Cubicle 7 Announces Dark Heresy 3rd Edition… Sort Of

It’s Gen Con season, which means the RPG publishers are all making their big announcements, and Cubicle 7’s pulled out a big surprise in the form of Imperium Maledictum – an upcoming new Warhammer 40,000 RPG.

This is a bit of an interesting move, not least because they’d only recently expended energy into salvaging Wrath & Glory, the previous 40K RPG, going to the extent of putting out an entirely revised version of the core book because the previous version by Ulisses North America, whilst it was built on some pretty solid ideas, had some fairly major quality control issues. And part of the selling point of Wrath & Glory, from its original unveiling under Ulisses to Cubicle 7’s adoption and resuscitation of the line, was its scalability – thanks to its clever Tier system it could handle PC parties ranging in power from baseline scum to high-powered Space Marines, Inquisitors, and other movers and shakers. What’s the need for a new game?

Reading Cubicle 7’s press release doesn’t give a ton of details – nor would you expect such from an early preview – but there are some bits that stand out and make me inclined to make some guesses as to what the deal is here. Imperium Maledictum is directly called “the spiritual successor to the beloved series of roleplaying games started by Black Industries over ten years ago”. There’s a little ambiguity here; Dark Heresy in both its editions is definitely included, because Black Industries did publish the earliest 1st Edition products before Games Workshop shut it down; whether Rogue Trader, Deathwatch, Black Crusade, and Only War are also intended is something where there’s a bit more wriggle room for, because whilst Black Industries did plan for some of those games to be part of the line eventually, they were shut down long before they were actually made.