Author Topic: Dark Heresy Play by Post: House of Dust and Ash  (Read 80381 times)

Tadanori Oyama

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Re: Dark Heresy Play by Post: House of Dust and Ash
« Reply #15 on: June 05, 2009, 05:15:35 PM »
Okay, got three players who seem to have a vague idea what they want to do and that's good enough for me.

We'll aim to get rolling in a week or so, give everybody time to get familiar with their class and the basic rules.

Feel free to post question, comments, concerns, or anything else about the game here. Please do, I love having any excuse to talk about Dark Heresy, I love this game.

Dawnsteel

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Re: Dark Heresy Play by Post: House of Dust and Ash
« Reply #16 on: June 05, 2009, 05:38:07 PM »
Fantastic.  Also, this choppy-choppy-guy persona I've developed in this thread will (probably) not extend into the game, to set your mind at ease.

Anyhow, to continue my earlier line of questioning:

In general terms (regarding the setting), if Jon inadvertently turns on the demon spigot, am I better off running like hell away from the newly-forged Font of the Warp, rather than staying around trying for a cranium-ectomy?
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Tadanori Oyama

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Re: Dark Heresy Play by Post: House of Dust and Ash
« Reply #17 on: June 05, 2009, 05:52:34 PM »
Good question. Unless you get the first action, which is unlikely, then your almost certainly more likely to survive by running away.

Dark Heresy uses a hit point system called "Wounds". A character planet type and Toughness bonus determin basic wounds with a high HP character having around 10 Wounds.

Wounds represents your ability to take normal damage. When you reach 0 Wounds, you begin taking critical damage. Critical damage effects different body parts at different rates but always scales from 1 to 10 in increasing severity.

At each stage of critical wounding you suffer long term or permanent damage to the character's stats. Critical wounds to the head or body become lethal after seven or eight points.

Critical damage's effects are based around each hit location and the damage type. For example, if you deal 10 critical damage to the head with a plasma weapon, then the head explodes, throwing burning fluid in all directions while the victim stumbles around lighting things on fire, with their head flames, before collapsing. Or you could deal 9 critical damage to the body with a rending weapon (like a chainsaw sword), which no only causes the victim's insides to fall out but lets them flow freely, creating a slick of awful that acts as difficult terrain.

Dark Heresy is a game where survival doesn't mean you get better. After all, your soft flesh was never intended to endure the horrors of the universe head on. But, lucky you! The Emperor provides for all, including a better, stronger you through cybernetics. Your friendly local techpriests will be more than happy to graft cold iron and wire onto that arm stub and give you the chance to burn heretics again.

In all seriousness, it's very possible somebody's gonna lose some body parts in this game. I mean, you PCs will be hacking them off left and right, certainly. But you might leave some of your own on the floor too.

But the blood boot washing from that critical bolter wound to the head of a horned daemon who mocks your existance by simply being feels oh so good.

Dawnsteel

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Re: Dark Heresy Play by Post: House of Dust and Ash
« Reply #18 on: June 05, 2009, 06:13:05 PM »
(This is the best Q&A ever.)

OK, so the Inquisition has armed my buddies and I with chainsaw weapons, power gloves, and something called a "bolter."  (In my head it shoots 5/16"x2" bolts, but that's probably a product of my profession.)  They charge us to Go Forth and Root Out Heresy.
What counts as heresy here?  Do I get to wander into a crowd, randomly point at someone, shout "Heretic!" and light 'em up? 

Also note that I'm going to get the core book tomorrow, which might curtail the ridiculous questions I've been asking.  But it's too much fun!
I didn't come here to win. I came to make friends.

Tadanori Oyama

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Re: Dark Heresy Play by Post: House of Dust and Ash
« Reply #19 on: June 05, 2009, 07:02:49 PM »
SO much fun. God, I love this game.

The Inquisition doesn't hardly give you shit accept for jobs that'll, more than likely, get you killed. In fact, some of the last people you should trust are your handlers (your not likely to know your real master, your Inquistor, until you've survived a few suicide missions and been deemed "useful"). Acolites are half secret police and half cannon fadder.

Tier five or six Acolites, like you guys, have passed that point and you know of and may have even met the dude who's constantly getting you into trouble. While he hasn't given you anything directly, he makes it possible for you to get things for yourself, like chainsaw swords and bolters, both of which are very rare and valuable items, normally reserved for the Emperor's best. Humanity forgot how to make them ten thousand years ago, what exists today has endured since then.

Bolters come in three shapes: psitol, rifle, and heavy. All of them fire, surprise, bolts! Bolts are .75 calibur solid rounds. Each one has a casing with enough packed explosive(gun powder or like material, depending on when/where it was made) to get it out of the barrel of the rifle and ignite the self-propellant. Once free of the barrell the bolt's internalized fuel lights and the bolter accelerates away from the gun, gaining speed as it does so. Designed to adjust to soft (flesh) or hard (armor) targets, the bolt penitrates to effective depth and then detonates.

As for rooting out heresy, first you have to identify it.

Depending on your Inquistor, you'll find different things to be different levels of heretical, and that these levels may or may not be acceptable. The Adeptus Mechanicus are, in many ways, heretics. But they are the prayer keepers, the only ones who know how to keep the machine spirits appeased and functioning. So, it can be tough. Luckily, you have a clear guide to heresy: those outside the Emperor's light.

