Wanted to gather thoughts on how squads are named within the Deathwatch. The Squad/Solo Mode sheet has a "Squad Designation" section even. I have the core rulebook and was a playtester and this was never covered (wish I had thought of it months ago..alas). So, thoughts? I know in the short story Headhunted the squad is referred to simply as "Sigma", so I suppose you could use various letters of the Greek alphabet, but that seems a bit dull.

Anybody have some good ideas?

Space marines typically name their squad after their sergeant.

Deathwatch have no sergeants; any member of the kill-team can act as leader. In fact the squad leader will change from mission to mission. So sadly, not quite that easy.

Interesting question... maybe the Deathwatch squads don't even have official designations. Many modern special forces do not use squad designations. This is because every team is a mission-specific adhoc formation and exists only for that specific mission. When the mission is planned you assign mission specific call-signs to each element. These are radio call-signs and also used in briefing and after-action reports. Thus you might have Kill-Team called Sigma Alpha in one mission, Eagle One in second mission and Primary in next.

Of course if your Kill-Team works for the same inquisitor for longer time and there are same auxiliary elements involved most of the time they would probably have set call-signs used over and over: "Flame Actual calling Skull, Flame Actual calling Skull... Piggy and Kitten are inbound in five. Safety distance zero-point-five mike." (translated into: Inquisitor himself calls Deathwatch Kill-Team to warn them to stay at least half a mile away from drop-zone so they won't accidentally get crushed by the two Land Raiders being dropped there in five minutes.)

Well, perhaps the members of the squad serve on a permanent basis together so you could give them an honourary title (Saviours of this, Defenders of that, The Swords of blabla). Or perhaps even just a designation. (Kill-team Delta-4)

Or you could give it a Lords of the Rings approach and name the party depending on who's on charge of the mission or the nature of their objectives. (The Brothers of Vengeance for a strike mission, The Emperor's Piercing Gaze for a covert intelligence mission, Fellowship of the Ring in case they need to take a daemonic artefact somewhere, etc etc...

I would consider the naming some sort of award,

ie after the group has completed ?3? (or two, or whatever, depending on the frequency of gaming) sessions or one stellar session, the players get to name their Unit. And they should be rewarded with a modest amount of XP for any imaginative name they come up.

As an aside, I encourage players to come up with fluffy details, so maybe one of the player wishes to pen out the actual document of recognition of the squad name with a reference to the exploit that triggered the award etc.

So, name the squad based on merit, and ask the players for an allusion toe either past exploits, a emperor-worthy theme or somesuch....

As a rule, the squad name should have no more that three, better two or one, (noun) words.

Not that it means much, but I find Polaria's argument to be the far more appealing one at the moment.

Kage

Team Theta Quatre Muffin reporting.

Now I'm having shades of Cyberpunk/Shadowrun . People giving themselves awesome sounding names like "Death Shroud," or team names like "Flame of Vengeance," and then having them changed on the fly. The fast-talking, loud-mouthed mage called "Mouth" that gets re-named "Mouse" after a particularly embarrassing firefight where he didn't really hold it together. The joys of "Death Shroud" becoming "Linen Wrap," or "Flame of Vengeance" becoming... errr... "Candle in the Wind."

Kage

Numbers for Me, the question is who gets to be Number 2

FatPob said:

Which brings a whole new meaning to " Semper in excremento, sole profundum qui variat ."

Kage

so true

My setting isn't going to be the official location mentioned in the game. The Kill Team squads deployed to this AO will all have the names of precious stones as their designator, Alabastor, Onyx, Amber, etc.

Baradiel said:

So semi precious stones then

'Sigma' sounds cool and that but if are going down that avenue there are only 24 greek letters.

Face Eater said:

Right, but when you've got Kill-team designated ε-7µ you have more options. Hehehe... Noble Team .

