Making Player-driven quests fun

[Chijinda]

So a point that my GM raised lately, has essentially been that our Dark Heresy campaign has gotten bogged down with far too many personal quests. Many of these have been long term affairs or the like, that just haven't come to fruition, but with the GM aiming to finish the campaign within the year, he's feeling like he has to resolve many of these personal quests that have often been pushed aside for the main one.

However, at this point, he's getting tired of having to put off the main quest for the dozens of personal side quest's he's allowed-- essentially to start under the premise the character could finish another time. In his own words this session: "I try to give you guys a lot of agency in how you tackle the campaign, but I think that might be the problem."

Because at this point, we've created so many loose ends, that it will likely take several sessions dedicated to these side quests in order to actually resolve many of them. On my own personal end, my character has:

-Attempted to start a business to fund our cell, considering our Inquisitor (and now our Interrogator) have both been killed, and we are effectively cut off from our primary source of resources for our missions.

-Recrew our ship, which has been running on a skeleton crew and been literally falling apart since our Inquisitor's death as the vast majority of the crew jumped ship after he died.

-Been constructing a Force Sword over the past two years.

-Analyze and replicate a mysterious blue liquid we uncovered on one of our missions that seemed to be the sole key to getting into a sealed treasure chamber.
-----

And that is just my character. I should note that there are two other characters in the party, both with their own personal quests that the GM feels he probably should address before we finish the campaign.

I think part of the problem is that the GM doesn't just want to give us our sidequests. He still wants to make us work for these personal quests, but at the same time, doesn't have the energy or interest anymore to actually come up with ways of MAKING us work for them. So he's kind of stuck in a limbo of wanting to resolve these side quests but not knowing how to get them resolved.

My query of the day is essentially-- are there ways I as a player can either A. Make these personal quests proceed as quickly as painlessly as possible? Or B. Suggestions I could pose to my GM to help him actually enjoy these sidequests, or even streamline them?

[hymer]

It seems a little like the DM is in this situation because he wants to get to the end, and soon. He's getting tired of the campaign, of being DM, of the system, of the players, something (and probably more than one thing, but the key word is tired). And while he feels a responsibility to give you guys what you want, he really just wants to get it over with.
So I don't think the problem is necessarilly player quests. Although being creative about other peoples' input isn't easy for everyone. I love creative input, but not all DMs agree.

Maybe something could be done to help him if the players each pick one thing they'd like to do, so the DM wouldn't have so much to work through? Otherwise, a break may be what the DM needs more than anything. A hiatus is a little risky, as it may kill the campaign. How about letting someone else DM a few of the sidequests?
In future, maybe you should all try to avoid shoving personal quests in an ever-growing snowball before you as you go along. Be pickier in your quests, especially when there's no reason to think you'll be able to resolve them soon, and when you have other personal stuff to do first. Be willing to let go, and maybe the DM should also narratively force prioritization. If you haven't done A yet, it becomes too late eventually, because you'd rather do B. You can't be everywhere at once.

[Nifft]

Sounds like your GM is getting burnt out.

My suggestion would be to shelve the whole game for a while, and plays something else until such time as your GM's groove returns.

Is there anyone else in your group who wouldn't mind being the GM for a while?

[Thrudd]

If I were him, I'd do what I wanted to do with the main group quest/storyline and then put the game aside. There's no reason the game can't be on indefinite hiatus, to return to any of those loose ends whenever he feels like it at a later time.

[Chijinda]

Sounds like your GM is getting burnt out.

My suggestion would be to shelve the whole game for a while, and plays something else until such time as your GM's groove returns.

Is there anyone else in your group who wouldn't mind being the GM for a while?

I would have no qualms with GMing myself.

In fact early on, there was talk of myself and the GM switching off between adventures and missions to give him a break. However, then the GM got attached to his plot and didn't want me adding in bits that didn't add up, because I wasn't aware of the full scope of his plotline (which I totally get).

I suppose I could always extend the offer, but I feel at this point (prepping for the climax of a 2 year campaign) I'll probably get turned down.



If you haven't done A yet, it becomes too late eventually, because you'd rather do B. You can't be everywhere at once.


