Is the leveling system more like DnD or World of Darkness? And does the gameplay have a certain mechanic theme (i.e. super-hero vs realistic; catch bullets, or find cover or die)?

Tromdial said:

The system is definitely cineastic. You're playing super-soldiers who adresses normal people as mortals. Lesser combatants (normal soldiers) are not fought individually but as a horde entity.

Levelling wise it works like this: you get xp and and can buy skills, attribute and skill improvements and special abilities with it. If you have bought enough skills, you climb to the next level. The primary effect of levelling is unlocking the next set of advances. The leveling itself doesn't give you more hit points or anything, only a few abilities improve automatically with level or rank as it is called here.

In short, you are playing extremely capable angelic.paladin-like warrior-monk/special forces soliders to begin with. You have lots of ways to improve your already formidable skills with squad mode abilites (abilities that come from working as a team). This only increases with rank. As you can imagine that can cause some scaling issues where the kill-team does practically auto-hit and dishes out enormous amounts of damage. Sounds like D&D?

No quite because the Marine in DW doesn't become substantially more resistant to damage. Rank 1 PCs do withstand much more than an ordinary human but a rank 6 marine is unlikely to have more hit points or a much higher damage soak. It tend to increase the likelihood of do or die situations where either the players eliminate the BBEG very quickly or one or more of their own will be in deep, deep trouble. Long, slogging fights are uncommon.

Alex

Rank is also determined by amount of XP spent, rather than XP earned. If you started playing at Deathwatch chargen (starting total of 13,000 XP) and have earned 6000 XP but have spent none of it, you're still Rank 1. If you've spent that 6000 XP on advances, you're almost Rank 3.

For comparison, D&D is a level-based-on-XP-earned system. Earn 6000 XP up from chargen = you're level 4, and XP is not a thing you spend unless you get into Item Creation or specific spells/powers.

I'd agree that the gameplay is narrative to a degree but the setting is very gritty. If you're not familiar with 40k, it's almost OWoD-esque in a lot of places as the universe is pretty much going to crap and has been doing so for tens of thousands of years. Life is cheap. And the game system is pretty lethal. Enemies can frequently bypass your entire armor rating. Player characters survive by being smart and fighting tactically, just like real-world special forces. Cover is important.

Kshatriya said:

That description is awesome. That's what I've been waiting for in an rpg beyond World of Darkness; I like games that have tactics.

I am not sure I can fully agree with the description though. First of all the players live in a world of their own, apart from mortal's lives. Their world is one of combat and service. You play a band of heroes of the galaxy, coming from different chapters with different traditions, thrown into one outfit, trying to work together and honoring your own traditions at the same time. Role-playing is very centered on inter-PC roleplaying.

Players can fight smart and tactical but it's not a 100% in the spirit of the game. Yes, you play super-soldiers indoctrinated with the experience of thousands of years of warfare. But they are also usually glory-hounds and their training and gear allows them to pull off epic stunts. They will be keen to fly into the faces of danger if that ever seems feasible.

It's not a simulationist game: Yes, players can get exposed to lethal wounds easily but there is a Fate Point mechanic that serves as life server. Every starting PC has 3 to 5 of them and one can be burned to escape death when it would strike the PC. This allows for more heroic (read:reckless) behaviour on behalf of the players. But that's again in the theme of the game. Also the tactics are heavily related to PC's talents and making effects stack. Since you have so many abilities those players who are very familiar with the system have an advantage.

You are playing epic heroes. Champions of mankind. Warriors from the stars. Guarding the first and the last line of the Imperium of Man against a hostile galaxy. To them the setting is not gritty, they live and die to serve. It's gritty to their foes because the last thing that most of them will see is the crushing boot of Astartes power armour coming down on their skill. You are the speartip of impending xenocide.

***SPOILER ALERT***

In Oblivion's Edge a kill-team of presumably 3 to 6 PCs is charged to board a huge Hive ship in order to put it out of order. Yes, they got a company of Stormtroopers with them but they won't be of too much help.
A handful of people against a Hive Ship to save a whole planet from consumption, that's where the stakes are at in Deathwatch.

