One challenge with GMing Dark Heresy is establishing the feel of the 40K-verse. After all, how GrimDark it is, is up to the GM- there are some large differences in the fluff between Rogue Trader compared to say Dan Abnett. But even with that, some elements of the Imperium are harder to convey to players than others -getting out of the idea of technological improvisation is one for example.

So heres some things I do -

In Hives, there is a daily "Thought for the Day" message- the speakers crackle, play the "Emperors March" and everyone comes to a halt in the streets and factorums, listening intently as one of the Thoughts for the Day are relayed to the populace - "Hate The Other" or "Questions are a Burden on the Soul of Humanity" . This serves to emphasise the fascistic aspect to the Imperium with its very definate propanda.

I mix 1930's tech and mediavael stuff with modern hi tech- when they wanted a spy camera the only thing they could find was an Victorian style photographic plate camera with the little shroud for the photographer to duck under and a tripod stand. This is whats being produced now- if they want a tiny, camera phone then they are looking at requisitioning a 2,000 year old artifact from the Adeptus Mechanicus. This helps emphasise that technology is degrading rather than getting better.

SJE

The part about technolgy 'degrading' is somewhat against what the Tech-priests are doing.

True, they mostly keep what thee can re-invent or find to themselves (which is what gives rise to tech-heresy in the first place), buthat being said they take great pains to maintain the old technology. Bolters over thousands of years old firing as good as the day they were fabricated for instance; that's not degradetion, that's stagnation. There's a major difference in those two words. Stagnant: Unchanging. Degradation would be more akin to something post-holocaust, as in nothing is being manufactured at all and what's left is then ad-hoc.

If you really wish to get the 'colour' of the Imperium you have to take in that everything here used to be grandeaur some 10,000 years ago. Lost tech was being rediscovered and man still had access to a great archive of old information. After the Heresy in the 31st mil, and the Troubles of the 36th mil progress came to a screeching dead-end halt. Dogma and superstition now take place where technology and science was once king. Basiccally someone gives you an arcahic looing device, and tells you to 'press this button' after you recite a chant. (Your camera). You then give it to the tech priest who will do the required littany of 'pho-imagery-patterns' (process the data) and give you your desired photos.

It's not breaking in your hands, falling apart or decrepid. There's now just mysticism and heaps of unrequired steps involed in things that millenia ago were commonplace and known. It's when the maintaining stops (hive cities ring a bell) that things go to custard and looks that way, building on top of the old for example.

If I may quote from Star Wars 1st edition RPG:-

'In Star Wars, ships don't have radar; they have sensors. Robots don't have motors; they have servomechanisms. Repairmen don't use wrenches, they use hydrospanners. Never call something a car if you can call it a landspeeder; a sewing machine if you can call it a textile droid. Using "Earth" terms is banal; use invented terms instead.'

Hence Vox, Lho Sticks, Textile Servators and all the cod latin.

Lots of good stuff in SW1st:-

'Star Wars is huge. We're dealing with space opera, here. Star Wars characters eat planets for breakfast and play billiards with comets in the afternoon. Everything is always five miles long, or as big as a small moon, or seven million years old. The odds are always 7000 to 1, and you should never blow up a landspeeder if you can blow up a planet. Part of the Charm of science fiction is the awe that the scale of the universe evokes. Part of the success of the movies is the ability of 70mm film and Dolby sound to portray this kind of scale. Obviously, you don't have Dolby sound or a wide screen at home (nor a couple of million for special effects), so you can't evoke scale the same way Lucasfilm does.

But you can still try to evoke a sense of wonder.

-Gesture - It's better to SHOW someone how big something is instead of describing it. Wave your arms, hold the far apart to demonstrate huge size, move them slowly to represent the movement of a huge object (regardless of actual speed, big things seem to move more slowly). Make deep, rumbling bass sounds.

-Use superlatives - Demonstration is always better, but in extremity you cab be reduced to words. Monsterous, huge, awesome, massive, ponderous, magnificent, incredibly bigger than anything you have ever seen before, massing so many tons that you need scientific notation to express the number, powered by zillionwatt fusion generators with the power of seven suns... You get the idea.'

Its the GW writers style guide...

As has been said before, some of the fiction really helps. I'm reading the Ravenor trilogy right now and 'getting the feel' for the setting in preparation for (hopefully) a game. Cogitators for computers, airgates for airlocks, anchor for orbit. It does start to feel truly like an ancient technologically based civilization that has lost its way. It is beginning to define 40K for me more than space marines and chaos demons. It comes off as a sort of medieval setting that 'remembers' how to build and use high tech even though it no longer understands it, which is the essence of the game, I agree. Pretty unique when you get away from the miniatures 40k a bit. I like it better, and I am looking forward to Rogue Trader especially. Some of my favorite scifi growing up was Poul Anderson's Polesotechnic League, and this game reminds me of it in some ways. Like Satan' s World, with David Falkayn fighting a fleet of warships found and manned by a low tech people and turned star pirate. They had learned just enough to use the mostly automated ships, but didn't understand the tactics and technology well enough to beat Falkayn and his ship, the Muddlin' Through. Yep, Rogue Trader could really be something. Anyway, I like the mix of high tech, dark 'xeno' tech, and the level of ignorance of same...even by the Inquisition. Ideas like using technology to recreate the 'magic' lexicon for Enuncia creates a stark, dark and exquisite setting flavor quite unlike anything I've run into before, albeit some similar, as above. I am quite looking forward to a game. Hopefully.

SJE said:

This is one of the reasons that I personally borrow the premise of "Tech Level" from games such as Traveller , GURPS , etc., and couple it with the 40k aesthetic. Worlds will have a "base TL" and might be able to find "novelty tech" from higher TLs depending on the planets' position within the trade network, or in other words it becomes a question of availability.

Then again I also work with the principle that the 40k universe is, while you might argue regressing, also more advanced than the modern world, though not universally over every field of technological endeavour. "Computers" are less advanced than where they might otherwise be, but they are still broadly computers (even if they have "icky goopy" components), since that is a common part of retrotech sci-fi (or fantasy, in 40k's case). Yet that "scroll" the TechPriest is chanting from might also be a computer with "e-paper" acting as I/O device and wifi access to the TechPriests' PAN (personal access network, or "noosphere") and/or augmented reality systems of a data-sanctuary (yes, Shadowrun can be plumbed for oodles of fun for this kind of thing).

Steampunk, the imagery from China Melville, etc., can all for me inspire descriptions of the 40k universe - yay, even unto some of the videos that Dezmond/ErikBoielle has posted - but for me the 40k universe is every going to be a soft (very soft) sci-fi universe... The technology is there, but cultural aesthetics hides it.

(Another caveat is that I see the "regression" of technology as also ending insofar as it is moving into the "Renaissance" rather than the middle medieval period...)

Kage