Dark Heresy (40K RPG) Review

[Zablorg]

Wouldn't that restrict me to 88 outcomes?

[Gunhead]

Wouldn't that restrict me to 88 outcomes?

No. You get 100 outcomes. From 1 to 100 or 00 to 99 depending.
One dice for tens and the other for a number between 0 and 9.
Double 0 is 100. If you get 1 and a 5 it's either 15 or 51 depending which die marks the tens which has to be determined before the roll.
You can also get a ten sided dice that is marked 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 and 00.

-Gunhead

[SylasGaunt]

Another game another report.

The general plot was figured out about halfway through when someone noticed it was 'The Shadow over Innsmouth' with a genestealer cult.

Unfortunately for the stealer cult the protagonist of a Shadow over Innsmouth didn't have a combat shotgun and two friends with heavy revolvers.


Our guardsman once again proved himself a monster with the dice as after the carnage of slaughtering the cultists and hybrid trying to murder us in our sleep more stormed into the hotel.

I'm guessing it was hoped this would leave to a harrowing rooftop chase sequence in the rain and dark.

Instead what it lead to was a guardsman at the top of the stairs with a height advantage and full body armor cutting loose with a combat shotgun equipped with a fire selector and all three clips loaded with scatter rounds. And frequent headshots and high damage rolls that lead to the overpenetration critical on the impact chart making no fewer than three appearances and three subsequent hits. Also Semi-auto burst + 2-4 degrees of success + Scatter round rules = Unbelievable carnage, and with the damage rolls the heretical xenos scum were getting the guardsman may as well have been a damn space marine for all the good shooting at him did.

My own tech priest seems to have broken his shitty shooting streak thanks to the purchase of a laser sight and a ballistic skill advance after our last session and managed to put his own dent in the stairway blitz when a handcannon critical did the action-movie shotgun bit and blew a cultist back into his friends.

After the gunfire had ceased the guardsman picked up and ambush downstairs and three mutants and an autogun wielding cultist leapt up from behind the bar (with the hybrids it was a literal leap). One hybrid for each PC, one with acid spit for the psyker, enhanced strength against the tech priest, and genestealer jaws against the guardsman.

The guardsman's opponent got in a bite on the leg that left it open to stabbing in the head. Eventually it managed to get through and inflict a minor wound before he decapitated it in such a way that the head flew across the room and smacked into the opposite wall before blinking twice and expiring. (On a side note this was the only time he was the one who got caught in the bloodspray effects his own carnage created. In every other encounter it was the tech priest and psyker who got the gore bath.

The psyker used a stolen handcanon to literally blow his opponent out of the air, avoided an acid spray that melted the door and then proceeded to brain rape the creature with touch of madness before putting a round through the counter and consequently the leg of the cultist wielding the autogun (who had taken several shots at the guardsman, none of which managed to penetrate his body armor) and then proceeded to land a mighty blow with a mono-edged axe that tore through the hybrid's arm and buried itself in it's chest.

The tech priest also shot his incoming adversary out of the air and then proceeded to shoot him some more while dodging it's attempts to push his face out through the back of his head and eventually blew its leg off.

Bodies were looted, 'samples' were taken (the tech priest decreed they were taking the severed head from earlier and brow beat the others into getting brain and tissue samples from as many different cultists and hybrids as they could.. hard going with the stairwell attackers since very few could be individually identified after the shotgun carnage).

They planned to escape by finding a vehicle, stealing it and riding out to the old spaceport that had formerly brought the town it's wealth to find a vox unit and call for support. When they exited it was still raining.. though there was some peculiarly straight lightning in the distance.. that seemed to come awful fast to (in actuality this was orbital bombardment called in by their inquisitor as he purged the main 'stealer nests). Outside they noticed that the land train (think passenger train on tank treads) was still there despite the fact it should have departed hours ago.

