# Forum > Gaming > Roleplaying Games > Older D&D/AD&D and Other Systems >  Dark Hearasy campain plot.

## Stormwolf69

Ok, a few of my friends are trying to get me to DM a Dark Hearsay campaign where they are in the under hive of a to-hunt Genstealer Cults and CHaos cults. then report back to an adept who reports to the inquisitor.  I don't know if would that work for a rough plot of a Dark heresy campaign where they might as well play Necromunda. 

What do you guys think I am looking for Ideas. I am also tempted to just give them the power fantasy of making them Deathwatch at this point. Or suffer through playing as a sister of Battle party.

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## The Glyphstone

Can you just say no? It doesn't sound like you want to do it, and 'forcing' them to do something else seems the best way to make sure nobody enjoys it.

As far as Dark Heresy - investigating cults and bad guys is kinda what the game is about, though it's supposed to be across multiple planets. Having a dozen competing cults all in one hive city would be pushing the boundaries of believability. You track down and deal with a cult, report back, then you're sent on to another planet to do it all over again.

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## GloatingSwine

Dark Heresy is generally a fairly combat light game so it's not quite "might as well play Necromunda" even if you're investigating in an underhive. 

Investigating in an underhive should be about finding out the balance of power of the gangs without looking like competition to any of them, figuring out who's got a new powerful backer or is acting strange, or who's suddenly gone quiet and why. A social investigation in a paranoid and heavily armed criminal underworld with something even nastier in the shadows, basically.

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## Anonymouswizard

> A social investigation in a paranoid and heavily armed criminal underworld with something even nastier in the shadows, basically.


And once you've dealt with that you can get to the actual heresy  :Small Tongue: 

Like, rooting out Heresy is difficult because the Imperium is inherently corrupt and it's beliefs are diverse. A character aligned with the Ecclesiarchy should probably have issues with whatever the local version of the Imperial Cult says. An Acolyte's job, and in some ways not an Inquisitor's. Your job is to find the cult and send the findings to the people with the armies. This will generally involve some kind of combat encounter, but it's not the key bit, it's the social interaction and spy stuff.

Note that only 4/10* Careers have a combat focus, and that drops to 3/8 if you're going corebook only (I'm including the Arbitrator, who I think also gets most of the investigation stuff). Going heavy on combat isn't bad, but it is something to discuss with your group before playing.

There's also the option of just not starting on a Hive World. A Forge World or Feral World could be interesting.

* And two of those ten Careers are Sororitas!

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## Stormwolf69

To be honest I have more experience playing Death Watch and Only war.  In fact, I am trying hard to remember the last time I played Rouge trader.

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## Easy e

Rooting out cults in an underhive sounds exactly like what Dark Heresy is about.  

The difference between Only War and Dark Heresy is, that DH is more like unraveling a spy thriller than an action movie.  Take the plot of most crime or spy films and Grimdark it up and there you go.  

You need a hook for them to investigate, and then just let them follow the bread crumbs, to the next hook, and then the next hook, with the political stakes increasing as they go.  

For example, the first couple adventures may deal with local gangsters, possibly illegally smuggling weapons.  This then connects the gangsters to a local business syndicate who are funneling cash from the gangsters to a manufactorum to make the arms, this leads to an Ad-Mech low-level cult who are providing the STCs for the weapons in exchange for biological subjects, which then leads to the fact that the Ad-Mech are using these subjects as test subjects for off-world stimms, which then leads to a connection with a noble house with off-world contacts angling to step-up their local power game, which then leads to......well I think you get the idea.  Start small scale, and then just keep upping the ante and stakes over, and over, and over again until they decide it is time to call in the =]I[=.

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## DeMouse

Dark Heresy is my main system that I GM and the number one bit of advice I can give is to be ready for the players to fail their investigation. 

It is rare for people to think along the same lines so there's a pretty good chance that they will start investigating in a completely different direction than you initially planned. The way I often deal with it is to leave the premise very vague and then whatever tiny detail my players fixate on becomes the keystone of whatever is going on. This works well for me but it isn't going to for everyone.

Alternatively you can have whatever scheme was in the works pop off in the middle of them investing it. Now they need to deal with or survive whatever the new situation is. 

The final thing to keep in mind is that people who are knowledgeable about 40k lore can get very confident that they know exactly what is going on as soon as you start dropping any hits that pertain to a specific faction. Multiple simultaneous cults clashing with each other while the players investigate both is one way to deal with it. Or you can have stuff that indicates a cult but it turns out to be a red herring, like just the planetary governor being corrupt in the mundane sense instead of the chaos sense. Or even have one type of cult pretending to be another to throw the inquisition off the trail.

Any game involving investigations and conspiracies needs twists and turns and you need to understand your players well enough to play with their expectations. Not the easiest kind of campaign to run but very satisfying to run if done right. If you're a chaos brained GM like I am it is perfect but more preparation style GMs might have difficulty keeping the players on track. As you said if it is just a dungeon crawl through the under-hive necromunda is a much better way to it.

That's my perspective on it anyway. I'm hardly an expert GM.

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