I know some you people played the scenario. Lets get some feedback on the table.

How was it? What was fun about it? How did it work out for you? How did your player's like it?

I'm Itching here. Gotta have something while we wait for the upload.

Cheers

-L

My group was looking for ideas on what game to play next, and Deathwatch was on the table. As a preview I ran this scenario for them, and managed to sway them all from "maybe" to "hell yes we want to play this now". Overall the adventure was well done.

Cons

There is no map of the city, which would have been nice, even a rough sketch of how the districts were laid out would've helped a great deal.

Character sheets had to be cut out, but are printed back to back so some manual copying had to take place. Making them one sided with some relevant rules on the back side would've made more sense from a intro to characters perspective.

Pros

Fast and easy to get started, I was familiar enough with the fluff of 40k to get my players a basic idea of who they were and what they were doing.

Presents challanges to even Marine characters with the Hordes mechanic, as well as the xenos encountered.

Did a great job showing players that this was more than a 'shoot them up and that's all you can do' game.

Ran this adventure yesterday at a local gaming shop and was quite impressed. I think everyone had a good time and enjoyed being bad-ass marines.

I thought the horde rules worked particularly well, and it was nice to see the players getting all cocky after mowing down several hundred rebels only to later be jumped by a single genestealer which almost tore off a PCs arm before they put it down.

The only draw back I found was it was a bit too big for running in a single session (not really a drawback if you have more time) as we played for two hours and really only just got through the first battle and started exploring the city - I could have easily kept it going for another 2 hours and then another session or two after that I reckon.

I'll also agree a map of city would have been nice - as it was I sketched one out for player just to give them a visual aid.

Otherwise though very nice scenario - ends on a cliffhanger too so I hope they do what they did last year and release a web follow up

Enjoyed the heck out of it! I just posted a review over on my blog www.forsakendestiny.com that might be helpful. Also I whipped up a map of Lordsholm with Campaign Cartographer and posted it there as well if anyone is interested.

Nice job FFG, you've got another hit here!

I'm glad people enjoyed it

I have to agree. I ran it twice, and all the players had a blast. Everyone liked the Horde rules, and they worked well. As mentioned, this really isn't a 2-hour demo adventure. This is an adventure that could take 2 or 3, 4-5 hour game sessions to complete. Bad for a Free RPG-day demo, great as an adventure. I also totally agree that it really needed a rough sketch of the city showing where the different districts are in relation to each other. There is some seemingly contradicting information in the various sections, and I had a hard time sorting it out.

Played as Brother Lucian (the apothecary) and totally enjoyed it. It is a longer scenario (about 5 hrs for us, and reading the adventure later, the GM had cut out a lot of the extra encounters to get all the major stuff in). The hordes rule worked great, as far as I experienced it. The Missions thing I really like; it gives you very clear objectives without railroading you into achieving them any particular way, and (again) when I came to reread the adventure later, I found we had achieved most everything. I think the only place we didn't get to at all was the tavern (only mentioned), much to the distress of the Space Wolves. The extra characters were very useful as well, as our table had 7 players (we had two Space Wolves). I also thought everyone's marine had a character, so I am now not too worried about characters - how 100% true we were to the general space marine ethos I am not sure, as I am more a Inquisition fangirl than a Marine fangirl (thus far...) and I probably need to read a lot more fluff, but I really enjoyed it for a first try.

My personal triumphs were annihilating two genestealers by myself and killing a filthy heretic rebellion leader who dared to attack me with his power sword. I also feel I got to live up to my character's scholarly nature by being the speaker and negotiator. But I think my secret favourite moment was when the planetary governor threw cutlery at the genestealers. Now there was a proper citizen of the Emperor! He would not stand by and allow the filthy xenos to exist while he still had his breadknife! ^-^b

I've been running Rogue Trader for many months now, so I was looking forward to Deathwatch as a diversion we can fiddle with now and then. I drove for 45 minutes to pick this thing up (to the only store in my state participating), so I was pretty happy with the free stuff I got (not just Deathwatch )!

