ak-73 said:

If you have a game with two groups of players then that may be possible - but again only if the GM is writing two adventures (call them misions if you like, it's the same thing). That is most certainly not going to be the norm as most groups will have one kill team (one group of players) and one GM. Certainly, and if only for the sake of my own sanity, that is how i'd run things.

Sots, without even getting into the fact that it is just as much following the rules to write two possible missions one of which is obviously insanely hard AK's post is enough

where the fighting is thickest.

that means no sneaking around the battle, no going in the back way to avoid sentries, no retreat, EVER, no matter the circumstances. If you aren't in the thick of battle you aren't living up to your curse. I think thats pretty bad for a first level primarchs curse. in fact as a GM I would have to be very careful if I had someone in my party with that curse. one of my favourite ways of conveying a massive sense of scale is to have the party do a covert assault on an installation while titans and imperial guard regiments battle in the distance. An ultramarine roleplaying the level 1 Primarchs curse would be absolutely right to want to head off towards the titan battle and die in a thoroughly pointless way. thus bringing an annoyingly early end to the mission I had planned

[edit] and incidentally arguing in reply #24 "that is not how the curse works" and then in reply #25 saying that the reason the curse is not that bad is because you wouldn't enforce part of it as stated in reply #17 is a little bit hypocritical.

its obvious what the curse is meant to do, if you wanna ignore parts of it go ahead, but don't say you are interpreting it literally if you are ignoring key phrases in it [/edit]

signoftheserpent said:

Following written rules when the strict letter of the rule is being in a manner that defies the very clear intention of the rule is what I'd call rules lawyering. Ultimately, it's down to the GM. As a GM, I can see the clear intention, and I've outlined exactly how I'd come down on someone jerking around and playing lawyer about it.

Although it's a moot point, as Alex has pointed out; RAW does indeed state that beyond talk of missions, the marine is insistent on putting the squad very much in harms way.

Narkasis Broon said:

I havent said people shouldn't write two missions, or indeed that people shouldn't do anything. You are not reading my posts correctly. But you will not convince me that DW GM's writing adventures for their players are going to double their workload so as to accomadate Ultramarine players - who may not even be squad leader (and if they aren't their curse doesn't have much effect). That is a decision for the players and while you can argue they might be rules lawyering to get around the curse by picking a different leader, the rules evens ay tthat the role should be rotated among the players. It's also a bit out of character to pick a squad leader who, by virtue of his current state of genetic fallibility, might well not only lead them to certain death, hwoever glorious, but screw up the mission.

But i have no advocated people play the system. Where the fighting is thickest might not even always apply since where the fighting is thickest is more often than not going to mean where the kill team chooses to go. If they decide to go aroudn to the back of the bunker to infiltrate covertly then that's where they fighting will be thickest, just as if they went around the front where potentially the greater defence is positioned. Now you might say that latter choice is what the rule means, but it's not the same thing at all. Where the fighting is thickest =/= where the greater concentration of enemies is stationed.

And as I said, if you have a rule that shuts down half the players from contributing because the only choice of action is 'where the fighting is thickest' then you've got a problem. Players pick character roles because that's how they want to itneract with the game; if the techmarine wants to go around the back because that's his specialty, for example, but can't because the squad leader is cursed to constantly charge in where the fighting is thickest then not only do you risk alienating the player from the game experience because his contribution is then meaningless, but you risk killing the other characters. That's potentially crossing the line. I know that if that was my character that id invested time and imagination in I wouldn't want him to be thrown away by the whim of a rule, no matter how in keeping with 40k it is.

A better way of doing this would be, again as I said, to have the curse compel the ultramarine to treat all mission objectives as equal: that way he coimpels his team to go after everything no matter the risk and not just expedite the mission on the basis of the primary objective. That seems much more balanced. It's still risky, but given the GM will have designed the mission so that all the objectives can be completed without them dying horribly because the team are forced into always picking one course of action no matter how foolhardy. They also get a reward for doing so in that they complete all objectives adn get all the XP/renown entitled to them. XP that can then be spent by the squad leader to buy off Insanity and render his curse inactive (which i presume is what happens otherwise it's just stupid).

