Having never actually played DW, my opinion might be less credible. Some of my players in my Rogue Trader campaign, however, have played DW and let me borrow the rule book. I skimmed the book and found that their were many things I didn't like. Now, of course, this doesn't mean that everyone else has to dislike them. But I found that:

1: Solo Mode and Squad Mode

Switching between "modes" is something quite often seen in video games. There, it can work quite well. In a roleplaying game, where the infinite possibilities provide a more realistic setting, I don't see why Astartes don't have access to all their abilities, all the time. Why does joining a squad deny you the features and legacy of your chapter? And why does joining a squad make you deal more damage in melee (circa Furious Charge)? From a roleplaying perspective, there is no difference between Solo and Squad mode other than your character's train of thought. And woeful is the marine who forgets what chapter he is from when he makes a charge with his comrades.

2: Hordes

I don't like hordes because it makes the already abstract rules for combat (because rolling dice is nothing like running someone through) even *more* abstract. While I can understand the necessity of having a way to deal with large masses of weak(er) enemies, I feel it should be more narrative than abstract. I can also appreciate the want for a mechanic however, and the horde rules do work, but I wish they were less abstract.

3: Lack of interesting story

And my *biggest* complaint about DW is the lack of interesting story. If you look at Space Marines as a whole, they are virtually identical. Their only defining characteristics are Chapter, specialty, and past accomplishments. Maybe you are able to work in another character trait or two, but their are still a thousand more marines so similar to you that your only value is as a resource, not a person. Furthermore, Space Marines are very limited in the scope of their goals. As compared to DH and RT, where characters can work to accomplish virtually limitless varieties of missions, DW leaves you saddled with a ball and chain. Your missions will consist of assaulting enemies, assassinating a key enemy figure, defending an objective from enemies, or recovering an objective (read: relic, person, information). Again, creative GMs might be able to come up with something a little different, such as the party being cut off from extraction and having to trek across the continent to reach the extraction point. For the most part however, a player who thinks ahead can prepare for anything the GM can send them.

Now, as I said, I have not actually played DW, so these observations may contain inaccuracies. Or maybe being a Space Marine is enough to overcome these flaws for you. These are just my personal opinions.

However, since being a Space Marine, and consequently awesome, is a natural desire in the 40k universe, my RT players and I did talk at length about what could be done to fix these flaws.

1: Solo Mode and Squad Mode

I would say that the easiest way to fix these is to do away with them altogether. Give Marine's their Chapter's Solo Mode ability all the time, defining them further by their chapters and allowing the aforementioned lack of defining characteristics to define them more from the other characters.

2: Hordes

Since my problem with Hordes mainly consisted of how abstract they were, I would do away with the Horde rules. In large battles, where Horde rules are more necessary and the players aren't alone, I would make the course the battle takes narrative and allow players to influence it with command checks (or if the party was so inclined, use the tabletop game's rules), and allow the players to attack one squad at a time in the standard form of combat. Of course, this does run into problems when its just the players versus a large amount of enemies. I would be personally inclined to use standard combat rules, but still utilize a variation of the rules for breaking hordes. However, since this method does take a lot of time and patience, I can understand GM's accepting the more abstract rules. (and I would be open to suggestions on how to use a less abstract method that didn't take as long)

3: Lack of Interesting Story

Here's the thing. Space Marines are pretty cookie-cutter characters. They all use the same (or similar) tactics. They all have the same organization. They all do what they're told and only think on their own when they can use that brainpower to better accomplish what they're told they have to do. Now, what I have noticed from the novels I've read, the only people that are interesting and have personalities (to some extent) and goals and aspirations (and really, what could be called freedom) are renegades. The Soul Drinkers come to mind first. They are interesting because they have unique mutations and they don't do what they're told, they do what they believe is right. Furthermore, the Soul Drinkers have problems to overcome. Normal space marines are supplied with ammunition, recruits, reinforcements, a home base, et cetera. The Soul Drinkers have to provide all of those things for themselves. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Fully renegade marines (Chaos) also have their own bickering and politicking to deal with (meaning a marine *might* actually need fellowship or the deceit skill).

