the GM decides without consulting the group, but why? The GM referees, sure, but everyone is there for fun as much as anybody else.

Maximum Kudos for asking for advice on this one Mr Hindsight.

Nice handle btw, I wish I had thought of that.

On the other side of that, there isn't really a huge power rift between beginning and Rank 3 characters in this system - especially if the new character is not a Psyker - so having him start out a little behind won't kill him. At best I'd have him start out a little behind the other characters, just so the players don't feel like he got a free ride when they had to work for their xp. If that feels a bit too limiting, since everyone else is Rank 3, make him Rank 2 or about 400 xp behind the rest of the group. (I think 400xp is about what the book recommends per full session)

As for characters dying, I tend to give the new character the same xp as the one who died - my reasoning being, the player *did* earn those experience points before he died. (and here you are rewarding the player himself for contributing to the game, than rewarding the character for living. Personally I think too many rpgs reward mission success over the enjoyment of the game - it shouldn't matter whether the characters win or lose, they learn something either way, and as a GM you don't want to send the message that players are being punished if they don't always *win* the scenario. Not only does this produce min-maxing players, but it makes those instances when "winning" isn't really an option seem like an arbitrary punishment by the GM; and as such, restricts to game master to only running adventures the characters *can* win at.)

Zakalwe, thank you very much

I thought it would be appropriate to ask more experienced game masters about what I should do in this situation. After reading the comments from you and the others it does only seem right that he enters on the same level as everyone else [maybe with a little less experience, but we'll see]. I have loved the 40k universe for a long time and my friends and I also play dungeons and dragons [although someone else is the game master in that]. I thought it could be interesting to try role-playing in the grim darkness of the 41st millennium, and it turned out to be a hit. I asked for constructive criticism at the end of the session and I'm endeavoring to improve even further in later sessions because, when it boils down to it, the main priority is that everyone should enjoy themselves as much as possible.

I really appreciate all the advice that you and the others had given me.

Mr Hindsight

Hallo there,
I agree with the others: he shouldn't be penalized for joining the game later.

In my opinion level 3 is also a good entry point for a new character: the only difference I'd settle is to have his character join at round 1000 xp, even though the other characters could be a little higher with their xp.

Why should we "work" for XP? XP is just the way you introduce more diversity in the game, more variability, and a way to make players enjoy playing their character because it evolves with the game...

But really, I don't consider my players are "working" for their XP, nor they "earn it". Therefore, I tend to give the same XP to everybody (even those who weren't there), with the exception that I'll hand out some bonuses at some times, just to reward those who create fun and role play, instead of rewarding the simple fact of being there. That way, players do not need to be there in order not to get left behind (so, if they have a big power meeting or whatnot, they're free to go and know they won't be left in the trash because the others will earn a billion XP), but those who really have an impact on the fun of the game get a little something (100, 200 or 300 XP, no more).

No in my games, the one who has missed the session totally, never receives XP for that missed session.

OTOH, there is no crucial difference playing DH amongst party members who are a few levels stronger or weaker. The game system does not put a strict 'ability barrier' between them, so even a level 1 character may significantly contribute to the success of the rest of the party, especially in the case if he has skills that the rest of the party does not.

It's not DnD, after all. DH is about roleplaying and interesting plots - not only about optimization, minmaxing and dungeon crawling.

I used to reward XP only to the players present, but found it didn't seem to work as intended. I wanted to give the absent players an incentive to turn up more often, but in the end these players found that lagging behind the others in "usefulness" just made it less fun and thus less likely they would prioritize RPGs over other activites.

Now I usually just give the same XPs to everyone, present or not. Some minor bonuses due to spectacularly good results, quick thinking or other memorable contributions, but not much. Trying to give individual XP awards based on roleplaying was tedious, tended to favour some players consistently and left others feeling unfulfilled.

