Kicked Off a New Campaign Yesterday

By dwraley, in Deathwatch Gamemasters

Yesterday I kicked off running a Deathwatch campaign with two friends of mine acting as players. I started out with running the Extraction adventure from the back of the Deathwatch core rulebook., and the two man kill-team consisted of a Librarian from the Ultra-Marines chapter and a Tactical Marine from the Dark Angels Chapter. To my surprise, my two players immediately concluded that saving Magos Vyakai meant potentially leaving every other individual still at the refinery to die.

During the firefight at Location 6, the tactical marine concealed himself behind some cover and began sniping the Tyranid warriors with his stalker pattern bolter, and the librarian attempted using an incendiary grenade on the horde of hormagants before discovering his smite power did tons better when reducing the horde magnitude. The librarian managed to take out both Tyranid Warrior when activated his Might of the Ancients power and waded into melee combat with them.

After the fire fight, the tactical marine player decided he took exception to a commissar shooting one of his own men. The marine showed his disdain by taking a full action to aim and then using his next action to snipe the commissar with his stalker pattern bolter. Given my low to moderate knowledge of the 40K fluff, I may have decided wrong when I concluded the remaining Imperial Guard soldiers in the commissar's unit took no offense of a space marine executing their superior officer.

They sent the guardsmen to patrol another section of the refinery, and the kill-team found the magos in the next place they searched. Instead of waiting for the guardsmen to return, the kill-team called for an extraction by thuderhawk gunship at the first opportunity.

Very nice start! However, I am not sure if the executing of a commisar would be looked upon to brightly (actually by the guardsmen it would). Otherwise it looks great and I am excited about how the rest of the campaign will play out!

Well, the key thing to note with a commissar, is that they are not officers. They are present to maintain acceptable levels of morale. In the short term, it is reasonable to have the guardsmen be "thankful" to the marines for such an action (especially if they disliked the commissar), but it is important to note that the "backbone" of the unit now has a crack in it. If anything were to threaten the morale of that unit, there is no longer a fearless example there to help guide the unit to victory, and the guardsmen will most surely break formation and flee given the conditions. If there is an officer present, they may very well begin to make poor leadership decisions, now that they are no longer under the watchful eye of a commissar. Obviously, this leads to interesting RP oppurtunities for the players. Now, I haven't read through Extraction, so I don't know the role of this commissar in particular.

It does strike me as "odd" that a marine would kill a commissar, who is simply performing the sacred duty that all commissars are tasked with. My first impression is that the player probably doesn't know the 40k setting that well, or is roleplaying an especially "different" style of space marine. If anything, the Ultramarine should take offense at such a disregard for the natural order of the Imperium. Obviously at this point the players are playing their characters, so its not really possible to judge them too harshly, just inform them that this is really not "normal space marine behaviour."

It should be noted that of anyone present there, the commissar would probably be the one most similar to the marines in terms of fearlessness/devotion to the imperium.

KommissarK said:

It does strike me as "odd" that a marine would kill a commissar, who is simply performing the sacred duty that all commissars are tasked with. My first impression is that the player probably doesn't know the 40k setting that well, or is roleplaying an especially "different" style of space marine. If anything, the Ultramarine should take offense at such a disregard for the natural order of the Imperium. Obviously at this point the players are playing their characters, so its not really possible to judge them too harshly, just inform them that this is really not "normal space marine behaviour."

My players aren't so read up on 40k lore, so I totally have a little bell that I use to interrupt things in order to explain if something is normal or not if someone's about to do something without the knowledge their character would have. :P

Thanks for the input on the commissar, though the player of the Dark Angels tactical marine justified his actions through the insanity points his character received from his starting package and his paranoia talent. The player might decide against such actions if I explain this goes against normal space marine behavior, though now I'm a little hesitant to place an NPC inquisitor I've created near the kill-team at this point.

The kill-team concealed the assassination of the commissar in their report to their watch commander, and the Ultramarine librarian has some interesting motivations behind his actions. The librarian character conceals some beliefs some characters space marines might consider heretical, though the character tends to blend in just fine because the librarian views falling prey to the temptations of chaos as a disgusting sign of weakness. So far I gather the character is a bit of a social darwinist.

Since Commisars execute Guardsmen when their morale breaks, I would assume that the unit must have been on the verge of fleeing when the Commisar commited the execution, and with the Commisar dead, the unit would immediately break. IMO...

Since Commisars execute Guardsmen when their morale breaks, I would assume that the unit must have been on the verge of fleeing when the Commisar commited the execution, and with the Commisar dead, the unit would immediately break. IMO...

It depends. Some commisars are clearly abusive, and kill guys who just voice a clever opinion (be it for or against them). The unit wouldn't collapse if such a jerk was shot. So it depends on who the commisar was.

As for IGs "taking offense" of something Marines do, that would be nearly impossible (never say never ^^). Did they see the Dark Angel perform this sniping, or did the Marines just silence that? Did the Marines come shortly after in contact with the IGs? I think the Guards would be quite happy to make themselves useful for the Space Marines, as much as they can. What's more when their commissar just got shot, so their structure is a bit off balance.

Consider this: The commissar makes a summary execution to maintain morale and keep the troops as an organised fighting force in the face of a very fearsome enemyvin this case tyranids. He does this as he deems it necessary to keep them from breaking.

Now consider this: You're scared, tired, low on supplies and ammo. Most of your unit is gone and you are cut off from reinforcements. You have hordes of slavering tyranids to the front, and the commisar just executed the lad next to you for saying , "Game over, man. Game over!" And then the commissar's head EXPLODES, cause unknown.

Tommorow I'm going to start running the adventures in The Emperor Protects , and I'm looking forward to seeing how my players react to diplomatic mission The Price of Hubris . A lot of what they will do seems to hinge on how they interpret their orders once they enter the field. Just hope they remember what I told them last week, "Melee combat with gene stealers = bad idea, friend!".

Ran the first part of The Price of Hubris this afternoon, and my players continue to have a blast. In the fight with the Diablodon, where they have to go into the field without the benefit of their power armor and powerful gear, the player relied on the smite ability of the librarian. The librarian pushed his first use of smite and dealt 70 damage to the Diablodon's 75 wounds, though the perils of the warp roll ended up stunning the librarian for 4 rounds. The tactical marine ended up fighting the Daiblodon solo for about three turns and managed to enough damage to kill the Diablodon before it killed him.

Though the adventure isn't written that way, I decided to give the two marines time to heal before they proceed to the next part of the adventure. I'll post updates about how the campaign goes whenever I run another session.