That's kind of how a lot of these personal quests ended up spawning up all over the place. Character would embark on journey A, but due to mission B having a much higher priority they'd be forced leave A for later ("Sure you can look around for guys to staff your hunting business, if you don't mind missing the meeting with that really important guy that has the clues to your Inquisitor's killer"). In fact that's come up with the Force Sword sidequest quite a bit as well. The GM's left major components for the weapon lying around, but almost always in situations where my Psyker would not be inclined to go after them, or when it would be even detrimental to the more important missions to do so.

[HammeredWharf]

It sounds like your DM is making you work for them by forcing you to choose between main quests and side quests. That's rarely a good idea. He could do it better in several ways:

1) Make the quests themselves interesting and challenging. Establishing a business is not particularly fun. Establishing a business while you're harassed by competitors could be.

2) Killing two birds with one stone. So, you're establishing a business. That business could involve transporting things on your ship. Maybe one or several of your competitors have similar ships that you could use for spare parts and hey, they also probably have people working for them. Some colorful characters you could recruit.

3) Tying side quests to the main quest. That murderer you mentioned? He's a bit bothered by your endeavors and he heard you're trying to make a Force Sword. So, he's been collecting parts of the sword himself just to slow you down. Parts you could get for yourself by defeating him.

4) Giving you side quest progression as a reward. Let's say you did a quest for some organization. That organization is a bit short on cash, but they can give you access to their lab, which you can use to analyze that liquid.

Most importantly, he should stop giving players tasks he finds boring. If most of your crew left, what did he think would happen? Of course you'd look for new crew. If you found a locked treasure chamber and a mysterious liquid seemed to be key to opening it, what did he think would happen? Of course you'd try to look for a solution. The only thing that sounds like something unrelated to the circumstances he put you into is the sword quest.

Players can have agency, but ultimately the DM decides what happens with it. If he wants to stop giving quest hooks, he can just invent a reason for a crew not to leave or let a treasure chamber open.

[Chijinda]

The only thing that sounds like something unrelated to the circumstances he put you into is the sword quest.


Kind of funny thing but he put me on the sword quest too. My character took a specific rank unique to Psyker's called the Templar Calix rank. When taking this rank, the Psyker is generally awarded a Force weapon by the organization that allowed him to join.

My GM looked up Force Weapons and decided a weapon like that was WAY too powerful for a rank 4 character to have (to be fair I agreed), so instead he had the organization give my character the designs for it and tell him his trial would be to construct the weapon himself. For a short time he seeded in little components of it, but at some point he just kind of stopped, or otherwise made gathering the components a hell of a lot more trouble than my character would be willing to go to (plus there was an incident with the Party Scum and the sword that I detailed in a past thread here, which set me back even further).

Also the whole business thing is actually tied TO the recrewing of the ship. My character wanted to recrew the ship, realized that to do that, he'd need money to pay the wages of the people working onboard, since we lost our Inquisitor and therefore the influence that would have otherwise sufficed for that. To provide for the people he'd be hiring on, he'd need a steady flow of income-- and oh, wait, weren't we recently on that planet that had that animal that produced that really valuable resource? Huh. Maybe I can do something with that.

That was essentially how those two side quests ended up getting started.


----

As a general response to shelving the game, I've suggested it to the GM before-- kind of a: "You know we can take a break if you're getting tired of it" but his answer tends to be along the lines of: "No, I want to finish this. It's fine."

[Darth Ultron]

My query of the day is essentially-- are there ways I as a player can either A. Make these personal quests proceed as quickly as painlessly as possible? Or B. Suggestions I could pose to my GM to help him actually enjoy these sidequests, or even streamline them?

As a player, you can always drop a quest or at least put it on the back burner.

If you really feel like you must do all the quests, you might consider a solo game or two outside the normal game.

A lot of your 'quests' seem like they could take all of five minutes of game time. Like ''my character spends three weeks in a lab with the blue liquid'' and then make a roll or check. Same way with the ''re crew the ship''.

[goto124]

I posted a link to this thread... in the "Linear Storytelling vs Railroading" thread... I thought it would help... I'm sorry!

[Chijinda]

I posted a link to this thread... in the "Linear Storytelling vs Railroading" thread... I thought it would help... I'm sorry!