So what I'm suggesting is that the only way to make a truly entertaining and unique story is to play non-Loyalist marines. Perhaps they're just marines that have defected and gone mercenary for human pirates and criminals or perhaps they are chaos lords of the traitor legions. Heck, a whole campaign can be built on just getting from the former to the latter and making the moral choices required to get there. Such a path does require a little house ruling of course. I would probably start with the Rogue Trader system and then use DW for character creation, psychic powers, career paths, and equipment. (I would go with RT because its already designed to use powerful characters and because profit factor [or the equivalent] would logically replace requisition. Also, the aspect of owning and operating a ship is a fun aspect that many players enjoy but is harder to use in standard DW)

Keep in mind that these are my personal thoughts and may not work for everyone and I'm not asking them to.

1. Modes: They are gamey, however they provide a distinct flair so I'm intent on keeping them, even though some of it is rubbish (Wulf Senses stop working in Squad Mode?).

2. Horde Rules: These need to be expanded. I have 3 concepts in mind that can be used: a) turning points a la Final Sanction, b) random(?) events like having a particular dangerous enemy (large hormagaunt/rebel leader) to face off or being in danger of tripping, etc., and c) special horde/anti-horde maneuvers (flanking, charging into the rear, a horde completely surrounding a marine, etc) for tactical variety.

3. Bland story: I intend to write the basis for a DW campaign. The PCs need to get out of the monastery that is the Watch Fortress and need to develop relations with Imperial citizens. Otherwise it's stupidly boring, sorry. So my idea is: the PCs get assigned to defend a handful of systems and are being given pretty much free hand in this unless they end up draining the resources of the crusade.

Alex

Nerdynick said:

Your opinion is pretty credible- it may come from a lack of experinece or information, but you're still entitled to it.

Nerdynick said:

I agree with AK here to a degree- they are gamey in certain respects, and some of them make no sense at all. In the super wierd cases (wolf sesnes, again) I tend to HR that they're always on.

You can approach it from a Roleplay perspective however, IMHO. Solo Mode represents your battle brother doing what he does best, but the squad doesn't benefit because he's not working with them, he's off by himself playing Dark Angel or Space Wolf, not Deathwatch. Squad Mode represents your players working together as a unit, supporting each other. Take the Devestator's Unrelenting Devestation ability- on the surface it totally makes no sense why they can't do it in solo mode, and it IS a gamey element for certain, but you can add fluff to it by considering that the Dev is only able to lay down such withering firepower when his flanks ar covered, when he knows his comrades are drawing fire, tempting the enemy out of cover, etc.

Nerdynick said:

How much narration you put into it I've found is up to you. There are plenty of examples on this board where people don't like power x, y, or z because it works too well against hordes. Hordes are, quite frankly, a boring enemy if you march them across a field only to be shot by the heroic PCs.

As a GM you have to put in 'flair' into the encounter, such as AK suggests, turning points, interesting setups for the combat, clever enemies that use tactics. Give PCs bonus mag damage for playing clever using flanks or calling in their own support artillery. The PCs only have a vague idea of how big the horde is (given the bonuses to hit it), so you can feel free to tweak the combat as you see fit.

Your suggestion on how to handle it can work, but the horde rules are a farily efficient way of dealing with, well, hordes of enemies. Combat, in any RPG is slow and tedious at times. The horde rules make it fast and furious when you're chewing through 100 guardsmen. If you make the hordes smart, in my expereince so far they can be satisfying when you want an encounter that shows off how uber the marines are compared to regular folk.

Nerdynick said:

Their defning characteristics are what you give them. The problem, as I see it, with marines is the surface level of the fluff are very similar. But I could say the same thing for the guard or the inquisition at the surface. The guard, I think, is easier for most of us to understand and relate to, and the astartes are a little alien. To me, to create an interesting story requires you to see beyond the propaganda posters.

Now, I agree the DW core book doesn't devote enough pages to the RP aspect of the game (like one or two), so it may be tough to get into it. But a couple of sentences in the RP section have always really stood out to me and given me some inspiration: "More akin to the heroes of the Trojan War and the Odyssey than to Inquisitorial Acolytes or a Rogue Trader and his companions...it is important to note that the Space Marines chosen for the Deathwatch are nuanced, complex characters."

Whomever they were in their original chapters, those marines stood out to their apothecaries and chapter masters, enough so that they would be seconded to the deathwatch. The key being that they stood out from the rest for some reason. They don't have to be, nor should they be, a cookie cutter representation of their chapter (unless the character starts that way, is seconded, then learns to grow and expand into the DW more completely).

