Customer Reviews

Dark Heresy RPG: Purge the Unclean

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book contains THREE excellent adventures for the Warhammer 40,000: Dark Heresy role-playing game. All of the adventures take place in the Calixis Sector (i.e., the setting from Dark Heresy). The first adventure, Rejoice For You Are True, is an investigation into a heretical cult. The second adventure, Shades of Twilight, is a fast-paced adventure full of combat and danger within the corridors of a warped space hulk. The characters are even assisted by a Space Marine! The final adventure, Baron Hopes, is a horror-filled look into the corruption of Chaos and rebellion against the Empire.

It's pretty Meh. Not bad, but for the price one expects more. It has 3 rather loosely linked adventures with radical different tones. The 1st adventure is a pretty good investigation of a cult, and missing person story. There is some intrigue, and RP. Some interesting fights, and a cool villain. That's the good. Sadly it doesn't get better. The 2nd is a mostly straight forward dungeon crawl I mean space hulk mission. It's okay, but I can't help but feel that it's just reskinned D&D module. The final one is really uneven it starts as an investigation of some terrorist type bombing then abruptly shifts to a zombie horror. The zombies are laughably lame in stats unless you read the grapple and gang up rules closely. In which case they become deadly in large groups.

I have been very impressed with the quality of suppliments for Dark Heresy, and Purge the Unclean was no exception. Each of the three missions highlights a specific skill set (infiltration, combat, mystery solving) to cater to a wide range of players. Each could be played in 2 - 4 sessions, maling this an investment for 2 - 3 months of adventures. Well worth it.

I'm actually not a big fan of any official gaming modules for almost any pen-n-paper RPG.
Usually they are rather dumb... eh-eh-eh... mass-market oriented. Very often they rely on players ability to guess the bizarre mindset of the author who thinks its pretty logical to shoot this stranger and than try peaceful communication with another one.
However I still decided to buy this one - mainly because Dark Heresy is still nowhere near the abundance of game materials as some older games and thus any piece of gaming material or setting descriptions is valuable. I was really amazed that the module was fairly interesting and well-thought. While I may criticize small parts of it (first adventure has several pre-determined events that are hard to duplicate by game mechanics and look like deus ex machina), the overall impression was very favorable. Second adventure (out of three) is just superb, third one has some great possibilities for hard-core roleplaying. The adventures are very logical and realistic if this word can be applied to W40K - no good players/bad villains staff, interesting NPCs, clever behavior, lots of future plot hooks etc. Enemies are subtle, stylish and smart - unexperienced players can easily meet kill their characters nowhere near the module climax.
The quality of writing is also not bad aside from mapping. The maps look gorgeous but are very difficult to use for actual fighting - they are small compared to character tokens, covered with art that makes them difficult to copy in bigger scale. This problem can be worked around but the designers should have paid more attention to it!
Nevertheless I definitely advice you to buy this book - even if you don't actually play the module it has some great materials for your own ideas. And yes, there are official Dark Heresy stats of a space-marine inside! ;-)

The production value of the book is well worth the price. I am amazed by the high-quality of what has been put out by the DH line so far. The maps and locales are incredible. From my reading, all three adventures presented are very challenging for players. All three give them options to attempt to thwart the opposition in a number of ways. The adversaries and potential allies are very memorable, and the revelations are rewarding for those players who really get into the 'verse and love to investigate.

Great adventure book with a lot of details. It still let the gm the occasion to be creative and adapt to the players. Just great overall, quality. Worth it!