figured I would go ahead and start a thread about the second edition of dark heresy just announced.

my biggest thing is I hope they include a guide on how to run old adventures using the new system, and since this game is happing during the "modern" 40k time era...how things in the calaxis sector have changed in the last few hundred years.

They say that the action takes place in a new sector ...

I only hope that the new sector will be relatively close to Calixis so that my PCs can jump between the two in their investigations. As well as let my BC PCs cause havoc in an entirely new sector as well.

So will the old supplements be in any way compatible with the new edition?

No, they will not be compatible. It was posted in the beta announcement section.

It would seem that the editions only share the d100 system and name most other things works differently.

No, they will not be compatible. It was posted in the beta announcement section.

It would seem that the editions only share the d100 system and name most other things works differently.

Dang. I might just expand on the first edition, then. Maybe. Depends on how the new edition turns out.

I was very eager for a 2nd Edition, but I was expecting something more along the lines of Only War , i.e. a refinement of the existing rules, not a complete re-write.

My DH campaign is now late Rank 7, and I have it plotted out to at least mid-Ascension level, so I'll be sticking with the current rules for a while yet. I'll be keeping an eye on the feedback of 2nd Edition; when this campaign wraps up and I'm ready to start a new one, I'll give DH2E a try if the player response is generally positive. If there are more complaints than kudos, I'll probably port over the OW rules for a 'DH1.5' game.

As far as the new setting goes- I was expecting the 'shock ending' of The Apostacy Gambit series to be setting up future material, but with the announcement that they are abandoning the Calixis Sector, TAG 's ending reads more like a 'scorched earth' policy...

We'll see. I'm interested, but cautious...

Now that I think about it I hope there will be a section or two about how to bring this new rule-set into work with the existing rule in other games, like there are in the Black Crusade core.

Now that I think about it I hope there will be a section or two about how to bring this new rule-set into work with the existing rule in other games, like there are in the Black Crusade core.

That would be splendid. The more interplayable the games will be, the better.

I have mixed feelings about leaving the Calixis Sector. I kind of feel it never quite got the love it deserved.

Naturally, the starting point for any RPG is the setting, and with a 40k RPG, a lot of that work is done already. Despite that, BI (and later FFG) put a lot of work into making the Calixis Sector a living, breathing place that had its own ambience and feel. Obviously, with a multi-writer setting, that tone is going to seesaw wildly, but on the whole, I think that the Calixis Sector was an interesting place and a great base for Dark Heresy games. There were strokes of genius in the tone struck in describing worlds like Quaddis and Sinophia, a kind of theatrical, decaying, rain soaked clockwork Venetian masqued ball quality that was extremely memorable.

The problem with the Calixis Sector as a setting is that it was very much the work of many hands, and I do think that over time it suffered from a lack of overarching focus as to what to do with it as a setting.

I loved the work that FFG did on the Jericho Reach setting for Deathwatch; what could have simply been a dull war zone has become a nicely fleshed out and given direction and purpose. The Calixis Sector would really have benefitted from great books like "The Achillus Assault", "The Jericho Reach" and "The Outer Reach", books that were pretty much designed as "Sector Sourcebooks" from the ground up. Instead the Calixis Sector got books with a focus on adventures and character classes.

OK, I know I'm being unfair. Blood of Martyrs covered shrine worlds. The Lathe Worlds covered forge worlds and so on. I guess my point is that if this approach had continued with a few more books, the Calixis Sector would have been better fleshed out. I'm genuinely not complaining about a 2nd ed DH: I'm just a bit sad that I'll never see the Calixis Sector be "completed" as a setting in the way I'd hoped.

I was in right from the start in the Calixis Sector: I did the write ups for Reth and Belacane on the old BI website, which then became incorporated in the the 40k canon. Given I've been into 40k since 1987, that was a weirdly big moment for me; worlds I'd written up being permanently part of 40k lore. So I'll always be very fond of the Calixis Sector, and sad to see it go in favour of a new setting.