The Hordes rules are great, and I'll definitely be porting them to Rogue Trader (angry primitive natives? you bet.)

I was a little disappointed at the included marines, but four is a fair number for a party, and they are only pre-gens after all.

The Demeanours mechanic has me curious, giving you a basic mechanical benefit for actually giving an attempt at roleplaying (and is probably a good idea in a game where the entire party is made up of combat monsters). This is something that could be ported to other games with no real effort, and will get newer players into the idea.

I agree with Dvang below that it's more of a full-blown adventure than a one-off, and to me that's a bonus. No inclusion of a map of the area puts a little more work on the GM's shoulders, but it gives you some flexibility.

If it wasn't a free-rpg day thing though, I'd be muttering about the heavy focus on combat. Great for getting attention from neophytes, but I look for a little more substance. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing more of the other tasks Deathwatch kill-teams might tend to.

TheMadGM said:

Uhh... not to be critical, but this just strikes me as odd. I mean, the characters are a part of an organization called " Death watch", and formed into kill -teams. It's like watching a football game and then saying "well, it was alright, but that was really kinda of heavy on the sports, wasn't it?" I figure the Inquisition and Rogue Traders should indeed have a broad range of focus and specialty (and I was personally miffed that every character in Rogue Trader was automatically at least good at combat, myself), but Deathwatch is about taking a group of 8' tall, over-muscled, genetically engineered supersoldier knight-monks who wear something akin to tank armor, and who spend their whole lives engaged either in war or training for war, and then honing them even further to create elite xenos-killing beasts.

Light on substance? Perhaps. But they're called kill -teams for gods sakes!

To FFG's credit though, even in a combat heavy adventure they did provide opportunities to do other things rather than just shooting/cleaving renegades. There were moral concerns for friendly forces, opportunities to engage in battlefield investigation and negotiation, and even some political concerns in regards to the planetary Governor. And it was all in a context that worked: war.

I know I'm harping on the naming conventions here, but I really am curious to know what you expect from a kill-team other than, well, killing?

got a copy of the adventure but haven't played through it with the group yet.
did watch it being run by one of the ffg freelance writers on free rpg day
but heres some 'at a glance feedback'

the mass combat rules are some of the best smooth running ones Ive seen in a game
(ever play mass combat in exalted? =O)
the adventure is a bit heavy on its focus on bringing this new mechanic.
suitably challenging for a decent team, but quite difficult for smaller parties (2-3)
the demeanor mechanic is a good way to get roleplay into the game when it could be completely overshadowed by 'I shoot it'
the scenerio is quite open to the gm having a fair amount of fun with it, though maps would of been useful.
the pregen characters were laid out pretty well so you knew everything at a glance. rule sum up good, gear sum up good, easy pick up and play.
I did like the genestealers and their dirty tactics, though was suprised that the broodlord was oddly stated without dodge. maybe you were trying to
make that last fight a bit easier since he was pretty nails but 80 wounds can disappear suprisingly quickly.
completeing objectives had actual feeling of reward and importance, and the fact that many things were timed added an extra
challenge factor while improving the focus on keeping a good pace.
The scenerio works well with the fluff and can easily be expanded on by any gm.
when the game is actually fully released the scenerio is a good potential campaign starter easily and good for breaking in new characters.
The bad guys were written as actually smart bad guys rather than being inept in any way, and that helps the feel that the scenerio would be
utterly lost if it wasn't for the attention of the deathwatch.
would of liked a few more rules hints, example I know the space marines didn't have a flamer, but what is the effect of a flamer on a horde? it could of been important to potential improvisation on the players part.

so overall Kudos, good job and I look forward to seeing more.

theDevilofWormwood said:

You answered your own question. I want more of this:

theDevilofWormwood said:

There's other stuff to do. I'm looking forward to seeing what other things are suggested to add to the mix there, is all.

Here's my tidbit of feedback:

The Assault Marine should be the Devastator Marine and the Devastator Marine should be the Assault Marine.

Just my view on it though.

