Im having troubles thinking up a DW campaign for a small set of friends of mine. Im obviously playing GM and I had to make a character to bring the KT to 3!

They prefer the combat heavy adventure I gave them but I dont think they would have much objection if they had to think a little bit.

We have a blood angels assault marine (not me) whos player doesnt know a lot of 40k universe at all

A seemingly unfriendly ultramarine…

and Im having to play the dark angel devastator

Any ideas would be brilliant

Ok, combat heavy sounds like Tyranids to me so that might be a choice of main enemy. Now here's my idea for a main campaign which will feature the Tyranids as a main enemy.

The Ordo Xenos Inquisitor Valerius, specialized on Tyranids, have come to the conclusion that in order to maintain morale among the forces standing against Hive Fleet Dagon the Imperial forces must maintain their faith to Him on Terra and for this end Eleusis cannot be allowed to fall and for that reason a Kill Team is chosen, newly assembled as a matter of fact, to take on the task of securing the Shrine World.

This campaign will pit the KT primarily against the Tyranids infecting the world, at first against Lictors and then a genestealer cult, before the main Tyranid invasion begins when the KT makes tasks to aid the defenders and protect sacred relics and temples from defilement by the aliens and target important enemy creatures, like Hive Tyrants. But the Tyrandis are not the only enemy that they must face down. Imperial formations, driven insane with fear for the Tyranids attemtp to escape the battle or are put under control by mind-controlling Tyranids and must be put down and the population itself might turn to the Ruinous Powers when they think the Emperor cannot save them.

sounds brilliant, with plenty of places i can take from there

just need to bring it all together, and there might even be some heresy lurking around from the sounds of it

brilliant idea, thanks for the help

any more ideas from anyone else would be appreciated, but i think im ready to go GMing on

I'm happy you like it.

Come on people no one got any decent ideas,

any stupid idea … WRITE IT UP

Well, if you want lots of combat over roleplaying, sweeping a Space Hulk (comprised of both Imperial and non-human ships mushed togeather) clean of xeno-infestation so it can be salvaged by the Imperium provides a good excuse to encounter a wide variety of adversaries: genestealer stow-aways, re-spawned orks from a wrecked rok, sneaky Dark Eldar looking for survivors to enslave- and that weird ancient ship in the core of the Hulk… are those… Necrons?!

Unless you've already used it with this group (or parts of this group) the pre-written adventure in the back of the Core Book is actually fairly solid and has room to expand things to your liking.

Elsewise, a basic death watch game needs to be no more complicated than "Xeno A is Attacking Planet B"

Pick a planet at random and an enemy at random (or just use your favorites) and send in your KT to collect Kill Markers.

If you're looking to string it together in a longer campaign, think about using either the setting or the enemy long term (the KT keeps coming to the planet to help it out…particularly good with the pesky Tyranids) or the Kill Team is chasing the Tau out of some sector in space. If your players like combat-heavy games than your campaign doesn't necessarily need to be much more complicated than sending waves of enemies to attack them.

Puzzles take a little more thought and I don't like to rely on them to much when I need to keep an NPC with the party long term, especially if they come to rely on said NPC to think them through the tough parts (though that might not be a problem with a Devastator…)

I dunno if this helps or not but I've actually gotten inspired plenty from the video games and novels

Any games or novels which were particularly good

Ive still not got got going yet and stuff like that would be brilliant

I'd imagine that the game Space Marines would be pretty nice in terms of how a small group of advanced Adeptus Astartes might operate.

I don't know if there is an omnibus or not yet but when I first got Deathwatch, I bought and red the Space Marine short story anthologies: Heroes of the Space Marines, Legends of the Space Marines, and Victories of the Space Marines . Each story is dedicated to a different chapter. Some of the stories sucked but others were really good and gave me a good taste for the different marine chapters.

The video games are good for space marine fluff too since they all kind of focus on the marines: Space Marine, both Dawn of Wars (and all the expansions) and Kill-Team are all pretty decent and give a good taste of space marines and lots of Xenos fighting. You mentioned using the Tyranids, the vanilla campaign for Dawn of War II is all about the space marines fighting the Tyranids so that might be a really good game to play if you're looking to get some extra flavor.

I'm reading the Word Bearers omnibus right now and it has been giving me all kinds of good ideas for using Chaos. As far as the books go, there is a lot of stuff out there and they have done a good job covering different topics (trilogies related to certain factions, marine chapters, etc.) so there's a good chance you can find a book or three covering the same kinds of stories you want to tell.

The campaign books that FFG has published are all pretty solid too. I haven't picked up the latest one yet but I've liked the other adventures. The Jericho Reach includes an adventure that deals with the Tyranids, so it might be worth checking out (the rest of the book is just extra fluff on the setting which is of so-so use)

Tyranids, you say? Did you try the free introductory adventures? They can be downloaded from here and are quite good.

I'm not sure, most of my best ideas I'm keeping for my own campaign, but…I had an idea for a mission where the KT are sent to capture an (apparently) psychic Tau Commander on the Grey-Hell Front. This however is misdirection - their real mission is investigating some (Necron!) Xenos Ruins, with an Obliterator (long time bad guy for my KT) hopping around there as well. This could probably be adapted quite easily. However, if you want a thinking one, use the MoX Lictor prompt for Eleusis, except the culprit is really a hidden Daemonhost. I'm running this mission at the moment - the KT's just been attacked by an Eversor Assassin hired by the bad guys to prevent them finding the cult.

The novel "The Purging of Kadillus," from the Space Marine Battles series, was pretty much dedicated to combat against the Orks all the way through. There are several scenes that could be changed a bit to feature the Deathwatch, and it ends with a cliff-hanger that could be spun into a longer campaign.