# Dark Heresy

The Warhammer 40,000 TTRPG of Inquisition acolytes hunting heresy in a grim, rules-heavy percentile system. First published in 2008, with a 2014 second edition; Cubicle 7 still sells the PDFs, while Imperium Maledictum is the current in-print way to play this style.

## At a Glance

Warhammer 40,000 Inquisition TTRPG • d100 roll-under • 1st edition (2008, Calixis) and 2nd edition (2014, Askellon) • PDF on DriveThruRPG • Cubicle 7's Imperium Maledictum is the current in-print successor

## Why It Fits

Choose Dark Heresy when your group wants to play human-scale agents of the Inquisition: following leads, surviving deadly fights, and living with the Imperium's cruelty. Pick first edition for careers and the large Calixis library, or second edition for aptitudes and Influence. If you want a line Cubicle 7 still prints and expands, start with Imperium Maledictum instead.

## Fit Facts

- Prep: High
- Price: Paid

## Facets

- Genres: Horror, Mystery and Investigation, Science Fantasy
- Mechanics: Campaign, Character Customization, Rules Heavy, Skill-Based, Tactical Combat, Team-Based
- Themes: Bleak, Dark, Mature Themes, Political
- Decision tags: Licensed

## Scores

- Complexity: 4/5
- New GM Fit: 2/5
- Roleplay Focus: 4/5
- Combat Focus: 3/5
- Tactical Depth: 4/5
- Campaign Depth: 5/5

## Best For

- Groups that want human-scale Warhammer 40,000 investigation for the Inquisition
- Tables that enjoy deadly percentile combat next to interrogation, cover identities, and institutional pressure
- Players who want first edition's large Calixis library or second edition's aptitude-based characters

## Avoid If

- You want a light rules set, reliable starting characters, or a short first session from a thin book
- You want to play Space Marines or mixed-faction cinematic 40K action (see Wrath & Glory)
- You want a line Cubicle 7 is still printing and expanding; that path is Imperium Maledictum

## Explorer Notes

Dark Heresy is the Warhammer 40,000 tabletop RPG about a cell of Inquisition acolytes hunting heresy, aliens, and warp corruption inside an Imperium that will spend their lives without notice. It suits groups that want investigation, interrogation, and grim institutional pressure more than heroic power fantasy. The rules are heavy percentile systems, combat is fast and punishing, and starting characters fail ordinary tests more often than new players expect. If you want that style of 40K play in a line Cubicle 7 still prints and supports today, start with [Imperium Maledictum](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/305328/Warhammer-40000-Roleplay-Imperium-Maledictum-Core-Rulebook?affiliate_id=1659151) after you finish this page.

This page covers the tabletop RPG first published in 2008. It is separate from Owlcat Games' later video game of the same name.

## What the game is

[Dark Heresy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Heresy_(role-playing_game%29) puts the player characters in service to an Inquisitor. The cell travels to hive cities, voidships, feral worlds, and forgotten shrines, gathering evidence of cults, xenos influence, rogue psykers, and corruption inside Imperial institutions. Missions can turn into firefights, but the default loop is detective work under a brutal theocracy.

Owen Barnes, Kate Flack, and Mike Mason designed the first edition for Black Industries. Fantasy Flight Games took the line over in 2008 and published the rest of first edition plus the 2014 second edition. [Cubicle 7](https://cubicle7games.com/en_US/warhammer-40-000-roleplay-dark-heresy-second-edition) has sold the PDFs since 2017. The game uses a d100 roll-under system closely related to Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay's second edition: you roll percentile dice against a characteristic (often modified by a skill) and count degrees of success or failure.

## Publication history and editions

Black Industries released a numbered collector's edition in December 2007 (it sold out in minutes) and the standard first-edition core book on 25 January 2008. Games Workshop closed Black Industries almost immediately. On 22 February 2008 the Warhammer 40,000 RPG license moved to Fantasy Flight Games, which kept Dark Heresy in print and built a large first-edition library, then sister games that share the same percentile family: Rogue Trader, Deathwatch, Black Crusade, and Only War.

Fantasy Flight published Dark Heresy Second Edition in 2014. Character creation shifted from first edition's career ranks toward a home world, background, and role, with aptitudes borrowed from Only War that change how much experience each advance costs. The default setting moved from the Calixis Sector to the Askellon Sector. Fantasy Flight announced in September 2016 that its Games Workshop license would end on 28 February 2017. Cubicle 7 later became the publisher of record and still sells both editions as PDFs. It has not added new Dark Heresy books. Its current Warhammer 40,000 investigation game is Imperium Maledictum, which Cubicle 7 has called a spiritual successor to Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader.

