I've been reading these fora for a year and half now, and found everyone the be polite and informative. My group started last August on our Deathwatch campaign, and, for a while, had a lot of fun. This Saturday we finally got to the end of "The Emperor Protects". TPK. One power level 10 smite was enough for the whole team. I just wanted to say thanks to everyone for the helpful advice and great ideas, but I have to be honest, too. This system ground me down. With only 2 players out of seven that would read the rules, talents and traits spread out over several books, and the CONSTANT complaints of one of the players, I'm done. Moving on to something simpler.

Thanks

Anvil

I definitely agree about the rules being a bit too spread out, which is one of the disadvantages especially with "rules-heavy" (aka clunky) systems such as these, but other than that it sounds as if your problems stem largely from the people you're playing with.

Maybe some day you'd like to try again with a different group? Or maybe try one of the other, slightly less clunky 40k games such as 2E Dark Heresy. I know one of the things that immediately caused me a headache was that just playing the Astartes "race" burdens a player with an entire page full of special rules to keep in mind. I mean, I kinda appreciate the attention to detail, but this is the most obvious example of where FFG's 40k games overdid it, especially when it's applied so uneven throughout the systems.

Best of luck either way! There's certainly other cool games out there, too.

SM special rules are a piece of cake, and they are written on your character sheet. Try remembering squad and solo modes, cohesion rules, oath taking (and what comes with each oath etc, add errata to that)

I may get flamers or even melta guns fired at me for this, but I don't really consider the DW game system all that complicated.

I like GURPS as a system (Prepares to leap into adamantium plated bunker while rest of board members are still stunned.) and in fact would have stayed with gurps if the guy running the company that makes it hadn't turned out to be a TEXAS SIZED ahole along with too many of the other company.

So to me the DW system just isn't that complex. (Jumps into armored bunked and slams hatch even as the first frag grenade lands at his feet.)

Complicated? Not necessarily. Poorly organized, oh yeah. I found myself putting around 10 hours of prep before each 4 hour game session just looking up special abilities. I guess I'm more of an old school guy. We are switching to Castles & Crusades, which is pretty darn uncomplicated. That 10:4 ratio above is also why I switched from D&D 3.x. Once I drew that conclusion the writing was on the wall. Funny thing is, I absolutely love being a PC in Deathwatch. Now if only my layabout friends would run it...

So what game are you gonna play next? savage worlds?

tghe easy solution is to limit what books you use, or trust your players to manage things to a degree.

if all your players happen to be using first founding chars, just for example, honor the chapter isn't important and can be ignored.