Well...i didn't create those characters just to be killed. They are there to use as plot hooks and backstory/background for the acolytes and their new world as servants of the inquisition.
I also don't really  know how we get from what I have done so far to killing them all off.
I could always kill some other acolytes.

I was thinking of having a scene where the pair find themselves being questioned by Oracle perhaps with the Inquisitor present (so they can meet him at last) where, after encountering a daemon/warp presence, they are questioned on suspicion of taint. Essentially it would be me giving them the third degree with no real way of getting out of it, though they would survive. Just to put the fear of the god emperor in them and hopefully to illustrate the terror of the warp and it's effect on people.

I don't know your players or their familiarity with 40k, their willingness to buy into a scene or whatever you want to call it.

The REASON you have to kill off Oracle and the rest is simply because you HAVE put in so much work and effort into them. You have two options: Leave them alive to overshadow the players at every turn with their innate awesomenes, thus making the players small in the pants, or get rid of them. I offered up killing them, so at least they'd serve a purpose (FOR YOUR PLAYERS!) of demonstrating 'Shit got Real!'.

In general the ONLY NPC that gets that sort of treatment in a game should be the Villain! And again, you have to expect he's gunna die. If you don't like it, get on the other side of the screen man!

Ditto having the boss (the inquisitor) give the third degree to the players.  Seriously. No.

Right now they aren't invested into the game, not if you're still shaking things out like 'how do I x?', like you are.  Players hate being captured, and being threatened with death for corruption won't tell them that shit got real, it will tell them the inquisitor is the bad guy and your game will fall apart fast after that.

Have one of your precious GMPC's burned for corruption.  Make a whole scene out of it, a fucking dramatic production, with everyone sad about it, and the guy with the flamer turning to the PC's and saying 'that coulda been you' or something.

We've had one session. I can't shoehorn in a whole team of people just to have them slaughtered without massively railroading things and contriving events - and to what end? Just to kill a bunch of npc's that contribute to the setting and help bring it alive as people the players can interact with.

EDIT: I would also say that killing of NPC's, which I have no intrinsic issue with at all, would work much better when it's characters the players have gotten to know. Just introducing people and then killing them is meaningless. It will be hugely contrived because the players will know they are not going to be likewise slaughtered and thus have 'plot immunity'. It has nothing to do with living a sheltered life either, which is a comment I find utterly bizarre.

The players are invested in the game, as much as they can be given we've only had one session and they are new to 40k. Just because they ask procedural questions doesn't mean they aren't into it (and if they aren't they are very good at hiding it), quite the opposite.

I really don't understand where you are going with all this. To suggest that the only npc that should have any depth or perhaps deatil is the villain seems rather limited to me. I think having all sorts of interesting fleshed out npc's is a good idea. In this case, needing agents that can support the pc's in the area's they aren't skilled at, which was the point in the first place. WHy not flesh them out, give them strengths and weaknesses that can be used for future adventures and colour interaction. Surely better than 'here's agent x doing the autopsy' before putting him back in his box. Interacting with a decadent cleric gives the players a chance to think about how their character views such people in the Imperium. Adds a bit of depth to the 'all corrupt people must die' aspect. Maybe later on they discover his predilections really do cross into heresy. Who knows.

Sure you can. You don't want to. The reason you don't want to is because you put so much work into them.

Which, of course, is partly why I strongly recommend you do SOMETHING to drop them like hot rocks. You are the GM, you aren't playing My Little Pony by yourself in your room, you've got players you are at voluntarily responsible to. Making them play gophers for your crack team of investigators is straight up ass, even if you somehow managed to handle it well.

See: An NPC should be, for the most part, a name, a vague description and maybe a quirk or two to get them to stand out. If your players adopt the NPC (which players apparently often do... I've rarely seen it, but people talk about it alla time!) then you can add more details to flesh 'em out a bit.  