## Product line and what you need to play

You need one core rulebook and a Game Master. Both cores are complete games:

- [Dark Heresy: Core Rulebook](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/65872/Dark-Heresy-Core-Rulebook?affiliate_id=1659151) (first edition, 400 pages). DriveThruRPG lists it for $29.95 as a PDF (catalog date 23 November 2009, files updated 15 February 2024). Authors: Owen Barnes, Kate Flack, and Mike Mason. The book covers character creation, the Calixis Sector, combat, psykers, insanity and mutation, an armoury, and a starter adventure.

- [Dark Heresy Second Edition: Core Rulebook](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/135019/Dark-Heresy-Second-Edition-Core-Rulebook?affiliate_id=1659151) (448 pages). DriveThruRPG lists it for $29.95 as a PDF (catalog date 4 September 2014). It covers the Askellon Sector, the later character-creation method, and its own starter adventure. Cubicle 7 also sells the second-edition Game Master's Kit and the supplements listed below.

Neither listing currently offers print-on-demand on DriveThruRPG. Original hardcovers show up on the used market. Both listings are marked human-created, with no AI disclosure.

## If you want to play this style today

Buy a Dark Heresy PDF if your group specifically wants the older Inquisition-acolyte lines, the Calixis or Askellon material, or compatibility with the Fantasy Flight sister games. For a current, in-print Warhammer 40,000 RPG built around investigation, social pressure, and a refined d100 engine, Cubicle 7's answer is Imperium Maledictum.

Imperium Maledictum is set in the Macharian Sector. Players are Imperial citizens recruited by a powerful patron rather than, by default, a single Inquisitor's retinue. Cubicle 7 describes it as focused on investigation and social encounters, with combat that becomes deadly when preparation fails. Its Superiority rules reward scouting and planning before a fight. Faction Influence shapes where the group can go and what help it can call. The [Imperium Maledictum Core Rulebook](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/305328/Warhammer-40000-Roleplay-Imperium-Maledictum-Core-Rulebook?affiliate_id=1659151) is a 352-page watermarked PDF for $29.99 on DriveThruRPG (listed 23 March 2023). DriveThruRPG also lists a starter set, and Cubicle 7 has kept releasing line support such as the Inquisition Guides. This site does not have an Imperium Maledictum page yet; when that page exists, the two entries should point at each other.

## Major supplements and adventures

First edition is the deep well. Wikipedia's product list and the surviving Cubicle 7/DriveThruRPG catalogs include the Inquisitor's Handbook (extra home worlds, an expanded armoury, and the Adepta Sororitas career), Disciples of the Dark Gods, Creatures Anathema, The Radical's Handbook, Ascension (high-powered play as Inquisitors and throne agents), Blood of Martyrs, Daemon Hunter, Book of Judgement, and The Lathe Worlds. Campaign series include The Haarlock Legacy (Tattered Fates, Damned Cities, Dead Stars) and The Apostasy Gambit. Black Industries and Fantasy Flight also released free preview adventures, including Shattered Hope and Edge of Darkness; treat those as historical starters rather than a current official quickstart storefront.

Second edition's line is much shorter: Forgotten Gods, Enemies Within, Enemies Without, Enemies Beyond, and the Game Master's Kit. Those books add Askellon material and options tied to the three major Ordos (Hereticus, Xenos, and Malleus). If your group wants years of published scenarios and alternate careers, first edition is the richer shelf. If your group wants the later character-creation method in one core book plus a handful of supplements, second edition is the tighter set.

## Core rules and play structure

Most tests are a d100 roll that must come in at or under a target number. Characteristics typically sit in the 20s to 40s for starting acolytes, so a "challenging" test with no bonus fails more often than it succeeds. Every 10 points you beat (or miss) the target is a degree of success or failure, which then feeds combat hits, social outcomes, and some investigation results.

Combat uses short turns with a small number of actions, hit locations, armour and toughness reduction, and critical effects once wounds run out. Full-auto fire, accurate weapons, and psychic powers have all been debated for years because they can swing a fight hard. Fear, insanity, and corruption sit beside hit points: seeing the wrong thing can stun, panic, or scar a character even when nobody has fired a shot.

Psykers channel the warp. First edition asked them to roll dice against a Psy Rating and watch for results of 9, which could trigger Psychic Phenomena or Perils of the Warp. Second edition moved manifestation onto Willpower tests and changed how pushing or holding back power works. In both editions, calling on the warp is useful and unsafe.