-=Brother Praetus=-

Ah Thanks guys. A little reading to keep me (and others) going until they release the thing on the net.

I'm really looking forward to this book. Hope its got alot of Background stuff in it but knowing FFG it probably has. The Horde rules sounds neat. I laughed at the cocky marine taking down a horde of cultists and then nearly loosing an arm to a genestealers. It sets things in perspective.

-L

Brother Praetus said:

I had this impression as well. I thought it was odd to have a DA Assault Marine and BA Devastator Marine the chapters certainly have those roles, but they aren't iconic and don't go well with their chapter-specific abilities. I'd have expected the introduction adventure to really typecast the chapters in their roles.

Overall I think there were a -lot- of rebel hordes, and I ended up cutting some out just to shorten the length of the adventure (4 hour session on Free RPG Day). My group ended up going straight for mission objectives, bypassing a lot of tertiary objectives, which also helped shorten the adventure.

I think they did a good job of intertwining some social encounters with the combat encounters without breaking the city-under-siege premise probably 2/3 of the encounter locations have some sort of social encounters to them (Imperial Chapel, PDF Base, Thorsholt Manor, House of Echoes, Blind Saint all do).

At first I was a little worried about the amount of damage the Genestealers could put out, but the Marines also put out a ton of damage the fights between the two are very deadly. The Astartes Bolters/Bolt Pistols connecting multiple times on either semi-auto or full-auto are really devastating. We had a few instances where the Devastator connected with 7 Heavy Bolter rounds, wallpapering a nearby barricade with genestealers.

Only two things we ran into when playing it:

1) It seems a bit too long for a Free RPG Day event. We were still in the Portica District at the four hour mark while all the other events were either over or wrapping up. That makes the module itself a great value for a free product, but a bit too much of a good thing for the event. Looking back, the only way we could have really speeded things up would have been to just ignore everything but the final goal.

2) We had a question about the Breaking A Horde rule. It states that when the Magnitude is reduced by 25% in a turn it must take a Willpower Test, but we had a question as to whether that was 25% of the original Magnitude, or 25% of the Magnitude from the start of the turn. Otherwise the only questions anyone had about the rules were answered in the FAQ here.

Overall, it was a fun game and has me looking forward to the full book!

theDevilofWormwood said:

If the game is just about killing things, or even just very largely about killing things ... doesn't that just make it a slightly more narrative version of the tabletop game?

1. I agree it was way too long for a free RPG day game. It had about 3x the playtime than Forsaken Bounty. Which is fine for some groups, but our FLGS was running free games back to back and had 3 hour slots. We ended up skipping 2/3rds of the action.

2. We used minis, but ran into issues of scale. How big is a horde? Our GM used 25m squares for the chapel fight, which put the entire area on his game mat, but I didn't like moving my Space Wolf one square a turn at a run. He used a mini to show us the *center* of a horde, but it wasn't clear where the edges where. I'm not sure that DW will fit well with 1m squares.

3. The hook was great, got us right into it.

4. I figured Space Wolves for close combat types. Boy was I surprised to have only a knife and pistol. LOL, my bad for not reading the sheet better. On the other hand, my pistol worked well against Genestealers.

5. We loved the mass combat rules even with a few issues around using minis. I'd love to port this to Rogue Trader for times when the players empty out their barracks. The one-pdf horde nullifies one-npc horde was such a simple mechanic, and kept the action focused on the PCs. Well done.

If the game is just about killing things, or even just very largely about killing things ... doesn't that just make it a slightly more narrative version of the tabletop game?

Hardly. It depends on your group, but this is a RPG. There are lots of ways to kill things, without being even remotely like the tabletop game. For example, in one of my games this weekend the team encountered some rebels with 3 siege guns attacking a PDF barricade. The SM team had a few members distract the rebels, while the assault marine jumped to & captured one of the siege guns. Then, they started firing the captured siege gun at the other rebel siege guns to break the rebel siege.

