Dark Heresy

[Adeptekon]

I'm planning on collecting all of the RP systems for 40k to see which one I like best and grabbed this off ebay first.

 

Does anyone play Dark Heresy? Any tips?

 

[Lathe Biosas]

All the Fantasy Flight 40k games eventually have a slight flaw in party construction. Most of your party is made of damp tissue paper standing in a hail storm and will tear open with a couple hits.

 

Mechanicus folks on the other hand xan turn themselves into a block of adamantium that is incredibly difficult to kill.

 

You will have to balance the two when running campaigns. Whether it be Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader, Deathwatch, etc.

[Adeptekon]

1 minute ago, Lathe Biosas said:

All the Fantasy Flight 40k games eventually have a slight flaw in party construction. Most of your party is made of damp tissue paper standing in a hail storm and will tear open with a couple hits.

 

Mechanicus folks on the other hand xan turn themselves into a block of adamantium that is incredibly difficult to kill.

 

You will have to balance the two when running campaigns. Whether it be Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader, Deathwatch, etc.

Ah... well, right now I just want to see how character creation is. Since I'm the only GM I know I tend to take the rules as a suggestion anyway.

[Mazer Rackham]

=][= Good Frater, harken thee well to this missive from thy Acolytes common to Inquisitorial exceptional =][=

 

Go thee hence from this place, to the foreboding halls within another, deeper sanctum - although be warned! Abandon thy sanity, for all is madness in the deep realms of shadow in which the true battle for Humanity's soul doth lie. Begirdeth well thy tender loins, for all advice is wrought with corruption, and many are the perils of the warp and the indolent wastrel, ready to prey upon the unsuspecting and untested...

 

 

I've dropped a link to this thread in the Nook, our RPG hub within the BnC. Feel free to have a browse of some of our games, and maybe get a feel for what goes on. Several of our Players also GM Dark Heresy as a framework for their own projects, so perhaps they can provide some help.

 

You've got a good handle on FFG games already though - the rulebooks are essentially a GM Kit - everything else is dice and screaming. 

 

Edited August 3 by Mazer Rackham

[Adeptekon]

1 hour ago, Mazer Rackham said:

=][= Good Frater, harken thee well to this missive from thy Acolytes common to Inquisitorial exceptional =][=

 

Go thee hence from this place, to the foreboding halls within another, deeper sanctum - although be warned! Abandon thy sanity, for all is madness in the deep realms of shadow in which the true battle for Humanity's soul doth lie. Begirdeth well thy tender loins, for all advice is wrought with corruption, and many are the perils of the warp and the indolent wastrel, ready to prey upon the unsuspecting and untested...

 

 

I've dropped a link to this thread in the Nook, our RPG hub within the BnC. Feel free to have a browse of some of our games, and maybe get a feel for what goes on. Several of our Players also GM Dark Heresy as a framework for their own projects, so perhaps they can provide some help.

 

You've got a good handle on FFG games already though - the rulebooks are essentially a GM Kit - everything else is dice and screaming. 

 

Thank you kind sir... Holding to what sanity I have left and with your waypoint I shall carouse of these deep backwaters undaunted! 

[Trokair]

17 hours ago, Adeptekon said:

Ah... well, right now I just want to see how character creation is. Since I'm the only GM I know I tend to take the rules as a suggestion anyway.

 

Sensible, the FFG games in my experience are fairly robust, but exact wording (or lack thereof) can be an issue so a common sense approach just helps the process along.  

 

6 hours ago, Mazer Rackham said:

I've dropped a link to this thread in the Nook, our RPG hub within the BnC. Feel free to have a browse of some of our games, and maybe get a feel for what goes on. Several of our Players also GM Dark Heresy as a framework for their own projects, so perhaps they can provide some help.

 

 

To expand on what Mazer said, I have used a Dark Heresy as the framework for a treasure hunt game, a Eldar player character game and most recently started a game with the players as a Titan Crew on their way to go for a Walk.

