I have prepared an image to convey my views.

Well Dezmond, if you like it that much then...

DH is fun for those who enjoy dark and gritty investigative style story telling. It may not be the greatest idea if you want to play a space marine or some such equivalent.

Dezmond said:

Hm, chainsword weilding, chaos worshipping villain? Done that a couple times now in Dark Heresy. The cover fits just fine dude.

If I can butt in with a follow up question(s)...?

I've been gaming with a group for several years. Mainly WFRP (1&2), WW (early versions, we always seem to drift towards the Werewolves), Cyberpunk & Shadowrun. We all share the GM'ing.

I'm wanting to start up a DH game. I'm looking for reassurance that it is a good system to introduced to an established group that are familiar with Warhammer Fantasy and know a little of 40K.

Currently we've got into the style of gaming that we prefer simpler systems so we can concentrate on having a good time! e.g. our current GM for WFRP doesn't even fully know the combat system "What do you mean Guarded attack?" yet we've been happily playing the campaign for 2-3 years.

My questions about DH are...

1. Is it rule/rolling heavy? So long as the players know their skills does the game flow?
2. What about GM'ing in combat? With multiple NPC's with different skillsets and different weapon options can you make it manageble (and not bog down the pace of combat) without the players thinking that each NPC is just a copy of the last?
3. How does the social system play out? Are the multiple skills used or does it just fall back to Charm?

I love how the skills work with the careers in DH. I like how with the XP levels you gain quite a lot of skills rather than the characteristic points (I hated advance schemes with lots of wounds on them). Am I right in thinking as the players progress and the character grows it's feels better than the WFRP system? Of course it depends on the player, we do have one in our group that has spent 1500 XP on jumping from basic career to basic career.

Thanks in advance for any replies.

Baldrick said:

Darn it the forums ate my post.

anyway my opinions to your questions

1. Its medium. Its not rule-role light by any amount, but its not super complex either. The game does flow once you can get those skills, but it suffers in the beginning a bit. By tier 3 though it begins to flow smoothling in social and combat. The hardest rules to understand and grasp is probably the psyker rules, and those aren't super difficult once you understand them

2. Yes its managable because it all the same basic mechanics, but the flavor of the weapons changes a lot of things, especially when criticals are called into play. A chainsword acts in quite a different way then a flamer does, which is different from a bolt pistol, since each roll on a different critical table. Toss in psykers (which work on a slightly different mechanic then the rest) and while mechanically it'll seem the same, flavor wise it'll seem different enough.

3. Social mechanics are probably some of the best I've seen. There are a number of social skills, each of which will impact how you conduct an investigation, this is especially true when you start tossing in the knowledge skills into the mix.

4. Better then WFRP.. no. Different enough yes. WFRP is much more open-ended in what you want to choose. Dark Heresy is much more linear. This can be both good and bad depending on your thoughts. Elite picks help customize your character. The biggest draw back right now is that there is a hard cap on experience as written in the rules, which can detrimentally effect character customization. Its easy enough to houserule out or ignore, but right now its there.

Also to answer Dezmond's picture. Some people do think that the moment they hear 40k it must be about world killing invincible Space Marines. Course I don't remember reading that anywhere in the initial advertisements for Dark Heresy, or on the book covers, or in the books themselves, but apparent if you listen to Dezmond then somewhere somehow Black Library (and then FFG) lied to us about what Dark Heresy is going to be about. Dark Heresy is about the Inquisition, like Eisenhorn. You know the guy who ended up a cripple and insane, who lost half of his alcolytes throughout the stories, and whose Interrogator, while going on to become an Inquisitor, was nothing more then a brain in a box. So while somehow though the books always said Inquisition, some individuals have it in their head that Warhammer 40k means Space Marines, and anything else isn't 40k.

I make this point that while Dezmond may be the most vocal member of this group, he's not alone in his thinking, and it can become important if your players are only familiar with Dawn of War being 40k, and not Eisenhorn and most of the non-Space Marine books.

Dezmond said:

I don't know looks kind of like actual gameplay to me. Chainswords... check... bolters...check.. chaos worshipping heretic... check... sounds like Dark Heresy to me... I don't remember any cover of any of the Dark Heresy books having a Space Marine or any kind of invinsible character type on them, but then that's just me.