This includes:
those who deny the Emperor,
those who worship others aside from the Emperor,
those who worship others inaddition to the Emperor,
those who do not worship the Emperor,
humans who complain about being human,
humans who don't want to be human,
humans who mutate into other things,
humans who mutate into slightly different things,
humans who talk to aliens,
alien in general,
anything that belongs to aliens,
anything that belongs to daemons,
people who worship daemons,
people who work for daemons,
people who talk to daemons,
people who look at pictures of daemons,
people who know anything about daemons,
people who think about daemons,
humans who use sorcery,
humans who think about sorcery,
humans who learn new things,
humans who teach new things,
and planets who don't pay the tith.

There's more, but that's the primer. Within the Inquisition there are three massive orders: Hereticus, Malleus, and Xenos each specialized in the destruction and removal of one of the three major problems of the Imperium: heretics, daemons, and aliens. Honestly, all of them are heretics but the lines have to be drawn someplace.

As an acolite, you are a secret agent. You don't say your part of the Inquistion, you just move about and watch. When you find heresy, consider: is this it? Heresy is like a weed with deep roots and it spreads quickly. Kill one heretic and you will simply have to kill another soon. Follow one heretic to it's nest and you may kill many heretics, then you can move to a new place for more.

Or the roots may go too deep. You can not know who has fallen. So the planet will be burned. Each citizen put to their own pyre. Burn them all and the Emperor shall know his own. Your job is to find out when this must be done. More often, of course, the heresy is not so deep and limited to a select few. Once you know the truth: burn the witch.

Unless, of course, you can't. The rich and powerful are often as weak as the gutter slime. When a planetary governor falls to dark worship, what are you to do? Find the proof, reveal all, and then to the stake he goes.

And remember, the battle is never won and you will never be remember for anything you do. You name and your life will be meaningless to the entire Imperium and a hundred thousand billion human lives will take no notice of your existance. And you are all the protects the Imperium from destruction by alien and demon. You will do your job. You will die or go mad (and then die). And you will be forgotten.

JonHook

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Re: Dark Heresy Play by Post: House of Dust and Ash
« Reply #20 on: June 05, 2009, 10:35:36 PM »
Awesome! I love the atmosphere, and I can't wait for the game to begin.
"Isolation on a ship like this can breed heresy in the dark unwashed corners. I won't find evidence of heresy here, will I?" - Festor Sorebol (an Imperial Psyker in Tadanori's Dark Heresy game: House of Dust & Ash)

Dawnsteel

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Re: Dark Heresy Play by Post: House of Dust and Ash
« Reply #21 on: June 06, 2009, 01:21:47 AM »
Oh, Jon, when we kick down the door, you shout, "NOBODY EXPECTS THE IMPERIAL INQUISITION!"
I didn't come here to win. I came to make friends.

clockworkjoe

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Re: Dark Heresy Play by Post: House of Dust and Ash
« Reply #22 on: June 06, 2009, 01:28:22 AM »
your first mission is to destroy the heretics who refuse to spell acolyte correctly

clockworkjoe

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Re: Dark Heresy Play by Post: House of Dust and Ash
« Reply #23 on: June 06, 2009, 01:28:51 AM »
man i'm a dick for trolling my forums aren't I?

Dawnsteel

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Re: Dark Heresy Play by Post: House of Dust and Ash
« Reply #24 on: June 06, 2009, 01:30:20 AM »
Quote from: clockworkjoe
man i'm a dick for trolling my forums aren't I?

I just figured there was no one on Omegle.
I didn't come here to win. I came to make friends.

Tadanori Oyama

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Re: Dark Heresy Play by Post: House of Dust and Ash
« Reply #25 on: June 06, 2009, 02:19:59 AM »
man i'm a dick for trolling my forums aren't I?

Yeah, kinda. You that bored?

JonHook

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Re: Dark Heresy Play by Post: House of Dust and Ash
« Reply #26 on: June 06, 2009, 12:42:53 PM »
man i'm a dick for trolling my forums aren't I?

Flame him! FLAME HIM!!!!!!!
"Isolation on a ship like this can breed heresy in the dark unwashed corners. I won't find evidence of heresy here, will I?" - Festor Sorebol (an Imperial Psyker in Tadanori's Dark Heresy game: House of Dust & Ash)

Tadanori Oyama

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Re: Dark Heresy Play by Post: House of Dust and Ash
« Reply #27 on: June 06, 2009, 02:31:35 PM »
Started the game on RPOL.

http://www.rpol.net/game.cgi?gi=37239&date=1244312910

Feel free to throw in a character name if you like. We'll continue creation and discussion on this thread for the present.

Dawnsteel

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Re: Dark Heresy Play by Post: House of Dust and Ash
« Reply #28 on: June 06, 2009, 02:49:23 PM »
I picked up the book this morning...time for some light reading!
I didn't come here to win. I came to make friends.

clockworkjoe

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Re: Dark Heresy Play by Post: House of Dust and Ash
« Reply #29 on: June 06, 2009, 03:08:25 PM »
man i'm a dick for trolling my forums aren't I?

Yeah, kinda. You that bored?

English degree and the constant presence of a misspelled word.