Dark Heresy, Getting Started

So, I got a really good question about getting started in Dark Heresy. It's not that hard, but it can be a little difficult depending on your friends, and where you live. You need three things, dice, books, and people. Thankfully, Dark Heresy is very forgiving in the first two categories, but like all RPGs that last category is ever illusive. Ideally, you want your friends to be the people, but depending on how receptive they are to such an idea, you might be out of luck.

Dice and books are the easy part. You want at least two ten sided die per person, as you will need to roll two of them at a time. You will need one that counts one through zero, and another that counts ten through one hundred. This combination is abbreviated as the d100, and gives you a percentile score. Popular names for it also include "Percentile dice." When rolling to see if you succeed at a skill, you roll the percentile dice, or d100. If you REALLY want to look, you can find an actual one hundred sided die, but they are silly and not neccesary. For the books, all you need to actually play the game is the Dark Heresy Core rulebook. It contains everything from the player classes, to the rules of gameplay, and scenarios and monsters for the GM to throw at you, as well as setting information. The dice probably cost about twenty five cents each, depending on where you buy them, the book is about fifty dollars but prices change based on where you go, as well. You can find the book at almost any book store, in Barnes and Noble they keep it near the comic books and graphic novels, in Borders I usually see them put it near the anime and manga, or the fantasy novels. Dice can either be bought online, or at your local comic shop.

Finding people is tricky, but if your friends are real bros, they won't have a problem with trying out the game just once. If you make them get into it, they'll come back for more, but you'll bear the mantle of GM forever. Unless someone thinks he wants to try it out, but trust me, that's rare. If your friends refuse, try your local comic shop, if they host RPG games, there might be a group there. Problem is, you run the chance of meeting real weirdos, as well as pretentious people. Online gaming has the same problem, but you also don't have to actually listen to them complain, and you can always drop out without having to face them again. Play by post, IRC, and messenger play are popular, but all require some dicerolling program, otherwise you may as well just freeform it out.

If people are interested, and don't have conflicting schedules, I might run a Dark Heresy game on IRC or something.

Rogue Trader

Not the post I wanted to make today, but that's okay, you'll see that one later. Right now, I'm gonna tell you about one of the games of Rogue Trader I ran. Rogue Trader is set in Warhammer 40k, and it's the same game, but on a whole 'nother power level. Instead of working for an Inquisitor, although you certainly can do that, you are a member of a Rogue Trader Dynasty, and you usually work for yourself. Typically, one player is the Rogue Trader and everyone else plays the elite officers onboard the Rogue Trader's ship. Usually, you're the head of the Dynasty, but sometimes, you're just one of the many heirs competing for that spot at the top, GM depending.

So, in Rogue Trader you have a ship, and the Galaxy is your oyster. You're a power player in the universe, and your goal is to whatever you want. You can be a merchant prince, a pirate lord, a colonial governer, or just about anything else. In my campaign, nobody wanted to play the Rogue Trader character type, so I had him acting from the shadows, as an incompetant brat using the wealth of his Dynasty to score chicks and future drugs and leaves all the hard work to his officers. His officers were: An Explorator(A tech priest that explores the galaxy for lost human technology, and works to understand alien technology) based off of Hunter S. Thompson from Fear and Loathing in Vegas, an Arch-Militant(A fight without peer, an Arch-Militant could be a former military commando, a big game hunter that hunts the most dangerous aliens, a penetant criminal serving off his sentence through suicide missions) that was formerly an Imperial Noble born with a mutation on her skin that makes her secrete poison from her pores, she left her world when a suitor accidentally got touched by the poison and died, through hard work and dedication she's managed to make it as an Arch-Militant probably through lots and lots of trial and error. The other two were far more unusual, a kroot mercenary(Kroot are aliens that resemble dinosaur birdmen that evolve by eating other creature's genetics, they hire themselves out to anyone who can pay them) that was the ship's cook, and an ork mercenary(Orks are the biggest and the strongest aliens in the galaxy, always looking for a good fight, they sometimes join up with less orky creatures for the purposes of getting a better fight. Because it's no fun being on the guaranteed a win all the time.) as well.