In the station the Guardsman's awareness check perhaps saved us all as a purestrain genestealer leapt out of the dark. The dice gods must have been with us that night as it went straight for the guardsman and despite all the bonuses of all out attacks and charges it just kept missing (literally the lowest roll for it's first few attacks was an 88). The guardsman narrowly avoided being butchered on the spot and cut loose with a full burst of semi-auto shotgun fire at point blank range.. that tore up it's flesh and gave it a bloody nose. The guardsman looked doomed when it finally caught him a blow to the leg that ripped right through his armor (and took out all his wounds in one go, though thankfully no critical) and then the psyker (who had been missing consistently with his hand cannon) hit it with touch of madness.. it failed the WP save spectacularly and ended up falling on top of the guardsman as it thrashed around screaming and clawing at it's own flesh.

This presented a problem for the tech priest who'd scored a minor wound on it already but didn't want to accidentally hit him and took a full turn aim action.

The psyker struck since the 'stealer would only be out for two rounds and put a bullet into it that broke an arm but didn't kill it. The guardsman remained trapped as he failed a strength test to get out from under it. More thrashing and the tech priest fired.. and scored a perfect head shot that blew the abomination's head apart like a melon. He then proceeded to patch up the guardsman a bit using first aid before they stole the land train, reached the space port, fixed the broken vox, called in assistance and got the hell out of dodge when it was reported the inquisitor was going to flatten the town from orbit.

Then back to contamination testing for us, yay!

[Utsanomiko]

Man I've only heard of about eight Dark Heresy adventures run so far, and even without stats on your basic intelligent alien at least three of those games already have damn genestealers in them. Might as well have Boba Fett jet-pack in while they're at it.

I'm thinking of picking up the Gamemasters kit, as I'm enjoying my PBP scheduled gaming sessions on penny-arcade and would like to run some stuff in person eventually. I hear it's got some good summaries of rules and a random alien generator in the 32 page booklet.

[The Yosemite Bear]

Well you could adapt plots from old Chaossium games....

I have a few young kingdoms books that would be good for the dark eldar....

theres some call of cthutlhu books you could adapt for the basic plot....

ok, now I'm remembering that Chaossium, Citidel, and White Wolf used to publish together....

[Dartzap]

According to sources who have no name (a rather bored GW worker last week) The production rights for Dark Heresy have been outsourced to one company or anouther. Apparently the official statement about it happening will be released soon, heh.

According to the staff memo, they decided to stop production due to the fact they don't have the facilities to produce little cardboard bits So, some hope is left, eh?

[Zablorg]

Unless I'm misunderstanding you, no, not really.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

...Jesus, what rock have you two been under?

Fantasy Flight Games picked up the rights several weeks ago. They're working on releasing the original line of supplements as well as a reprint of the core book rumored to be available sometime this summer at the earliest, though probably later.

[Zablorg]

Pff, silly me, not continuing to keep updated.

[Dartzap]

...Jesus, what rock have you two been under?

Fantasy Flight Games picked up the rights several weeks ago. They're working on releasing the original line of supplements as well as a reprint of the core book rumored to be available sometime this summer at the earliest, though probably later.

And you didn't bother to inform the thread of this? We may have been under a rock, but you have one knocking around your skull!

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Uh, Imperial Overlord posted a big ol' post on the subject quite awhile ago.

EDIT: Specifically, here, in this very thread.

[Zablorg]

Well I knew that. Thats old news. I thought maybe it was being transferred again to someplace sucky.

[Imperial Overlord]

So I had a pow-wow with our newly recovered Arbites when he got healthy enough to talk. He spilled back story. He was the son of an Imperial Governor, who was on vacation when his family got infected by 'stealers. The Inquisition took care of the genestealers before it spread to far and ended up not offing him because he was infected. Instead they set up another ruling family and trained him to do useful stuff.

Why is this relevant? One of his captors dropped his dad's signet ring into his pocket. That's right, our tech heretics are Inquisition connected. Big scary stuff.