Hell, for your purposes, they don't even really need stats or skills.  So and so is the forensic expert, so So-and-So will hand out any forensic related clues at the appropriate time.  Nobody really cares how many rolls it takes so-and-so to determine the killer was left handed and favored black liquorice. Nobody. They just do it, off screen, while the interesting people (that is, the PCs) are doing interesting shit.

Seriously though, I mean aside from your general obtuseness as a poster, you really seem to either be seriously clueless about actual gaming or you are fishing for people to write your fucking campaign for you.  If it would seem plot contrived to kill off the bad asses and leave the PCs unscathed then have hte PC's out running an errand when the hit goes down. They come back to the safehouse (or whatever you are using) to find their team (and only connection with the boss) dead, the gear wrecked and so on.

Rocket science it ain't.

QuoteI really don't understand where you are going with all this. To suggest that the only npc that should have any depth or perhaps deatil is the villain seems rather limited to me. I think having all sorts of interesting fleshed out npc's is a good idea. In this case, needing agents that can support the pc's in the area's they aren't skilled at, which was the point in the first place. WHy not flesh them out, give them strengths and weaknesses that can be used for future adventures and colour interaction. Surely better than 'here's agent x doing the autopsy' before putting him back in his box. Interacting with a decadent cleric gives the players a chance to think about how their character views such people in the Imperium. Adds a bit of depth to the 'all corrupt people must die' aspect. Maybe later on they discover his predilections really do cross into heresy. Who knows.

Again: You must be dense or deliberately trolling.

You can have all sorts of interesting and colorful NPCs. Nobody says you can't. WHat you shouldn't have is interesting and colorful NPCs who are better at doing what the PCs are obstensibly doing, in their face, all the damn time, being cooler than the PCs on account of the fact the GM statted them up with a metric fuckton of upgrades (Xp, levels... whatever) that he DIDN'T give the players.  Not unless they are bad guys that the players are supposed to hate and eventually kill.

And yes: Having a somewhat interesting but flat NPC that only comes out of his box to do some mundane task that the PCs don't care to do is actually a good GMing technique.  That is EXACTLY my point.

If you really really really like Oracle the uber acolyte, put your fucking screen down, find someone else to GM and just fucking play Oracle the Uber Acolyte.  In the last twenty years or so that I've been seeing or hearing about GMPCs (and thankfully that wasn't an issue before that) the BEST you can hope for is that they aren't 100% ass from floor to ceiling.  You can't hope that they are good, or that they meaningfully add to the game experience for the players or any of that shit... just that they don't suck all the fun out of the game for your players eventually.

That is it.

Seriously, I might actually PAY FUCKIGN REAL MONEY for someone to find internet threads waxing romantic over the awesomeness of GMPCs.

And you don't have just one, you've got an entire fucking team of them, making the PCs... what?... Interns?

Fuck that shit right in the nose hole.

If you can't grasp this concept, even in abstract, then I got nothing. You are officially too stupid to game at that point. Put your books down, do not pass go...

Just to be clear, you are accusing me of trolling in my own thread because I don't agree that the ONLY way to run my adventure is to suddenly shoehorn a massacre?

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;506625Just to be clear, you are accusing me of trolling in my own thread because I don't agree that the ONLY way to run my adventure is to suddenly shoehorn a massacre?

Who's started the thread is of no consequence at all.  However, the answer to your question is no.

And yes.

I'm accusing you of trolling because you are acting very much like I'm not making a point at all. Disagree with me? That's your call, and the starting point of a debate. Agree with me and think it doesn't actually apply here? That's cool too, even better for some debates (at least with regards too GMPCs as far as I'm concerned. Ultimately, I can't say what you are or are not doing at the table).

You? You're responding to my posts with the bafflement of a five year old who doesn't understand why they need a jacket to go out into the snow because there is a heater in the house.  

That level of confusion seems to be par for the course with you, which may be why I'm the only one bothering to try and respond to your plea for advice.... and my reward for bothering is that you apparently don't understand the advice.