-=Brother Praetus=-

kenshin138 said:

Actually they do have Sergeants if you read any of the actual novels (ie the canon) you will see they do each Squad is normally led by a deatchwatch captain which is different then a watch captain and the squads are normally named after them. The leader changing for each mission is a game mechanic not they way the squads are actually done.

souljawebb said:

The RPG is considered canon as well. FFG was given quite a bit of freedom in developing the Deathwatch so you will actually see a few retcons and whatnot. There is no difference between a "deathwatch captain" and a "watch captain". Its just wording since a lot of the DW fluff was never layed out before. Per the new fluff there are only a handful of ranks within the Deathwatch, and sergeant is not one of them. Now a brother sergeant may join the Deathwatch, but he is a sergeant of his Chapter, not of the Deathwatch. As such he will not always be the team leader. Kill Teams are built to be very flexible and the rotating squad-leader role is part of that. As such, a Kill-Team does not have a single name they can use. Also a Watch Captain has one or more kill teams under him, so he rarely leads them directly.

Also per the novels they are almost always led by an Inquisitor, which is not the case in the RPG. In fact I was a little shocked at the change, but I think its a good one overall.

kenshin138 said:

o ye, C S Goto the most backest author

DW Space Marine said:

Indeed, I'm not touching any of his writings again, even with a10-foot pole while wearing a HazMat suit. I'm an avid reader and I always try to finish a book or film, even if it's bad. But his books were the only ones ever that I put down after half a chapter and never, ever touched them again...

souljawebb said:

And if you read the "canon" (aka, the Deathwatch RPG rulebook), they have no sergeants, only Captains and Commanders. Captains will be in charge of several Deathwatch Killteams, and won't go out in battle with them unless it's against something "REALLY BAD", and Commanders run an entire sector, and really don't go out for battles unless it's "EVEN WORSE".

The RPG is canon, so saying "that's not how it's actually done" is incorrect. Depending on who wrote the novels you are talking about, I'd consider their contributions as either equal or ignore them (like Goto's tripe *shudder*).

the novels were ublished by games workshop and I know they have no Seargents however they have a deathwatch captain that leads each squad a rpg published by fantasy flight games doesnt sunddly become canon and overrule novels published by the creators of the IP yes there is no set leader it rotates everytime in the game however a actual deathwatch kill team per games workshop canon has a deathwatch captain to lead it each team does no exceptions Uriel Ventris of the ultramarines 4th Co was a deathwatch captain who led a kill team the deatch watch novels warrior brood and warrior coven they have a deatch watch captain to lead the kill team. Yes there are deatch watch captains that oversea several teams however each team is led in the field by a captain who acts for all intents and purposes as the squad Seargent. im not saing FFG Deathwatch doesnt have good stuff cause its a great book however for a game of course they are not gonna make one character the sqad leader who lords over all they even said that in the design report where they talked about squad mechanics its a game but gamesworkshops novels hold the true canon and history of the 40k universe and they have ssaid each kill team has a deatch watch captaion even in the tabletop game a deathwatch kill team has a captain to lead it

Couple of things to note:

1. People will tend to listen to your side of an argument more if you present it better. Case in point, an entire "paragraph" with not a single bit of punctuation or caps isn't the best way to do this.

2. Actually the RPG book doesn't override anything. The stories published happened to have a Watch Captain lead them, this DOES happen in the RPG but its very rare/extreme. Most of the DW stories are pretty extreme so this makes sense.

3. You realize that FFG gets GW's sign-off on everything right? Also, many ex-GW employees contribute to their products (Andy Hoare for example, who also writes for Black Library).

4. Actually yea, they have made one character act as a squad leader; this is in the rulebook. However it changes each mission. Also, some Oaths and thus Squad-Mode abilities are limited by who is leading the team for the Mission. However, if an NPC Watch Captain was to go with them, then leadership would default to him of course. However for 99% of all Kill Team missions, one member of the team will be the squad-leader. If your players "lord over" people then that is a personal issue and not a game issue.

5. Not every story has a captain as you argue. The story Headhunted did not, their squad-leader was the Librarian and an Inquisitor was off-ship but in vox contact directing them.

6. Yes the pretty old Deathwatch rules for the tabletop game always had a Captain (or Librarian) leading them. That was then, this is now, things change as they get fleshed out.

kenshin138 said:

1. dont really care if you like how I write

2. i stand corrected a caption or a librarian

3. rules may be old but untill they make new ones they are the rules

4 wasnt argueing just stated my own thoughts never asked or tried to force you to agree with them

5 only somthing published by games workshop will ever be considered true canon to me

souljawebb said:

Hmm, so you ignore all the Black Library stuff completely then? or are they counted as GW.