We hunt and check. One of us gets lucky and sees a dude in the dock area that connects the pleasure island to the nearby hive. Leads to storage and slaughter areas that might have the big, sealed rooms and the air recycling like Arbites boy heard during captivity.

We gear up in our best "civilian clothes but heavily armed" style and pursue. Follow into a mutant slave/refugee quarters. Hide from a big, armed mutant patrol. See the some armoured guys with the big Inquisition I on their shoulder pads and think that's the guys.

So I incinerate the armed mutants while they are in an easily targeted cluster, since they seem to be at least somewhat allied with our enemies. Surprise is too useful to throw away. Arbites guns down a power armour dude with his bolter. Some of the power armour dudes have those huge alien shock mauls, which tells us more than enough.

Fire fight breaks out. Session ends mid way through.

[Raj Ahten]

Why is this relevant? One of his captors dropped his dad's signet ring into his pocket. That's right, our tech heretics are Inquisition connected. Big scary stuff.

Well what happens when you come up with an unusual backstory with powerfull people involved? The GM uses it of course
By the way, about how much xp do you have in that game? Burning whole groups is a rather high end ability.

[Imperial Overlord]

By the way, about how much xp do you have in that game? Burning whole groups is a rather high end ability.

Dana puts us through hell and has been, until recently stingy with the equipment (we've taken all our good stuff out of our enemies' cold dead hands) but he gives out xp worthy of the character killing hell he generates, which is a lot.

I've got the most I think, with just about 3K. Psy Rating 3 and firestorm to nuke a group.

[Utsanomiko]

He was the son of an Imperial Governor, who was on vacation when his family got infected by 'stealers.

*Takes another drink*

So I've been running a Dark Heresy game on Penny-Arcade's forums, couple hour session every a few nights a week. I sent the party of four to check out a deep space station that turned out to be a monastery built as a 3km-wide sphere entirely out of wood. So far they've been bamboozled by the nature of the monks there, so seem to shun technology and their past lives.

The adventure does not feature Genestealers.

[Imperial Overlord]

So we returned to the mayhem from last session. The shock maul turned out to be a false alarm and just a nasty looking Imperial model. But since they were in power armour and their leader had a power glove, we really didn't feel any better. Did I mention that we were in light armour and the Arbitor, Malleus, was the only guy with a long arm?

Fortunately Malleus had the building most of them were in covered and the long arm in question was a bolter and he had already dropped one of them. I maneuvered around, having incinerated their presumed mutant allies last session. The assassin broke cover . . . right in front of the building with the power armour guys and got gunned down. He now has one less fate point if the scum or the arbitrator attempt to remove him from the mortal coil for his screw ups.

The tech priest dragged him into a hut and two power armour boys came towards yours truly, who had moved closer to the power armour boys. I firestormed them, but didn't roll high enough to get extra damage. Not so good. The GM ruled that I did cook the inside of the hut with the techpriest and the assassin, which injured them both. Not much to either power armour dude.

Scum moves up stealthy like, but I'm pretty much solo with the two power armour guys. The tech priest has a laspistol . . . but its a fucking laspistol against power armour. Too close to firestorm again so its firebolt, sword, or overcharged laspistol. I go with firebolt.

I barely wound them, but I do set them on fire. They recover, extinguish themselves, and I set them on fire again and retreat slightly. This repeats over several rounds until I finally put them down. They're generally too busy burning to do much shooting, so I'm only slightly wounded after using my Heal power. I fix up the rest of the party as best as possible, but the IG is still fucked up from the other psyker's Fear power.

The bad guys have escaped through a tunnel in house they entered. We're somewhat chewed up and short of night vision so we pass on facing power armour guys with automatic weapons in dark, cramped spaces. We instead call the arbites and tell them they're faking Inquisitional IDs. We don't expect the Arbites to stop them, but in order to get passed them they'll have to flash legit Inquisition IDs and we can then use that knowledge to find out about them. That is, if they Arbites catch them.