Xathess Wolfe said:

I think he means there are no rules for playing chaos-tainted chainsword wielding loonies...

...oh, wait, there are.

Anyway, to the OP's question - I would consider long and hard whether I purchased anything from the line - all the people that worked on it are of unsound mind. Heck, if you believe some of the things said on the internet they deliberately set out to make a game designed to be enjoyed by some people, but not all. Can you believe that s#$@? They also never ever wanted anybody to have any real power, so they made a game where they can only aspire to being redshirts, like, say James Bond. Ignore the filthy lies about forthcoming products that will fill in the higher tiers of inquisitorial power. Heretics, the lot of them.

That TS guy. Now that guy... that guy is funny. That guy.

The "red shirt" and "low power character" angle isnt true at all. The only reason why I even thought so at first was because of the rank and career system (which is scrary close to level and class, unfortunately) but that is only because of the rank titles.

A few touches here and there and a right amoung of imagination and fairplay and everything works out very well.

Its a very very good game that quickly became my favorite in 25 years of gaming.

TS Luikart said:

Yes those filthy lies are there entirely because the righteous fandom whinged and are in no way because the designers had um, you know? a PLAN to start low and work there way up. Oh no, not at all. Must surely be incompetence.

Yep, must be.

Hellebore

I'm glad to see you're still keeping an eye on these boards, T.S., in spite of the ludicrous levels of criticsm and even personal insults leveled at the DH designers by some people...

And I hate to repeat what other people have said... but Dezmond, are you serious? You think a dude with a funny mask a chainsword, a bolter, and a penchant for heresy is beyond the scope of Dark Heresy?

I guess I see the problem. The designers were too lazy and stupid to include an entry for "funny mask" in the equipment section, and instead just lumped it all in together under "clothing." I'm a busy guy, when I buy an RPG I want it to be immediately playable. I don't want to have to come up with my own rules for funny masks.

Silly masks are one of the ICONIC images of 40k! The fans are understandably upset that they waited for 20 years for a 40k RPG, only to get one without a single mention of silly masks in the equipment section! I can only hope that Rogue Trader gives silly masks the treatment they deserve.

Really, 400 pages and not a decent treatment of silly masks...

Overall I still love dark heresy, it is my favorite game.

But I still wish they did character generation differently.

Hopefully Rogue Trader has different rules that can cross over into Dark Heresy for Character Generation.

TS Luikart said:

In 40k land JB is a redshirt. Compared to an eversor assassin.

And M is a 400 year old 10th circle ginaz swordmaster who can melt iron bars with his mind and is so warp touched he has grown horns.

Small fish in a really big, really nasty, pond.

I thought M was a girl. Or at least she was in Casino Royal

Xathess Wolfe said:

Thanks A LOT for the reply. I try to persuade them tonight...

Dezmond said:

From everything you've said on these forums recently I can't help but wonder if you play games with a sadistic GM who kills off your characters every session. You do realize that you don't have to start this game at the lowest power level right? You do realize that the low levels are there for the enjoyment of people who do prefer to start as "red shirts" and grow to wear other not so lethal colors?

Oh noes! The game system caters to both low power AND higher power gamers with very little if any tweaking needed.

My players are anything but red shirts in our game. They are both feared and respected, with a trail of dead in their wake and they're only rank 3 (nearing 4).

Where is your vision? Where is your creativity man? You have so much fervor for Space Marines and badassness yet you're content trolling here which is the exact opposite of bad ass. I'm getting Toby Keith vibes here seriously. I laugh about your behavior on other threads but when you pull petty trollish behavior on a thread that is meant to bring new players to the game then I am content to ignore you completely. Being a negative spokesman for DH isn't going to help bring money in for future projects. Namely your beloved Space Marines.

Grow up. Seriously.

Well, I don't want to see Dark Heresy become the same millstone around the neck of 40k roleplaying that WFRP is around the neck of Warhammer roleplaying.

There was even a blog post trying to rationalise the yawning gap between WFRP and Warhammer a while back

--

Examine the characters from the art thread - none look as bad-ass as The Guy On The Cover. What has gone wrong? If people are supposed to think their characters are bad ass why don't they?

(I don't think its a talent issue - there are some great pictures there).