If you don't mind me asking, do you have examples of missions the DW can't go on that DH/RT characters can? Your key storyline points sound like the standard fare for DH and RT as well. Aside from getting a squad of marines into deep cover, they can do quite a bit, from resistance fighters, to diplomats, to security forces, to battlefield or sector commanders, to the tip of the spear in an assault. The game IS designed to be more combat heavy than the others, so there is definitely a combat focus to much of their missions, but you are playing a marine after all. That said, there are plenty of other things you can do with them.

Nerdynick said:

If you want RT with space marines, go for it- you may have a blast, and it sounds like it could be quite fun. But I think there are some nuggets in DW that are worth digging out, and so far I've been having a pretty engaging time with my characters.

Now while most loyalist marines are past the desires for wealth and the like, you can still create complex characters in regular marines. They each have their own desires, fears, regrets, passions. They also lived once as humans- maybe they remember that. Maybe they like their memories of their families, maybe they don't.

Tell me what some of the missions you think DW marines are incapable of doing given the DW command structure, and I bet the folks (some of us anyhow) on this forum can help you come up with reasonable rationale as to why a KT is doing that.

Nerdynick said:

Okay, I may be wrong on a few of those things, I make no claim to be an expert.

As far as still being able to any mission that the other systems can do, sure, they can do them, but they tend to be on a different level. For example, as diplomats they tend to be either bodyguards to the actual diplomat or there to deliver ultimatums. If the Marines are called in, they are far past talking (in all but the most exceptional instances).

As for being identical, I've really not seen any well-written characters. That may very well be the books I've read, though. Could you provide me with your own characters backstory or direct me to a good book?

And, for the record, I'm not looking for RT with marines. I just think that RT happens to fit the circumstances in the proposed campaign.

I think many people come to a preposition that, because DW has Space Marines and tons of combat, and is essentially a military RPG, it will lack interesting stories and roleplay opportunities. I know I was initially concerned about the story-telling potential of DW.

But so far, after reading through all the adventures that are currently available, story is not gonna be a problem in this game. For me, one of the main RP flavours of this game is the aspects of 'choice and consequence'. In addition to blowing sh*t up, the DW make and carry out powerful decisions, decisions that can often save a world, whilst damning another.

Another concern is the pre-conceived notion that DW is going to mostly be hack 'n slash missions. Sure, there's a lot of combat in this game. But going on from above, on a smaller scale, the combat can be (often must be) highly tactical. Kill-teams are usually outnumbered, and often they must make the right tactical choices during combat, to not only survive, but maximize their effectiveness. This is what Marines excel at, what they're trained for. If you run the game and make missions so that the players only have to pull the trigger to win, then you're not delving into the deep potential of this game.

On top of all that, you have the inter-factional roleplay of not just the Imperium and the galaxy at large, but specifically the interactions of a highly specialist unit of the Imperium's greatest heroes, each born and grown into a certain way of believing and acting.

I could go on about it, but if anyone still has doubts, re-read the GM chapter and really take what it says to heart.

To the OP specifically, I don't really understand why you would want to deny yourself components of the game that make it precisely more interesting.

Solo/Squad mode may be 'gamey', but what isn't these days? I don't see the problem there. Those rules give combat some flair, some chance for players to do something different, and to also help them act and roleplay their tactics. OP, you did mention a complaint about the DW all being the same, and then you want to take out something that helps them stand out? Combat in DW should definitely never always be simple hack n' slash, but should involve many situations or cinematic moments where the players need to make hard decisions and actually use tactics. Research military tactics if necessary, read Codexes from the miniature game. For example, my players have all done some kind of national military service, so their experiences and real life training bring something to the table.

Same goes for the Horde system. It's actually very elegant, and captures the squad-against-a-mass combat very well.

If you are worried about story, start reading. One of the truly beautiful things about any of FF's 40K roleplaying games is that we get to truly explore the vast universe of Warhammer; beyond the Codexes, rulebooks, miniatures, etc. I mean, if you're a red-blooded 40K geek, who hasn't read a battle scene from Dan Abnett and been inspired? Now we get to actually do that stuff in our games! Do what the mission writers for DW have done: read the Jericho Sector chapter, and start using small detailes to create adventures.

