The small blurb on the dev's diary about mission really got me inspired somehow, and I started to think about what my first game of DW could be about.

I see this game going for a few gaming session... feel free to be critical (positively, hopefully) or to rip off if you like

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The Imperial World of Noveria is under attack by Waagh Gazket, the Imperial Guard lead by the brilliant Commander Yarsef managed to stave off the attack for long enough that Space Marines of the Hawk Lords and Invaders Chapters are now assisting, with a small Squadron of Raven Guards Chapter specialists inbound. However, the cost has already been high, 2 of the 3 continents of the planets are under Greenskin control and have now become charnel pit of slaughter and heresy while battle rages on the last continent.

Noveria is a world of interest for the Ecclesiarchy because it is the final resting place of Saint Karivus, a former Lord Inquisitor and settlers of worlds. He was entombed in a majestic crypt on Noveria, because it was the first world he discovered/settled. The crypt is on one of the continent that fell to the Green Tide. While the Imperial Guard and Marines involved in the planetary defense would dearly love to reclaim the crypt, their effort are focused on the more pressing matter of securing the planet.

This is where the Deathwatch Kill-Team comes in. The Inquisition will not stand to have the remains of one of its most cherished and respected Lord desecrated by filthy Xenos, the team is to be dropped on the continent, their primary objective is to retrieve the remains of Saint Karivus and bring them to the extraction point. Their secondary objectives are to retrieve and bring back any relic of the God-Emperor of Man's Cult that are in the Crypt and to deal as much damage as possible to the invading Ork forces.

Of course, the Drop Pod won't arrive where it was supposed to. The first half of the game will be tense and mainly about stealth and paranoia... as mighty as the Kill-Team is, they can't survive against the full might of the Orkish force on the continent. They will have to travel as stealthily as possible in the warn torn continent that used to be a prosperous imperial world. They'll have to deal with small squadron of Ork fighters quickly and stealthily, hide from Ork flyers and major convey... but also have to deal with pocket of civilian survivors, Imperial Guard resistance fighters and even another strike force of battle-brothers sent to the continent to cripple some Ork objectives... do they help them? Forsake them? Try to steal their ressource to get to their objective faster?

In the second half, the plot thicken. Upon arriving to the shrine, the Kill-Team will find it swarming with Eldars. It turns out that the secret of Karivus' success in life was a stolen Eldar artifact, a Scepter with now unknown properties. The Eldars have finally localized it and are already on the move, going to their extraction point. The Kill-Team will now have to race with the Eldar, trying to stop them, eliminate them and retrieve the Scepter (And this part, having dealt 'correctly' with the surviving IG and the other Marines may actually prove to be helpful) all the while dealing with the marauding Orks who want nothing more than to fight new foes (Those are the boyz left on a vanquished continent, they are bored and ornery... well more so than usual).

When (if) the Kill-Team succeeds in retrieving the remain and the Scepter... they will have to get to the extraction point, all the while wondering how to deal with the fact that one of the Empire's great Hero and bastion of purity was a willing user of forbidden Xeno technology... if he succumbed to this temptation, what else did he succumb to? And what of his pupils who are still alive today? (plot hook for follow up games)

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I was thinking of making the Scepter some kind of object that dealt with the Warp, and having Daemons (or maybe Chaos Marines) involved somehow, but it felt like the plot was getting complicated enough already... beside, it would make a great angle for a follow up game.

You know guys, even if you got nothing to say on my idea, you can post YOUR game idea, this could become some kind of 'I got a writer's block and I need help with a quick idea' thread

That sounds really good, I've never done anything like this before so I'll probably adapt a few of these ideas if you don't mind.

I was thinking of having a series of small skirmish type games before building up to dropping the kill team into a pitched battle like commandos but I'm not so sure now

I like your idea a lot. That's how I imagine DW games ought to look like.

I think your idea is awesome. Nice twists and lots of opportunity to overcome adversity. Well done.

Please share more as you flesh your idea out.

Regards,

Xykal

This is a really nice idea - if the orks got wind of what was in the tomb, a Big mek might be interested in using it, probably as an add on to a Deff Dread or a shiny new personal weapon.

You may want to think about whether or not the Deathwatch team would be expected to cause damage to Ork infrastructure while there - the problem, as you realised is that they cannot reveal their presence too overtly - but the opportunity of knocking off a high ranking Ork boss might be tempting if it would help the other marine chapters or Guard to reduce the pressure a little.