I'm guessing that the new setting will be tighter, more coherent, and with a clearer "plan" as to the tone and purpose of the region, in the same way that each sector has felt tighter and more purposeful than the Calixis Sector. However, I do think that the Calixis Sector retains a kind of ramshackle charm that makes it far more endearing than, for example, the Screaming Vortex.

So I'm fascinated to see what FFG will do with the new setting, but I still wish there'd been a big Calixis Sector sourcebook... What the hell, maybe there's still room for that in DH2 as a single volume setting book? Well it's a thought, I guess...

I have mixed feelings about leaving the Calixis Sector. I kind of feel it never quite got the love it deserved.

...

So I'm fascinated to see what FFG will do with the new setting, but I still wish there'd been a big Calixis Sector sourcebook...

Me too. Although there were a few things that I didn't like about Calixis (what's with the lack of planets near the Sector Capitol? why so many ancient hive worlds in what I supposed to be a young Sector?), I mostly enjoy using it as a setting. The main problem with Calixis, I think, is it's location in Segmentum Obscurus, thus ruling out the use of Tau and Tyranids as Adversaries. I hope the new Sector is in Ultima Segmentum...

Given the lackluster writing of some of the later DH supplements, maybe it's for the best that there will unlikely be new 'official' material on Calixis. Stuff like the depiction of Landunder's Hive Subrique in Book of Judgement was really disappointing. Lundunder is potentially a fascinating setting: a mostly liquid planet with a thin solid crust, with the world's cities hanging suspended under the crust, dangling down into the strange chemical 'sea'. Huge potential for a colorful setting! But the writer of the Hive Subrique section of BoJ blithely ignores the potential of this unique environment, and instead depicts the planet's capitol as a nearly bog-standard hive, with spires rising into the sky (wtf?!) and a traditional Midhive/Underhive structure... Yeah, that's just brilliant . So, maybe it's a good thing that hacks won't be screwing up other interesting locations hinted at in the fragmentary info on Calixis...

Me too. Although there were a few things that I didn't like about Calixis (what's with the lack of planets near the Sector Capitol? why so many ancient hive worlds in what I supposed to be a young Sector?), I mostly enjoy using it as a setting. The main problem with Calixis, I think, is it's location in Segmentum Obscurus, thus ruling out the use of Tau and Tyranids as Adversaries. I hope the new Sector is in Ultima Segmentum...

Given the lackluster writing of some of the later DH supplements, maybe it's for the best that there will unlikely be new 'official' material on Calixis. Stuff like the depiction of Landunder's Hive Subrique in Book of Judgement was really disappointing. Lundunder is potentially a fascinating setting: a mostly liquid planet with a thin solid crust, with the world's cities hanging suspended under the crust, dangling down into the strange chemical 'sea'. Huge potential for a colorful setting! But the writer of the Hive Subrique section of BoJ blithely ignores the potential of this unique environment, and instead depicts the planet's capitol as a nearly bog-standard hive, with spires rising into the sky (wtf?!) and a traditional Midhive/Underhive structure... Yeah, that's just brilliant . So, maybe it's a good thing that hacks won't be screwing up other interesting locations hinted at in the fragmentary info on Calixis...

"Ancient Hive Worlds" in a "young sector" - With the Angevin Crusade some two-thousand years past, the Calixis Sector is not all that young, actually. And there were human colonies in the Expanse prior to the Crusade. And just because it is such a distant location from the Eastern fronts does not preclude one from getting creative with ways to introduce Tau and Tyranids into the mix.

Not every star has planets orbiting it, and not all planets are useful to the Imperium. That there were relatively few systems near Scintill is demonstrative of the fact that stars are more dispersed the further away from the galactic core one gets. Even still, presuming the grid on the "big" Calixis Map is meant to be 1ly scale, you've got almost 20 worlds within 15ly of the sector capital - just not all bunched around it. Who's to say there aren't more stars clustered around there that merely lack notable orbital bodies.

I don't know, I liked the open nature of the Calixis Sector, even while I was wanting a source book to give us more information about it. As to rules for the Beta, so far I'm of a split decision on them.

-=Brother Praetus=-