## Characters and advancement

First-edition characters pick a career path. The core book offers Adept, Arbitrator, Assassin, Cleric, Guardsman, Imperial Psyker, Scum, and Tech-Priest. Later books add paths such as Adepta Sororitas. Each career has ranked advance tables. You spend experience on the skills and talents listed for your current rank, then move up, sometimes branching into a specialist track (a guardsman becoming a scout or officer, an arbitrator becoming a marshal). Supplements added alternate career ranks and starter packages, which is a big part of why many groups still prefer the first-edition library.

Second edition builds a character from a home world, a background (the institution that shaped them), and a role (the job they do in the cell). Those choices grant aptitudes. Advances that share one aptitude cost less experience; advances that share two cost much less; advances with no match become expensive. In theory this is more open than career tables. In practice the aptitudes you start with steer the rest of the character, which some players like and others find easy to min-max or easy to trap themselves with. Elite advances cover options such as psyker, untouchable, and, at very high Influence, inquisitor.

First edition tracks money in Throne Gelt. Second edition (like later Fantasy Flight 40K games) uses Influence for requisition: you test Influence, modified by an item's rarity, instead of paying a listed price. Influence also rises or falls with the cell's successes and disasters. You cannot simply buy it with experience.

## Signature mechanics

- The acolyte cell: player characters are competent specialists, not Space Marines. They survive by complementary skills, careful approach, and knowing when to run.

- Degrees of success on a d100 roll, which turn a pass/fail test into a measure of how cleanly you did the work.

- Insanity, corruption, mutation, and fear, which make the setting's horror mechanical rather than purely descriptive.

- First edition's career ranks and alternate careers, or second edition's aptitudes and Influence, as two different answers to long-term character growth.

- An Inquisitor (or, in later written guidance, the cell's standing) who assigns missions and can also become a source of pressure, secrecy, and conflicting orders.

## What play feels like

A typical stretch of play starts with a brief from the Inquisitor: strange deaths in a hive spire, a missing reliquary, a cult symbol appearing in an Administratum archive. The cell picks a cover, follows witnesses, breaks into records, and decides how visible it can afford to be. Combat arrives when a lead goes bad or when the group chooses force. Fights tend to be short and ugly. A lucky burst or a bad fear test can end a character who looked fine a round earlier.

Between missions, first-edition groups often shop with Thrones and plan advances along a career track. Second-edition groups argue about Influence tests and which aptitudes will still matter ten sessions from now. Both editions reward players who treat the Imperium itself as an obstacle: the Arbites, the Ecclesiarchy, local nobles, and even rival Inquisitors can be as dangerous as the heretics.

## Running the game

The Game Master prepares investigations more than dungeon maps. You need clues that can be found in more than one place, NPCs with reasons to lie, and a sense of how much heat the cell draws as it digs. The books give tools for nemeses, cults, and (in second edition) guidance on Influence and how openly the group is working. Prep is high if you write your own cases. Published campaigns, especially first edition's Haarlock and Apostasy series, cut that burden.

Common pitfalls: treating every session as a shootout, forgetting that starting acolytes are fragile, and throwing late-game threats at a fresh cell. Second edition's printed starter adventure, Dark Pursuits, has a reputation for putting new characters against opposition that outguns them. If you run it, read the opposition before the first session and be willing to scale the back half.

## Campaign fit

Dark Heresy is built for campaigns. A cell can spend months cleaning one hive, then follow a conspiracy across a sector. First edition's Ascension supplement even lets survivors become Inquisitors and throne agents, which raises the power level toward the sister games. One-shots are possible with a tight case file, but the rules load and character creation make that a heavier lift than a purpose-built one-shot game. There is no official solo mode.

Replacement characters are easy to justify: the Inquisition has other acolytes. Long campaigns should plan for death, insanity, and the political cost of calling in help.

## Reception

On DriveThruRPG (checked 8 November 2026) the first-edition core averages 4.4 from 39 ratings (21 five-star, 14 four-star, 2 three-star, 1 two-star, 1 one-star) with 7 written reviews, and holds a mithral bestseller badge. The second-edition core averages 4.7 from 42 ratings (34 five-star, 5 four-star, 3 three-star) with 4 written reviews, also mithral. Store ratings for both books are strong.

