Iam a new GM for Dark Heresy and I wanted to run my players threw Purge the Unclean before starting to write my own games. So do you have any pointers on executing the game with grace?

Less is more is my guideline. I figure out a general direction for the campaign but leave a lot of holes to fill in later(depending on what the PC's do). And i find GM'ing in smaler more detailed surroundings easier than things that are "too big". A hive is much harder to bring alive than a smaller city or community, or even intruige insida a command bunker.

I generally don't like canned adventures, but I do like Purge the Unclean. It's fairly easy to run, although as a lot goes on definitely reread the sections you're going to cover before each gaming section so you don't make any flubs. The only possible issue I've seen is that the first adventure pretty much relies on the PCs not killing Theodosia early on, which admitedly is hard, but my players came within a hair of doing. Of course the solution is fairly easy. Just create and insert another badass NPC to fill his roll in the rest of the adventure.

Cynical Cat said:

I ended up using Elsergi Krin for this, and just gave him similar upgrades as Theodosia. The PC's were completely surprised and loved it.

But as for advice, if/when your pc's come up with something other than what the box text says they will, don't be surprised and roll with it. Read and reread the adventure before running it. Flesh out the major personalities, give them some real depth and make sure they are distinctly different from each other. And finally have fun.

Oh and play Siprit Daneen to the hilt if you feel comfortable enough with that. He makes for a fantastic patsy.

Cynical Cat said:

I gave Theodosia the Touched by the Fates talent from Disciples of the Dark Gods to get round that - he had enough Fate Points that he could survive the encounters he needed to survive, but was out of them by the time they finally catch up with him on Ambulon.

My group caught up to him and one of the assassins went to town on Theodosia with a Lathe blade. The rest closed on him. Fortunately the cannon fodder NPCs and the dropped briefcase distracted them enough for Theodosia to escape, but even with fate points it would have been hard to justify his escape as anything other than GM fiat and I dislike putting players in a situation where no matter how clever and skillful they are they can't change the outcome. Especially not over a guy who is essentially a high grade henchman.

Fortunately I didn't have to make to make that decision and he escaped with a huge sword wound in his chest.

SPOILERS BELOW!

My players totally derailed that plot point on me. They realized Orday was spooked and offered to get him off-world fast in exchange for him taking them to the data the next morning. They were so prepared for something to go wrong (fitting their overall MO, they don't take chances with people going off on their own), that they kept him from getting ambushed, and were able to get an Arbites cordon set up during the fight. In the end, they shot him with the Hive's defense batteries. >_<

Not that it mattered, there was no way Mr. T was getting away, I fudged a few rolls and gave him more armor, but he had zero chance of escaping. Which is why I let them call in a strike from the defense batteries, as it was cool and meant that any evidence of who or what Mr. T was got vaporized. I was tempted to pull the whole "last minute escape", but felt it would be cheezy and cheapen the player's success in preparation. So instead of the usual progression, the line of communication between the lab and Shoal was cut, and neither had figured out what was wrong by the time the events at the Alabaster court occured. They were able to trick Shoal and his retinue into a distant room, and put him to the question after slaughtering his guards... all while the Arbitrators raided the court (they had sneaked farcosia out of the initial party, and were able to pull the required influnce to have an official raid once they told the high-ups what the stuff was). So I stuck a bunch of SQ agents in the lab instead of T, as they realized they had to get everything cleaned up and off the planet once the cult was raided.

Then my players, thanks to now having support from the whole friggin planet for all intents and purposes, dropped an Inquisitorial Storm Trooper strike team on the lab instead of going in alone. I didn't even bother playing out the fight, and moved straight to clean up...

Overall they did too well, and that's something I reward (by giving them access to more support and being able to pick their battles), rather than railroad back into shape. Once it was proven to the Inquisition what was going on, there was no excuse to deny them all the resources the hive could give them without blowing their cover (which they managed to avoid by getting arrested with all the other people at the court).

I did throw one curve-ball at them though, as Siprit was WAY too friggin obvious as written. Instead of the written in story for him, I made him an investigator for the Governor, pursuing a different line of inquiry. Sure enough, the redemptionist took one look at Siprit and said "Slaaneshi cultist", then walked up to him and tried to trick him into going elsewhere with him. So, as Siprit had already made the acolytes for what they were, the redemptionist got a political enemy rather than another marker on his "heretics purged" tally (he keeps running totals of: limbs severed, heads removed, heretics killed, "interrogations", heretics "recanted", and heretics put to the flame).

Aureus said:

Wow. Thats like calling down the deathstar to take out an ewok.

Aureus said:

Just out of curiosity, why didn't you go with the advice listed in "The Blatant Way" in p. 41?

Lexicanum said:

It's all up to interpretation. And scale really. For instance, calling in space marines to deal with the problem could be blatant compared to using a defense battery on him.

Poor little ewok he never saw it coming...

I had lots of problems when I ran the three adventures, that said there is enough fantastic stuff to make it totally worthwhile and with some work you will be ready for the issues...