Anyways, my biggest point is this: the parts of DW that worry people the most, are actually it's greatest potential challenges for roleplaying. Roleplaying the military doesn't have to be boring gun-play. It's just as complex and diverse and interesting as any other RP setting. You just have to find its key depths and exploit them.

DW really is everything that you make it to be. I would strongly advise against taking out rule components from this game. You'll be doing your games an injustice if you do.

H.B.M.C. said:

I have seen a number of people who weren't too enthusiastic about DW. And if a game fails to inspire a good deal of people, somebody should ask themselves what's going on. If a published game fails to inspire a good deal of people that is the designer's fault (if we play the game of finger-pointing).

Personally I am still struggling with DW. I have developed a number of ideas since release and I am sure having this thing going in the right direction but I'm still not at ease with it.

A lot of things have to do with it. For example, the heroes are assigned to save Avalos. Fine. But the death of millions is just a statistic, if you remember, and saving a single woman from a chaos cult is far more personal and engaging than saving entire worlds. So the epic level scale actually works to the detriment of fun in some sense.

Exploring monastic life on the remote Watch Fortress isn't particular moving or inspiring so far either.

Dealing with many hordes gets repetitive quickly.

Player characters generally lack depth.

etc.

Now all of this can be corrected, yes. But it just takes lots of work, both by the players and the GM. And still there is this lingering feeling of something missing for me, some kind of je-ne-sais-quois which I can't pinpoint which is a bit frustrating. DW should work out like noble Arthurian knights to the rescue but for whatever reason it doesn't quite feel like that.

Anyway I take it as a challenge to get it working for me. :-)

Alex

I'll admit I was wrong about Hordes. The rules do work well (even if they are a bit abstract ).

korvass said:

However, I do fail to see how solo/squad mode make the game any more interesting. I'm all for a lot of the chapter-specific solo mode abilities. What I'm not for is a system that says they can't use those when working with someone else. It makes no sense (as in the case of the aforementioned wolf senses). And combat as you described can and does happen in other systems without the use of this mechanic.

Nerdynick said:

Sterotypically, I think you are right here, and I think that is where the biggest fault of DW is- some of it is hard to get into, it's harder to get into it than say into a (very human) acolyte. There is a good deal of bad fiction and novels out there that don't depict marines as much more than automotons doing the emperor's work. Some of it is very, very bad. It's also more difficult as a player or a GM to get into and develop compelling stories at an epic level. Those two combinations can make things hard for people. While I've not read them, I hear the Horus Heresy novels are pretty good (depiste some naysayers saying the marines are too different from those original marines). I've read some of Abnett's work, and while most of it is not Marines, he does a good job of painting a combat scenario and giving the people involed some actual character. It takes some thought to translate it to Marines, but can be done.

What I try and do for my players, is to remind them that their marines, despite being super humans, are still humans under all that muscle and indoctrination. They had past lives, even if they were taken from them as pre-teens/teens. What part of their pre-marine life do they remember? How did they take to the conditioning of the astartes? Why did they choose to 'try out' for the marines? How do they view humans and humanity, how do they view the guard? As peasants or as servants of the emperor they have the privledge of defending? How do they view the emperor- as a god man or as a man, their grandfather? Do they believe in miracles or science? Are they radical or are the puritanical? The DW marines are special in some way, perhaps that way is that they don't agree with everything their chapter says they should be doing (like a Black Templar getting along with psykers), or make sure that they're flexible and are willing to evolve and change (like the Templar that starts off against psykers, then learns to trust them).

For missions, you're right, even as diplomats they are at a different level, and you have to come up with some different, or extraordinary, reasons for the players to be involved. To me, that's not a big deal because they're the players and extraordinary things happen to them all the time. In the Emperor Protects, they offer some of these things up. Adventure one has you as diplomats to a feral world, trying to convince the population to let the Imperium take over the planet. They send in the DW because the culture there respects martial might over foppish diplomats. The second adventure has the characters essentially taking up the investigation in place of an inquisitor who get's taken out of action to shine the spotlight back on the players. Extraordinary, perhaps, but again these are the player characters. Perhaps as diplomats somewhere, they initially get called in to be the simple muscle, but the bull headedness or smarts of the group was underestimated and they end up talking over the 'official' diplomats by force of strength or personality. You DO have to be a little more creative, but it can all be done.

