I just want to say, there is a distinct differance when using the DH forum compared to DW. I think it must be because DH players actually role play and do not ROLL play. I do not know, but you guys are deffinatly a lot more helpful and respectfull in general, and the threads do not rapidly degrade into a flame war as fast as in DW forum.

Thanks!

I do believe that both RT and DW suffer from "too high power level syndrome" which leads players to roll play more than they role play. In DH you play "ordinary" people which makes it much easier to relate to the characters, I certainly can´t even begin to understand the psyche of a space marine.

Storhamster said:

I got too agree with this. I like the RT setting however. But DW is just a power gaming festival. How are you suppose to roleplay a space marine??

They do one thing and one thing only. You can kill stuff or KILL stuff. IMO DW is just for fanboys. DH and RT is for real role players.

matze said:

Ya I wish my players agreed, as soon as DW came out I was constantly hounded me to start up a DW campaign. I do play DW alot more like DH though, I do not just rush hordes at them, I use alot more Elites and my campaign is based in calaxis sector and regardless of the fluff in DW- in my campaign The Ordo Xenos does directly controll them. I have never tried RT, I would like to. I have most of thier source books for referrance, but I am alittle overwhelmed at the scale that game plays at. It seems I would need to do alot of leg work into the ship battles and large ground battles.

I do not agree with the assumption that RT is more of a roll-playing game. Sure, the scope is larger than in DH, but that just means that you can play games that are epic in compared to a typical DH campaign. My group just recently took a break from our long DH campaign and took the plunge into RT (mostly because the GM had bad experiences with RT and wanted to give it another try to be sure that it wasn't the systems fault). After two evenings and not a single shot fired I must say that RT lies on the same role-playing level as DH.

I haven't yet played DW so I won't comment on it.

We play RT almost exactly as we play DH - with 90% role-playing and 10% fighting/solving puzzles. The scheme of things are just grander; in DH it might be a planetary governor who's a meanie but in RT you have to take down a whole network of planets, since it's quite often connected. It's just a grander scale s'all. In DH you take it step-by-step and in RT you get thrown right into it quite often, I feel. Ah, well - to each his own, but I must admit I like DH more. Feels more... realistic.

Well, I think DW is a more "heroic" game, so it is more about "we is awesome" as characters. This will tend to make playing it more about how good you are at killing things, but there are opportunities to do more roleplaying stuff (though it is more narrow in its style than DH). I actually think it is harder to roleplay DW characters than DH ones. There is so much baggage to Space Marines that kind of shape how a Space Marine should be, but in Dark Heresy you can play your character more how you want to (and you don't need to know much about the universe to play them, as often the characters will be a bit clueless about the galaxy themselves).

The bit that I feel does make DW more "gamey" is the whole "solo mode" and "squad mode" thing, as the mechanism is a bit jarring alongside the core rules. Feels a bit like activating a computer game power up or something.

I've only tried DW once, and I admit I had my doubts. And although I'm not a SM fanboy (never played 40k or read much about them) they are pretty cool.

I am however interested in militairies etc. and I've played a very nice RP heavy WHFRP game set in Kislev and based on the fact that all the characters were soldiers in the Empire's armies. Although that was alot less powerful character, it was fun to play a "war" campaign and deal with a soldier's life.

In that aspect DW is more action-oriented and certain mechanics makes alot of the soldier's difficulties alot easier or non existant. SM can deal with fatigue, go weeks without food or water, and can heal supernaturally fast.

Still the war aspect is retained, and I did get a feel we were a militairy squad who's members had different personalities and abilities. Also the few combats we had were easy, but still kinda fun. When you have to hit a Tyranid creature 4 times with full-auto in a single round, and even get a Fury, just to barely kill it you know that it is really tough and would eat DH acolytes for breakfast.

To be honest your little thread here just comes off as self congratulatory, masturbatory circle-jerk praising one group and lambasting another group for "not playing a real role playing game". This is almost as dumb as 3.5ers shitting on 4e D&D players, surely, we, the vaunted, the best, the brightest , dark heresy players are above such juvenile trumpeting? And if you can't imagine how to role play a space marine, or even a special forces soldier, that's you're own shortcoming, not the systems.