Easier and more fun this way. As for the original question, I would enter them in at the same level of XP. On a previous occasion I let a recently joined player start at about 1/2 the XP level, but gain much more XPs than the others, letting him catch up in a matter of a few sessions. I did this for 2 reasons, firstly to let him learn some of the basic skills of his character before being confused by the more complex, and secondly for story-reasons. We explained the rapid XP gain by saying his exposure to the other, more experienced characters had the effect of high-intensity tutoring

Stormast said:

Players "earn" XP by showing up to the game, if you reward them for not coming you send the message that they can show up or not whenever they like. This makes maintaining a cohesive story very difficult as a GM may very well be counting on his players and their varied skills when designing adventures. (I do this, at least, so everyone feels as though they and their skills are valued in the game) Not to mention, if you've developed personalized stories for each character, and that player chooses not to come to the game, not only have you wasted your time, but it may very well make the entire session suffer.

I treat my gaming group the way one would a band or club; players are expected to make the game a priority on those weeks we are scheduled to play - because everyone else is relying on them. Not to mention, it is rather disrespectful of players to miss games, (aside from understandable emergencies or unexpected surprises) when I have put my time and effort into designing them ... for my last short campaign I wrote 30 pages of notes and information to flush out the experience; that is a hell of a lot of effort to go through and have people simply not show up.

As for Darth Smeg's concern ... if my players are showing up so rarely that they are falling that far behind the group, then I would rather they not be in the game to begin with ... but that's just me.

I can see things working out differently if you're running a game in a club, but I just play with a bunch of friends, and dropping or replacing them isn't really an option. (I don't have all that many friends, you see. Must be my charmingly offensive personality)

So I have to motivate them into showing up using different methods, and the one that works best is just to make a kick-ass game

I have enough friends, but I don't have enough to role play with, so...Problem's the same.

I'm not "rewarding" those who don't come. I give them the same "weapons" as the others. Yes,-ish XP doesn't make that much of a difference in DH, but it does do one anyway. Miss 2 or 3 games, and the difference may well become important, at once. And that's where the fun shrinks because you aren't awesome enough to stand up to the others. So, yeah, basically, I'm "rewarding" those who don't come because I encourage them to come nevertheless. When they do come, they find that they're at the same power level as the others and can perform as well. And that is, to me, a great incentive to come back and play. If you have enough players to dismiss those who occasionnaly miss one or two sessions, that's great, but I don't see that as the general case

I'd rather have an explanation with the player than punish him with "XP loss". Sounds more reasonable to me. And, well, for the amount of work lost when one doesn't show up...Sh*t happens, it has happened to me as well, all I can say is that sometimes you "lose" that much work because players act in a silly way, and that's life, too. So, why be worried about it? If you can use all the backstory you've written, it'll be awesome, if not, you'll just have to make do. That's RPG at its finest

Since I'm running my first DH campaign, I use the simplified "200 XP per session" method recommended in the Rulebook. With the formula already heavily abstracted, I don't penalize players for missing an occasional game.

I'm sticking with the 200XP pr evening too, even after many years. Then I throw in nice meaty bonuses when they accomplish major story arcs. Like finishing a major plotline or one of the premade adventures.

On the OP:

You are not really going to have a problem either way with your group sitting at level 3. If the new player starts off with a basic 400XP rookie they will not be "left in the dust" by their companions who have 600-1000 XP on them. Alternately letting the new player build with about 1000XP (less any background package if selected) should not be problematic for the other players and allows the new guy to make a slightly more developed (and useful!) character.

If the other characters took a real beating in the previous few sessions (lots of physical damage, Insanity or Corruption) then you might offer the new player the choice of making an unsullied rookie or risking a little damage for some extra XP. What I used to do when a new player joined my game was allow them to "gamble for XP" to represent damage suffered in the course of their "off screen" adventures prior to joining the team. Essentially I picked an arbitrary amount of XP (around 400-500) and then for every "XP Block" they bought for their character they selected an old injury for the character or a "trauma die". When they were done piling on with the "bonus" XP then they allocated their "trauma dice" in whatever way the player chooses between their Insanity and Corruption, then the player would roll 1D5-1 for each "trauma die" assigned to each trait and record the result. This let the player decide for themself if they wanted to "start fresh" or come in swinging with a damaged veteran.