Don't just listen to the folks that say 'well the elite troopers of the Imperium wouldn't be called in until bolts start flying', give the PCs a chance to do whatever. Have the characters make the choice to engage, create a watch commander that likes to meddle in the goings on of the 'regular folk.' Create an inquisitor that for some reason gets the privledge of having a 'pet' marine KT on call for his/her needs, whatever they be. Give your marines an opening like AK has where they have a sector of space to 'manage' and have to deal with all of the Imperials involved.

ak-73 said:

I think this was one of the hardest parts for me as well (and still is); it's, IMHO, an easier job to get an emotional response from players on a small scale. Some of the epicness might be too big to rationalize and play out. Yeah, a world is dying, but that thought is so friggin big how do you deal with it. It's difficult to relate to seeing that none of us have held the fate of millions in our hands.

I've tried, with some success, to blend the two together, to provide epic scale impact while keeping the mission and the actions close and personal. They're the tip of the spear freeing a Tau held world, but why should they care about freeing it, beyond it being the primary objective? Most of my successes have been through NPC interaction, having them show the 'human' side to the effects of the occupation. Make them deal with the population of a world before they get to make that exterminatus decision; though creating rich, varied NPCs is tough at times for me, and can be quite draining.

Charmander said:

Which is where FFG has utterly failed in the missions it has provided so far, noting though that I do not own TEP yet. Particular Shadow Of Madness has been disappointing in that regard. It unloads the heavy duty work (making the mission interesting beyond the basic narrative framework) on the GM.

Alex

My perspective as GM and player:

1. Modes. We have cut and thrown away all chapter modes after 2nd gaming session, All Universal Solo modes are reworked, nothing works per mission anymore (stinks of D&D). Squad modes after little rework are usefull and we liked it in the end.

2. Hordes. Depends how u portrait them. We changed some aspects of horde fighting and it started to work quite nicely.

3. U joke right? its RPG game, its your game, how u play it u have it.

My personal problem with DW is complete incompatibility with DH and RT even if they tried they failed, dozens of bugs, and number of our house rules we needed to make for more smooth play.

boruta666 said:

True, and I may be mistaken here but the OP knows that part. I think the issue here is that Marines, at least on the surface, are fanatical servants of the emperor that are 100% loyal and will never disobey orders. Makes for a bland character. It's kind of where I stand on Grey Knights, and why I think they'd be terribly boring to play- they're mind wiped marines trained essentially for one mission. While you could have a personality and a fleshed out character, the whole mind wiping and super loyalty thing would make it much harder to create a character that felt unique and important. I think a lot of people view the whole of the Adeptus Astartes that way.

It's more of a challenge, and harder to get into- they even mention it in their introduction chapter. I disagree and think they do have personality, but then again I inject more humanity into my portrayal of marines than perhaps many do.

ak-73 said:

I picked up the PDF not that long ago, and FWIW from what I've read so far (the first 1.5 adventures) do a reasonable job of giving you a reason to care. You (potentially) end up gaining the trust and respect of the people of Aurum, but are then faced with what to do with the planet once you have their loyalty knowing full well what the Empire will do to it. They set the table with a moral conundrum, though it is up to the GM to protray it as such, and the players to do more with it than shout 'for the emperor' and shoot it (which is far too tempting for some players).

The point being that the two demo missions nor Extraction nor Shadow of Madness has interesting NPCs in them. I hold that out especially against Shadow of Madness as it's the only paid for (okay it was a birthday gift but nonetheless) full-length scenario and it was a bit of a let down. I am sorry but in combat heavy game as this, the mission designers have to pay special attention to role-playing situations. That might be counter-intuitive but it's true unless you want to cater to power-players only.

The point is that good role-playing (without falling into cheesy cliche all the time) seems to be more difficult to a number of people in DW. Therefore it's the mission designer's job to take as much off the "create intense role-playing situations" workload of the GMs as possible. Creating combat set-ups is easy, I don't need any mission designer to do that for me. It's where the plot and intriguing NPCs and cool NPC drawings come in where it gets time intensive to make up quality stuff.

Other GMs might disagree, that's how I see it.