Alex

ak-73 said:

While I agree that the overall level of play is cinematic, the fact of the matter is it's easy for a number of Elite/Master-level enemy types to one-shot a Space Marine, and if you're not using cover you're just asking to get killed (just like in Shadowrun).

And while Deathwatch puts you in the shoes of Astartes, who are larger than life beings, you're still playing in the very nasty 40k setting. Astartes are willing to sacrifice normal people for the greater good (heh) of the Imperium. Astartes know their lives are worth more than "normal human" lives, because each Astartes has a much greater direct power in protecting the Imperium than anyone outside of high-ranking Guard/Navy commanders and Inquisitors/Throne Agents.

ak-73 said:

I find that it's "not 100% in the spirit of the game" to be nonsense. Look at the stats on a Broadside or a Hive Tyrant. This isn't Exalted; you don't have unbeatable defenses that you can trivially throw around. You might be a glory hound but you're not an idiot. A Space Wolf in the DW, for example, might have that Chapter culture of heroics and bravado, but he also survived being a Blood Claw and saw members of his pack die because they were too reckless or unlucky or any number of things.

ak-73 said:

Burning Fate is not the kind of thing you want to casually throw around. If you play dumb, you'll be burning a lot of Fate and then you'll just be dead. I see burning Fate as something to be avoided, not like 1-Up mushrooms in Mario. I'd rather have 5 Fate and never burn them and revel in the rerolls than play up the glory and burn a Fate every other session. Even the most glory-hungry SM is trained in ancient battle tactics and knows to sell his life very dearly. That means being a hero but it also means being smart. You don't stand in a hallway and blast at the enemy in a firefight. You use cover and tactics and coordination to out-think as well as outfight. I can't believe that even the biggest glory-hog SM is going to fight quite so stupidly. And please don't take that as a personal insult. I just can't suspend disbelief that a warrior-monk special-forces operative who knows exactly how rare his kind is will act that stupid when confronted with enemies that he knows can actually kill him pretty easily.

Also, you say it's not simulationist? Every game has elements of simulationism and all too often, people use the narrativist-gamist-simualtionist terms very wrong. Some of your notions break my simulation-based suspension of disbelief. The Astartes, more than anyone, know the cost of war. They're not sheep like the vast hordes under the sway of the Imperial Creed. They know what's going on and what's out there. They don't fear death but they don't throw their lives away. They know there will always be more orks in a Waaagh than there are Space Marines in the universe, and they fight on. Yes, it's their duty, but if every SM was a gloryhog who said "oh I have extra lives so I'll live it up," that's metagaming first off (to the characters, it's not a game after all) and it doesn't accurately reflect the fluff of the indoctrination and training common to each Chapter.

ak-73 said:

What? How is it not gritty to SMs? They know that their kind can and do die trivially. They don't like to admit it and they all want a good, glorious death, but they're not Ecclesiarchal drones who buy in to all the hype that the Imperial Creed foists upon them. For many Imperial citizens, war is a faraway thing. To the Astartes, it's their life and they want to keep living if only to keep killing. They see friends and mentors die all the time, and they know that there are a lot more xenos out there than there are Astartes. How can they not view their war and their service as gritty?

To me it feels like a hybrid of the WoD point buy and a D&D (3/3.5) level up system. A Classed, Level based point buy system.

I'd say the same for themes- there is an edge of grittyness and the ability to be one shotted by enemies that feels more like WoD, but at the same time you still have the high wounds and survivability that you might expect in D&D- there is a cinematic level of heroism in killing large swaths of enemies (hordes) and slaying some of the most dangerous creatures the galaxy can throw at you.

To be honest, if you don't like to walk the line, it's pretty easy to switch themes to be more one than the other though. If you want more cinematic and epic heroness, simply 'dumb down' the enemies a touch and change how they're deployed into a more comic book epic fantasy style and tweak the enemy types you're deploying. If you want more grit, bump up the enemy IQ and tweak the enemy types the other direction.