No worries, the more advice the better :)


As a player, you can always drop a quest or at least put it on the back burner.

If you really feel like you must do all the quests, you might consider a solo game or two outside the normal game.

A lot of your 'quests' seem like they could take all of five minutes of game time. Like ''my character spends three weeks in a lab with the blue liquid'' and then make a roll or check. Same way with the ''re crew the ship''.

I agree with a lot of this. Part of my personal unwillingness to let these subquests go is the time already spent invested in them. I've been on the Force Sword sidequest, for example, for almost two years now. Going: "Well, that's over and done with" means those two years were basically wasted. At least that's how I see it as a player, doesn't matter that by the time I actually GET the Force Sword, at this point there will basically be only one or two fights left in the campaign.

I've also.... sort of tried the "my character spends X amount of time doing this", but the GM tends to interrupt those long time stints. Last session being a pretty good example. My character was taking advantage of some prep time to try and complete some of these side quests, almost exactly as you suggested. Essentially told him: "My character will spend the next few days trying to find some guys that can work for him, find a skilled chemist to analyze the blue liquid, and maybe even find a component of the Force Sword."

GM's response was essentially to go: "Several hours into your search, and before you can make too much headway, you get a call from X demanding your immediate assistance in a completely unrelated, but considerably important matter".

[HammeredWharf]

So your DM's problem isn't that he gives you too much agency, but that he gives you too many sidequests and for some reason actively prevents you from completing them. I'd get it if he had something special in mind for those quests down the line, but clearly he doesn't, so... whyyy?

[LnGrrrR]

Hey, I've got an easy solution for your sidequests.

-Attempted to start a business to fund our cell, considering our Inquisitor (and now our Interrogator) have both been killed, and we are effectively cut off from our primary source of resources for our missions.

Your business fails. Competitors spring up and imply that the owner is actually in league with [insert bad guys here].

-Recrew our ship, which has been running on a skeleton crew and been literally falling apart since our Inquisitor's death as the vast majority of the crew jumped ship after he died.

Unbeknownst to you, one of the skeleton crew put out a personal ad for crew. You have a bunch of new hires! They cost roughly X gold per month.

-Been constructing a Force Sword over the past two years.

You either A) go on a mission to locate the final Macguffin to build it or B) after the final session, you create the sword. Roll X dice to determine how many cool functions it has, then pick them.

-Analyze and replicate a mysterious blue liquid we uncovered on one of our missions that seemed to be the sole key to getting into a sealed treasure chamber.

Is the treasure chamber a plot device? Yes? Then some dude who researched historical stuff found out the info. Not a plot device? Roll some related skill. Is it high? Awesome! You found out what you needed to and get the phat lewt.

Honestly, I don't know why people worry so much about sidequests. Are the players interested in pursuing them? Great, then put them on screen. Are they boring and detracting from action? Then just handle them with a handwave.

For instance, with your sword quest, maybe you finish it but it's not yet awesome, and you find out in some old scroll that you have to kill some powerful monster to activate it. Or need to bathe it in the waters of a magical fountain guarded by ... whatever. Or that the sword is intelligent, and won't help the owner until he defeats some BBEG. Whatever, the point is you can work that into a plot pretty easily. Just combine it with a main plot.

If all the players are too busy with their own thing, and not working as a team... the DM should have a chat OOC to determine what the group wants. There's no point in everyone getting with the DM so he can do solo projects for everyone.

[Red Fel]

It sounds like the DM is grappling with two very distinct roles of DMing. On the one hand, he wants to give the players what they want, which is admirable, but it leads to too much of a good thing - the PCs pick up thread after thread to pursue, and he just shrugs and pauses the game while they do it. On the other, he wants to complete the story, which is also admirable, but it leads to come on already you guys - the PCs aren't just aren't keeping up.

The solution that I see is a simple one. Start the clock. If the climax is a particular event, such as an invasion or a war or a particular ritual or coronation or something, that event will proceed as scheduled unless the PCs do something about it. Your DM should make that abundantly plain.

The PCs can go on with their personal quests, of course. But they should do so with the knowledge that the more time they waste on this, the less prepared they will be when the climax hits - or, alternatively, they may miss it entirely.

