My friends and I have recently picked up Only War, and are having a great time playing it. We are all completely new to roleplaying – not just Only War; this is our first RPG ever. Being the least lazy of the group, I am the GM. We are currently trying the rulebook adventure “Against the Savages”.

Combat has been fine, and conversations with important or obvious NPCs (commanding officer, quartermaster, the Brontian lieutenant after landing) were awkward initially but everyone has got into it. However, we are struggling a bit when it comes to out of combat and narrative.

As an example from the adventure: after the very first fight, the squad arrives at the Imperial Guard supply depot. It says the squad should be assigned duties and gets some down time to explore. But how do you ‘play’ this? How do you handle tasks like guard duty or routine cleaning/maintenance? How are you supposed to play out everyday activities like roll call, breakfast, going to chapel for prayers, etc, where nothing out of the ordinary happens? We felt a bit lost at this stage and didn’t know what to do, so we just went to mission briefing and set out (having been on the planet for barely a couple of hours).

This led to a similar problem – travelling. The adventure states a journey of 12 hours, with a navigation test every 5 hours to see if they get lost or have an encounter. It describes how the journey should be difficult and very tense. However, we weren’t sure how to flesh it out or create that tension; I basically ended up going “you drive for 5 hours through the jungle, navigation test time” until we reached the base. I didn’t know what I could do to make the journey exciting or tense, and the rest of the group didn’t know what they should be doing other than listening to me fail to describe their journey.

In addition, none of the players interacted in character other than to discuss what actions to take. This isn’t though lack of want, just lack of any experience roleplaying whatsoever. The players in our group are very imaginative and could create some amazing characters; just don’t know what to do.

I realise that these are pretty vague and broad questions, on how to do things that are probably as natural to some of you as speaking or breathing. But if anyone has any advice/suggestions, knows of any resources for absolute beginners (everything I found for GMing was for more experienced players), our group would be very grateful.

TLDR: Brand new GM, brand new players, how do we play the bits that aren’t shooting stuff?

If you have Skype I'd be delighted to give advice via IMs at any time provided I'm not occupied with something like sleep which rather demands my full attention. Got about a year of Only War now and coming up a decade of RPGs.

There's admittedly only so much time in a session and so much role play you can do of mundane tasks around the base, so consider complications that could arise. Some NPCs to have notable interactions with and build friendships and rivalries. Have a comrade ask thought provoking questions to get people talking.

Being in character takes time to get used to. Nothing for it but practice and consistent encouragement. Dont get frustrated and never give up. Just coax them along and remember that you're all part of the same story.

A tool I use is to novelise the adventure as they go along and let them read the chronicle. Helps out into context what their characters say, do an achieve.

Hope these are good starting help.

Give your players options and free things to do around base/ship. 40K is a notoriously strict fictional setting where even the smallest infraction leads to death, but there is wide variation regarding application of rules among the Guard's regiments. "Discipline" to a Mordian means always having a uniform in order, your medals polished and your appearance perfect for parade. For a Catachan, "Discipline" is watching your squad's back, breaking most of the rules in order to eliminate the enemy, and fragging the Commissar if he is inclined to get the squad killed because of a preoccupation with following the rules.

I'd first suggest loosening up the atmosphere on base for the group since this is your first game. Tweak the planet the group has come from if possible to make it a more "relaxed" regiment. Maybe they'd be better described as militia than a standing army?

Stuff like roll-call should only ever be called once, to introduce them to the commanding officer who will be handing down orders. Otherwise, it becomes routine and boring. Guard duty should be similar- they're on guard duty when the surprise enemy offensive happens, catching the entire base by surprise. It's their squad against an entire company of enemies, holding the line while the rest of the Guardsmen gear up to join the fight.

Basically, if it doesn't advance the plot, don't bother "showing" it and assume they do it.