Ignore Dez. He's a troll who thinks role playing is taking one of the special characters from a Codex, giving him all the best wargear, and getting together with a bunch of characters just like that so they can kill lots of Orks.

As for WFRP being low powered, you bet that base starting characters are. Of course nothing stops you from throwing a few hundred or a few thousand xp onto them if you want something stronger. My WFRP players have taken out a chaos champion Shaggoth, a chaos dragon, and an entire warband lead by a champion of chaos and a level 4 chaos sorcerer. They've stormed vampire towers, turned wights into bone meal, ended vampires, crushed cults, and turned minotaurs and rat ogres into bloody gobs of meat. The daemons of chaos haven't escaped their tender caresses either.

Dark Heresy is as powerful as you want ot run it. I started my players with 1500xp instead of 400 because I wanted a tougher introductory adventure. At around 4,000xp they are very scary boys and girls.

So the general conseus is that it is indeed worth approxitmently $60 US? I mean I've read it a few times in my friendly local comic shop (which has a nice seating area for briefly leafing through books and magazines,) but I don't own it yet (yeah I know... what's taking me so long?)

I'm not certain that my little stone in the pond will make much of a difference at this point, but Emperor of Man, most Holy and Rightouse, would blast my eyes for not poking my head into the thread. So, yes it is worth getting. I was not a big 40k fan ... always fealt it was over the top and full of power armored psychopaths beating one another over the head with their machismo ... Dark Heresy changed my entire perception of the setting and has become something of a recent obsession of mine. I have been gming for ... well, a damned long time ... and I have had few games I place on the "must have" list - this has quickly stepped forward to join those coveted ranks.

Yes, the general concensus is, buy it! (in the immortal words of Arnie - "Go, Go now!")

Psion said:

I'm going to say its worth the money yes. There are very few games out there currently in my opinion that even hold a candle to Dark Heresy in terms of fun factor. For me it has just enough combination of fluff, and yet open-endedness that allows creativity without having to start literally from raw air in creating that fun.

Xathess Wolfe said:

This, added to which there are very few rpg companies producing books with anywhere near the graphic design excellence of the Dark Heresy line.

If you've played WHRP 2nd Ed then the jump to DH will be easy. Combat is the same other than a more sane initiative. (d10 + algilty BONUS) Things to know:

0)You play members of the Inquistion. You aren't the Inquistor. Of course nothing stops your GM from using a different setting. I ran a Rogue Trader game when DH came out. (Sort Firefly meets call of chuthulu.)

1)Low level characters are a bit newbish, but are a step above starting WH.

2)There are only a few classes, and you can't switch careers. But..

a)Each tier has x2-3 times the number of advancements you need to proceed to the next tier. 2 scum could be radically different by tier 3.

b)At tier 3-4 you generally have a branched advancement path. A scum can take the con man/thief route or the thug/killer route.

c)There are a number alternate tiers youcan take. For example a starting scum can take reclaimer which makes him into a tech or possibly a heritek.

3)Guns are king. You can make melee work, but nothing beats full auto autoguns at the lower levels.

If you've played WHRP 2nd Ed then the jump to DH will be easy. Combat is the same other than a more sane initiative. (d10 + algilty BONUS) Things to know:

0)You play members of the Inquistion. You aren't the Inquistor. Of course nothing stops your GM from using a different setting. I ran a Rogue Trader game when DH came out. (Sort Firefly meets call of chuthulu.)

1)Low level characters are a bit newbish, but are a step above starting WH.

2)There are only a few classes, and you can't switch careers. But..

a)Each tier has x2-3 times the number of advancements you need to proceed to the next tier. 2 scum could be radically different by tier 3.

b)At tier 3-4 you generally have a branched advancement path. A scum can take the con man/thief route or the thug/killer route.

c)There are a number alternate tiers youcan take. For example a starting scum can take reclaimer which makes him into a tech or possibly a heritek.

3)Guns are king. You can make melee work, but nothing beats full auto autoguns at the lower levels.

Of course Dark heresy is a good game. It's easily one of the best recent releases in gaming right now. And for an added bonus, since you're a WHFRP vet. you can jump right into dark heresy's system with no problems, as it's all old hat to you.

My core rulebook and Inquisitors handbook arrived today. I should be able to have a look at them after work.

Thank you for all of your repiles they have been very helpful.