Has anyone run OW as a narrative war game?

Additionally how compatable is OW with DH 2nd Ed?

Care to clarify what you mean by "Narrative War Game"? Helps me give a proper answer.

Sorry I should have been far more descriptive. By Narrative Wargame I mean a Wargame with a story and missions that advance based on previous performance where individuals, units, vehicles, equipment, and resources can all be altered over time by gaining expereince and by the wear and tear of battle.

Im thinking kind of like WH40K 1st ed but with some role play in between the fights, or perhaps like a much larger scale version of the current Killteam that incorporates Role Playing as well.

It can be done fairly easily if you're willing to move outside of the traditional bounds of Only War as presented in the Core Rulebook. I've never seen anyone toy with that, but it'd certainly be something I'd be willing to explore.

You'd need to assign a few arbitrary statistics to the flow of things, or make heavy use of the Formation rules. There's some mechanical hocus pocus to work through, though, given it's not the game's intended scope. It'd certainly cover a Command level game, with the roleplay being in the planning tents among the Officers, with players heading up formations or piloting vehicles into the battlefield.

Shoot me a PM with a better medium for communication for us. I'd be interested in picking your brain if not collaborating for a good product with you. At the very least I can describe in much better detail what my initial working vision is.

Anyone else have any experience with this?

I don't have any experience with it, but I'm curious what you guys come up with. There are some really cool things you could do, playing it as a wargame with RPG elements.

Did this ever go anywhere?

Same here, very curious

I see absolutely no reason why this won't work RAW.

- It's a RPG so there is obvious scope of narrative and interaction between missions. There are plenty of non-combat skills and it's not that difficult to throw together a non-combat character on the fly (30s for int and fel, 20 or less for anything else, only trained in skills that pertain to his /her trade, add name, add stereotype personality, spice to taste). There are already stats for basic NPCs in the book. Not that you generally need stats for NPC allies.

- Characters are currently rewarded XP based on how well they do on a mission

- Characters and vehicles can take critical injuries that can seriously cripple them (limb loss, etc)

- Weapons and vehicles can be upgraded between missions given the correct facilities and characters (tech-priest, or the correct operator for weapons)

- At GM discretion casualties can be replaced between missions, though you can limit this using regiment rules

At a squad level all this works already. If you want to include several squads you might want to come up with some rules for dealing with casualties and xp for the NPC squads. As Lazarus mentioned, this all exists in the Formation Rules.

What else do you need? Is there something in particular that you wish to do, that you are looking for rules for?

I ran it to a limited degree and yes it works. Anyone interested?

In hearing how it went? Absolutely!

In joining? I'd love to but I have no spare time

I ran it to a limited degree and yes it works. Anyone interested?

Yeah, lay it on us man, how'd it go?

Inquisitor was a narrative wargame - essentially taking a small squad against opponents with a similar sized force.

I can imagine three or four guardsmen per side in a skirmish be quite good fun - just pointedly taking more care about movement, lines of fire, etc.

Sorry for the Extremely late responses. Been wrapped in fact doing the very thing we are going to talk about here. Background..... I've done a ton of research blah, blah, blah. Basically it boils down to INQUISITOR is the great grand daddy of Dark Heresy so I borrowed a bit of the spirit of INQUISITOR but none of the rules when doing this. I stuck with Only War rules as I like then and with 2nd ed being effectively the same system it looks like its going to stick around for a bit.

Stats. I've run 4 combat scenarios. A couple of caveats. On the table 1yd of range of X movement speed equated to the same amount of inchs ie: Guardssman "A" spends a half action to move 3 inches. The then Spends his additional half action to engage a ork with his Lasgun. This means he can with no range modifier positive or negative fire out to 100 inches on table. I am sure that many of you (especially if you are used to playing wargame 40k) will shout Blasphemy and that is overpowered. Well not really first of it isnt any different than the game already runs things it just represents it on a board which illustrates how different it is from standard 40k but More importantly; these guys as SHOOTING at one another and lethally capable weapons are in fact capable of shooting a fairly impressive distance. I also do not run the players with Companions per se. They do however have other Platoon members who accompany them on missions based on need and availability in game. The NPCs are full fledged characters and I run story and background for them as well. You don't need to do this but I wanted it to be clear for the descriptions that follow.