That done, a few of us go shopping with our new money. We don't do well until I get passed a contact from our xeno artifact buyer. Malleus adds bolt pistols (he has acquired two pistol fighting talents recently), others load up with slug throwers and ammo, and I get Good quality xeno mesh along with a hellgun and hellpistol and some hot shot packs along with some miscellaneous stuff.

Also, I'm do xp for two sessions next time. I think we're ready to rock.

Dana will probably crush us with one.

[Raj Ahten]

So we returned to the mayhem from last session. The shock maul turned out to be a false alarm and just a nasty looking Imperial model. But since they were in power armour and their leader had a power glove, we really didn't feel any better. Did I mention that we were in light armour and the Arbitor, Malleus, was the only guy with a long arm?

Fortunately Malleus had the building most of them were in covered and the long arm in question was a bolter and he had already dropped one of them. I maneuvered around, having incinerated their presumed mutant allies last session. The assassin broke cover . . . right in front of the building with the power armour guys and got gunned down. He now has one less fate point if the scum or the arbitrator attempt to remove him from the mortal coil for his screw ups.

The tech priest dragged him into a hut and two power armour boys came towards yours truly, who had moved closer to the power armour boys. I firestormed them, but didn't roll high enough to get extra damage. Not so good. The GM ruled that I did cook the inside of the hut with the techpriest and the assassin, which injured them both. Not much to either power armour dude.

Scum moves up stealthy like, but I'm pretty much solo with the two power armour guys. The tech priest has a laspistol . . . but its a fucking laspistol against power armour. Too close to firestorm again so its firebolt, sword, or overcharged laspistol. I go with firebolt.

I barely wound them, but I do set them on fire. They recover, extinguish themselves, and I set them on fire again and retreat slightly. This repeats over several rounds until I finally put them down. They're generally too busy burning to do much shooting, so I'm only slightly wounded after using my Heal power. I fix up the rest of the party as best as possible, but the IG is still fucked up from the other psyker's Fear power.

The bad guys have escaped through a tunnel in house they entered. We're somewhat chewed up and short of night vision so we pass on facing power armour guys with automatic weapons in dark, cramped spaces. We instead call the arbites and tell them they're faking Inquisitional IDs. We don't expect the Arbites to stop them, but in order to get passed them they'll have to flash legit Inquisition IDs and we can then use that knowledge to find out about them. That is, if they Arbites catch them.

That done, a few of us go shopping with our new money. We don't do well until I get passed a contact from our xeno artifact buyer. Malleus adds bolt pistols (he has acquired two pistol fighting talents recently), others load up with slug throwers and ammo, and I get Good quality xeno mesh along with a hellgun and hellpistol and some hot shot packs along with some miscellaneous stuff.

Also, I'm do xp for two sessions next time. I think we're ready to rock.

Dana will probably crush us with one.

Man your DM is throwing lots of dudes in power armor at you. That's pretty harsh. I would just throw a higher number of adaquately equipped goons (with a support weapon or two, maybe some technicals) with perhaps some witch support at the party instead. In an ambush

On a side note, how are you handling hell guns and the other high end gear that the book doesn't have stats for? I'm curious to know how your gaming group does it.

[Imperial Overlord]

Yeah, way too many guys in powered armour. Carapace would make a lot more sense and be almost as badass.

Hellguns are courtesy of my stats, appropriated by my GM. Interm stats ( a lot of this stuff will show up in the Inquisitor's Handbook) is something I've been doing off and on. I posted some at the BI site, back when it was active.

You would not believe the whining by Eldar wankers about how the shuriken catapult wasn't badass enough (and my version wasn't exactly anemic and I'm not exactly a space elf hater).

On another note, I can confidently say bolters are a threat to guys in power armour and GM's don't need to escalate to meltas to threaten characters when a suit shows up. Power armour is nice, but it doesn't make you invulnerable (although using anything less than a hotshot las or a bolter and you're going to need a lot of shooting and luck).