So I'll say it again: You are putting your players, from the limited description of your game available to me over the internet, in the position of playing flunkies and bitch-boys for a bunch of much cooler NPCs you made up, because as the GM you could freely give them as much XP as you needed to make them awesome, and that is a bad idea.

How you fix it is your business. IF you fix it is your players problem, not mine.  I only offered a way out that sounded pretty cool.

Hell, for all I care you could have the NPCs solve the mystery and declare it case closed, leaving the PC's behind to mind the store while they go anywhere else. Its not a great solution (could be made better if the NPCs were WRONG, but still not a great solution).  For all I care you could say 'fuck you spike, I like pulling my GM dick out and wanking off in front of my players every night. I'm gonna have THEM solve the mystery, running both sides of the GM screen every night while my players watch! Fuck you!". I don't game with you, no skin off my nose.


See, you aren't doing anything but telling me 'but I like having cool NPCs around'.

Yeah? So?

I'm telling you its a problem. I'm trying to tell you why and how to fix it.

And all I get back is how much you like it.

I got that.

I got it when you posted the loving writeup of all your awesome NPCs.

THAT is what I accuse you of 'trolling' me with, the wide-eyed blank stare of vacuity and deliberate obtuseness.  Hey, its your thing, I and about half the posters here get it.

My thing is calling people on their bullshit and laying it out in small words so people understand it. If I also happen to actually help you in the process I figure I could use the good karma, and chalk it up as a bonus prize.  I'm also exceptionally likely to assume a cry for help and advice is exactly what it looks like, because frankly assuming everyone is lying and baiting traps all the time gets old quick.

I think you've got some serious issues and continuing this line of discussion is pointless. You are so way off the mark I'm absolutely incredulous at your responses accusing me of this or that and attempting to speak for other posters with ad hom attacks.

Kill the npcs if they deserve to die, if events unfold that will kill them, or if PCs pull the trigger.

I dunno what else's the problem.

Quote from: Rincewind1;506706Kill the npcs if they deserve to die, if events unfold that will kill them, or if PCs pull the trigger.

I dunno what else's the problem.

I agree entirely. No npc should have plot immunity, nor have i ever said such. That those noc's i created have a couple of paragraphs of background should in no way suggest that I think they are too precious and they must 'win the game'. It's absurd. Their whole existence came from the discussion about npc's being used to fill in what the pc's lack in terms of skill 'need someone interrogated? No problem the Inqusuitor has someone on hand with pain inducers'. Well that's the character Cinder. Giving him some background is just me creating future plot hooks for myself. Perhaps the pc's cross him and he doesn't forgive them. Maybe a future plot hook is having Oracle murdered. My point is that none of this works without first establishing their existence and allowing the pc's to create relatioonships with them, of whatever kind. First you build the world, then you knock it down. Just having a bunch of random strangers show up and explode...if that were me playing i'd probably just laugh at the randomness of it all.

So no, I also don't know what else the problem is. We were having a perfectly pleasant discussion where I was posting session 1's experience. We had session 2 last night. None of those characters (save Oracle's disembodied voice) have even been introduced yet.

The only point I will concede is considering that starting the characters out with more xp might have been a better move, but you learn by experience playing the game. It would have been impossible to judge a more appropriate starting rank. Furthermore the most important reason for starting at rank 1 for me was so everyone could learn the game and acclimatise to the system without having to deal with lots of talents/traits/weapons/powers at once. At higher ranks, for instance, the threats have access to more powerful abilities which means having to learn a lot more at once. Thus, although low ranking acolytes are pretty pitiful, they have less to learn at once and so do the threats. That's good for me. Other GM's may differ. Dark Heresy can be pretty complex in terms of the amount of stats things like daemons can have, so i prefer to take it slow.