Scenario 1: PCs assault an enemy HQ using surprise and a lot of stealth (players made some good decisions with the assistance of some divine intervention) The Combat Ran very disjointed from my end as the GM. The two main reasons for this were lack of recall level memory of the rules, which caused a lot of referencing materials. The Second was due to having multiple materials that i needed spread in different txt/areas. Player decisiveness was also a factor as was players being poorly familiar with their own abilities and the rules.

Lessons Learned: Read the rules and commit to memory where able. Ensure that I have a folder with all the necessary tables (I dont like the GM screen so I have printed copies of everything I need in a GM guide I use), copies of an abbreviated NPC roster w/combat stats, Figure out a good way to make initiative go smoothly and to be tracked smoothly. Ease record keeping.

Scenario 2: Happened same session as the one above so there was no time to make changes. It was a small combat but incorporated vehicles on both sides. This went pretty smoothly even with the previously mentioned issues. The only real worht while note is that the vehicle rules were not totally grasped so that took some digging and arbitration on my part.

Scenario 3: Very Small battle. One Squad vs. another squad..... the twist however was that it was in Zero G. I struggled with how to properly represent this while playing it out as a wargame. The best idea I came up with was to lay out a wet erase mat, then I placed a bit of small terrain pieces on it. I decide to say that the Zero G training bay that they were in was 30 yards high x 30 wide x 40 long. Next to each piece of terrain I wrote a number in blue and circled it. This indicated where along the Z axis the terrain was located. If that didn't make sense I will elaborate. Placing a piece of terrain on a flat surface gives everyone the visual location of the object in 2 dimensions X and Y. What is missing is height and that was displayed by the Number I assigned it. It required everyone to use some imagination but it actually worked great. It is the system I will likely use again in the future until and if I can find a better one. For this battle I had made a few changes. I had combat stats for everyone all printed out and the Tables ready to go.

Lessons Learned: Not sure if there is a reliable better way but Initiative is still a problem and I think the simplest solution simply is the old pen and paper method while rolling for bad guys in like groups. Having a method for identifying which model is which for quick reference to their combat sheet was a problem and so I'm going to paint names on the base of friendly NPCs and give all the Bad Guys Alpha Numeric symbols on their bases for identification. Hit points were a problem until player said "why don't you just put a die next to the figure that annotates HP" That was a great idea and it has worked wonderfully.

Scenario 4: Pretty decent size scale infantry engagement. Total models on table was around 30. It took a bit of time but the players loved it. It was essentially a very detailed wargame with a ton of narrative description about what was going on and having the leaders actually lead and have to make some critical decisions. Lesson learned; tracking HPs for friendlies can be a pain in the ass. I am inclined to move to a three strikes and you are out methodology. If a friendly NPC get hit and that hit does more than a point of Damage it counts against one of their 3 hits. As I understand it that's pretty much how the Core book says to do it anyhow.

So thats it for now. I wont be hitting any super huge battles until a bit later in my campaign and Ill let you know how those guy.

Summary:

Works well overall. Players and GM needs to knew the rules, have rules/tape measures on hand, some of the blast icons from GW work as well but that not a requirement. Have easy references and make an abbreviated character sheet (multiple per side of paper) that you can list the important facts about each NPC for fast reference. Most of those suggestion are pretty obvious. All in all I like it. I have GWs rule systems for their lack of realism and this seems like a good alternate route albiet significantly more detailed. Encourage your players to know what they want to do before it is their turn. I put a timer on them is they show that they are being a problem. Then the time is up their opportunity to act is up. *Edit: late addition...... Uniform armor is a HUGE help but may not meet the style you are looking for. personally I do not want to sacrifice the Role play experience for ease on me. just my $0.02

Let me know if you have any specific questions fellas