The world can and does keep spinning while the PCs are going on side quests. This isn't a JRPG where the war starts, the party bails and goes to grind in the forest for three weeks, and they come back to find that the war has still only just started.

I've been in games where the PCs had dangling threads and unfinished business. When the time came to step up, the unfinished business was set aside for another day, and we reassessed priorities. Heck, having things you still want to finish makes for a great climactic character moment. ("I can't die here! I have to buy my daughter a stuffed fish!")

A lot of personal quests can be epilogue'd. In fact, that's pretty satisfying. A great campaign deserves a great epilogue, and one of the best ways to do that is to show the PCs, after the fact, having earned or acquired what they wanted, or what they deserved. The farmhand-turned-hero returns to a quiet life with his new family on the farm, raising children and tending the crops. The fortune-seeking bar-dwelling lech acquired great riches for his heroism, promptly blew them on liquor and women of ill repute, and returned to his fortune-seeking bar-dwelling lecherous ways. The wanderer with anger issues who sought inner peace has found it in a life of quiet contemplation in the mountains. The adventurer who just wanted to learn what happened to her father all those years ago has found a new lead, and new hope that he may still be alive. And so on.

The point is, these player-driven quests don't actually need to all be finished by the climax. In fact, it may be best that some of them aren't.

[Quertus]

These side quests sound more like prerequisites to completing the game than actual side/personal quests. You need to earn money to fix your ship in order to go anywhere. You need to hire a crew, and earn the money to pay them in order to go anywhere. Do you have any idea what the end game or the blue liquid are? Given how connected your side quests are, I'm suspecting that they're somehow related, too.

Or the GM could just be trying to railroad you into staying put, or into looking for alternate transportation. Which would explain why he is losing interest, if you aren't taking the bait.

Many of my best characters are ones that juggle dozens of ongoing quests, over the course of many adventures with many parties under many GMs. I never talk to the GM about most of these quests, and allow them to get resolved naturally over the course of play. Yes, I told my GM that my character was on a quest to find her lost father, but I never explained my desire to reconcile my religion with my heritage, nor did I explain why I was collecting soil samples and local currency and sand from a teleporting island and angels hair and dragon's blood and... until I put it all together as a proposed recipe for a magical item.

So, unless you require / desire that style of play, there is no reason that all of a character's personal quests need to be resolved before the end of the campaign.

[Chijinda]

Hey, I've got an easy solution for your sidequests.

-Attempted to start a business to fund our cell, considering our Inquisitor (and now our Interrogator) have both been killed, and we are effectively cut off from our primary source of resources for our missions.

Your business fails. Competitors spring up and imply that the owner is actually in league with [insert bad guys here].

-Recrew our ship, which has been running on a skeleton crew and been literally falling apart since our Inquisitor's death as the vast majority of the crew jumped ship after he died.

Unbeknownst to you, one of the skeleton crew put out a personal ad for crew. You have a bunch of new hires! They cost roughly X gold per month.



My character has actively discussed this matter with the captain of the skeleton crew. The problem with it is that the guy straight up stated that we don't have the funds to hire on more people. Hence the business angle. Those two are basically interwoven-- the business sidequest started up so that we COULD get our skeleton crew less skeleton. It's almost a: "If the business side quest fails the skeleton crew side quest also fails and our team is critically undermanned for the expedition we'll be undertaking (do I think the GM will stonewall us if we don't succeed here? No. I do, however, expect it to make our big final mission significantly harder)



-Been constructing a Force Sword over the past two years.

You either A) go on a mission to locate the final Macguffin to build it or B) after the final session, you create the sword. Roll X dice to determine how many cool functions it has, then pick them.


Exactly what I've been trying to do. Unfortunately the GM has almost constantly been leaving it just out of arms reach of my character anytime the components have been showing up. Either that, or he's been tying my success in this field to my character's middling Fellowship stat, when he goes looking for it in the commerce sections of Hives.



-Analyze and replicate a mysterious blue liquid we uncovered on one of our missions that seemed to be the sole key to getting into a sealed treasure chamber.

Is the treasure chamber a plot device? Yes? Then some dude who researched historical stuff found out the info. Not a plot device? Roll some related skill. Is it high? Awesome! You found out what you needed to and get the phat lewt.

