Tag Archives: Dark Heresy

Iblis Prime: A Homebrew Planet for Rogue Traders and Other Adventurers

The Boiling Brine

The Boiling Brine, an inland sea on the planet Iblis Prime via

For the past 28 sessions, I have been GMing a Warhammer 40k Rogue Trader game for my home group. At the end of our last story arc, the players were rewarded with the rights to a colony on a newly discovered (though presently populated) planet outside of the Imperium of Man.

Rather than give them a data dump of information and plot hooks I created, I made a session out of planet creation. I leveraged the World Generator system from Chapter 1 of the Stars of Inequity supplement, and players took turns rolling skill checks to research or investigate the planet and its system. Based on the success of their skill rolls, I granted them some leeway to choose off of the random tables from Stars of Inequity. If they failed, I chose nastier results.

After randomizing the characteristics of the planet, we set about filling in the details of some major factions of the city, creating a slew of potential allies and adversaries as they set off to make their mark for the Imperium of Man. I’ve included the results of our session as a (mostly) ready-to-play location for your Rogue Trader game, which can be easily adapted for other settings.

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Fixing Dark Heresy 2E’s Random Item Acquisition for Rogue Trader

dark_heresy_second_edition_front

Lately–as I’ve mentioned on the Total Party Thrill podcast–I’ve been running a Warhammer 40k Rogue Trader game using Fantasy Flight Games’ Dark Heresy Second Edition system. Rather than members of the Inquisition, as Dark Heresy is designed for, the player characters make up the crew of a Rogue Trader vessel. We had to lightly reskin and reflavor a few items, but it has been an overall smooth conversion, but one mechanic has stuck in my craw since the first game of Dark Heresy we ran in 2014: item acquisition.

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FFG Releases Warhammer 40k: Dark Heresy 2E Character Sheet App

Dark Heresy Digital Character Sheet App

In April, Fantasy Flight Games released Enemies Within, the first splatbook expansion to their Warhammer 40k: Dark Heresy 2nd Edition RPG, to little fanfare. This week, to equally little fanfare, FFG released the Dark Heresy Digital Character Sheet app. Well damnit, there should be some fanfare, because this is awesome.

I’ve had a chance to peruse Enemies Within, which overall adds a lot of flavor and additional options for players and GMs without much in the way of power creep (though the Sororitas’ light power armor is a fair concern.) It’s a cool book for all the reasons I love the Dark Heresy line, and easily worth its $39.95 cover price ($19.95 for PDF). If you play DH 2E, you should check it out.

But today, we’re going to talk about the app.

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Confessional: I Hate Reading RPG Stories

Is there a good story for this?

Is there a good story for this?

Let me start this by saying that I love thinking about games, writing about games, playing games, and experiencing the memorable stories that we create through games. I am an active participant on RPG-related online forums. I created this blog to help people play games, have more fun, and push the limits of the hobby. I believe roleplaying is an artform, and like any art, worthy of study and critique. I play, I write, I read, and I analyze.

All of this is to say: I have read an awful lot of RPG stories. From fa/tg/uys posting greentext on 4chan to desperate cries for help on Reddit, I have read everything from classics like the Dread Gazebo and Tucker’s Kobolds to modern serializations like the All Guardsman Party. I consume podcasts voraciously, listening to actual play sessions, where RPG stories are created, and discussion formats, where they are discussed.

I have come to the conclusion that I hate reading RPG stories.

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