Hi!

So I've managed to convince a few friends to try a real paper and pencil style RPG and have decided to pick Dark Heresy as the game. I've got a good bit of knowledge on the 40K universe from playing the tabletop from 3rd edition to now.

There will be 3-5 possible players. We have only one player who has ever done any roleplaying, and his experience is 1 campaign in a different game, I think "The Darkness" or something along those lines.

Here are my questions:

1. We have about 4-5 hours for our first time together. What do you think could/should be accomplished in this first sit down? I figure I'll have to fill the players in on some info about 40K. I was hoping we'd at least get character creation done.

2. From reading the forums, it seems that Edge of Darkness will be a good starting campaign. I figure I'll run through published ones until I get the hang of being a GM. Is there anything I should worry about for the start of the campaign? Should I even try to introduce the campaign the first night?

3. What should I expect the players to have/know beforehand or after the first session? I plan on giving them a list of links to 40K background sites to read in their spare time. Should they have their own copies of the rule book?

I bought the main rulebook, the players handbook, the 3 books in the Haarlock saga, and the 1st and 2nd books of the Apostasy Gambit. I probably don't need the other campaign books yet, but I like to read all things 40K.

Any other pointers you can give me or links to general roleplaying advice sites?

Thanks all!

Senj

Knowing the background and general "tone" of the 40K universe is probably the most important thing a new GM can bring to the game. Beyond that, just familiarize yourself with the rules (including the updated Errata- there have been many changes since the first Rulebook hit the market), and be prepared to improvise. This is important in every RPG, but especially in one focused on investigation. You never know when your players will radically misinterpret a clue and go off on a wild goose chase, and you will need to be able to "wing it". I recommend writing up stats for a variety of npcs- these can be as simple as archetypes from the Adversaries section of the Rulebook given specific names, but trust me, you don't want to have to make up names on the fly. Also, some maps of generic locations (bars, warehouses, hab-units, marketplaces, etc.) will probably come in handy at some point.

Edge of Darkness is a good introductory module, but it lacks maps of the key locations- you will want to draw those up before trying to run it.

Adeptus-B said:

There are some freely available on the Internet. IIRC I got mine from darkreign, and they were rather good. But then, the only one really useful was the ground floor, which requires a little bit of imagination work from the description in the adventure; with the rest I just worked with descriptions.

What I did with my group was if they didn't have the rule book, I printed up some copies of the sample rules from Edge of Darkness.

These were used as extra reference materials, so not everyone was grabbing the 2 rule books available.