I’ve been wondering about the viability of Deathwatch as a game for quite some time now. Common complains that I’ve heard with the system essentially boil down to the premise of the game being too narrow and “railroady,” and Astartes characters not having enough actual personality to sustain player investiture. In this post and hopefully the responses that follow, I’m going to attempt to answer two important questions.
1) Can Astartes characters be interesting?
2) Can a Deathwatch Campaign provide players with the freedom to pursue their own agendas and goals?
Let’s talk about character first. Many view Astartes as cookie-cutter, generic templates that do not have enough flexibility to provide a basis for interesting characters. I believe there’s a way to not only construct Space Marine characters that can be just as interesting as human characters. I think the key to this, for those who find the stereotypical Astartes – a noble, proud warrior-knight – to constraining, even when modified by chapter tendencies, is to first create a concept of a human character that fits into the 40k world and then apply that same idea to a Space Marine.
For instance, let’s take the character that one of my thought of for Rogue Trader. The character is an Astropath serving a dying and withering noble house. In order to regain the political power and prestige of the house he serves, he astrotelepathically “hacka” the conversations of important figures such as rival Rogue Traders, Administratum Officials, Ecclesiarchs, and more. By doing so, he has accumulated a vast trove of political secrets, which he can use to both blackmail various Imperial Institutions and also predict how the political-economic climate is going to swing, allowing him to scheme accordingly. This character A) has a very defined personality with goals and B) has the freedom and agenda to pursue his own interests, due to his access to starships and the resources of a Rogue Trader.
Now, let’s take my theory and try to convert said idea into an Astartes. For the sake of this experiment, let’s call him Sartorn. We already have a few elements to work with – a dying power base, psychic hacking, and political ambition. How can we make this work as a Deathwatch character? Well, let’s say that instead of a noble house, Sartorn – a Librarian of the 6 th company – is a member of the Adeptus Astartes chapter known as the Marines Stygian, which has suffered a grand misfortune – the chapter has been earmarked by the Inquisition as a potential moral risk, and now other chapters and imperial adepta are giving them a wide birth, marking a stain on the chapter’s honor. However, the Adeptus Astartes have never been beholden to the laws of men, and if Sartorn were to, say, listen in on a private communiqué between a notable Inquisitor and an Adminsitratum overseer to get better handle on the details of the situation, then, well, who can blame him? Perhaps he learns that the Inquisitor is being bribed by another power group, one who wants the chapter out of the way. Or maybe there’s a traitor within the chapter’s ranks, one that needs to be eliminated before he bring the entire chapter to ruin. Or, just perhaps, the Inquisitor is framing the chapter, pursuing an agenda of her own.
Either way, the best method for Sartorn to get to the heart of the issue is to get up close and personal with the Inquisition itself – which, if he wants to remain unnoticed, means joining the Deathwatch. It won’t be an easy task, however. If this erstwhile Astartes happens to perform one too many psychic interrogations, people are bound to start asking questions – which means disposing of certain officials who would best be left silenced. To get closer to his target, Codicier Sartorn could end up spending centuries climbing the ranks until he reaches the title of Brother-Captain – centuries that the Marines Stygian don’t have, as there are already those within the Inquisition and the chapter’s first founding parents calling for the declaration of an Excommunicate Traitoris. So, to expedite the process, a number of Brother-Sergeants and Watch-Captains suffer mysterious battlefield “accidents”. Now, Sartorn is operating alongside the Inquisitor who has framed his chapter, and is in a perfect position to strike. But what if the Inquisitor is just a pawn of a greater force? Can Sartorn risk showing his hand too early? Or will his pride in his chapter force him to vent his wrath prematurely?
So let’s take a look at Librarian Sartorn – does he fulfill the requirements for an “Interesting” character? Well, let’s see. He certainly doesn’t embody the usual mold of a Space Marine, but his motivations make sense for an Astartes. He is proud of his chapter, and will do anything to clear their name if need be. He holds himself above regular men, and views their deaths as worthwhile sacrifices to ensure his chapter retains its image. He’s not without severe flaws – when you’re willing to endanger and even kill your superior officers to further your own aims, you’ve crossed the line that most other Astartes would consider acceptable. So, he possesses the motivations and mentality of a Space Marine, but with enough tweaks and flaws to making him stand out from the usual mold.
Now, is he proactive? Sartorn has his own agenda, which he pursues actively through political maneuvering and the use of his psychic powers, along with a healthy reliance on social skills such as deception and scrutiny. That being said, he also has the combative skills of a Space Marine. The chaos of battlefield provides ideal opportunities for him to abduct key officials who he needs to interrogate and to assassinate superiors so that he can earn himself promotions. The character isn’t just a combat tank that can shoot lightning bolts – he has cunning, and a reason to use it.
So, let’s take Sartorn as proof that Astartes characters can have a lot of personality. In fact, Sartorn has a personality and motivations that wouldn’t make sense for most human characters – the causal way that he sacrifices other people’s lives borders on psychopathic, yet he is motivated by a noble cause higher than himself. So, given that, we have answered Question 1: Can Astartes Characters be Interesting? Yes, they can. Now, we have to answer Question 2: Can Deathwatch Campaigns give players the freedom to pursue their own goals?