[Mazer Rackham]

Just to speak to your Dark Heresy Chargen comments - the rules for FFG stuff can be quite....stodgy, but as Tro says, they're generally rock solid. Actually rolling stats up is very easy, and you can get that bit done very quickly. Bonuses are added to certain stats depending on world, career background, that kind of thing. Boiling it down, you have all your usual archetypes, Wizard (liable to explode), Techno Wizard (liable to make things explode), Fighter (liable to be near explosions), Cleric (liable to be explosive in temperament), Face/Number cruncher (liable to provoke explosions), and Rogue (liable to get other people involved in explosions).

 

I forget the others, been a while, but I can guarantee explosions.

 

Each of them carry a hell of a lot of rules, skills, talents and traits to enhance the things they're supposed to be good at - but there is some cross-pollination, so characters can spec into other things, but as per usual, never are as good as focus. All of these things are explained, and they're fairly intuitive once you get your head around how they interact.

 

For example: A Cleric will have Speak Language (Low Gothic), and Speak Language (High Gothic), so he can converse with the Ne'er Do' Wells, and Hoi Palloi alike. If someone doesn't have that language, he can't read, speak or understand it, so that can be a flavour thing, or even a GM lever opportunity. As Lathe Biosas above says, these guys are tissue paper, but balancing it isn't that hard if you've got some RPG miles under your belt - gonna be hard for that tanky metal mickey to move when he's been hit with an EMP grenade...did I mention explosions?

 

Chargen in FFG can take a while, but it's a very routine procedure, good amount of options, bolts together really well, crunch and fluff-wise. A good Session Zero with plenty of time put aside is recommended if you're GM'ing for a group not familiar.

[Adeptekon]

53 minutes ago, Mazer Rackham said:

I forget the others, been a while, but I can guarantee explosions.

 

I love it already!

[N1SB]

On 8/3/2026 at 8:37 AM, Adeptekon said:

Does anyone play Dark Heresy? Any tips?

 

"(Normal) 40k is about how people die.  Dark Heresy is about how they live." - my GM

 

I played 2 near year-long campaigns of Dark Heresy mixed with Only War, and 1 of Wrath & Glory, but the above comment from my GM (also a frequent local 40k tourney winner at the time), which he casually dropped during dinner 1 time, is actually the epitome of Dark Heresy specifically.  Dark Heresy is best at the brutal slice of life in 40k.

 

What that means is combat-lite, exploration-heavy, not just roleplay but LIFE-heavy, is what we liked in Dark Heresy.

 

Learnings from 1st Dark Heresy campaign

 

On 8/3/2026 at 8:46 AM, Lathe Biosas said:

All the Fantasy Flight 40k games eventually have a slight flaw in party construction. Most of your party is made of damp tissue paper standing in a hail storm and will tear open with a couple hits.

 

Mechanicus folks on the other hand xan turn themselves into a block of adamantium that is incredibly difficult to kill.

 

I was literally that block of adamantium, and even as a Techpriest, combat was dull, I can't imagine how boring it was for the others.

 

MAKING an uber character was fun...but again it was about the exploration-heavy, life-heavy stuff.  His background was Hive Ganger, so we were figuring out how he managed to leave to be part of the campaign.  Just exploring the lore with the GM, we 2 Long War Veterans concluded: the only ways out of a Hive was as a Guardsmen, a can of corpsestarch, or getting noticed by the Mechanicus.  A Hive, their whole world, IS a mechanical construct, so my character juryrigged something that caught the eye of the Cog.

 

The combat rules and upgrades are definitely there.  Our party included a former member of the British Territorial Army (he'd simplify it as "Dad's Army"...which then confused our Canadian and American players).  He was great, he was trained in tactics and stuff, and even then he excelled at what he imagined as the day-to-day of a Guardsmen.  Setting up camp, deciding what items to carry as every ounce of weight was a cost, it was the NON-combat stuff outside of battle that was most interesting.

 

So I had a very combat-oriented character, played with a former soldier, we both found the exploration and life in 40k more interesting.