Session 2:

I'll be honest, I don't think it went as well as I'd like. Ill dive straight in by saying that I feel the main culprit was too much levity: i.e. too much joking around from the players. I was concerned this would be an issue. I'm absolutely not opposed to levity in games at all. There is always a place for it, even in 40k. So long as it is kept in its place. It is, for me, the perennial bugbear of gaming; I feel many people that roleplay, with the best will in the world, let some sense of self consciousness manifest and it comes out this way.

Anyway, picking up from last time, the acolytes are at the entrance to a sewer having picked up two clues: a key and a dataslate (slightly retconned from last time) with a map showing a route through that sewer for about a mile leading to a sunken cathedral. The map indicates three places where mutants can be encountered.

The first of those was a pack of mutant rats they ignored. The second was a mutant abomination that was a tough fight they eventually won. The third was an encounter with a ratcatcher with a dodgy flamethrower called Fives being assailed by a pack of said mutant rats.

The acolytes help him and then rather brusquely question him (though quickly learning he is a licensed city ratcatcher with papers to prove it). This wasn't an encounter I initially planned, but I had been thinking about it for a while with a view to taking the adventure into a different direction (which it did, but for entirely different reasons!). Fives was an unassuming ordinary municipal servant of the imperium whose purpose really was someone to interact with that wasn't a monster or an uncommunicative heretic. He pointed out that, down the sewer, was a haunted cathedral that he, and his fellow ratcathers, daren't go near. He explains it was cast down in a hivequake and is cursed. He also mentions he'd seen some people matching the heretic's description heading that way.

The acolytes head to the cathedral and find no heretics just a ruined cathedral with a lot of damage and an organ. To get in they find a side entrance and forget they had the key from before (it's not smart gm'ing but I prompted their memories as to what they'd found). Around that organ is some sheet music pertaining to the 'black aria'. Then a daemon appears!

Not quite, I tried to create an atmosphere, building up to the thing (a bit like a medusa though based on a fiend of slaanesh) appearing. The organ starts playing and the door locks them in. they fight the thing and kill it with a combination of warp instability and by destroying the sheet music and eventually the organ. They took some damage in the process and the assassin gained some insanity points and failed a fear check at the start, though quickly regained his composure. The fear check was a basic WP roll, making it any harder, as per most daemons, would have been too much. After the daemon was defeated time was up for the evening.

Now I hadn't intended for the sheet music to be destroyed. In fact it was to lead to a final part of the adventure with that music used, unknowingly, in a theatre to create a daemon incursion. I could still do that, but I think I need to change tack. I had to pull the punches of the attacks of the daemon. Had I used the actual damage I rolled one or both would be at the very least critically injured. That would, I'm sure, have lead to disappointment. Introducing a daemon this early in their careers was a mistake, that's for sure. The core issue is that acolytes start deceptively weak at the low rank. Now that per se doesn't bother me so much, but there's only two players and they kind of have similar skill sets, and that didn't seem too much of an issue at first (I also don't like dictating player choices during character creation either, unless absolutely necessary). I'm probably going to slightly fast track their career development somewhat. They got 200 xp for their efforts thus far, which is about right anyway, though I'm concerned the psyker is more interested in rolling a 9, buying more psychic powers than perhaps he should (as opposed to developing skills and/or talents).

So there is the learning curve. I'm not sure what I do about the levity. I know the players are genuinely interested in the game and in playing and they aren't, I should point out, deliberately out to sabotage the game. However it's just how some people play and how some relate to the hobby. It would have been the case in any game we'd played not just Dark Heresy, even though the game, more specifically the setting, has it's own peculiarities: they players are new to 40k and so there is a process of acclimatisation to how things work, especially in the everyday society part of Imperial life (as opposed to the 'there is only war' aspect) that the Inquisition usually moves in (at least that's the world low ranking acolytes work in).

Consequently I'm going to take stock of what works and what doesn't and consider the next phase. I don't think I'll proceed with the adventure as planned and just have it end here with the Black Aria as perhaps something I can bring in again: maybe they find clues as to its author during other investigations or something.