To pass the time on base, give the group a list of things going on that they can do. No more or less than three things. With my players, the list looked like this on their last game:

1.) Go to the shooting range for practice. The player tests out a weapon they aren't trained in (they chose Melta). Usually this is an XP sink that no one wants to waste valuable points on. So instead, I give them the option to make 3 ballistics rolls, unmodified. If they make 2, they master the basics of the weapon type.

2.) Go to the company library. My group's regiment comes from a world that actively prizes technical knowledge to make better tech-priests. The players could go to the library and make rolls to learn a free Common Lore (never Forbidden Lore or Scholastic Lore, though).

3.) Letters from home. This is my favorite and potentially the most valuable for you as a GM. Have a small list of trinket items drawn up, don't have to be from the books either. Prayer beads, a local newspaper, a family good luck charm, etc. The players can carry these around and trade them for boosts to Commerce tests. But they must also narrate the letters that come with the item. This will get them more in the mood for roleplay and give you potential plot hooks in the future.

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With NPCs, make up three important people they can interact with, and give these characters personality and a small history.

The quartermaster is a superstitious old man who could give out Requisition bonuses if the group brings him blessed items (or tricks him into thinking they've been blessed).

The Commissar is a jerk, but is interested in trying to find her MIA son who was assigned to another regiment on the planet and went missing. She'll look the other way to some offenses if the group finds her son's cog-tags (or brings him back alive).

The chief medic is addicted to recaf and will hand out a medkit to the group before a mission if they give him some ground recaf on the side.

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With travel time, make them jumpy and afraid of their own shadows.

They have to drive out in the dark. At night. Make up three innocent looking plants or animals that are absolutely lethal to humans ("If you get bit by this bug that's the size of a fly, you have three hours to seek medical attention before your brain begins to bleed.")

Make the truck break down before their first navigation test. It suffers a flat tire and one player MUST work on fixing it. Meanwhile, make everyone roll Awareness checks. Unless they get 3 or more degrees of success, all they can hear is something rustling through the underbrush along the side of the road. If they shoot, it's at a ridiculous penalty (darkness, foliage). If they hit, something big and nasty growls ("It sounds startled, but definitely not wounded") and runs off, but the brush on the other side of the truck begins shaking in two places.

Later, the truck runs out of gas. Their map says there's a civilian fuel station nearby. But they have to sweep the building for enemies and manually pump the fuel. Even basic enemies could make this a difficult encounter if a stray lasround could ignite the whole place.

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Probably the BEST piece of advice I can give you as a new GM is to make an "Evil Overlord List." I assume that you have a big bad guy in mind while running this campaign?

If so, cool. If not, no biggie. But the Evil Overlord List has saved my skin in other games before.

Basically, establish your Evil Overlord's goals, and write out exactly what he's going to do in a list IF THE SQUAD DOESN'T INTERFERE. If the players do nothing or fail their missions, he/she/it's going to win by default.

A sample list might look like:

Dark Apostle Josias wants to conquer the planet Acropolis to Ascend to the rank of Daemon Prince and make it his stronghold against the Imperium.

1.) Josias' cultist followers on Acropolis initiate riots on the ground, overwhelming the Arbites in key cities and tying down the local PDF.

2.) Josias' Chaos fleet exits the Warp and begins landing soldiers and war machines in the countryside. His cultists in the "suburbs" begin to rise up. (The squad is deployed to a crossroad outside their city; they have to repel several waves of Chaos soldiers)

3.) Josias' soldiers begin long and bloody sieges of the primary cities while his fleet fights the Imperium's to a standstill. He sends a squad of crack soldiers to take over the planet's orbital defense network center. This turns the tide in space.

4.) Josias' pounds the PDF with orbital fire and siege guns. After weeks of fighting, he sends an overwhelming human wave attack to destroy the last of the resistance. After a bloody fight, the Imperium's forces on Acropolis are destroyed and he is undisputed master of the system. His reign of terror spreads across half the sector before a coherent defense can be mustered.

