Dark Heresy (role-playing game)

Dark Heresy

Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay
Cover of Dark Heresy, the first book of the Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay series
Designer(s)	Owen Barnes, Kate Flack, Mike Mason
Publisher(s)	Black Industries / Fantasy Flight Games
Publication date	25 January 2008
Genre(s)	Gothic science fantasy

Dark Heresy is a role-playing game published by Black Industries in 2008 that uses the Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay system. A second edition was published in 2014 under Fantasy Flight Games.

In Dark Heresy, the player characters are agents of the Inquisition.

In Dark Heresy, the players assume the role of a group of Acolytes working for an Inquisitor, who sends them on various missions. Depending on the type of mission, the gameplay can involve investigation, combat, intrigue, or a number of other genres. Therefore, the Game Master can tailor his campaign to suit his player group. As the players work for an Inquisitor, most missions involve rooting out heresies or matters relating to them, but the breadth of the game allows for many other missions, including wiping out dangerous gangs, gathering evidence of corruption, dealing with alien threats or eliminating rogue psykers.

In Dark Heresy, each player can pick a career path for his character, which is similar to a class from other RPG systems such as D&D. There are 8 career paths in the core rulebook, and more added in several source books. They are:

A collector's edition of Dark Heresy - the first release of the game - went on sale on Monday, 10 December 2007, at 16:00 GMT. The 200 copies of the game, individually numbered with an accompanying 'signature' of an in-game Inquisitor, sold out in six minutes. The regular edition was released on 25 January 2008, and a demo booklet was distributed at Gen Con 2007.

The game itself shares many design features with WHFRP2.

On 28 January 2008, Games Workshop announced that it would close Black Industries - thereby discontinuing Dark Heresy and all the other games published the subsidiary - to allow them to focus on the commercial success of their novels and core business.

On 22 February 2008, Black Industries announced that all Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40,000 RPG, CCG, and select board game rights were being transferred to Fantasy Flight Games, who would continue to publish Dark Heresy.

During late 2008 and 2009, Fantasy Flight started releasing autonomously-developed material for the Dark Heresy game: a collection of heretical factions to pit the player characters against titled Disciples of the Dark Gods, a monster manual called Creatures Anathema, and a mini-campaign in three parts dubbed The Haarlock Legacy.