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Hi,
I did a couple of DH sessions without any mini. I'll use GW mini for the next sessions as it will give more precision for the fights, I hope.
What do you think about ?
I know they speak about it in the rulebook, but I don't know anyone who did it.
Is it really an advantage or does it take away immersion ?
Thanks, and Merry Christmas to you !

I played Dark Heresy last week, as part of my first time doing proper pen and paper rping.

I've got to say, the miniatures actually made me feel more comfortable than the couple of haphazard attempts at rpg's when I tried back when I was at uni.

All the time. I now have a massive collection of maps and tile-sets expressly for that purpose.

I tend to paint them as character portraits, and we have them out as rough visual tools. Our sessions are never really tight on rules and limitations, they're just to say "this is where I am, roughly".
I wouldn't like to try doing anything extremely accurately, but that's just how our group works.

Never used them myself but I've always wanted to, unfortunately my collection is rather small and I'd not want to tip people off by asking for certain models. For the moment use small counters on a squared piece of paper. Works well enough.

It adds to the immersion IMO and I really liked using them both as a player and gm for Deathwatch. The only trouble I ran into was getting some first time rpg players who were avid 40k players used to the more abstract distances. They'd count up exact inches and expect that to translate directly into meters. It took a couple of games but they eventually got the hang of using them to gauge relative rather than exact distances.

Always, I never run without maps and minis, I feel it really helps players understand what's going on than without them, I have a GMAIL for Shadowrun, and he's a great GM I think, but he never uses maps or minis, which is awful in multiple week fights, because we forget stuff

I rarely use maps or minis. However, that is more from my own laziness than anything else. If I had cool tile sets, terrain, etc. I would use them for sure.

Hey, thanks !
I'm buying mini specially for my players (mainly Necromunda, like arbites, ganger, a redemprionist...), it will be a surprise for the next session.
I thnik I can use the Space Hulk tiles, as it is exactly the kind of environnement they will be in.

Did someone say tiles?

 godardc wrote:
Hey, thanks !
I'm buying mini specially for my players (mainly Necromunda, like arbites, ganger, a redemprionist...), it will be a surprise for the next session.
I thnik I can use the Space Hulk tiles, as it is exactly the kind of environnement they will be in.

Space Hulk tiles are very good for things like DH, but do keep in mind that the corridors are all 1 square wide. That can be limiting if you're not creating a higher scale (ie. 1 square = 5m squared). The best tiles, bar none, are the ones for FFG's old DOOM boardgame. Got my self two sets of those. Lots of interesting and big rooms, tons of bits to end rooms rather than just having corridors that go to no where, and all the corridors are 2 squares wide.

Hard to find nower days though.

You can also get decent map sheets out there. The Paizo ones, if you ignore the obvious fantasy ones, are a good start. GF9's D&D sheets also work pretty well. The D&D tiles Wizard's made were good as well, but finding them now is more difficult. Christopher West makes some fantastic maps as well.

We never use maps, minis etc. Partly because it would require us to re-arrange all the living-room furniture so we're all round the one table.

We did try it once for an IK RPG session, but I think it felt too much like playing Warmachine, so we didn't bother again. Generally, it means we aren't so obsessive about weapon ranges, etc; we let the GM keep track of that stuff. The last game I ran was FFG's Star Wars RPG, which only bothers with "short", "medium", "long" and "extreme", and doesn't bother actually specifying that this blaster pistol has a range of 30 metres and that one 45.

In our recent MERP campaign, the GM did start using maps drawn on an A3-sized whiteboard. Not to any sort of scale, but to indicate where the characters, NPCs and villains were and who was fighting who.

As for tiles, the boards from Execution Force and Betrayal at Calth could well be useful, as are Space Crusade, Sedition Wars, Mantic's now-OOP Space Hulk knockoff and 1st edition Space Hulk which included a few 90mm-wide (3 squares) corridor pieces in the expansions.

In our recent MERP campaign, the GM did start using maps drawn on an A3-sized whiteboard. Not to any sort of scale, but to indicate where the characters, NPCs and villains were and who was fighting who

Good idea the whiteboard ! I used to draw on paper, I have to say I have a lot of maps now^^
I don't know how I did not think about a whiteboard...

Thanks for the links, some great stuff here !

EDIT Do you have any idea for representing an assassin (butcher, murderer, I don't know exactly how it is called in your book in english) ?

I have a redemptionnist for the priest, an arbites for the arbites, a Delaque ganger for the riffraff / hoodlum (again, I don't know the exact word in the book, I just translated from French).

I think about a Van Saar ganger, as they look more professional.

We use a Chessex Battlemat, 2 sided, wet erase.

http://www.chessex.com/mats/Battlemats_MegamatsReversible.htm

With Rogue Trader we only use a mat and minis when there was space combat to be had. Other than that, it was all in our minds.

 godardc wrote:
I think about a Van Saar ganger, as they look more professional.

I think the combinations of origin planet, previous career and current role, and then simply player preference, means that you could use just about anything. A hiveworlder ex-Arbites Assassin who uses stealth and ranged weapons is going to look very different to a forgeworld-born tech-slayer who excels at melee combat, for example.

I think the combinations of origin planet, previous career and current role, and then simply player preference, means that you could use just about anything. A hiveworlder ex-Arbites Assassin who uses stealth and ranged weapons is going to look very different to a forgeworld-born tech-slayer who excels at melee combat, for example.

In deed, well thought.

With Rogue Trader we only use a mat and minis when there was space combat to be had. Other than that, it was all in our minds.

Isn't human mind wonderul ?^^

I have run games of Dark Heresy for 2 different groups. For the first group I had them crew an Imperial Bomber during a Battle Fleet Game. They loved it. Next they crewed the Bomber during an epic 40 k game and it was loads of fun. Next was running them as a gang during a gang war in Necromunda. After that the group had to fight a rogue group of imperial guardsmen that I used Warzone miniatures for. Then the last mission was fighting Eldar using Space hulk tiles. The group loved all the games and got to experience Dark Heresy in all sorts of scales and different roles during wars and battles as well as the aftermath. Do you need minis, nope. Can they add a lot of fun and lead to interesting ways to play , absolutely.