And yes, I mad.

Zamnil Blackaxe said:

Take it easy there.

You may not agree with the OP and you may even think that his phrasing is disrespectful. But you could atleast try to make your point in a way that doesn´t make you sound like an angry 5-year old.

Constructive criticism is good. Meaningless ranting, not so much.

Although Zamnil's anger makes him seem like a prick, he does have a point. I mean, just look at the original post:

Nimon said:

Ok, I've exaggerated the OP's hipocracy, my work is done.

How does the saying go... "If the only tool in your toolbox is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail".

That applies to DH. Figure you start with a 35 BS you are probably the party sharpshooter, and the best starting armor you get is to stand behind the guy with the most Wounds and hope the gangers shooting at him/you don't get a Righteous Fury roll. All of a suddend talking to those teenage narco-gangers sounds like a much better idea than a shootout.

Don't get me wrong I really like the DH setting, and eventually characters come into their own, but at its heart it is an investigation game, so role-playing is a requirement. RT and DW just put more tools in your toolbox, so they can be role-play heavy or roll-play heavy, or a combination.

(NOTE: I have seen some roll-play heavy DH as well, but until you get to higher levels or the GM really caters to that philosophy, the system is very unforgiving).

Zamnil Blackaxe said:

Appologies if you have taken it this way, actually though not sure if you actually read what I wrote before, but you would realize that I do play DW. Really all I am saying is if you read the threads in the DH portion of this website, then go over to DW threads, there is a huge differance in the quality of responses and peoples willingness to actually help you and not just knock you or start a flame war. I only made a possible suggestion that it could be because DW seems to be geared tword more combat less narrative(role play/roll play), though I will not lie I do enjoy combat games and am accustomed to the table top version. I certainly can imagine how to role play a space marine or special forces soldier, being a combat veteran my self from the U.S Armored Cavalry 2/3 ACR F Troop Combat Medic 68w, but I do get the feeling after reading alot of the threads in DW that alot of people can not.

Hi,

Fine response sir.

To be fair though Blackaxe did say he was mad.

Have fun.

In my experience my players actually role-play better in DW then I DH, I'm still not sure why this is.

SomVone said:

My players are coming around in DW also, and again I really was not trying to say DW is not as good as DH or their players are not equal, I was more referring to the differance of those represented here on the forums. I probably could have worded it alittle better, I was annoyed with several of the "munchkin" types I had ran into on the DW forum. There are those that see exploits within the games mechanisms and go straight for it, when mentioned that the mechanism is more to represent a greater RPG aspect, and that one should accept the good with the bad, they want to argue(probably in hopes that their GM does not see the post and get an idea of what they are attempting.)

That was my experiance at least that lead me to happily come over here and see how things were going with my first 40k RPG experiance, and I was pleasantly surprised and wanted to express it.

My group has done both DH and DW, we like DH a lot and enjoyed DW. We view DW as a nice break from DH where you can be awesomely powerful and wade through faceless mobs. We know you could build the DW toons in a way to encourage heavy RP but we feel that is what DH is for. Pretty much what we do is play one shot DW mission or two when the full group can not show up to play DH.

scscofield said:

That does sound like a good way of doing it, DW is good for one shots for sure.

That does sound like a decent idea. You can also tie the two together wby switching from a DH character to a DW character (a bit like how CoD 4 singleplayer went).

Simple example:

• play Dark Heresy and find genestealer cult
• call in the Death Watch
• play Death Watch and kill genestealers.

It makes it a bit more "realistic" in that I imagine many stages of infestation to be implausible to be dealt with by regular humans, yet still allows you to play through an entire campaign.

We've always hit DH as a 'hardcore' roleplay in my group (everyone does there best to remain IC 90% of the time and we make the effort to interact outside of the 'scenes' with each other) so I was a little bit worried about DW when we started playing just before christmas (Having tarred 'More power = less rp' on it as well as RT). However after a couple of sessions where we got into the groove of roleplaying Space Marines I have to admit that we roleplay just as much in DW as we do in DH.

