This review is going to be biased.
Three reasons.
One, my already-immense love for all things Warhammer. That is why I have I have spent the past five years considering whether giving my soul to Games Workshop in return for a lifetime supply of miniatures is a worthy investment (that’s still under consideration). Two, the history I share with it. Yes, I’m one of the few who didn’t with the donning of leather armour and spelunking my way through dungeons in DnD. Instead, I donned guard flak armour (which is arguably worse), and armed with my trusty flashlight, spelunked my way through abandoned space hulks, teeming hive worlds, and alien planets. It was also the first RPG I ever DMed, although the usage of the term at that point may be an insult to all my fellow dungeon masters. Perhaps it was more akin to hurling orks at my PCs and giggling at the pretty (imaginary) explosions.
Three, the game itself. This is essentially the immense richness of the setting and the absolute intensity of the gameplay, combined with the myriad options for character development both in terms of role-playing, and in terms of in-game player progression. And it is the third which has spurred me today to write this review. Yes, this may sound a bit like an advertisement, and if it does, I’m sorry. I can’t help it. If you want me to write a scathing review about a certain RPG, then someone request for DND 4e (Let the hate-mail begin!) or if someone wants me to write a confused jumble ending with alcohol, then someone request for Nobilis (God, that game was mind-bendingly convoluted). I promise, I’ll mention the downsides to the system and the setting, but please, let me have this one.
I’ll assume everybody reading this knows the basics of a role-playing system, so I won’t go much into that (If you don’t, it’s basically a bunch of people gathering together and rolling imaginary dice in order to pretend they can fight). Instead, a brief outline of Dark Heresy. For those who have had experience with other Big-Name RPGs, it can be described simply as a cross between the frenetic combat and madness of Call of Cthulhu (indeed it takes much inspiration from the CoC game-system), and the structured classes/skills/talents etc. of Dungeons and Dragons. For those who have no idea what the words you’ve just read meant, then imagine a freeform game where combat is lethal, plots are deep enough that lack of investigation would kill you, and add into it a huge variety of various items, equipment, talents, skills, and backgrounds.
Breaking the game into its component portions, we then find four main sections that define it (note that I’m only taking into account the main rulebook, of course the supplements will be covered at later dates).
1. Character Creation and Progression
2. Gameplay Mechanics
3. Items/Equipment/Monsters etc. (Supplementary Material for DMs)
4. Background Fluff Provided
Each will be taken into consideration, and I promise that I will try my best to be objective about each (HA!), and that I will not go into a rant about how the Calixian Conclave is essentially much too comprehensively structured for a sub-sector of its size… unless its built in order to hide or even contain something, which would then assume the completion of a certain new Ordos that has been tasked with bu-….
Anyway, starting with Character Creation and Progression.
Character creation is quite a complicated process, so I won’t go into it in detail, but suffice to say, options are numerous. One can opt to be the zealous Cleric to the Emperor, the crazy Judge (based slightly on Judge Dredd most likely, although I’m not too sure about that), the stealthy Assassin, the Cannon-Fodder Guardsman, the Techpriest (who’s bound to betray you eventually in order to augment his body with more HERESY), the crazy Psyker (OHGODOHGODOHGOD) and the all-important… Adept, who as useless as he sounds, actually is important, as you always need someone who knows that the symbol above the cave you’re walking into demarcates that of a Necron Tomb-complex. Oh, and the Scum, but nobody really cares about that bugger (My party’s scum stole so much stuff from me I can’t be bothered to list it down here).
Each class is chock full of character, brought to life through expansive back-stories and fluff provided for in the book, allowing for interesting role-playing as according to the guidelines given in the descriptions of the classes, but also allowing space for player interpretation as to the intricacies of the class itself. For example, the assassin class may be played as a stone-cold sniper slowly picking off targets one by one, or he/she could be played as a crazed killer bathing in the (green? Blue?) blood of his fallen foes. All of these provide for a much-appreciated departure from the classic norms of the Warrior Rogue Wizard archetypes that are found throughout generic RPGs at this day and age.
Character progression is dealt with simple two or three tiered trees, with various options for each rank (level) allowed to be taken in different sub-classes relevant to the character class (essentially multiclassing in a single level of another, more specific class). Confusing as it sounds, I can safely say that throughout the past four years I have been playing this game, I have not yet met two characters with the same career choices once past the fifth rank. Experience points gained is spent upon various advances that allow for increased proficiency in certain skills, and upon specialized talents that assist the players in specific manners or give them interesting new powers to play around with, and the allowance for the spending of experience upon the various advances between levels ensure that the players constantly have access to new content from the game-system.
Creating characters is a blast, but unfortunately, the downside to this is that getting a group of characters to work together is not an easy task. In my eyes, this adds to the fun of the game, a whole layer of challenge that is essentially the players and the DM against the system itself as they attempt to beat the lethality of the gameplay. However, for players who prefer their groups to work like a well-oiled machine, much discussion would have to be had beforehand, as character roles blur to a much higher degree within this game than in any other, leaving characters as essentially true jack-of-all-trades or specialized to the point of uselessness (my group of players currently has a psyker who has ONE trick, turning his hands into huge hammers and growing four arms in order to squash people like bugs ala Mr. Fantastic).
Still, if you can stomach the math involved, and handle reading through the vast supplements and resources you would need to in order to optimize the character you have created (and trust me, taking into account the difficulty of the game you probably would need to), then character creation is ultimately an intricately exhilarating process that would leave you itching to play the game.
[Next – Dark Heresy: Playing the Game]
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