Now that my primary game is at the Ascension level I just have new characters built as either new Rank 9 DH characters or a Rogue Trader character beefed up to 13,500XP (the baseline for a newly Ascended DH character).

At a bare minimum, make sure you give the new player's character a micro-bead and ensure that they have a reload or two of ammo for their weapons. Some of the starting packages give funny things like "Stub Revolver, 1D5 bullets and a wad of lint." so handing the poor bastard a box of (cheap!) bullets is not going to do anything harmful to the game. How cheap? 1TG = 20 stub bullets. Lho sticks are about 10TG a pack. Assuming Lho sticks come 20 to a pack like cigarrettes in the US then a pack of smokes is worth approximately 200 stub bullets! If the group got some loot from previous adventures then either use the method in the DH rulebook for characters starting over base (1 month's pay per 400xp over start) or simply give the character a few upgrades to his starting kit and be done with it.

You could also offer "bonus XP" to the new player for writing up their character's backstory, providing character art, having a suitable mineature to represent them on a battle-mat and so on.

As for absent players earning XP: The rule of thumb for my group is that absent players characters do NOT earn XP unless they are being run as an NPC for the missed session. Real life happens, but this encourages the social nicety of "advanced notice when possible" and it means that I can try to ensure that the plot for that session does not hinge on that player making an important decision. If you routinely miss sessions then yes, the more reliable Throne Agents WILL be a bit more "bad-ass" over time. Dark Heresy is a mature game, and that is just the way of the universe. We had a situation develop pre-ascension where one of our players developed a serious medical condition and had to miss a lot of sessions because of this. Because this was NOT the player's fault when he was able to return we beefed up the character using the "gambling for XP" method I mentioned above. Missing the game because you went to a party instead was worth 0XP, but then hey, you got to go to a party...

Adeptus-B said:

Darth Smeg said:

In my opinion 200 xp per session are too many.
I usually give my players about 40-60 xp per session, a bit more when they do something exceptional: the maximum I remember I gave them was a cumulative 250 xp for two sessions, comprising a long fight that took a whole session and half of the next one.

Yet I also give my players «personal xp prizes» to induce them to write (session reports, personal journal entries...) or to reward them when they impersonate their characters (for example, when they have their character do, say, move like they would backgroundwise). Usually these rewards are in the order of 20/25 xp.

As for xp rewards for missing players, I think there’s a way to get over the sudden uninformed absences: have no set weekly date for playing. Let me explain what I mean.
My group doesn’t have a fixed day for playing: at the end of each session we all agree on the next one’s date. We’re forced to do this because one of us is a cop, meaning that only week by week he knows his shifts and his free evenings: so he tells us when he could play and we all try to match our commitments with his availability. This way, should somebody be missing, he gets no xp.
Of course it works only if every one is inclined to sacrifice something in order to meet the other ones’ needs. And right because of this, it is very instructive too.

Berengario said:

Dude that might work at Rank 1, but at 60 xp per game sessions that's every week (50 per year) for five years to get to Ascension. You must have a well established group and a bunch of good ROLE players.

Zakalwe said:

I trust my players (and therefore I) will never reach Ascension level: even as a player in my AD&D times, I’ve always had an innate aversion for high-level characters and campaigns. Simply put, I can’t stand that «epic deeds changing the world/universe/everything» thing nor those «larger than life» heroes: and having ascended characters would indeed mean I’d have to run suitable campaigns, with lots of high-level adversaries and quests, too many pieces of powerful equipment and frequent combats.
Not my stuff.

Instead I enjoy the little things, trying to make them more personal (kind of a «family business»), to give the players both the feeling that they’re just one number among the (uncaring) trillions and the awareness that, should every pious imperial citizen do its part, mankind would rise again and conquer the universe.

My players are aware of this aversion of mine and, even though grumbling once in a while, seem to agree and (I hope) enjoy this choice I made.