 

Enjoying the 2nd Dark Heresy campaign

 

After that 1st campaign, I brought my "power level" down to be more in-line with others.  It's as the others said, felt too unfair.

 

I played a young Priest, not Techpriest.  The GM had this plan she would eventually join the Adeptus Sororitas.  I wanted to play female Nacho Libre instead.  She had a faraway shrine that served as an orphanage filled with los ninos, and they had exactly ONE homesteader rifle with ONE clip of ammo, issued by the Ecclesiarchy centuries ago.  We decided that would be treated as sacred, like relics, so each bullet is on the altar like holy items, never to be fired.  Thus this shrine invented a whole martial arts around a gunstock warclub.

 

The rest of the party continued playing their characters, but just playing life out in the Ecclesiarchy I think fascinated everyone.

 

Gone was all the combat advantages I had as a Techpriest, and it was more fun because it's not about combat, it's about life in 40k.

 

The absolute highlight of the campaign was the GM wanted to RP a flashback that was a late-game plot twist, that the shrine/orphanage was actually a front for Radical Inquisitors.  The orphans were a secret genetics project even my character didn't know about.  My character would've been raised in this orphanage herself, and without working out what we were going to say, we just played out the flashback as a quick back & forth.  My character was a child, sweeping the cloister, when the old Priest that raised her sat her down:

 

"One day, someone bearing a symbol that looks like...this," he drew the =][= symbol in the dirt with the broom handle, "will come.  You must do everything he says.  Do you understand?"

 

"No, Padre."  Intelligence was my character's dumpstat.  Everyone laughed.

 

"But will you obey?"  My GM knew me better than I did myself, thus was unflapped.

 

"Yes, Padre."

 

"PERFECT."  Everyone laughed even harder.  The Imperium values obedience, not intelligence, in fact, blind obedience from a lack of intelligence was best.

 

If I were to run a Dark Heresy campaign

 

I'd use Dark Heresy rules.  I'd encourage players to build investigation heavy characters, there would be combat, but lightly.

 

Then I'd secretly be using a really good Call of Cthulhu that the players never came across and repurpose it for 40k.  Like instead of a Cthulhu cult, it'd be Nurgle or Tzeentch or whatever.  It'd be a Lovecraftian horror version of 40k, without having Insanity points per se.  The goal is neither 40k nor Cthulhu, but that creepy gloominess in grimdark.

 

I'm guessing your players won't be as read up on 40k background as you.  You need not explain, just explore, with them, like that conversation with Padre.  People get their information from LoreTube, but those focus on superhero moments between Primarchs.  Quiet moments in 40k like that are precious if only because they're so rare.

[Adeptekon]

I haven't played Call of Cathulu, but I do have Chaosium BRP. No players yet, so it may be a while before anything starts, but another thing I would like is to have the RP campaign connected with tabletop narrative play (but I might be asking too much)

[N1SB]

Excellent, depict life between battles.  From what you described, it's a long way off, but it's good back-of-mind processing.

 

I only mentioned Call of Cthulhu because there's a lot of parallels with Dark Heresy specifically.  Cthulhu calls player characters "investigators" (rather than "adventurers"), while Dark Heresy calls them "Inquisition acolytes" and so on.  Sure, they both have a percentage system, but more importantly, notice how many investigative skills there are in Dark Heresy.  You see what I'm getting at.

 

In what you described, it looks like it's about all the reconnaissance work before and/or the recovery work after a 40k battle.

[Mazer Rackham]

Yeah, can't add more. Dark Heresy is digging up all the dirt, and then if you can, handling the trouble yourself in a desperate situation. Deathwatch or even Only War follows, when boots hit the ground to deal with the growing threat and dig out the roots of what you uncovered.

[Adeptekon]

Yeah the intrigue, drama, and subterfuge which shapes battles. I've got some ideas for characters so I'll probably start creating those now.

Edited Thursday at 12:28 AM by Adeptekon

[Adeptekon]

Handed the book out to a team mate today who is regular AD&D player, so I'm planting the seeds.