Siranui said:

So it's rules lawyering when I make a point, but when someone else advocates following the rule as written (with respect to going where the fighting is thickest) then it's playing properly and not being a munchkin rulesmonger?

If the marine isn't squad leader (which shuts down the curse somewhat, unless the marine wants to be obstructive and insubordinate which woudl seem even more out of sorts than being cursed for a marine) then how will his curse actually manifest? Sure the player can have his character throw hissy fits and be obstructuve but in practical terms what will that achieve other than potentially pissing off the other players because either he gets his way or he acequiesces to what the SL has ordered. There is no outcoem to this effect, it doesn't serve a purpose other than to just annoy the players.

Siranui said:

And of course it is rules lawyering too. He can't sell me that a space marine who seeks the most dangerous missions for its team would not seek out trying to complete as many objectives as possible, no matter how fool-hardy. Treating that as two seperate issues is rules-lawyering.

Alex

signoftheserpent said:

He'll urge others to take risks, speak out against a tactical withdrawal, assure support to locals without consultation, etc.?

signoftheserpent said:

So role-playing doesn't serve a purpose, I see.

Alex

signoftheserpent said:

Seeing as you just kept ignoring every argument appealing to a common sense approach and the very clear intention of the rules with the comment 'but the rules say', I gave up expecting that to work, and thought that you might actually respect something written in print. But no: Now we try to interpret that in a convenient manner, too.

Some great roleplaying? That's kind of the point of the game. If I wanted to discard that, I'd be playing tabletop 40k.

It's an insanity, accumulated by gaining insanity points. A down-side. A flaw. It's not supposed to be conveniently ignored or sidestepped by manipulation of rules. And if a player is unwilling to roll with that, then -as I said earlier- they should spend XP to reduce IP or play something else where they're happy to play the Curse.

As I said earlier: The Imperial Fist curse has zero mechanical downside. Would you let a player get away with ignoring it because there's no penalty for doing so?

Having two scenarios prepped really isn't a problem. In SLA I did it all the while (6 on the table, normally. And one was always a suicide mission). It's a magician's choice: The unused adventures are jigged about, with the PCs interceding at a different point or with a slightly different goal, and you change the name of the planet, and then use it again. No work wasted.

ak-73 said:

Well I don't agree. I think trying to complete as many objectives would be a sensible apprioach, but that's not what the rule says. Going for the most dangerous mission isn't quite the same thing as attempting to complete every objective (which I imagine the kill team would do anyway, only with more consideration to expediency and pragmatism).

We will have to agree to disagree for the Greater Good.

signoftheserpent said:

It's not 100% the same, it's not 1 to 1, but it's a pretty easy stick to measure by in many cases. And I see one of the keys to Alex's post is "no matter how fool-hardy."

Pretend for just a second that the rules don't say 'mission' but say 'course of action.' That is essentially the theme the curse is trying to convey, as has been said 100 times over, that the cursed marine is a glory hound. If you don't play this game for the theme and for the objective of playing a space marine, I think you're missing out. Though if that's what floats your boat...

I didn't have to look at the Ultramarine curse too closely since there were no UM or successors in my campaign. Looking over it now, it does seem pretty severe. But then again so are the tests needed to not act like witch-burning/blood-drinking/howling lunatics.

I think that a SM with that level of the curse should be going out of their way to find high ranking Deathwatch personnel between missions and make them understand that their killteam is by far the best choice for upcoming missions that other killteams may possibly fall down at. While I didn't offer choices of missions to players, if one had gone out of their way to get NPC attention to their killteam that may well have changed the missions they ended up with, or at least the order. And the last part of the last line strongly suggests that a cursed SM would go out of their way in mission to complete multiple secondary and tertiary objectives, especially the dangerous ones that other SMs just "aren't good enough for".

I certainly would not be impressed at the notion that a SM should somehow ignore this aspect of their character but hey, it's an opportunity for roleplaying (and roleplaying xp).