And, yes, even though we’re a patchy group playing together since just an year, luckily we’re all long (and old) time experienced players: most of the situations are settled narratively, thus keeping the game a «role play», not a «roll play».

At low levels 200 per session can seem like a lot, but at mid to high levels? In my DnD games I have a pretty standard system in advancement - it takes a year to get to 9th level, two years to get to 12-13th, and about a year every two levels after that. (this is based off of second edition, mind you, where 9th level is supposed to be a big deal) But even in my low powered Ravenloft games the whole 1 year per level thing some people did never seemed enjoyable to me. In a level based system part of the fun is actually advancing your character and if you never get to do that you begin to wonder why you're playing a level based game.

And there really can be some fun things done at high levels. At the point where characters are working with the movers and shakers, making decisions that shape the world/sector etc. At that point politics become as fun as killing monsters and though you are doing bigger things you come to realize that you're doing them on a larger board - so you're still limited and not all powerful.

@ Berengario and Jack of Tears:

I hear you both. When playing D&D we never ran a campaign much past 9th or 10th level, it just got too hard for the DM, but we had some excellent campaigns. I hear what Jack says though. In a level based game you need a bit of movement because it's .part of the game.

I think as I've got older I have prefered more influence in my characters, if not ' raw power' as such. To many games grovelling around in the gutter apologising for not being worthy have soured my view of the (pathalogically) 'low powered' game. Right now we're Rank5. I have achieved 'Assassinhood' and its a pretty good place to be. Do I see Ascension as the goal, not at all, the story and the charcter are the drivers for me. But it does feel good to level up too.

On the other hand, I've just returned to RPGs after 10 years when asked to play DH. We don't get to play very often so our gm is giving LOTS of xp. I'm not really that confortabvle with things and would like to play a little more regularly and advance slower. Like you Berengario (and I'm not implying that Jack doesn't), I prefer in game rewards like building a relationship with our Inquisitort over more abstract ones like levels. Making contacts, gaining influence, solving puzzles, defeating cunning bad guys and finding cool pieces of kit are pretty satisfying. Much more appreciated when it comes from creative play.

So I guess what I'm saying is it's all important to me.

p.s. Right now while I'm typing I'm watching a doco about the hunt for a 93 year old Nazi. Could be a good starter for a DH scenario, with acolytes on the trail of a near-death heretic associated with an infamous act of heresy. For reasons of vengence and obsession the Inquisitor has deceed the old heretic must be brought to justice before he dies. Meanwhile all hell is breaking loose and because the Acolytes are so busy chasing the shadows of someone who committed their crimes 70 years ago andmay be dead already they are nowhewre to be seen as the local situation turns to sh#t. What do the acolytes do?

40-60 xp might be alright in principal but once you want things like master sorcerer (available as an alternate career rank) and you include the prerequisites aswell: Sorcerer, Forbidden Lore (Demonology or Warp) +20, Scholastic Lore (Occult) +10. your getting at about 1.5k xp which by your system would be about 30 sessions!! -so it would be the decision of wanting to be a master sorcerer then 7.5 months later you become a master sorcerer!!

I get the impression Berengario is running a different kind of game from one where a PC could or should want to be a Master Sorceror.

And anyway, Sorcery is Heresy!

"Burn the Heretic, Purge the Unclean!" ZAP ZAP ZAP!!!

When players miss a game i give them half the xp of everyone else, that way they don't fall too far behind but it encourages players ot turn up to games.

In regards to new players coming into the game I tend to start them off a 100-700 xp behind dependent on the groups average rank but they catch up pretty quickly.

Jack of Tears said:

In AD&D our master didn't give us xp: he simply told us when we were allowed to level up.
In my opinion that was the best system: too bad I couldn't import it in Dark Heresy because of the different way leveling, experience and skills/talents buying work.

Zakalwe said:

By the way, to make things more creative and personal for my players, soon I’ll start their characters’ «personal quests» I came up by salvaging their backgrounds, journals and reports.
It seems it would be nice to share the same group as yours.

Zakalwe said:

lol

Exactly