Each one of those 4 points could be a mission- or multiple missions over sessions. It'll give you a guide on what to throw at your players next. And if they should fail at a critical juncture and Josias succeeds? The campaign changes from open warfare to insurgent warfare while they wait for reinforcements from the Imperium.

I think the guys above have laid things out nicely.

My suggestion would be go on youtube and watch a few different RPG games.

ITMEJP - A youtuber who does alot of starcraft stuff, plays Dungons and dragons as well with a bunch of youtubers and Pro gamers, I believe A Video game dev too. This will give you a good idea of how gm, and how to add " Filler" .

Filler is pretty much the same for all games.

Some great responses here, thank you!

SgtLazarus – That is a very generous offer, thank you. I don’t have skype installed at the moment but when I get a free moment I will take you up on that. I really like the idea of chronicling the adventure; I imagine it would make everyone feel part of the story and perhaps more inclined to get involved and play a larger part. I will definitely do this when I get the chance.

A question on comrades: are they usually roleplayed by the GM then? In our game so far the comrades have basically just been used as a 5 BS or 10 WS bonus and felt really clunky.

Fiddler27 – Thank you very much for the incredibly in depth post, some great advice in there! Our regiment is a custom regiment from an agricultural world (in real life we are from parts of the UK with a lot of farming so we liked the idea of a ‘farmer’ regiment) and I guess the regimental discipline is pretty relaxed. I really like the idea of coming up with some activities for them to do; prevents everyone feeling lost and unsure what to do but doesn’t feel like I am ‘railroading’ them (which I understand is a big no-no in RPGs). I feel quite excited about coming up with some important NPCs and an ‘Evil Overlord list’ – I guess where it was our first time I was trying to follow the adventure to the letter and wasn’t even considering coming up with new ideas.

CommissarWilliams – A very good suggestion with youtube/etc. Hadn’t even considered trying to find a podcast or video that I could observe and see how it is done. I have read various games that have been typed up (like the all guardsmen dark heresy group that was linked in the main forum) which is why I was inspired to ask for help – they make their games sound amazing, but obviously don’t explain the nitty gritty actual gameplay.

Thank you all again for the advice, I am really excited for our next session so I can put some of these ideas into practice!

You can always look up the Grim dark podcast, as well, its two gms talking about all the 40k fantasy flight games, and I have space for a few people in a new group im setting up so you are welcome to join it, if you have a Mic and can meet at uk times.

Rural UK Bros! Alright! I'm in on that action - sort of. Up in the bitter wilderness of the wilde north (i.e. not that far from Windermere).

Comrades are traditionally roleplayed by the DM, though I have no objection to people roleplaying their own comrades within my group.

Some youtube links for you bud.

https://www.youtube.com/user/VaultsOfTerra/videos

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-oTJHKXHicSxBj2DMq_zmJ0QALrhKzVg

Also this is a great camp manager.

https://www.obsidianportal.com/

Some really good ideas above. The novelisation of the adventure is a great one. I do that as it helps me to keep things straight as the gm, plus its excellent practice for writing (which is my ambition). However, saying that, there are some other good ideas above.

In regards to basic standard tasks, till you feel comfortable winging it, why dont you write down some descriptive pieces about it, that sound more like monologues or prose description. Read them out to the players, but leave places for them to break in. In my experience (27 years GMing now, dear god), there hasn't been a player alive that doesnt want to jump in when the GM goes off on one. It will prompt them to actually take actions in these mundane situations.

Also, I agree that all important NPCs should not only be fully statted, but also should have character histories and roleplaying notes made for them. It might also be a good idea to make up another squad in the regiment that your squad has a friendly rivalry with. That could give you loads of prompts for roleplaying, and it would normally have to be done in inactive moments.

Guard duty has some interesting possibilities since their are guards mounted inside the camp as well as outside. One of the funniest I can remember is a Catachan jungle fighter on guard duty for the base headquarters had a lord commissioner laying face down on the ground since he was not on the access roster. The female psyker accompanying him would be let in since she was on the access roster for the headquarters.