Alex

In my gaming group marines are truly great RPG material. Marine shards of personality are beaten deep by their chapter drill, hypnotherapy and creation rites. But personality tends to resurface very quickly when contacted with battle brothers from other chapters, different values, tactics, personalities, history and my gamers RP it in great way. Also DW marines have much more free time, and much more occasions to socialise with different brothers.

cut that out and u have "Turn Squad Base Combat" not RPG

1) Yeah; it's gamey. You have a point as regards the fact that many solo abilities 'should' work in squad mode. Some though clearly shouldn't: A Blood Angel in Blood Frenzy is not going to be getting any teamwork bonuses, nor should they, for example. However, the squad mode mechanics are very original and are a great way of representing the 'leetness' of marines - giving them an edge over DH characters - and making them feel like a real team that has a mechanic to back up all that time spent training to work as a squad. The Chapter patterns nicely represent individual Chapter tactics, and to my mind it's a great idea for a squad leader to have tactics at hand that are representative of their own Chapter's way of doing things.

2) If it plays badly, it's down to the narrative. All games are abstract. DW requires players to be able to hose VAST amounts of foes down in short order. Quicker even than Feng Shui can manage. For this they developed a new mechanic that is both original and excellent. In any other game the GM would be bogged down with vast numbers of dice to roll and wounds to track. All that is gone. All that time wasted on the GM rolling dice and going 'urrrr' can now be devoted to describing a cinematic firefight. Far from being an awkward abstraction, it's a abstraction that greatly adds to immersion and atmosphere.

3) Firstly Story is not Character. That's two seperate points.

Characters are only superficially similar. Marines are not vat-grown machines, as demonstrated well by the novels. Prosperro Burns being a recent one, but there are dozens of others that portray Marines as complex people. I'd recommend pretty much any of the Horus Heresy series to be honest. 40k trumps dozens of other gaming settings by sheer weight of background material, and that extends to the Marines. There are dozens of well-fleshed out Chapters and a lot of history written about them. Far more than most games, and perhaps more than even Star Wars. If a player is playing a vat-grown-killing-machine and has no personality, that's down to the player, not the game.

The Story is a different matter. Yes: Marine-based games are about warfare. And so many adventure types that conform to standard tropes are right out or limited in scope. But you can fit non-conflict based scenarios in. It's a matter of the right tool for the job, though. One doesn't use V:tM/V:tR for dungeon crawling and any system tends to limit the scope of adventure. On the bright side, 40k's vastly varying levels of technology do allow you to throw fantasy aspects into a sci-fi game quite easily.

Ultimately it is a military game, but that doesn't make it bad. Is 'Aliens' a bad movie? How about every war film and novel ever created? Now lets expand on that and throw in tales from the Classics, because DW is also a game about super-humans performing great feats and undertaking trials of prowess. There really is a lot of scope there.

The more I read, the more I begin to accept that DW is playable. So good work to all of you who replied!

Purely out of curiosity however (I promise!), would someone be so kind as to post their character's backstory?

Nerdynick said:

Here is one of my player’s in brief:

A Blak Templar, Conrad grew up on a world that the BTs liberated from Chaos. Was the grandson of a resistance fighter, he grew up on dreams of the Astartes and their might, honor, and purity. On a feudal world, under the tutelage of the privileged families like his, he learned the way of the sword. Eventually he gained enough skill to be noticed by the Chaplains, and suffered the trials of initiation. He followed the BTs, subscribed to their doctrine, and would’ve given his life for them. Then his visions came on the eve of a great battle, and those visions showed him not only how to achieve victory against the daemon the Templars were hunting, but of other things as well, including his family that suffered in the wake of his departure and the deaths of his father and brothers, he saw faces of people he had judged as ‘mere mortals’ during his crusades and battles and brushed aside, he saw psychic powers being wielded in the name of the Emperor; he saw a world apart from the shelter and zeal the Templars provided, a progressie world. This caused in him a crisis of faith of sorts, resurrected his humanity, and reminded him of where he came from and why he wanted to be an Astartes in the first place; it wasn’t about being a brother, it was about saving the people of His Empire. The apothecaries, chaplains, and commanders knew something was different after that; he had ‘gone soft.’ After some intense discussions and worry that dispatching him to the diverse and morally flexible Deathwatch would further lead him astray from the true path, it was decided that his softness would better suit him to work with the deathwatch. In addition, and more importantly, the trials the DW would put him through, and the horrors it would expose him to, would show him truly why the Templars believed as they did. It would reaffirm his belief structure.