Community discussion is more split by edition than the store scores suggest. First edition is widely praised for the Calixis Sector, the career flavor, and the size of its supplement library. It is also known for fragile starting characters (the old "failcolyte" joke) and for combat options some tables found swingy, especially full-auto fire and accurate weapons. Second edition's more open character creation has defenders and a strong store rating, but a detailed 2014 RPG Codex review argued that the published book dropped promising beta changes, imported Only War systems without fixing older combat problems, offered thinner setting material than Calixis, and shipped a starter adventure that overwhelms new acolytes. Many groups still play first edition because the extra books are there. Pyramid magazine reviewed the first edition after release.

No major tabletop award win turned up in the sources checked for this page, so this entry is not marked award-winning.

## Where it is strongest

- Playing human-scale agents of the Inquisition instead of Space Marines or rogue-trader dynasts.

- Investigation that can end in a firefight, an execution, or a report nobody powerful wants to read.

- A large first-edition library of sectors, cults, alternate careers, and multi-book campaigns.

- A percentile engine familiar to anyone who has played older Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.

- Tone: the setting's cruelty is in the procedures, not only in the monster descriptions.

## Where it can frustrate groups

- Rules weight. Weapon qualities, psychic side effects, and talent lists take time to learn.

- Starting competence. Average characteristics make ordinary tests unreliable until characters have advanced.

- The edition split. Advice, adventures, and character options do not all port cleanly from first edition to second.

- Combat balance debates that have followed the line since 2008.

- Game Master prep. A good investigation needs clues, factions, and a plan for what happens if the cell goes loud.

- Second edition's shorter support window. The Askellon line stopped when Fantasy Flight lost the license.

## Content and safety notes

This is high-intensity grimdark material. Published play includes graphic injury and critical wounds, interrogation and torture, religious persecution, mutation and body horror, daemonic corruption, summary execution, and an Imperium whose default politics are xenophobic and authoritarian. Those elements are part of the official setting, not optional garnish. Groups should decide in advance how directly they want to play interrogation, civilian harm, and warp mutation, and they should keep a way to fade or cut scenes that cross a line.

## Best starting path

- Decide whether you want the older Inquisition-acolyte library or a current Cubicle 7 line. If you want books Cubicle 7 is still expanding, buy Imperium Maledictum and treat this page as history and context.

- If you want Dark Heresy itself and care about published campaigns and careers, start with the [first-edition core](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/65872/Dark-Heresy-Core-Rulebook?affiliate_id=1659151). Add the Inquisitor's Handbook when you want more character options, then pick a campaign series if the table likes a long mystery.

- If you want the later character-creation method in a single newer core, start with the [second-edition core](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/135019/Dark-Heresy-Second-Edition-Core-Rulebook?affiliate_id=1659151). Read Dark Pursuits before you run it and adjust opposition if needed.

- If your table wanted cinematic mixed-faction 40K action instead of street-level investigation, look at [Wrath & Glory](/item/wrath-and-glory) rather than either Dark Heresy edition.

## Research notes

Last checked 8 November 2026. Sources used for this page:

- [Dark Heresy (role-playing game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Heresy_(role-playing_game%29) on Wikipedia, for edition dates, designers, publishers, career lists, and the product list.

- DriveThruRPG public listings and APIs for [first edition](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/65872/Dark-Heresy-Core-Rulebook?affiliate_id=1659151), [second edition](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/135019/Dark-Heresy-Second-Edition-Core-Rulebook?affiliate_id=1659151), and [Imperium Maledictum](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/305328/Warhammer-40000-Roleplay-Imperium-Maledictum-Core-Rulebook?affiliate_id=1659151) (prices, page counts, ratings, AI status, catalog dates).

- [Cubicle 7's Dark Heresy Second Edition catalog page](https://cubicle7games.com/en_US/warhammer-40-000-roleplay-dark-heresy-second-edition) and [Imperium Maledictum overview](https://cubicle7games.com/our-games/warhammer-40k-roleplay-imperium-maledictum), plus Cubicle 7's public description of Imperium Maledictum as a spiritual successor.

- [RPG Codex review of second edition](https://rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=9678) (10 November 2014), used as a detailed critical source, not as the only verdict.

- Community discussion such as [this r/Warhammer thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/Warhammer/comments/t240h7/is_the_warhammer_40k_dark_heresy_ttrpg_good/) for broader sentiment patterns.

Unauthorized full-book copies were not used.

## Links

- Explorer page: https://www.ttrpg-games.com/item/dark-heresy
- Agent JSON: https://www.ttrpg-games.com/api/games/dark-heresy.json
- Publisher or official site: https://cubicle7games.com/en_US/warhammer-40-000-roleplay-dark-heresy-second-edition
- Reviews or retailer page: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/135019/Dark-Heresy-Second-Edition-Core-Rulebook?affiliate_id=1659151