That's one example of combat/killing situation that isn't represented by the tabletop. There are also several points where the SM need to bolster the spirits of local friendly PDF forces, or else they will break. The PCs also need to coordinate with the local planetary governor, for example.

This adventure is pretty heavy on combat ... but you could still run a DW adventure that is light on combat and much more investigative.

For example, the demo adventure ... if the SM had arrived before the rebellion broke out. They would be doing a lot of investigating and negotiating and speaking to people to find out information about the infestation.

Sithlet said:

Adam France said:

H.B.M.C. said:

Yes It's pretty obvious what they were going for. I thought it was very successful for the Space Wolf and Ultra Marine, but I disliked The Blood Angel and Dark Angel. They just reversed the stereotypes on those 2 which is no more imaginative than the original stereotype. Plus there's nothing wrong with those Stereotypes. Allot of People will at least initially want to play their favourite Chapters Iconic character, and for the Blood Angels that is an assault marine, They didn't have to make the Blood Angel a raving HTH loony, but just swapping the Blood Angel and Dark Angel stereotypes was disappointing.

H.B.M.C. said:

An RPG game design has a focus, a type of encounter that is stressed in the rules and character abilities. I'm sure they'll be support of other options, but Deathwatch is going to stress big, over-the-top, combat.

Gnomestew said it better than I could: http://www.gnomestew.com/gming-advice/the-surprisingly-vertical-impact-of-encounter-type

The lineup of DH, RT, & DW provides interesting choices in focus. For those who rail against a combat centric game, try Dark Heresy or Rogue Trader.

If what you want is role playing without combat, 40k is the wrong setting.

Fulminata said:

I don't understand this reasoning. People are complaining that there's too much content?

Things may work differently here, but in my experience Free RPG Day is more of a chance to get swag and try it with your own groups at your leisure, and not in-store on the day itself (though, I wouldn't mind if that was implemented locally, to be perfectly honest).

Limiting your adventures to a 2-4 hour scenario, especially for a new system trying to show off it's goodies, seems counter to a good marketing strategy.

Though I suppose more in-store advertisement couldn't hurt, I think showcasing a variety of different encounter types for a new system is the way to go. Granted, Final Sanction didn't exactly do that, so maybe I'm shooting myself in the foot with this argument.

Either way, assuming a standard quality, more = better, in my book.

6 Genestealers surprising 3 marines = no chance

In my group 3 space marines (storm warden, devastator, assault) was going to meet the Lord Governor. I ran the encounter with the Genestealers who surprised the player Space Marines. Because of only 3 players, I cut down the Genestealers by 2. So 6 Genestealers "almost" surprising the players as they entered the governors meeting hall, they didnt even have a chance. And the Genestealers didn’t even have a surprise turn. 2 rounds and we could see where it was going. Even spending permanent fate points almost every round to survive, the space Marine to only 2 Genestealers down.
Maybe they would have a chance if they had some more distance like 100-200 meter, but not even the Lord Governor mansion has so large rooms.

We tried to rerun the encounter with 2 Genestealers, and this time the Space Marines won in 2 rounds. So something in between would be more like it. Or is it just us doing something wrong.

We are continuing the adventure later this summer, and are looking forward to rejoice further into the world of Avalos.

Genestealers are nuts.

I used one - full rules, not demo rules - at the end of the last session we played as a sort of "Boo!" surprise boss. The Arbite in our group is only alive because of the Dodge he made (dodging the Genestealer's fourth attack). All the other ones carved into him, and it took everyone else to bring the thing down in a single round (including help from the nearly-dead Tech-Marine they had with them). The hilarious part is that when rolling for Initiative I rolled a 1, and still beat their highest score (full rules Genestealers get D10+24 for Init rolls).

I'm not surprised that 6 Demo-Stealers tore 3 Marines apart. Now imagine them with full rules (Lightning Attack + 4 arms, Unnatural Reflexes, Unnatural Agility X2).

That's one of the reason I can't wait to play this scenario using our own characters (we've already started working on it). Let's see how 'Stealers do against a Dark Angel Librarian.

BYE