1) I actually quite like the squad mode and solo mode abilities, and to me they are what helps to bring character to these slabs of muscle (more on that in part 3) I like how things such as bolder assault let you and your squad go on a a heroic charge, guns blazing, but I like the cohesion cost as well so that your limited by this abstract value, that could represent anythign fro mthe kill teams energy levels to the physical and mental work of all charging and firing at the same time while picking targets, avoiding each other and creating interlocking arcs of fire. I like that you can do this, and prefer it to the alternative of not having any powers. Now if I could only get my players to use them, I hope the chaos space marine kill team I have planned will show them the way.

2) Again I feel the abstract qualities of the horde mechanics are demonstrating the strength of the system. I have had situations where a horde of chaos cultis have "parried" an attack, but described it as two of them throwing another into the assault marine and detonating the explosives strapped to him. Or When the hoard suffers a large loss of morale that is easily represented with a battle brother picking off a cult leader/sergeant. The first session we tried hordes it was clunky and abstract to the extreme, but we were just learning the system them and probably would have agreed with you, but now I think hordes give the GM are large oppertunity for narrative elements that are so hard to represent in other rpgs rules for mass combat.

3) Its all what you make of it. Currently my marine are being used as a bargining chip between a rogue trader with access to Tau gene synthesis and scanning technology that the inquistion wants to use against Hive Fleet Moloch. Rather then take the heavy handed approach the inquisition is having the battle brothers serve as guests of honour at the rogue traders annual ball, in return for the tau tech. This is mostly because the Rogue trader is a cousin of Commander Greyhell, but also because I want the players to be in a situation where challenges exists that cannot be solved with a boltgun. We have had our share of action, but its fun to mix it up.

As for backgrounds, check out the link in my sig, and you can see my campaign diary, player history, cast of characters etc.

I'm running a Dark Heresy campaign and have yet to play Deathwatch , but here's my two Thrones:

From my reading of it, I don't have a problem with the concept of Squad Modes ("Formation Beta- Now! Rico, Varga, suppressing fire! Everyone else, form up on my six!"). But trying to read through the rules for all of the Squad Modes gives me a headache. Are they unwieldy in actual play? Does it bog down combat?

I like the idea of Hordes, and wish they had included something similar in DH to make lesser opponents more dangerous in numbers. My problem with it is that all of the extra damage Hordes deal is inflicted on a single target in the PC group. I realise that is necessary to overcome a Space Marine's massive damage soak and thus create a viable threat, but in narative terms it comes across as extremely unrealistic to me ("We ran into about 200 cultists. Two of our unit took all of their fire and were nearly killed, but the rest of us didn't get a scratch!").

With reguard to interesting story potential, an RPG is what the GM makes of it, of course, but I would say that DW is focused primarily on video-game-style combat, just as DH is focused primarily on investigation and Rogue Trader is focused on exploration. Each of the three games has all of these elements to varying degrees, but I would say that if you don't like combat as the central focus of a campaign, then you will probably be happier playing on the others...

Honestly, if the Solo-Mode and Squad Mode stuff feels too gamey for you. Just cut it out. The game stands on its own without the Cohesion/Squad stuff just fine. In fact, in three sessions my players have yet to use any of the abilities. Mainly due to the complexity of the rules for them, or they simply forget about them.

Adeptus-B said:

My players tend to forget they have the abilities TBH, however they do remember the core of the system. When we started, it was one giant pain in the ass because we kept having to re-read the rules, but once we figured it out the modes were just another power to be activated, not unlike combat talents and abilities.

Adeptus-B said:

I do find something slightly unrealistic about the hordes, but I tend to try and scatter the damage around the group, especially with untrainted or undisciplined hordes. A lot of it has to do with how you deploy your hordes, too- are those 200 cultists a single horde, or do you split them up and manuever them? They're also speed bumps that are easily forgotten, unless I'm using them as part of a setpiece, in which case the whole squad is going to be hurting, not just a couple of them

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Nerdynick said:

See? Just gotta give things a chance.