It /was/ a plot device. A very important artifact we needed to acquire was in there. GM made sure we had enough of the liquid to actually get in, and get the artifact, and get out, but no more than that. My Psyker had to cheat the system to escape with the vial he does have and that nearly resulted in a TPK. Now it's another "easy out" for the Force Sword side quest as well as the crewing problem as not only is there a Force Sword component in there, but we could probably sell half the stuff in there and be able to afford to recrew our ship.



If all the players are too busy with their own thing, and not working as a team... the DM should have a chat OOC to determine what the group wants. There's no point in everyone getting with the DM so he can do solo projects for everyone.

Oh, the group is working as a team to be fair.... mostly. It's largely that these side quests have piled up over a 2 (now two and a half) year campaign, and many of them never got resolved. And as you say. Part of it, I think is that the GM could easily make these transition into the main plotline seamlessly but he just doesn't. As I said. He seems to be caught in a bit of a limbo where /he/ wants to resolve the side quests since we've been trying to do them for so long, he wants us to work for them, but he doesn't want to put in the effort into devising a way for us to work for them.

[hifidelity2]

If your DM needs a break why not stop the campaign, do something else and then come back to it. My group does that and we have about 5 multi-year campaign's on the go / on hold and then revisit them when the DM is a bit refreshed





-Attempted to start a business to fund our cell, considering our Inquisitor (and now our Interrogator) have both been killed, and we are effectively cut off from our primary source of resources for our missions.

-Recrew our ship, which has been running on a skeleton crew and been literally falling apart since our Inquisitor's death as the vast majority of the crew jumped ship after he died.

-Been constructing a Force Sword over the past two years.

-Analyze and replicate a mysterious blue liquid we uncovered on one of our missions that seemed to be the sole key to getting into a sealed treasure chamber.
-----

However for your quests as a DM I might

You analyse the liquid (be it a roll, hiring an alchemist etc , from this you can find a backer who will fund trip to loot the treasure chamber. Because of this you can find willing crew and refit the ship. After the looting you have enough over to start the business. Oh and the final bit needed for the force sword is in the treasure chamber
All solved and wrapped up in one adventure

[LnGrrrR]

My character has actively discussed this matter with the captain of the skeleton crew. The problem with it is that the guy straight up stated that we don't have the funds to hire on more people. Hence the business angle. Those two are basically interwoven-- the business sidequest started up so that we COULD get our skeleton crew less skeleton. It's almost a: "If the business side quest fails the skeleton crew side quest also fails and our team is critically undermanned for the expedition we'll be undertaking (do I think the GM will stonewall us if we don't succeed here? No. I do, however, expect it to make our big final mission significantly harder)

I just don't understand why a group of adventurers decided to start up a business, unless that business was appropriately adventure-ish. Why are you coming up with a business to make money instead of, say, just invading some villain hideouts and stealing all their cash? Or taking on protection business? Or doing any number of other businesses that could coincide with adventuring.



Exactly what I've been trying to do. Unfortunately the GM has almost constantly been leaving it just out of arms reach of my character anytime the components have been showing up. Either that, or he's been tying my success in this field to my character's middling Fellowship stat, when he goes looking for it in the commerce sections of Hives.

Have you talked OOC with your DM? If your character wants the swords but keeps rolling low, does that make the story any better, really? If you rolled really well, would you feel you "earned" the sword that much more?



It /was/ a plot device. A very important artifact we needed to acquire was in there. GM made sure we had enough of the liquid to actually get in, and get the artifact, and get out, but no more than that. My Psyker had to cheat the system to escape with the vial he does have and that nearly resulted in a TPK. Now it's another "easy out" for the Force Sword side quest as well as the crewing problem as not only is there a Force Sword component in there, but we could probably sell half the stuff in there and be able to afford to recrew our ship.

I'm not sure why you put the "easy out" in quotation. Is he afraid to let you figure out the blue stuff solution because that will solve all your other problems? Maybe the info you got about the vault was wrong, and what you THOUGHT was a simple treasure stash is actually a lair guarded by X monsters. Or there's a bunch of traps in there. Etc etc.


