As mentioned before, Taylor has ended his 3.5 game, and the group settled on David's Dark Heresy game to come next, so we converged at Angela and Taylor's to create characters for our forays into the second book of The Haarlock Legacy - Damned Cities!
There were a few problems with character creation last night, not the least of which being that we only had one week between ending one game and jumping to the next. We certainly take gaming seriously, and have no problems in the transition itself, but...more than anything, this just caused a jam because the copy I had ordered of the Core Rulebook didn't arrive yesterday, like was my hope, leaving us with just one book to build four characters from.
We let Angela use the books the most last night, since she was the newest player to the system, but when it came down to it, David, Taylor, and I couldn't remember too much, and Steve could remember even less about the system, because it has been about two years since we touched the system at all.
Taking in all the hang-ups and time it takes to build a character, even with a familiarity to the system, I can honestly say that, unless some gamers are definitely into 40k as a whole, I just don't see Dark Heresy, and by extension, the other three games Fantasy Flight has in the 40k line, as a good beginner's game. The price, at one time, may have been an issue with me, but I feel that you get the quality you would expect, as well as a tome chock full of game, but at the same time, I'm an adult, with a steady job, who isn't really hurting at the moment. If I were me 15 years ago and glanced at the game, I wouldn't give it a second look after seeing the price, except maybe to tell others to buy it for me for Christmas or birthday.
Then, if I did get it, and I tried to get my friends to learn this game, and get everyone to make characters, I could see it taking multiple sessions just getting that done, even if I had brushed up on the character creation rules. There's just too much back and forth looking at skills and talents for advancement, especially if you want anything beyond rank one, and that's not to mention the pages upon pages of gear that can be selected, especially weapons! Which, sadly, aren't always in the same section of any given book.
So, if I had managed to slog through character creation without losing all my players, and it came time to select gear (assuming they had more than a few thrones,) then that would be more page turning to deal with. If anything hindered us more than the lack of multiple books and our own time-forced ignorance, then it was the poor layout of the supplements available. It's very frustrating glancing over an armor, say, as you're after something else, then when you try to find it again, you have to run through 7 or 8 different armor sections to find the right one!
Maybe I'm being too harsh. Once I found what I wanted, it wasn't terrible to stat up a Rank 4 character, and more than likely, if we had been making Rank 1 characters, then this would have been much easier and less time consuming. I'm just the type of person who loves building characters, and this time, it just wasn't enjoyable to me.
Next week, however, we delve into the corruption of Sinophia!
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