Well the GenCon event list went live… there is no listing for an annual report for any of the 40k RPGs. There is practically no new stuff coming out (none for Dark Heresy unless I missed something) listed for this year beyond the Only War materials and the Tome series of books. After receiving no new book ideas or even hints at new material beyond Only War last year at GenCon, are we looking at the end?

-Cynr

I would tend to say no, since after every announcement, lack of announcement, etc. there are folks who cry apocalypse, end of line and what have you.

Until FFG announces the end of the line, I won't believe it. I think to assume otherwise is foolish.

MADDOGmjb said:

and even then it is not the end since at least my group would continue playing (if they anounced the end right now) for quite some time… we only use 3 books at this time anyways.

Yes. The game is over. There will be no more books, the Dark Heresy forums will close, and Games Workshop will be sending employees to everyone's homes to burn copies of the books.

(Naaaaah. I imagine there's bound to be another update/edition coming up.)

As has been said Dark Heresy is NOT coming to an end. With more lines out there will be less resources for each line, and the ones with few sourcebooks will have more support than the lines, like Dark Heresy, which already have lots of sourcebooks out.

I asked FFG if there were any forthcomin products for Dark Heresy and I received an e-mail stating that the line was not dead. This was last YEAR! So I would guess something big is coming.Whether this is going to be a new edition or a load of new books, they are taking thier sweet time! In either case I think due to the long silence may alienate some Dark Heresy fans. I have stopped playing Dark Heresy as we've run out of adventures to play. I don not have the time or resources to create my own, so we've moved on to other games. My players have long since abandoned the thought of going back to Dark Heresy, unfortunately. But come on FFG, if we have to wait this long for any info on new stuff, at least throw us a teaser of some kind to keep our attention! So in the end I'd be lying if I said I wasn't at least a little bit disappointed with this whole needless "secrecy" B.S…it's getting old and tiresome. Actually… I'm REALLY disappointed.

Play adventures I've made myself or fanmade adventures? What bull. My experience has shown that (as I just stated) is that I used to have alot of time when I was younger…but DONT. If you were me, you'd know this. But you're not. If you had asked me if I played any Fan made advetures(I have played many, in fact) before your post, instead of assuming that I haven't, I would'nt be responding in such a harsh tone. Also you have assumed (incorrectly…again) that I've not customized/altered existing scenarios or made my own…I have. You have also incorrectly assumed that I'm "burned out". Where in my post you got that idea, I'll never know. I have also asked other players if they wanted to G.M…but no takers. I asked them why. Do want to know what their answer was? They don't have the TIME! I really hate it when people on message boards make incorrect assumptions whithout getting their facts straight and thinks that person is somehow bored. Even though nowhere in my post did I say I was bored. I think it is you sir, who are making up their own scenario.

It's a matter of preferences. Some people like writing their own adventures, some don't. There's no reason to pull the "no time" excuse unless you're really pulling three shifts a day or something, but then I'd doubt you would feel like spending so many hours on a P&P evening. If writing your own campaigns isn't high enough on your list of priorities because you'd rather do something else, that's completely okay and up to you - no reason to get defensive, and no reason for anyone to blame you for it.

I will say that dependence on official adventures is an issue in just about any RPG system, though. Few P&P lines publish a selection of ready-made adventures at all, and even of those that do it's just a matter of time until you're through with them, at least if you play regularly. Ultimately, it's always easier/faster to blast through content than creating it, be it a novel series, a TV show, a computer game … or, well, a pen&paper RPG. Accepting fan-made material helps, but even there I doubt that it's enough (as exemplified by your own statement).

Myself, I see official adventures as a stepping stone for new GMs, something to help them find their bearings in the game and the setting - but there's something to be said about that shift to homemade campaigns, tailored to the individual characters' roles and backgrounds. Typically, such campaigns also offer much more liberty to the players as the GM may be more willing to improvise, given that he or she already created the material from scratch anyways and thus feels right at home adapting to the group, whereas official adventures often lead to a degree of railroading to get to page X, as if it's a matter of reaching the next level in a railshooter. Or that has been my personal experience, at least. *shrug*

Have you considered passing the torch to one of your players? Usually, that's sadly a no-go as few people are willing to GM (the greater responsibility involved may be frightening, especially if it's a system as complicated/complex as DH!), but it may be worth a shot.

Addition to the above: Yes, I actually read that you already tried asking your players - just as I clicked on the Publish button - but the forum prevented me from editing the response in time. First by refusing to load, and now the time window has already passed.

For some reason, this website almost never seems to work right. I swear, out of all the forums I'm visiting, this has to be the least reliable one.