Oh, the group is working as a team to be fair.... mostly. It's largely that these side quests have piled up over a 2 (now two and a half) year campaign, and many of them never got resolved. And as you say. Part of it, I think is that the GM could easily make these transition into the main plotline seamlessly but he just doesn't. As I said. He seems to be caught in a bit of a limbo where /he/ wants to resolve the side quests since we've been trying to do them for so long, he wants us to work for them, but he doesn't want to put in the effort into devising a way for us to work for them.

Is it a problem of him not wanting to do the work? Or him just being an @$$hat? Because you could always say to him OOC, "Hey DM, why not do something like this..." and incorporate your sidequests into the main story. If he agrees, great, less work for him and more fun for you. If he disagrees, sounds like he's railroading you and is a poor DM.

[Chijinda]

I just don't understand why a group of adventurers decided to start up a business, unless that business was appropriately adventure-ish. Why are you coming up with a business to make money instead of, say, just invading some villain hideouts and stealing all their cash? Or taking on protection business? Or doing any number of other businesses that could coincide with adventuring.

Dark Heresy isn't exactly your standard D&D. In Dark Heresy you act as Acolytes of the Imperial Inquisition from Warhammer 40k. Your purpose is to follow your master's orders and sniff out and destroy heresy wherever you find it. Within the 40k universe, an Inquisitor's power is almost limitless-- not so much so for his Acolytes. You're not out "for adventure" you're actually doing your character's job, which is effectively to serve as an intergalactic Gestapo in an empire in which many citizens believe your organization doesn't exist, protecting them from the unthinkable horrors that exist in the Galaxy just waiting to prey upon humanity.

In the case of my specific campaign, the GM has actually killed off pretty much every individual that gave the party their influence and power, leading us to try and find alternative solutions since we no longer have the power of the Inquisitorial Rosette backing us. My character's solution was to make a business on the fly, since we'd already found a considerable source of income that we were personally unable to make use of.





I'm not sure why you put the "easy out" in quotation. Is he afraid to let you figure out the blue stuff solution because that will solve all your other problems? Maybe the info you got about the vault was wrong, and what you THOUGHT was a simple treasure stash is actually a lair guarded by X monsters. Or there's a bunch of traps in there. Etc etc.

Oh, we've been in the vault. We have thoroughly explored it. There IS in fact, a guardian in it, but it seems like it only actually pursues intruders who are actually trying to "break the system" (ie. Take anything from the vault without using the blue liquid). That guardian is what nearly resulted in a TPK when my character tried to cheat the system. And no. It's not dead. The near TPK was a result of the party getting hit by a single one of its attacks while we were fleeing from it, which resulted in pretty much the entire party being dropped into high critical damage, and causing two of us to pass out, along with horrifically disfiguring my character from the damage suffered (thankfully we were outside the Vault by the time the attack hit so it could not pursue us with subsequent attacks).




Is it a problem of him not wanting to do the work? Or him just being an @$$hat? Because you could always say to him OOC, "Hey DM, why not do something like this..." and incorporate your sidequests into the main story. If he agrees, great, less work for him and more fun for you. If he disagrees, sounds like he's railroading you and is a poor DM.

I've already suggested one such thing to him, kind of in-passing sort of thing. Essentially that thing that he pulled me away from my own side quests for involved hunting down a Rogue Psyker to gain a favor from the Sisters of Battle in the big final battle we're setting up for. I sort of questioned him in-passing as to what the chances were the Psyker might actually happen to have one of the components of the Force sword that I needed, just to put the thought there. We'll see if it pans out.

[LnGrrrR]

Ok, so correct me if I am wrong, but if you usually have an Inquisitor, but now you don't... can't you just do anything you want and claim it was under the order of an Inquisitor? I am assuming you aren't all Lawful Good types :) Take over a business, or claim property for the Inquisition, place people in indentured servitude/wage labor etc etc. Sure the higher ups might be pissed but only if they find out.

I just don't see how you square "destroyers of heresy" with "small business owners" lol.

And it seems like this DM has weird priorities. Why is he introducing even MORE side quests if he doesn't like them? Why not use these Sisters of Battle in order to RESOLVE another side quest? I'm also guessing this guardian is nigh undefeated blue due to DM fiat? If so, then he's forcing you to use the blue liquid, without actually giving you any way to get more blue liquid?

