arthurbdd's review
4.5
Highly flavourful, but the system works best if you are fine with playing low-powered characters who believe a fair fight is for chumps and are willing to leverage every advantage they can to swing things their way, and if you are fine with wild and sometimes destructive results. Later iterations of this generation of 40K RPGs dialled back the rough edges - but I increasingly feel that those rough edges were what made it fun. Full review: https://refereeingandreflection.wordpress.com/2017/12/18/an-appreciation-of-dark-heresy-1st-edition/
books17's review
2.0
As an RPG fan and a 40k fan, when a mate of mine decided to run some Dark Heresy campaigns I was thrilled. But as it turns out it just isn't.. fun. Being railroaded into being (basically) a member of the Inquisition (well not technically but under the employ of one) sort of pigeonholes what the GM can do in terms of plot, and what the players can do in general. My general dislike for d100 systems notwithstanding, Dark Heresy just has a lot of general issues that rankled me - our party spent weeks at a time sitting around not doing anything after a firefight because it would take a month for our combat character who took all the bolts and lasers to the face to heal back up. The universe of 40k, while immense and well-written, is lacking in specifics that are really required for a GM to plan out a campaign - it's hard for a hive to have a personality when it is literally just an enormous mound of buildings.
Whilst we haven't tried it, Rogue Trader would probably be a better system with a bit more freedom - being a rogue trader after all is a bit more vague than being an Inquisitor's patsy - but after Dark Heresy I just have major reservations about FFG's 40k RPGs.
Whilst we haven't tried it, Rogue Trader would probably be a better system with a bit more freedom - being a rogue trader after all is a bit more vague than being an Inquisitor's patsy - but after Dark Heresy I just have major reservations about FFG's 40k RPGs.
tiggum's review
4.0
The 40k universe is really fun and the Dark Heresy rule set is easy to understand and seems to work well.
More...