Well, since this forum is pretty calm and Xykal asked me, I figured I’d write some more about this. Feel free to comment/suggest/criticize. I’m going to write this in a bit of a ‘book’ format, but also pretty formal, dropping my thoughts as I do.

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The Briefing

The game will start with the debriefing. I’m heavily thinking of putting a NPC chaperon with the players, this will be their first Deathwatch game and while they have some experience playing Rogue Trader, this is an entirely different game. The npc will be the Sergeant of the squad and his main job will be the guide the ‘roleplay’ and give the players some kind of template as to how Space Marine behave. His personality and skills are of course to be determined, but odds are he’ll be a Tactical Marine of the Ultramarine Chapter… you can’t be more ‘baseline’ than that really >_>. Although his role/chapter will be changed depending on my group… I really don’t want him to steal the spotlight.

It will also eliminate the need to establish a ‘in-player’ command structure right away, letting the need for it to happen when he dies (Because he will – yay for killing Ultramarines!) after the players are more comfortable in there character and thus have fleshed them out more.

So the first scene opens with them meeting the Inquistor Lord tasking them with their mission. They will be debriefed, given their objectives and weapon load out and take whatever oaths they find necessary with a Chaplain (I’m assuming those all varies from mission to mission based on the dev’s diaries). They will also get some time to roleplay and ‘screw around’ so to speak. In game, this whole thing more or less happens between the meeting with the Inquisitor and them getting to their pod, and can easily be ‘skipped’ through of roleplaying doesn’t pick up.

The continent they are being sent on is heavily industrialized/built. It is clear that if the growth of the city on it keeps going at this rate, the planet will eventually become a Hive World. As such, the entire continent is a sprawling city, full of spires and skyscrapers…. Or what’s left of them as the orks are having a jolly good time bringing the whole thing down.

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Point of No Return

The Drop pod will be send screaming down to Earth, with the Marines bracing themselves for impact, blessing their weapon, chanting pray to the Emperor... whatever is it they do to get in the zone. They will be a mishap… a one in a billion occurrence – the Drop Pod will hit an Ork Flyer in a freak accident. The Adamantite hull of the pod will shatter the ork flyer and cause it to blow up in a fiery explosion… but the impact will cause the pod to spiral out of control, it will smash through 3 skyscrapers and land in a thunderous smash of flying rockcrete and dust.

The Marines don’t have much time to collect their thoughts… Drop Pods already aren’t very stealthy in the first place, but this was a very dramatic entrance even for one. The Green Tide is on to them and is out for blood. What’s worse is that they don’t really now how far off their objective they strayed and the communication array inside the Pod has been damaged.

Either way they are in for quite a trek, they landed 80miles away from their destination, which was itself a half-day walk from the crypt.
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Day1

‘Hold your position!’
Staying at the pod to try and repair the communication array or operate it despite its damaged condition are logical choice. They may decide to fortify their position as they do so – the ruins they landed in will certainly provide plenty of cover. Assuming they have a member of the squad who is Tech savy enough, they will get an opportunity to find out information as to their current location (Either by repairing the communication array and talking to the commander in the ship or by getting the land coordinate out of the Inertial Guidance System in the pod). Regardless, if they decide to stay, the Greenskins will find them and attack them. After getting rid of the first attack, the Marines should realize that they need to move and leave the pod behind, as more orks will be drawn to it until they are overwhelmed.

‘Move out!’
Moving out of a burning wreck that acts as a signal pyre to all hostiles within kilometers is also a rational option (and they will eventually have to do so even if they originally decide to stay at the pod). During the briefing, the Space Marine will have been shown a map of the city where the crypt is, and those who are smart enough (or trained in Navigation) will have a decent chance of finding just exactly where they are, by using remaining street sign or still recognizable ruins of great building/statues. All of this, will have to be done while being stealthy, as the Orks are inbound. This option gives a much greater chance to avoid conflict, as the Orks will be too busy ripping the pod apart for ‘Good Bitz!’ to mount effective hunting parties. The ‘stealth’ rolls won’t be too difficult since this is a war torn city with plenty of dust, rubble, smokes and fire to cause distractions. The key here is to enhance a sense of danger as the players duck from cover to cover, wishing that Trukk full of Boyz doesn’t seem them… all the while hoping someone figure out where the hell they landed and if they’re even going in the right direction. If they fail their role spectacularly (I’ll be lenient) or if they act dumb, they will get in a fight.