Mithras said:

Let me first say that it was not my intention to insult you, so for any offense, I apologize. The only point I was trying to make was that there is no significant difference in time between making your own scenario and preparing a pre-made scenario for play. If you don't have time for one, you likely don't have time for the other. And if you don't have time for either, you probably don't have time to be playing a pen and paper RPG.

I never once adopted an accusatory tone. I never said you were burned out, I offered an option IF you were burned out. I also never said you were bored, I said that you and your group were boring if you thought the system was exhausted. Please don't misconstrue my words, I simply was trying to have you approach the problem in a different light. P&P games are all about communication and compromise within gaming groups. If you're the only one willing to run a game and you really want to run Dark Heresy, tell your group. You're putting in more work than they are (I assume), so why not be rewarded for it?

As Lynata said, the "don't have time" isn't a reason for Dark Heresy, and not a reason for anything at all. Personnally, I don't think there is one, if only one, human being on Earth that has less than 24 hours each day. The rest is a question of priorities; it is entirely correct that people decide to do something else and make other priorities in their life, but it is not because they do not have time.

On the other hand, I agree with the fact that creating a scenario is not taking more time than reading and preparing one that is already done; either are time consumming processes that can ben highly rewarding and also that have their own advantages and disadvantages.

In my group we design all of our own adventures, we think it's fun and manage to find time (usually, sometimes we have to skip a session because the GM had life to deal with). That being said, playing a game that hasn't had any announcements in almost 8 months is a little bit of a bummer. We generally don't jump on the newst book and try to shoehorn it into the current campaign, but it's fun to see the new rules and fluff. It keeps us engaged and keeps the GM thinking about the adventure even when he's not working on it.

We run a hybrid Deathwatch/ Dark Heresy with a touch of Rogue Trader campaign, so the few books for those lines that have been dribbling out are fun, but we're at two or three months now for both DW and RT with no new announcements. It would be great to see another designer's diary, another interview or even just FAQs and errata once a month.

That being said FFG doesn't have to do anything to keep folks interested in WH40k since Games Workshop works really hard at that. Also, given the intense release schedule for the 6th Edition Table Top Codexes, it's possible GW told FFG to slow down on the RPG releases so the Table Top fluff is established first. So here's hoping.

Lynata said:

What is up with that? All of the FFG WH40k RPG sites have weird lag, timing out issues, the forum pages don't load completely, I just had to sign in multiple times in order to post this. There are 10,000s of forums on a wide variety of sites that work flawlessly out there, not sure what's up with FFG.

I don't want to sound like I'm 'ganging up' against you, Mithras , but I've found that the published adventures require so much work filling in the gaps that they provide almost no time savings over self-written scenarios. I'm currently running Damned Cities , and the missing details left up to the GM are pretty extensive: multiple plot threads, key tactical maps, etc.

That said, I totally agree with the other point from your first post: even if they are not prepared to commit to release dates, FFG should at least give some teasers of upcoming product to keep fans from losing interest. If traffic on the WH40KRP Forums is any indication, fans are drifting away in significant numbers…

Well GenCon event registration opened. i was 1989 in the cue and all events will filled up before my list was processed for all (well what 5?) FFG Warhammer RPGs. I did see a FFG seminar called "In-Flight" taht talked about new products but no where in the description did it say as to what games… it could be all Star Wars, Dust, etc. Gone are the days when each of our beloved Warhammer games got their own (or shared even) seminar. I know everyone hates the doomsayer but I was on board with Dark Heresy since the Black Industries announcement. I have met everyone from Ross down at different events. Noone has ever talked about a revised edition beyond "it's an idea" and nothing was mentioned beyond the Lathe Worlds last year at GenCon where even many of the FFG names were moving to work on other projects.

It is unfortunate that, in all of the FFG history, there is very little ever said from FFG staff on their own forums. As of this date, there is no Warhammer products In Development or At the Printer on the website.

As for adventure material, I have run all the printed FFG stuff, I have run converted adventures from Rogue Trader and Deathwatch, and most of the contest submission stuff. I have tied it all into my own storyline themes and connection stories over the last every Tues night for 5 years. My solution was to give the party's Inquisitor Lord (NPC) a Warrant of Trade and a ship and "politically" exile him (and his Throne Agents, the PCs) to Koronus after the events of the Apostasy Gambit where many people think they killed St. Drusus reborn. I have created a ship and an Explorator crew for all the classes that are not really represented well by my Dark Heresy party and they will actually arrive on Footfallen to start the Lure of the Expanse storyline next week. Spoiler! Unless someone in the party sacrifices one of the Unique itmes they have collected (they are an average of Rank 12 Ascension, so they have some nice tools), I am going to have their Inquisitor Lord use his Rosette as his auction bid to win a place with the Seven Witches. Starting to sever the formal ties to the Inquisition, is my hope to turn Dark Heresy into Rogue Trader without too much disruption.

