Psykers and Tech-Priest look to be the most interesting to me since they deviate from most other settings significantly and both offer some unique role-playing opportunities. After choosing a career, players pick a few skills and talents and are ready to flesh out their character details with a couple flavorful charts. Psykers in particular can end up with some particularly interesting quirks.

Advancement for characters march up a pre-defined career path called ranks. As the character advances they may be presented with some career rank choices but these are almost chosen beforehand by the character’s previous skill and talent choices, and how the player has played the character.

In a way I find this odd since in WFRP the career system is very open and is indeed a defining element of the game. The progression of careers in Dark Heresy in contrast feels a bit limiting and the ranks are disturbingly akin to levels. Each rank has an experience point threshold to reach it, it offers up some new skills and talents, and the successive ranks require higher experience thresholds to hit.

Luckily each career rank offers some interesting choices as the player advances and each character will quickly become unique as opposed to the generic effect level based games seem to gravitate towards. As a character gains experience points they can spend them on the skill and talents available to their current career rank. Once they reach the experience threshold to move up a rank, they move on and the process starts over again. The system is set up that you can never buy all of the skills and talents in your current rank, so players will have to make some hard choices as they rank up, since they may never to be able to buy those old skills and talents. Players can also raise their base stats with experience to further add to the player’s choices. It is an interesting system, although career ranks at first glance look an awful lot like levels

Characters start off with randomly generated stats that are all in a similar range, so it would not be unheard of to have your group Scribe end up being a better shot and tougher than your group Assassin. This will eventually delineate itself out as characters progress and talent and skill availability complements career choices. I personally don’t mind luck playing a role in character generation but I know it may irritate some.

A Shower of Blood and Gore

Combat is quick, dangerous, and usually ends with a horrific critical hit that showers someone with blood and gore. This is of course, fantastic. Weapons pack quite a punch and can potentially end anyone’s life with a lucky hit. Successful characters will likely use their social skills as much as their guns to get out of sticky situations and I think this plays into the hand of what the game is going for – investigation of dark plots and subtlety rather than frontal assault types of firefights.

Most of the weapons and armor are standard Warhammer 40k fare with a good mix of range and melee weapons. Everyone should find something to their likely. Combatant can also use Psyker abilities to create a variety of mental effects. Powerful Psykers can indeed be very devastating but they can push themselves into corruption or insanity more easily than other characters.

The main thing wanting in the armory section is the lack of vehicles and vehicle combat. I don’t think it is unreasonable for a Dark Heresy game to include some rules for high speed chases or running over a cultist with a drop pod. In a game with a huge array of vehicles you can simply count on players wanting to use them. I fully understand why they did not include such rules, the book is 400 pages as it is, but it is still somewhat disappointing.

The combat rules are close to WFRP and follow an easy to use action and half-action system. The options for the players include all manner of cover, overwatch, suppressive fire, and melee options. A friend of mine is an Iraq combat veteran and is definitely pleased about the range combat options – woe to the cultist. Combat, like most other tests in the game revolve around a 2d10 percentile role against of the characters attributes, which can be modified by a skill or circumstances.

Combat follows a wound system that ends with critical hits. As the player gets wounded beyond their wounds score, they take a variety of critical hits depending on the type of weapon used and the location hit. Energy weapons fry flesh, explosive weapons send gore splattering in all directions, and impact weapons crush and smash bones. Combat is not pretty, nor should it be. For GMs not wanting to use a plethora of critical charts (who wouldn’t?) then some simple sudden death rules can alternately be used.

While I can’t say for sure until I play test it extensively, my first inclinations is to say this is probably the best mix for detail and ease of use in a ranged combat role playing game.

The God-Emperors Inquisition

Dark Heresy really shines with the setting and environment. They have had over twenty years to flesh out the Warhammer 40k universe and it shows. A good 100 pages are devoted to explaining the setting, the Inquisition and the Calixis sector. Every bit is useful and turns a good game into a great game.

The Inquisition is the core of the story for the PCs, as the right hand of the God-Emperor of mankind. PCs are individuals that stood out to the inquisition and are put into its employ to save mankind from all manner of threats. As an acolyte of the inquisition, the PCs operate on behalf of their patron Inquisitor to discovers and thwart heresy, alien threats and fouler dark threats. In doing so they will operate on many types of worlds, in many types of cultures, and the GM will have huge variety of possible adventure ideas to throw at them.

While it is impossible to sum up the grim, dark 41st millennium in this review, I was clearly impressed with how they pulled it off. For example I enjoyed the illustration of ignorance that most of the population has of technology. While quite a bit of technology exists, for the most part no one actually knows how the stuff really works. Tech-Priests perform their maintenance rituals and puts parts together as the holy books dictate in order to appease the machine spirit. But all in all, no one actually knows what the hell they are doing, so anyone sane will sweat when they hit that most holy ‘on’ button. This sort of fluff can offer a multitude to role playing opportunities for the GM and players and thankfully Dark Heresy is full of this sort of content.

The details on the Calixis sector flesh out various worlds, organizations and offer up a good many adventure hooks to get going with. This section also includes some example Inquisitors for use and it is recommend to have your players choose their own patron Inquisitor. This is fairly smart since it can give the GM an idea on what the players want in their game and give them a sense of involvement on who will be giving the orders.

The later sections of the book talk about antagonists, critters and follows up with an adventure. The adventure is straightforward and is a good introduction to the setting and the usefulness of skills. The Blackindustries.com web page also offers supplemental material including some quick play rules and a short adventure.

Doomed, but to try Anyways

Dark Heresy uses two scores to keep track of the horrible things that will inevitably happen to the PCs. These are Insanity and Corruption. Insanity is fairly self explanatory, and it can be accumulated though fear, horrific events and critical hits which will eventually apply disorders to PCs. The more Insanity and Corruption the PC has however, the harder it is for them to gain more in many cases. After all, once you see many of the horrors in the universe, what are a few more?

Corruption is likewise accumulate, but through contact with the warp and daemonic influences. On the same tangent PCs can make Dark Pacts with the powers of chaos for great personal power, if the opportunity should arise. Eventually when enough insanity or corruption is accumulated the character will gain delusions or mutation and it will eventually end the character if they gain too many. Both insanity and corruption points can be removed, but the price is quite steep. Dark Packs can never be removed, your soul is effectively sold.

PCs can be altered in other way, notably their mind and their body in the form of Psyker powers and body augments. Psyker abilities and powers can manipulate the powerful forces of the warp and thus are dangerous to use, or even be around someone using these energies. Augments can replace body parts and are a core domain for the Tech-Priests. Other PCs can augment their body in the likely even that they loose a limb or flesh. This can lead to a loss of humanity and sanity if too much is replaced however.

Conclusion

Dark Heresy is a stand-out product on most every level. That said I can safely say Dark Heresy is likely one of the best role playing products you will put your hands on this year, and I would not be surprised at all if it ends up being a standout game for many years to come.

I do have some minor issues but these are likely due to personal taste rather than the quality of the product. The lack of vehicles and appropriate rules are missed, the career rank system seems a bit like glorified levels, and the game is generally not very novice friendly. I can also see some people not caring for the luck in character generation or the number of charts presented in the book. Despite these minor quibbles they are nothing to shove the product off of the premier pedestal and I am glad to recommend it.

One more note. I think the Eisenhorn novels are simply mandatory reading for anyone thinking about running or playing the game, much in the same ways the Dragonlance books were to the Dragonlance role-play setting. No rule book can do justice to a setting like a trilogy of novels, and really Dark Heresy was written around the Eisenhorn.