‘Onward!’
This is the transition from day 1 to day 2. The outcome is that the players are on the move, either toward the objective or toward something they identified as easily defendable (in case they still don’t know where they are in the city). The key difference between them being with a goal or aimless will be shown during the event in the next scene.

Note that the term ‘day’ is used very loosely. Space Marine don’t really need to sleep every night and are fully capable of operating at night (in fact, since orks have poor night vision according to fluff, it would be smarter to do so).

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That’s it for now.

Lookin' good! Keep it coming. Any scenario involving Orks gets my vote naturally. You should try and bring out the comedy element with those Orks as much as you can, despite the dark nature of the role-play - some crazy Mek inventions (Tinbots that pursue the PCs through No Man's Land, hovering Chinork koptas with hissing Steamcannons, Lootas mounting their Deffguns on Orkified Sentinels etc...), as well as opportunities to show the effects of Ork victory on a planet - overrun by Gretchin, Squigs and mounted Ork bikers like 'Mad Max' buzzing about.

Very nice, Tarkand! This is looking like a brilliant campaign.

I agree with RedMike about the comedy aspects of Orks, but don't hold back on the tragedy for the human population oppressed by the Orks either. You can both enhance the comedy and tragedy of the situation by having the players encounter a camp where human slaves are driven to death constructing utterly bizarre Ork inventions that misfire amusingly. Perhaps freeing some of the slaves could become a secondary or tertiary objective.

Lightbringer said:

Personally, I think that the comedy and horror elements of the Orks come out naturally in their own ways.

The 'comedy' angle of Orks is from their own mindset - they're raucous, violent and recklessly enthusiastic, and take a light-hearted approach to pretty much everything they do. Orks fight joyous wars, and they fight them often. Orks fighting amongst themselves can take sufficient punishment that internecine violence is seldom fatal, so it resolves most of the disputes within their society, but when it comes to fighting others, few Orks care that their enemies generally can't withstand the same amount of harm (it's why Orks like fighting Space Marines - they're tough and really enjoyable to fight).

However, that humour seldom translates to those fighting the Orks - to the man in the trenches, the Ork is a massive hulking green monster that eats people and laughs in the face of enemy firepower, a situation made worse by the sheer number of Orks on a given battlefield. They're savage, terrifying, relentless, seemingly heedless of their own mortality, and entirely willing to throw themselves at heavily-defended fortifications in great numbers without hesitation (this is, of course, because a defended position makes for a really good fight, which inherently attracts lots of Orks, but most humans don't know that).

Couldn't agree more, N0-1! It's that conflict between how much fun the Orks are having and how much misery they're causing everyone else that takes them out of the realm of just "light relief."

I'm actually more inclined to agree with No-1 here...

Don't get me wrong, I love me some orky humor and mayhem, but I've recently read Rynn's World, which tell the history of the Crimson Fists. In this story, the Marines/Human do not understand the ork language and the ork end up being portrayed much more like monsters than the comedic relief that they are often seen as. Horror is what the ork bring to the book, not comedy... and I kinda liked that. Since my players have not read it, I may even steal stuff from it.

That's not to say that what they do couldn't be seen as darkly humorous from a 3rd party observer, but to the Kill-Team that is in the deep of it, I don't think it should be funny.

Perhaps freeing some of the slaves could become a secondary or tertiary objective.

I think I may have to do that yeah...

My original idea was to put 'Do as much damage to the ork as possible without compromising the other objectives' as a tertiary objective... but if the player decided to play 'hardcore gung-ho badass' they may truly not give a **** about surviving civilian. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing - the Kill-Team doesn't have time to escort civilian to safety or babysit them and they may very well have to leave them behind to their death regardless... but I'd like the decision to be a morally difficult one rather than a shrug of the shoulders (Doing something that you feel is wrong because you're ordered/have no choice vs Not caring about it).

So in short, I need to find a way to make the Marine care about the civilian... otherwise they'll just walk pass the 'slave camp' (or whatever) to get to their objective faster.

I totally agree, giving the players a choice between two tertiary objectives that are at polar opposites of the moral spectrum could provide some really interesting opportunities for roleplaying... On the one hand the players see a Gargant construction yards and have time to blow it up, on the other thay see a death camp with thousands of slaves in it, who they have time to free...but they only have time to carry out one of these tertiary objectives. There's no "right answer," it's up to the players to roleplay out how the various marines would deal with this situation according to their natures, personalities etc.

A Marines Malevolent Deathwatch operative would probably have a different attitude to a Salamanders marine, for example (OK, I know those two chapters aren't playable (yet) but you get the idea...)