Before I run my first Deathwatch game this weekend, I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions to make it more exciting for the players?

Seems to be a lot of combat, which I can see becoming tedious. The book gives some ideas for mixing things up a bit, but even then, combat seems like it could grow arduous.

Any ideas for some sort of puzzle element? My players are fans of brain-intensive problems, but there don't seem to be any in this demo adventure (other than figuring out how to take out all of those hordes).

I'm also toying with the idea of having marines in melee get an extra hit of magnitude for every 1 degree of success, as 2 degrees of success seems fairly weak. Marines in melee can seemingly expect to do 1-2 hits to hordes in a round...while the bolter weapons can do an easy 3-10+. I can see my melee enthusiasts weeping at their character choices.

Bloodtyrant said:

I played the first part of Final Sanction. My experience is that the players liked the new scale of combat, initially. For the first part you won't have any problems. I assigned a kill score of 1D3 kills per magnitude damage and told the players their totals after the session, only given estimates of the damage of an attack in play. That worked well.

As for role-playing, I can not assure you enough of the necessity to take the time to brief the players in detail about the character of Space Marines (see the marine psychology topic) and encouraging them to develop an individual personality before play. Or create some dynamic between characters. Make up that one PC has a habit of borrowing things from another PC without returning them. Sth that is likely to come up frequently in battle or inbetween. Precreating some inter-PC dynamic with the players should be very valuable.

As for puzzling, make the task of finding the lair given the hint more complicated.

As for your melee characters, I can see your Devastator weeping when a genestealer charges him in close combat.

Alex

One possibility that was hinted at in the Designer's Diaries but ultimately given little space in the free demo (the "free" bit in there probably says much) was the social angle. For example, rather than putting them down in the middle of nowhere as a means of illustrating how "cool" (errm...) the Horde rules are, why not focus more on getting them to the Imperial Commander so that they can be involved in the "big picture?" None of the crap about the super-powerful NPC assassin that can ream them a new one.

Other than that, ak-73's suggestions seem to have some traction.

Kage

Kage2020 said:

Ha, in my game I am enjoying the mystery. Of course, they gunned down Syndalla when she started to change shape. Now they have noone to brief them their objectives, tough. Oh, I have given the Dark Angel player a hint from his chapter about Avalos being headed for catastrophe. (That wording allowed me to hint at the upcoming tyranid invasion without stating so outright, the civil war being an outright catastrophe by itself already.) Maybe that's what made him trigger-happy.

Now they need ammo with the Devastator mowing down hordes like there is no tomorrow. And without Syndalla they have nowhere to go. I expect them asking for directions towards the governor's mansion soon though. That should be interesting; I think I'll make the governor a bit like Hitler in the Downfall, bad news coming in all over and him losing his composure one or two times. The PCs will be his only good news in quite some time. I hope I'll get the strangeness of his considering himself peers to the PCs across properly, that should be fun.

Anyway, if the combat gets too tedious, put some thought in on events happening during the role-play parts... an officer stepping in with more bad news during the conversation with the governor. Or another confusing or foreshadowing vision of the Astropath. A PDF officer who refuses to hand out bolter ammunition without the proper requisition form, signed by the Joint Chief of Staffs and stamped by the governor's office.

That's where the effort for the preparation for the scenario might go into.

Alex

Roleplaying as the stuff that happens between the combat?

Kage

Random question, are the renown rewards of "1v1 a genestealer" and "Do most damage to Broodlord" supposed to be fully revealed at the beginning of the mission, or are the players just supposed to be surprised when they're awarded extra renown for accomplishing those tasks?

Bloodtyrant said:

If you do, it gets very gamey, I assume. I won't tell anybody.

Alex

My group and I played some of Final Sanction this weekend....we had a blast btw, even with all of the gameplay/rules questions we had and still have. The complete rules REALLY need to come out sooner than later.

Anyway, I hinted to my players that Renown was a stat that had opportunities for personal glory from time to time to earn them beyond group objectives. One of the players attacked and killed a Genestealer by himself, to help save another player who was in trouble. When this ends I will reward him the extra point and make a comment about it, bringing my earlier hint home for future sessions.

RolandC said:

I told my players that any xp they gathered would be transferred to their actual characters we will create when Deathwatch is out. Renown gain will only be so that players get an initial impression how much they would have earned.

Alex

ak-73 said:

My players are already very attached to their marines, so there will be a slight character reboot once Deathwatch is actually out, but I am going to let them keep their renown and experience. I was planning on this just being "practice", but I was pleasantly surprised by how much they embraced their roles and got into the characters. However, once my techie friend gets his hands on the Techmarine rules and they all see the Librarian....all of this loyalty will probably get tossed out the window.