Pages

Wednesday 20 October 2010

Dark Heresy: Carbon Empire Conspiracy

Image property of Fantasy Flight Games and used under Fair Useage

It was about three years ago now that my old friend Lee presented me with a copy of Dark Heresy on my birthday and at the time my feelings about the game were mixed. As a GM, when a player gives you a rulebook the situation can sometimes feel like that of a cat owner who has been presented with a freshly killed rodent by his feline companion. You appreciate the thought behind the gift, but both the player and the cat are saying: "This is what I want!"

My initial scan of the book was mixed as I was impressed by the presentation and thrilled to have on paper rules for all of the 40K hardwear that GW have come up with over the years. But at the same time I was somewhat turned off by the premise of characters being acolytes of an inquisitor and disappointed not to see more rules for things like space marines, eldar and orcs.

Of course I was far more enthused with the idea after I read the Eisenhorn and Ravenor novels and insisted that my players read them as well before I would even contemplate sitting down to write anything for a campaign. In the end it was all down to Dan Abbnett and his magic words that made me do a complete 180 on the whole idea and so late last year whilst on a holiday around the islands off the coast of Scotland, I started to jot down ideas.

There were a number of things that I wanted to focus on in the game that I felt were important to make it different from the things that I had read and translate the feel of the Abbnett novels at the same time. The first was that I wanted the threat in the game to be something other than Chaos and daemons, a threat that was internal to the Imperium and far more sinister in nature. The second was that I wanted the Inquisitor to be a far more remote and indistinct figure than the central characters of Abbnett's novels.

I set the game in a region of space known as the Argolid Cluster, a dense region of stars that had been cut off from the rest of humanity more due to bureaucratic errors than wild warpstorms. In that time the worlds had made their own way and deviated from the Imperial way, a matter that was set to rights when a taskforce arrived to bring the region back into concordance. The effort to achieve that has been ongoing for more then 300 years and the acolytes step into the tale when some of the darkest secrets of what the region has been hiding are being revealed.

I intend to keep making the occasional post here on the progress and content of the game and see where it takes me.

Tuesday 19 October 2010

Son of the Son of the Apocrypha


Things have been a bit hectic recently, not least of all due to the fact that my family has just epanded to welcome the birth of my first child and as anyone in the know will tell you, the little angels can be quite demanding as far as your time and energy are concerned!

I still have a fair few things that I'm working on when I have the chance, including the second part of my trip into the retro world of Space Crusade and some modern and RT era rhinos that are the first vehicles I've ever painted for a WH army.

I'm also addressing the issue of some of the duplicate miniatures that I have managed to amass by taking a new look at the first marine chapter that I drempt up in my youth: The Astral Paladins. In addition I have some RT era Eldar that I want to have a twiddle with as well.

Hope to have something to post soon.
 
 

Blogger