I've retired from the hotly debated discussion of the Dark Heresy 2nd Edition Beta to talk about where my original ideas started....with the original Dark Heresy.

The game I had planned involved a plain ordinary civilian noticing that a member of her family was acting strangely. So she decides to follow her. Being "normal", the characters set off into a busy city street using necessary modifiers for the pursuer continuing to follow while avoiding being noticed; the pursuee rolling to see if they perceive the pursuit.

They enter a bar, where the pursuer tries to sit close enough to hear the conversation the pursuee is having. NPC's will also cause bother. The barman not recognizing her and a man or two trying to chat her up. But she will try to remain stealthy while listening to what amounts to rebellion.

She will then leave the bar and head to the nearest Arbites precinct to report what she has heard. At which point the Inquisitor will make an appearance and her Dark Heresy career will begin.

This will largely be a game of dice rolls, in which no combat is intended to take place. Of course, what I've just described is only a plan. If she's discovered it could lead to other interesting events, or the players might decide she's very curious and continues to follow them.

Much of my Dark Heresy ideas have always been based on a stealthy form of game play. Fighting is a last resort as the characters try to remain anonymous. I've my own ideas for doing so, much of which will be made up on a need-for-game basis, but I'd like to read your thoughts.

Forgetting the whole 2nd Edition Beta. How would fellow Games Masters handle subtlety, investigation and social interaction using ye olde Dark Heresy rules?

Important skills to have for this sort of adventure:

- Shadowing

- Move Silently

- Inquiry

- Disguise

- Trade (various)

Back-End (Gm Stuff):

Draft a frame work of clues, evidence, and leads before hand. I use a plot tree of the most significant events I wish to occur, with the minor details bridging them left to the players creativity (or lack thereof).

I personally handle subtiety pro-actively throughout the course of the game itself. During each segment, if they 'blow their cover' or are revealed before hand, they either have to manage to convince x npc they -weren't- following that person with charm, blather, etc, or get captured, or whatever is scene appropriate (target runs, screams for help)

ultimately I frame most of my adventures to have a non-violent methodology for solving the heresy involved (mostly), and most combat in my games is largely incidental to the player's being...well, players.

That sounds like my sort of gaming.

I prefer to keep violence for Guardsmen, Grey Knights and "Ascended" characters with the Inquisitor. Rarely does a Guardsman appear in my Acolyte cells. I call them "cells" because warband is for warriors.

Radical's Handbook has a lot of cool spy gear - audio/video bugs, hacking spikes, invisibility devices, and so on.

My campaigns usually err on the side of investigation and my players are phenomenal at BSing their way through just about everything. You don't necessarily need a plot map, but if you go the improv route you will need to sit down afterwards and figure out how whatever you came up with on the spot plausibly fits into the story.