Spoilers ahead

The three adventures do not offer any sort of closure, so you will need to do a lot of work to finish out the campaign. The very last part of the book has a bunch of stuff about the big bad guy I would recommend reading this in detail and when you read through the adventure consider how each adventure plays a part of the villian and exactly what the players will discover. You might find it benefical to add extra hints and clues for the players. Do work out how to end the campaign before you start it.

People have mentioned the problem with the 'unkillable' character in the first adventure especially as hivers have a benefit which allows them to move quickly through crowds, personally I fudged and didn't let the players kill him despite the overwhelming damage they were able to inflict, my recommendation would be to ignore the adventures advice and prepare a back up should they do so.

Second adventure involves a hulk, there is an assumption that the players will escape it by loading themselves into the escape pods of a ship which is ENCASED IN A THOUSAND TONS OF ROCK AND OTHER SHIPS, this made no sense to me or my players and it was not the option they took. The assumption of the adventure appears to be the players will all die a horrible death if they do not go for the escape pod option, be ready for this and don't punish the players for the flaws of the adventure. Only 50% of my players made it back to the surface before the hulk was destroyed by the imperial navy which made for a great next session when I made the other players play some npcs for half the session before starting the second half of the session with those who were left behind staging an escape from the Dark Eldar ship they had been taken to.

Third adventure has a character unkillable by the players unless they are using weapons coating in blood of another npc, maybe I missed something but I couldn't see any way the players could possibly work this one out either and worse still there are plenty of reasons the players would want to leave said NPC behind or somewhere safe away out of the fight. Another case of the players must do X or die.

Also be aware that the game does not easily scale well for difficulty levels. some days you will one shot players and some days they will insta kill all your npcs be ready to fudge and dont be afraid to use 1 health mooks and 50 health bosses.

Good luck!

I know at the end of the day my players had fun and so did I despite any flaws there might be!

Bazleebub said:

Which won't be launched until the structure of the hulk has broken apart sufficiently to allow the pods to escape, as explained by the NPCs...

Beyond which, it's a Space Hulk. By their very nature, the laws of physics apply only loosely to them.

Bazleebub said:

Typically this is a common theme in Warhammer... While I agree that it is difficult for the players to see that the main villain is vulnerable to the baron, mine managed. It takes some really creative foreshadowing and playing up the villain's fear, but it is possible.

If you really want an unforgiving scenario check out House of Dust and Ash. I'm running that right now and my players are terrified of what's coming, their not even at the island yet.

Zarkhovian_Rhythm said:

Please tell us how it goes!

Karl R said:

Heh. Will do.

The three scenarios arent hard to run, nope. The second one (Space Hulk) is really easy as it hasnt really all that much choices and different ways to go bad. The first and the third are a bit more tricky, but most problems have been mentioned above already.

Two things I would suggest, though: Make your players go by the rules for their equipment. Its **** easy to get hold of extremely powerful weapons if you dont enforce (and perhaps even fudge) the rules for acquisition, time it takes etc. Its a big difference whether your Rank 1 players run around with a Lasgun and a pimped Hand Cannon for kicks, or a Nomad, an Angelus and a Plasma Pistol to boot. Also, for the first adventure, I made sure Theodosia escaped by using lots of cover rolls, suppressing fire and called shots to the heads of my players.... even though chances were slim to actually hitting them, my players heard "he aims at your head, then pulls the trigger carefully" and suddenly everyone was looking for a way to get their noggin out of the way. I suppose its the "head shot" syndrome from video games or something

Ah, Theodosia. I thought he'd get away, but my players managed to nail him so hard that I didn't want it to look like the GM fiat I was planning on. The players had gotten Man Stopper bullets and made some rather good rolls. Theo was down to one leg and had taken critical hits to the head, body, and both arms. I had sparks and smoke flying out, and him trailing an oil slick.

Note, the adventure states that PCs playing nobles can't be seen going down hive, so the party should not be full at this point. I gave the noble some low level house guards from their hosts. I couldn't see letting the players sit on their hands. I should have given them house cooks, but anyways...

So when they go to old Theo, I had the classic "count down" in red lights and they guess "bomb!" and took cover. BOOM! Then the local enforcers started showing up and the party ran. So I thought! Aha! Theo gets away.

But I was wrong.

When they see him later, they go "Another guy like we fought before, shhhh." And then I knew, my players had written the script for me. "He looks similar, but not an exact match. They could be brothers..."

So, in my galaxy, there were two of them.

Nojo509 said:

Heh. I like it when players make it easier on the gm. Can we trade players for a few sessions?

The other potential problem in Purge the Unclean is if the players unleash something that should kill the unkillable in the third adventure. While I don't expect this to be the case, logically speaking the daemonic pact doesn't make the recipient unkillable, just protected from death by the daemon. Getting run through the chest by an Untouchable, incinerated by Holocaust (a power that specifically states that nothing is immune to it and everything it kills is irretrievably dead),. impaled on a powerful daemon weapon, and shot with psycannon rounds should all suffice to do the job. I don't expect any of those to turn up, but everyone isn't running my game. If the players unleash something that should do the job, despite not being the One True Way, let them get the kill. Otherwise they're just being punished for being smart.