Hello All,

Long time lurker, finally decided to join and post something about a campaign idea I had and was hoping for some feedback. It's not so much a "Deathwatch" specific game so much as a Space Marine/40k game:

It is the time of the Great Crusade and the Primarch Sanguinius, with the support of the Emperor, has called for teams of exceptional Astartes to be formed from amongst the Emperors legions in order to promote cross-legion cooperation and conduct deep space recon missions of unconquered territories. While some of the Primarchs are weary of losing some of their best warriors they all contribute Marines to the newly formed Space Marine Force Reconnaissance (I may change the name, it's starting to sound lame to me). These teams not only have to be exceptional soldiers (for those troublesome Xenos), but seeing as they could be the first contact between the Imperium and long lost parts of humanity, they also need to have skill in diplomacy and knowledge of technology, in case they find some long lost piece of technology.

I think it could work because of the 6 chapters in Deathwatch, 4 of them are First Founding Legions, while of the other 2, the Black Templers (a Second Founding Chapter) could pretty much be Imperial Fists and the Storm Wardens, at least to me, resemble a few of the other original legions at least style-wise. Granted, I don't have the book yet ( cough, cough, wink, wink FFG ), so I don't know how it would work mechanics-wise, but the Storm Wardens could be Death Guard, Iron Warrios, Iron Hands, or Luna Wolves (I'm leaning towards Luna Wolves, and yes, I know, traitor legions).

I was just hoping for some feedback. Am I completely out in left field? Does the Storm Wardens thing sound okay? I'm really intrigued by it because you would be there right at the beginning of everything, and obviously it would move into the Horus Heresy (it'd be interesting with a traitor legionary on the team).

I'm also thinking about adding a Rogue Trader element to the game, seeing as a handfull of Astartes wouldn't be out in the middle of space completely alone, but rather would be on a ship, not a huge ship anything, but maybe something smaller with a normal human crew. The PC's would have secondary characters from Rogue Trader to act as the crew of the ship and be another element the Space Marines could utilize for situations where it wouldn't be very good to have 8ft tall super-humans around (infiltration, some diplomatic situations, etc).

s1ay3r said:

Welcome. :-)

I wouldn't try to squeeze the Storm Wardens into it but rather create one or two chapters from scratch but that's personal preference.

Also I would put in small changes in the chapter specific stuff, so as to bring across that it's not the standard Deathwatch campaign but that we're dealing with earlier versions of the chapter. :-)

You'll also have to check out which gene-seeds haven't devolved yet.

My personal impression is that most (not all though) people right now will want to run a standard DW campaign. When people get tired of that, I assume they will look for different campaigns.

But it could be fun.

Alex

It's an interesting idea. My only qualm with it is oversaturation of Marines. With the Marines being attached to a Great Crusade, we can assume quantities in the thousands of battle brothers. I think that one of the strengths of the game is giving your players the opportunity to play these superhuman soldiers in and amongst the regular troops of the Imperium. They might feel less special being in an astartes crowded sector, as opposed to a team of special forces swooping in for the "impossible missions".

But good on ya!

Oh totally, I definitely want to play/run a standard DW game, this was just an idea I had bouncing around my head that I want to flesh out and explore. And yeah, I know I'll have to make some changes to get across that it's 10,000 years before the game is supposed to take place. Again, I don't have the book yet (and again cough, cough, wink, wink FFG ), but I know I'll have to look at certain technology (like las weapons, I'm probably wrong, but I think I read somewhere that it wasn't around until about the 35 millenium, than again it could also just have been that particular lasgun) and gene-seed degradation/mutation and the effects of it in game (Black rage for instance). This probably won't be the first DW game I run, but it will definitely be the top game on the back-burner and I won't run it until I know I can get as much right as I can.

It's an excellent idea!

The Horus Heresy era of 40K is itself Epic. I myself have been considered running something similar to this.

I know that your idea was actually part of the crusade at the time, though I don't remember if Sanguinius was the Primarch to suggest it to the Emperor. They did indeed have cross-training between the legions.

I would replace the Stormwardens with the Luna Wolves. Not all Luna Wolves turned traitor... the same is true for the rest of the Traitor Legions... hundreds of loyalist marines were killed by their own chapters for "not being on the same page as the rest of us". Therefore, your team could stay "pure" as far as that is concerned.

First sorry if my english is poor but i will try my best to make my sentences clearer as possible.

I like your idea and I've some months ago launch a horus heresy campaign for my player begining with the great crusade and finishing on Istvan V dying with their Primarch on the battlefield. I use to play RPG for 18 years now and it wan't so difficult to put rules for the game. It's quite interresting period of the imperium. But i choose to put all my players in the same legion (Iron Hands btw). All i can say is that they love it. Of course DW is interesting in itself and they are eager to play killteam but the Horus Heresy is a great place to be for players and GM alike. Hope your players will love it as much as mine. Good luck to you!

Courage and Honour!