Dark Heresy is the 2008 addition to the Warhammer 40,000 RPG lineup. The back cover promises players the opportunity to play “an Acolyte in the service of the Inquisition.” This doesn't mean exactly what you might expect it to mean, as we'll see later. It also offers us this rather baffling mission statement: “You will never know fame nor reward, yet if you stand resolute your deeds will be whispered to the God-Emperor of Mankind and your name will be revered for milennia.” Having your name whispered to the corpse-god seems dubious in value, and I don't understand how you can be revered without being famed, but that's okay, because as we'll see later there are totally rewards.
My confusion here is an omen of things to come. Throughout this book I found it difficult to keep track of what kind of status and what powers the Acolytes are actually supposed to have. It's possible that this is just me. This is the first Warhammer game in any medium I have actually read. Hopefully my ignorance will be a benefit in this context, allowing me to evaluate the book on its ability to orient newcomers. This is especially true because of the way I encountered it.
I first became interested in Dark Heresy when I was invited to play a 1-shot that might turn into a campaign. I showed up on game night, picked out a character from a set our MC had premade, and downloaded the core book onto my tablet. I then flipped through it haphazardly trying to orient myself while the game was in progress. Only after the first session did I have an opportunity to read the book in order and adjust my character. I will attempt to intermix a session report with the standard OSSR format.
I will also probably digress into design theory at some point, because this game's advancement mechanics are genuinely interesting, although I'm not sure they are actually viable.
INTRODUCTION
The first thing we get after the table of contents is a full page art splash featuring a blurry painting of a medieval tower and a crinkly yellow parchment with setting conceits spelled out in tiny, slanted, and overly embellished text. Fortunately, it seems to be essentially equivalent to the box text from every Warhammer product I've encountered. The God-Emperor is a corpse on a gold throne to whom thousands are sacrificed. He powers the Astronomicon and is served by Space Marines, Guard, Tech-Priests, and the Inquisition, among others. I stopped reading at this point and turned to the actual introduction.
This is 4-page section. 1 page is a cogent, if belabored, explanation of what an RPG is. 1.5 pages(!) are spent rehashing the table of contents with a one-paragraph description of each forthcoming chapter, which is almost completely unnecessary. The RNG is revealed: This is mostly a roll-under percentile system, with a few things (like damage) being rolled as some number of d10s or d5s. One page goes to an “example of play” that is essentially devoid of mechanics. The Acolytes make two skill checks, but the book simply asserts that they pass without showing the numbers or even mentioning that dice are being rolled. Somehow they find space for a single paragraph describing what sorts of mission our Acolytes will actually do: Apparently, we fight heretics, aliens, witches, demons, and conspirators, and we do it with guns. Good to know. Inexplicably, there is also a sidebar reminding us that demons aren't real. Apparently nobody told GW the Satanic Panic is over.