And what the heck is the main plot anyways? lol

[Chijinda]

Ok, so correct me if I am wrong, but if you usually have an Inquisitor, but now you don't... can't you just do anything you want and claim it was under the order of an Inquisitor? I am assuming you aren't all Lawful Good types :) Take over a business, or claim property for the Inquisition, place people in indentured servitude/wage labor etc etc. Sure the higher ups might be pissed but only if they find out.

I just don't see how you square "destroyers of heresy" with "small business owners" lol


You kind of can. In fact that's generally what we've been doing. Not letting it slip that our Inquisitor is dead, for the most part. However, as we're presently involved in a giant Inquisitorial civil war plotline, needlessly throwing the Inquisition's weight around could be seriously detrimental and give away our objectives. Also, we have to be careful as impersonating an Inquisitor's authority is, like most crimes in 40k, punishable by death. So if anyone ever CALLS us on our bluff, we're basically screwed.

We don't have the power to fight our own organization-- that's what the last few sessions have been all about. Building up our personal resources.Gaining a business so we can have something resembling funding for our crusade is just one of these resources that my character has been trying to establish.

For a super-brief summary: On a planet we were visiting, we found some of the extremely dangerous wildlife was incredibly valuable. As in: "A single one of these lethal animals could buy you a house" valuable (According to the GM a single scale of these creatures goes for about the equivalent of 50 gold... On creatures covered in thousands of such scales). Of course they're also unbelievably lethal, but. You know. When our lack of financial backing was finally getting to us, my character remembered the place, and started wondering if he might be able to send out a hunting expedition to hunt these things to generate revenue to keep the ship running. Plus the things have been believed to be extinct for thousands of years, so there wouldn't be much competition for the hunting.


I'm also guessing this guardian is nigh undefeated blue due to DM fiat? If so, then he's forcing you to use the blue liquid, without actually giving you any way to get more blue liquid?

More or less. It's a giant piece of ancient technology. We haven't actually TRIED fighting it, mostly due to having seen what this thing can do, and the fact that we know ICly, that the Dark Heresy equivalent of an Epic Level Sorcerer picked and lost a fight with this thing. Like I said, when we attempted to cheat the system (the party Guardsman used an improvised plasma explosive to blast open the Vault when we were making our exit, instead of using the liquid), the thing nearly TPK'd us with a single attack. And yes. He more or less forced us to use it solely for plot reasons.



And what the heck is the main plot anyways? lol

Well, seeing how you asked (and as briefly as I can manage to summarize a two year campaign:

6,000 years ago a Greater Demon of Malal ravaged the sector. Despite numerous attempts to slay the creature, and some of the most powerful Imperium heroes and demonslayers of the age trying, they were unable to keep him down, as anytime the creature was slain, it resurrected itself. Finally it was subdued through the joint actions of the Inquisition and a Space Marine Chapter known as the Sword Brethren. Rather than killing it (which would just lead to its revival), its heart was split into three and, using heretical rituals, sealed inside three Pariahs to keep it from reviving.

Cut to 6,000 years later, our Acolyte cell was sent to investigate a cult we learned was dedicated to freeing this Greater Demon. Said cult was secretly backed by an Inquisitor Lord who believes he can use the Greater Demon as a tool to fight the enemies of the Imperium. We didn't find that bit out until fairly recently. When our Inquisitor started getting a little too close to the truth, the Inquisitor Lord had a sleeper agent he'd placed by our Inquisitor decades before, kill our Inquisitor. We pursued the sleeper agent-- an immensely powerful Psyker, across the system, before realizing how far out of our depth we were, when he launched a counterattack, hitting our ship with a small army of his own, decimating what crew had stuck around after our Inquisitor's death, and only being driven off by a plot-based Deus Ex Machina. We cut a deal with an old friend of our Inquisitor who'd guessed what was going on, and under his direction managed to find the key to permanently killing the Greater Demon (or more accurately, rendering the thing unable to resurrect itself), at which point he informed us of the link between the Inquisitor Lord, the sleeper agent and more or less the whole plotline. He also kindly informed us that as we were, we would be no match for the Inquisitor Lord, and that we'd need a lot of allies if we wanted to take a fight to him. He also told us that he'd help us, but only once we'd proven we had any sort of chance at winning.