The group's first, and only job was to find out the recipe to a new drug was, one that tasted good, and was highly addictive, but had no other properties. All they knew was that it was an orange powder, and when mixed into liquid, usually water, its full addictive properties were realized. So, they have little leads, except it's coming out of Footfall, imagine every hive of scum and villainy you possibly could, combine them together, and make sure they're all well outside of the law's jurisdiction. Then launch it into space. That is Footfall. Going there, they meet one of the Explorator's dealers, who says that he's got some of the stuff stocked up, and if they want they can have some. But he has to get access to it, which is a complicated process due to increased gang competition. The group accepts to eliminate his rivals, when they learn that their trade lanes are being attacked by orks, but not just any orks, these orks were rivals of their ork. So, in the interest of keeping their trade lanes free of orks, they take a small craft and patrol the nearby lanes.

What they find is a giant ork ship with Gork's(Or Mork's) face carved onto the front, charging toward their little ship! They can hear it, through space, the Orks are chanting, "ORKZ ORKZ ORKZ ORKZ ORKZ ORKZ!" Their psychic gestalt making this possible, the mouth of their ship also opens up, clamping onto the side of their craft. The ship is burned open by plasma torches, and six of the biggest orks they've ever seen board the ship, and one ork bigger than that. They're here for blood. Sadly, the fight went through only one combat round, and then the game never went anywhere due to scheduling conflicts.

Dark Heresy

Since Warhammer 40k went over so well in the last post, or everyone has heard of it in some way, I figure I'll keep talking about 40k related things. And, in my opinion, the best thing to have happened to 40k is Dark Heresy. That's the Warhammer 40k roleplaying game. Imagine, if you will, DnD except instead of killing goblins for gold, you're killing cultists for heresy. The game has you as a conscripted squad of acolytes, working as undercover agents for an all powerful Inquisitor. Your job is to uncover the heresy, apprehend those involved, find out how deep the heresy goes, and to infiltrate and eventually uproot the heretics entirely. The game is a lot of fun with the right GM.

My first Dark Heresy was GM'd by Veteran Sergeant Gary Eraklin of the Legio Gary, and I played a female Arbitrator. Think like Judge Dredd, only in SPAAAAACE. My original idea was to use improvised weaponry to beat the ever living heresy out of heretics, however that went to hell when I discovered I had unnatural luck on ballistics checks. I got great rolls, almost never missed with my autogun, and I instantly regretted selling the shotgun Arbitrators get as standard equipment just so I could upgrade my armor. However, I wasn't involved in that game, and dropped out to help beta test the Trigger Discipline RPG. I played a few other games with that group afterwards, but I kept feeling like I was too far behind.

Fast forward to the present! I've played in a few ill fated Rogue Trader(Think like a higher level of Dark Heresy) games, ran a Rogue Trader game myself, having great fun even if the games went nowhere, and have had more experience with Dark Heresy as well. Currently, I am joining a new game as a Feral World Psyker with a shockmaul and a laspistol. Dunno what's going on, but one of the guys in one of my IRC groups offered me a position in his game, and I aim to take it.

The guy's name is Lokas Spiritbound, and is the odd man out of his family, not so much in not being a warrior, but not being the one choosen to serve in the Allfather of Man's Warband. Well, him and his older brother, anyway. He was discovered as a psyker, sanctioned, found strong enough to resist the Warp, and stood before the Allfather Himself to complete his sanctioning. His older brother was a murderer, and was picked up by the Inquisition. It was not known what happened to him until Lokas became sanctioned, found his records as a penal assassin, and learned that his crime was pardoned due to his untimely death. Lokas' father died in service as well, but his mother and younger brother are still fighting against the enemies of the Allfather. Lokas himself has served with the Inquisition for a long time, since he is in his thirties, I'd say atleast seventeen years. I don't know what amazing things he has done in his past, but I would imagine they're along the lines of what any Norse style berserker would do. He's looked at weirdly by the more Puritan Inquisitors and Acolytes for his homeworld's interpretations of the Imperial Creed, but his Inquisitior knows he is a valuable asset, despite his quirks.

The biggest quirk among them is that he believes if you kill someone, or something, and wear their skin you turn into them while wearing their skin. This has earned him some serious mind probings, but he's Emperor loyal, even if he sticks to primitive beliefs. A side effect of his Sanctioning is that his teeth have daemon wards applied to them, it makes him struggle to say the names of the Chaos Gods, and he stutters when speaking about daemons in general. He has a mask, probably made of someone's skin, that he keeps from his life back on his homeworld, and a ring of prayer beads as a reminder of his sanctioning.

So far, Lokas has not done anything, as I have not yet had my first session with him. I'll be sure to post logs, or something, of his adventures, so you guys can see where he's going.