Let’s see how, if at all, Sartorn could pursue his goal, as a good character concept means nothing if the campaign doesn’t leave room to explore it. First, what does a “typical” Deathwatch campaign entail? The game has an undeniably martial focus, meaning your day-to-day adventuring is mostly combative. Also, unlike in Black Crusade or Rogue Trader where you choose where you are fighting and what you are fighting for, in Deathwatch you an inextricably tied to the Inquisition and the Imperium, who issue your characters their orders, missions, and objectives. Can players pursue their own objectives when constrained by the parameters of Inquisitorial missions? For instance, at the start of this hypothetical Deathwatch campaign, Sartorn’s first personal objective is to identify who his immediate superiors are and to decipher the chain of command, in order to calculate which sergeants, captains, and other personnel need to be incapacitated to bring him closer to his target. This is very difficult to do if your game session begins and ends on the battlefield. If Sartorn is immediately ushered into a drop pod, fired down to the surface, and then collected after the battle’s end by a Thunderhawk gunship, there is no time for him to pursue his own agendas. Yes, he could try and stake out his targets on the battlefield, but that’s very difficult to do without not only compromising your fellow players but also when you’re being attacked by hordes of ravenous orks – orks who do not, and should not, care that you have better, more important, and more intellectually stimulating goals to pursue. As such, in a “standard” Deathwatch campaign, where characters are expected to report to superiors, take orders, and be accountable, there is little room for side adventures or personal stakes.
Something I also want to discuss is whether Deathwatch is a game that rewards different play styles. To figure that out, we need to discuss how Sartorn would mechanically function. Sartorn is a character who relies on deception, first and foremost – skills like Deceive, Forbidden Lore (Inquistion), and Interrogation are all of great necessity to him. Additionally, an understanding of Lore and skilled proficiency with Telepathy are also must-haves. Admittedly, this doesn’t leave much room for Sartorn to prioritize combat abilities, in a game that in its default format is predominantly combat-based. Can Sartorn survive in such an environment, or will he struggle to keep up with and perform alongside the other Battle-brothers of his Kill-Team, mechanically speaking?
Now, let’s say, for the sake of argument, that in a more conventional roleplaying game like Dungeons and Dragons, or even Dark Heresy, there are mainly three character types – Brains, who prioritize Intelligence and Knowledge-based skills; Faces, who excel at social interactions and deception, along with economics; and Tanks, who serve as the group’s muscle. A game like Dark Heresy, or even the higher power levels of Rogue Trader, requires a healthy amount of different character types. A Rogue Trader party, for instance, needs a skilled diplomat to conduct trade, a knowledgeable specialist who can identify various relics and artifacts, and a warrior to defend against the hostile things that inhabit the space between the stars. However, often times these categories prevent a character from specializing in other things, meaning that a player who wants to create a more balanced character might find himself at odds with other characters who are more heavily specialized.
One way in which Deathwatch is a great game is that a character has the mechanical freedom to prioritize mental and social skills without being a completely incompetent fighter, as the abilities of even a newborn Astartes are formidable. If you, as a player, want to play a smart or sociable Space Marine, you can do so without sacrificing the majority of your ability to defend yourself – unlike in games like Dark Heresy and Only War, where your Adepts and Psykers are likely to be utterly steamrollered in a straight punch-up. This imbalance often forces Game Masters to somehow balance combats that will provide a decent challenge for characters like Arbitrators and Guardsmen, who can take a truly punishing amount of damage and still keep swinging, without those same enemies utterly murdering the party’s brains and face. Nevertheless, thanks to the abilities of an Astartes, Sartorn can not only keep up with his fellows on the battlefield but also invest XP in his social skills and psychic powers, without risk of becoming utterly incompetent.
But, unfortunately, just because you can create a smart or sociable Astartes doesn’t mean you should, and most Deathwatch campaigns reward combat characters first and foremost, as opposed to catering to players of all flavors. Deathwatch seems to be a game that severely fails when it comes to rewarding party balance, in that its extremely combat-centric missions leave little room, value, or necessity for lore-based or social characters – character like Sartorn. Let’s take a typical Deathwatch mission – the Imperial Guard has identified a key area that could help them gain a significant territorial advantage in a protracted war against the Orks, but the waves of waves of guardsmen being funneled into the meat grinder have failed to dislodge the xenos. Thus, the Deathwacth is summoned to remove the blockages. Let’s face it, being told that your mission is to charge a bunker full of greenskins and re-take a key bastion provides a great thrill for those of us who like to play the tank, and even players who prefer talking or thinking their way to a solution will likely enjoy bouts of posthuman-fueled bloodletting every now and again.
But what about when every mission follows this primarily combat-based formula, when the research has been done ahead of time? For our players who enjoy social interaction with NPCS, investigation, intrigue and lore, these objective-centered missions clearly favor one type of character build over all others. While in a Dark Heresy game a band of Acolytes is expected to be able not only to investigate and analyze a potential threat but neutralize it, for a Kill-Team all of the research has been done ahead of time – the enemy has been located, its weaknesses have been identified, and now it’s time to send in the Emperor’s Sword. It doesn’t really make sense for Astartes to be investigators or researchers, meaning that all of their intelligence is likely to be delivered by an Inquisitorial NPC right before the start of a battle.
We’ve established that, in a typical Deathwatch campaign, character variety is not really useful or rewarded, which immediately puts a mark against encouraging player initiative – so, while it is possible for Sartorn to specialize in deception, he will not have anywhere near as much time to exercise his skills as players with a more combat-centric focus. Given this, we can conclude that a standard Deathwatch campaign will not reward players who want to break way from the mold. So, while it is possible to create Astartes characters who are interesting and have their own aspirations, it is much more difficult to give players a chance to pursue these aspirations, perhaps even downright impossible within the parameters of a typical Deathwatch campaign. How can a Game Master construct a campaign that caters to players of all types, allows personal objective seeking, but also encapsulates the military lifestyles and regimen of the Space Marines? Additionally, how does he or she do this and also provide scenes in which social and intelligent characters can strut their stuff?
I’m not entirely sure about that part. What do you think?