Hence where we are now-- calling in every favor we can and trying to build up as many resources as we can to actually be able to take a fight to what is essentially the most powerful and influential person in the entire Sector.

[goto124]

A TWO-YEAR campaign?

Looks like GM burn-out, really. A break would be nice.

[LnGrrrR]

Ok, the plot sounds good, but I see a big problem with it. It is essentially, "Do a bunch of side missions until you guys think you are ready enough!" So the very plot encourages all these little "increasing my X power!" missions. The DM has to provide structure in a plot like that. The side quests may be important to the player (i.e. Your sword) but not important to the overall plot. And it sounds like he doesn't want to incorporate side quests into the "main" missions so of course it's all going sideways. He wants his cake, to have some epic level up campaign, but he also wants to do it his way instead of catering to what his players want. (For instance the whole blue liquid thing.)

He's put all these hooks and macguffins in, and due to ruling he can't unscrew it easily. And frankly, demanding that side quests be epic is probably burning him out too, as others mentioned.

For instance, you mentioned the near TPK with the guardian. You feel it would be a letdown if you guys just got more blue stuff from says some contact, right? And the DM is too stubborn/dumb/whatever to just make it a reward after a challenge. So now what? You guys just sit there doing random stuff. Move the plot forward! If you told me at the beginning of a game that we were going to take down a demon, and I saw no true appreciable progress in TWO YEARS, I would be pissed. In the synopsis you provided, at best you found out some info, but now you're in this giant slog. The DM needs to fiat some stuff to clear it out of the way and get to the interesting parts.

[Chijinda]

Move the plot forward! If you told me at the beginning of a game that we were going to take down a demon, and I saw no true appreciable progress in TWO YEARS, I would be pissed. In the synopsis you provided, at best you found out some info, but now you're in this giant slog. The DM needs to fiat some stuff to clear it out of the way and get to the interesting parts.

To be fair, we didn't know we'd be fighting a demon in the campaign (though as they're among the nastier things in Dark Heresy, we did expect he'd throw them at us at some point). And a Greater Demon would be WELL beyond our party's ability to fight right now (or, arguably ever. Imho, if you can take down a Greater Demon in Dark Heresy in a head-on fight then your GM is probably doing it horribly wrong unless the beastie is incredibly handicapped by something).

We knew about the demon's involvement for awhile, but a lot of the campaign prior was dealing with the Cult and the myriad of strange happenings surrounding the Cult. That took almost a year. GM gave us a little: "Well done, here's some easy assignments" while seeding in little connections he'd be pulling on later in the story (for example, we ran into the treasure vault on a previous assignment, which provided us the major clue later on). Then he killed our Inquisitor and sent us on the "second half" of the campaign, which has been avenging our Inquisitor's death. We honestly only had all the connections drawn together, and learned it who has been behind everything, about two or three sessions ago.

-----

I'm thanking you guys for all the advice so far. I think I've gotten even the GM to start admitting his burnout and will probably try to push the group to break for a few weeks, maybe even a month, and just wait until the GM sounds eager to try again. Maybe he might even come up with some cool ideas during that rest period that he'll get eager to try out again. I know the last time we took a hiatus because one of our group took a trip to New Zealand for a month, he was the one pushing playing the game all night long, instead of one of us. So hopefully the same thing will happen here.

[TheCountAlucard]

Not every desire needs to be seen to its completion within the confines of a story - did Luke ever get those power converters?

[Chijinda]

Not every desire needs to be seen to its completion within the confines of a story - did Luke ever get those power converters?

By the same token, however, if we'd seen Luke start building a lightsaber, several moments of screentime were dedicated to him finding the plans for a lightsaber, carefully selecting his lightsaber crystal, practicing with an iron rod or something in preparation for having it, and then had nothing further happen with it, we'd call it bad storytelling, implementing an utterly pointless and useless series of scenes that didn't go anywhere :P

[LnGrrrR]

Sometimes those scenes are filmed and then get cut on the editing floor. Unfortunately real life does not have one :)

Ultimately, your quest is a personal one, and in should in my mind take a backseat to the "team" quest. But we have already established that you should be able to do both at the same time and the DM is unable or unwilling to for some reason.