Dark Heresy

By signoftheserpent, in Black Crusade

In my last sesion my GM told us that we see some big footprints and there are some even larger... then i shouted "F**c! Space marines and drednought". If peoples could shoot lasers from their eyes i would be dead :D

I'm sure DoDG is very good, but there's a lot of books for DH and i'm a pauper.

There also seems to be some crossover between that and the Radicals book.

The Radical's Handbook, Creatures Anathema and Disciples indeed have all kinds of overlap, though obviously every one of them has a new angle of approach to already familiar threats.

I asked this ? on the Dark Heresy list, but this seems like the correct thread to put it in.

X years have passed and FFG has consistently improved the mechanics in all of the areas covered by Dark Heresy. So, if you had all of the books and scissors, what composite Dark Heresy book could you make today that would have the best "mechanics." For example, Psionics from Rogue Trader/Dark Crusade, Combat from Dark Crusade, Character Creation from Dark Crusade, etc.

furashgf said:

I asked this ? on the Dark Heresy list, but this seems like the correct thread to put it in.

X years have passed and FFG has consistently improved the mechanics in all of the areas covered by Dark Heresy. So, if you had all of the books and scissors, what composite Dark Heresy book could you make today that would have the best "mechanics." For example, Psionics from Rogue Trader/Dark Crusade, Combat from Dark Crusade, Character Creation from Dark Crusade, etc.

Skills, Talents, Traits, Psychic Powers, Armoury, Combat Rules, Miscellaneous Rules - Black Crusade.

Insanity and Corruption rules, setting, Game Master - Dark Heresy.

Everything else - you have to sit down and figure it out by yourself, trying to import it whole cloth from any other game will yield poor results.

Dark Heresy is a gritty, investigative and fighting-for-your-survival system, that works well with small to medium sized groups (2 to 5).

Rogue Trader is very high-seas-adventure-in-space and very social, that works well with medium to large groups (4 to 7).

Deathwatch is a high-combat tactical hack-and-slash, that works best with a medium sized group (4 to 5 players).

Black Crusade is a gribbly-hell-death abomination sandbox of a system, that works best with any sized group (minimum 2 players).

N.B. the above numbers are my personal view on the matter based on my experiences as both player and GM in hese systems.

Each and every book to date features a mixture of background fluff and game mechanics, so any supplement can be used to simply flesh out your setting. The best for this is Dark Heresy, with the core book, Disciples Of the Dark Gods, Creatures Anathema and each of the 'handbooks' bringing something new and interesting to the table or at least offering a fresh perspective on something already presented.

However the combination of power creep (each system seemingly wanting to let the player feel more empowered, and inquisitorial mooks being weaker than rogue trader crews being weaker than deathwatch marines being weaker than grey knights - then random 'i am chaos and can do all i want!) and balancing ( psykers, degrees of success, fate/infamy points, streamlining of skills, making skills more 'lego' or rather more compatible and pick-and-mix with eachother, the inclusion and updates to the Hordes system for massed combat, updated weapons and wargear stats and special rules.... the list goes on) it all adds up to four very similar yet also very different games.

The ultimate choice is how much effort you as the GM are willing to put in trying to micro-manage all of the supplements. It's something i do in well established RPG lines - i set out ground rules from the start over which supplements are and are not allowed for the players.