-Cynr

Cynr said:

I have taken the same approach, but after the foretelling, the playersinquisitional team went back to 'take care' of the witches. It was a fun encounter (for me anyway) and they now have 10K blind slaves

breez said:

Nice! Always useful.

-Cynr

Hi, if there is something big coming….

I suspect it would be an overhaul of the mechanics of the dh game which hs persisted since Black Industries. whichhas been tweak, tinkered with and refined by ffg since they inherited the game.

lets face it - rogue trader mechanics were somewhat more smoother, as was deathwatch - and now with Black crusade and only war seeming to be a further refinement.

A revision seems to be long overdue…

A new edition don't seem unlikely and could perhaps be useful. Although it will require me to spend even more of my hard earned money on new books….but it will probably be pretty great anyway. But even without a new edition there is still alot of space left to cover for the Dark Heresy line.

So, if there is a Second Edition, what changes are you hoping for? The two things that top my 'wish-list' are:

1) Reign in Psykers! I don't really have any suggestions about how to do that, but something needs to be done to bring them more in line with the other classes.

2) Do away with money! Agents of the Inquisition should be Purging the Unclean, not looking for stuff they can steal and sell; looting used armour from dead heretics to sell in town reeks of D&D , and shatters the game's 'suspension of disbelief'. Wealth should be abstracted to a statistic , to make it clear that accumulating Thrones is not the objective of the game.

I have FEAR to see Ascension as a core-book.

Adeptus-B said:

Both of these things were actually done in later 'versions' of the game! I respectfully disagree about the Thrones thing though; I think at the level of "Acolytes" players are interacting with Imperial society at the "normal joe" level. Their Inquisitor is well beyond such concerns but the Acolytes are not! It is actually mentioned that some Acolytes take on the challenge af being a throne agent to enrich themselves! Selling 'loot' from ones adventures may seem somewhat pedestrian but than the Gm should allow for asset seizure and 'Bonus payments' for mission completion in the same vein. Additionally, The Cell's Inquisitor SHOULD be provideing the Acolytes with Specialist gear should he 'deem' that they need it!

BTW; Updating the rules for DH would be pretty simple since many of the classes have already been redone in OW includeing

Cleric; Guardsman (Multiple variants); Sanctioned Psyker; and Tech priest. All that are left are Adept (A Specialist); Scum (An 'average' citizen/rogue); Arbitrator and Assassin (Yet another specialist). (Plushy has done some fine work on this BTW! FFG take note!)

What remains is to rewrite the Core rules to Encompass all levels of Imperial play (DH, OW, RT and DW!)

"Selling loot to get along" certainly doesn't sound very fitting when one thinks of Inquisitional operatives, yet I also agree that the concept of monetary management does have its place for a deep cover group. I think there is a compromise to be found somewhere in the middle, such as a combination of free basic equipment, whereas the agents need to manage an expenses account for anything else they might need, from local transportation and lodging all the way to saving up for customized gear. Certainly, this could be worked into the basic rules somehow. And while we're at it, we may as well get rid off the monthly salary that lets working for the Inquisition appear like some part-time job.

That being said, I also never quite understood why Black Industries opted for an Inquisitorial cell without an Inquisitor back then. Sure, it's one way to pull it off, but it doesn't exactly meet expectations when someone comes in having read about the Inquisition from all those other sources, does it? The "low start" always seemed a bit weird - it's like a game of Rogue Trader where the players start out as crewmen!

Adeptus-B said:

Personally, I'd hope for a unified core rulebook that promulgates a single system for everything and everyone, allowing for maximum crossover-compatibility between the many forms of campaigns one could play. I realise that this would affect the various tweaks that the different 40k product lines of FFG have taken in order to focus to a unique style of narration, yet I always disliked that comparability had to be sacrificed along the way. In fact, this has been one of my biggest gripes. But it's just a matter of preferences, I suppose.

Needless to say, however, this would also include the necessity to "reign in" Space Marines, and I'm not sure they'd be willing to do that. "Inquisitor" has shown that the approach is possible, though.

Oh, and please, no actual "divine magic" in 40k …

Lynata said:

What about "Pure faith"?

Lynata said:

Probably because an inquisitor has too much political and financial power, he could even declare the destruction of an entire planet in less than an hour.

And I think that Dark Heresy, in the end, is the most clearly focused game of the line, the part written by the BI at least.

For example, I think that the archetypal character of Rogue Trader is Han Solo, a wrong choice to me, the tipical character of Rogue Trader should be Sir Francis Drake, a man who commanded many sailors, not a man with only an hairy friend!

And I think sometimes that FFG is too much bounded to the Codex, instead of Black Industries which were more "free".