I'm really enjoying DW at the moment as, sadly, my marine died and was replaced with a Ascension Level DH Interrogator. It's nice playing the squishy Untouchable human whos taken Mental Aegis, Can you say Brain Freeze?, with his two marine 'comrades' who don't like/trust him (I'm talking to you Ranulf!).

TBH I'm actually looking to give RT a go now after seeing that it was possible for us to play 'High Power' PCs. The fact that Into the Storm has rules for Kroot PC's may be the other reason

Mark

Dorn said:

Go for it! Really, with the whole role play vs roll play, it's not so much the power-level or the system but how the GM and players approach such.

While I haven't played DW, I have ran RT and some of my groups best rp moments came from a few of those sessions. Granted, I focused a LOT on inter-ship politics but that really payed off in the end. The PC's were spending almost as much time running interference between the cults on the lower decks and the engeenseers and keeping them from taking each others throats out, keeping the astropathic choir away from the navigators and away from the captains witch, keeping the gun-clans of the of the ballistic decks from wrecking havoc to blow off steam and accepting of the captains decisions not to engage so-and-so threat and go out in a blaze of glory, etc (more probably) than they were on pillaging and plundering. I saw the ship as a massive city in space with the PC's as the governing body which to me said "Political Thriller/Drama".

One of the best rp moments we had in that game was a meal after a prolonged amount of time being stranded in the warp. Food was running dangerously low, extreme rationing had begun, but the bridge officers still dined on fresh food as was the tradition and right of their station. The Seneshal declared that they need to buck tradition and rend the fresh food down into nutra-slurry to extend it's use. This triggered an hour and a half long heated debate that almost came to blows around the captains table... good times and good rp. It's just all in how you approach the game.

scscofield said:

We do pretty much the same and also have a different GM for DW than for DH. While we are RPing heavily with high detail, need at least about ten 4 hour session for each of the published adventures and earn only low amounts of cash an XP when playing DH, we take DW far less 'serious', level up far quicker and play no strongly connected campaign. We tried RT at first as an alternative when the full group cannot show up, but realized it needs far more commitment than DW (more en par with DH).

DH is like Name of the Rose crossbred with Blade Runner, while DW is Starship Troopers crossbred with Predator.

Graver said:

What a great story!

A big difference between DH and DW vs. RT is that DH and DW are mission games, where a superior gives you a mission, and you have no choice not to do it, while RT is more of a sandbox. I encourage my players to come up with ideas they'd like me to turn into endeavors. When one endeavor ends, I'm ready with a number of choices. I don't have the details of the adventure down, just the broad strokes, and when the pick one I have until the next session to flesh it out.

I would imagine that Ascension DH would be more sandboxy, but haven't tried it yet.

I love the idea of DW one shots to break up a long DH or RT campaign. I'll have to try that!

DH is like Name of the Rose crossbred with Blade Runner, while DW is Starship Troopers crossbred with Predator. -Luthor Harkon

I like the comparison to Name of the Rose and Blade Runner for DH, that is deffinatly how I see it too. DW does have the feel of Starship troppers in the Jericho Reach against Tyranids, but I like the classic enemies and Calixis Sector, so I guess my DW campaign right now is like Chronicles of Riddic/300 if I was going to give it some movie comparisons. My DH could easily be described as Name of the Rose meets Blade Runner though, in fact I think that is how I will describe the game when others ask about it.

I've set myself the challenge of running a DW campaign with a great deal of roleplaying in it, and with one session in it's looking promising on that score. I will say that I've been appalled at some of the rampant power gaming discussed on the DW forums but frankly the DH and RT forums aren't immune to it (broken psykers, anyone?). I can see how someone not familiar with 40k might find it difficult to roleplay a space marine but there are plenty of SM characters in the background and novels for example. Having run and played both DH and RT campaigns, I say it's perfectly possible to roleplay interesting, engaging characters with any of the 40krpg systems. But it does come down to what players and GMs expect from their games.