I know Dark Heresy is basically built for that, but do you think that there is a easier way of going about it?
The potential is there, and it's a hell of a tease. I've used my Necromunda and Imunda gangs as basis for Dark Heresy characters, which was great fun, but yes very difficult to 'port' consistently and fairly imo.
I reckon there's one thing you could pinch out of DH though and that's the core mechanic. Stats are out of 100, to test them roll two D10s together to give you a double digit number between 01 and 99. If you've scored under your stat, you've passed that particular test; if you score over you've failed. E.g. Strength 40 needs 40 or less to pass.
Every 10 that you pass or fail by equals one degree of success or failure, so as well as straight success or failure situations, you can also set up tests like:
- Test your strength to see if you can smash the door down
- If you pass by a 20 or more the door falls in taking out the lights with it and the whole place is plunged into darkness
- If you fail by 20 or more the alarm goes off and lasers start shooting you
or whatever. You can also make one door heftier than another door by adding a plus or minus modifier to its test.
So a well-meaning GM, if you've got one of those, could between Imunda games come up with tests like this to cover a range of story situations, taking the Imunda character's stat x 10 and testing it. I would think short snippets of story that just involve a couple of tests being done, with some sort of corresponding reward or story fork, should be doable. You can have characters see if they can bash a door in (S), withstand violence (T), jump around to avoid falling rubble (I), etc.
The only problem there is, Imunda stats don't tell us anything about a character's intelligence, willpower, charisma, learnedness, technical ability, and so on, so we'd struggle with the scenarios you describe:
The characters in the war band should have the ability to do what they do. A pilot flies. A tech priest makes and fixes tech. The inquisitor squeezes info and plays the detective a little.
What you could do is:
- decide before the campaign starts on some extra statistics which will only be used in RPG segments between imunda games
- in this case it would be piloting, technical ability, charisma, and investigation/deduction
- i.e. these extra ones don't get used within Imunda games proper so don't need to be costed or balanced for that
- on creation characters have a bank of points (again, separate to the stash) which they can spend on these RPG stats which are added to their roster
This system could, as you say, bookend the tabletop games.