Hey guys I'm fairly new to the GMing thing and have quite a few idea's for a campaign, I want to run in a month or so.

Thing is I'm going to be running a campaign which may have upwards to 10 players (thankfully I do have a co-GM, to help), I've got and Idea were this Star cluster was lost to the Imperium at the start of the Age of Shadow, and only recently have some Rouge Traders stumbled upon it and informed the Imperium.

The Players are going to start off at rank 2, to make them a little more resiliant ( I have in the past TPK'd PC's by accident, in D&D).

The Rouge Traders speak of Alien tech being used by the local Human empire, and of an actual Xenos race living on one of the planets in the cluster (There are 5 systems within the Cluster).

So the Ordo Hereticus decides to send a Inquisitorial cruiser and a Deathwatch Kill team to investigate. What the Imperium doesn't realize is that when the Cluster disapeared it did so because it was Cut off from the warp (litrally).

Thus when the Cruiser and support fleet (which includes a Heavy troop Transport housing 3 regiments of IG), 'Crash' out of the warp Violently, and 3 of the 7 ships are destroyed outright. The Inquisitorial Battlecruiser, and Heavy Transport Crash on one of the planets and the remaining 2 ships are presumed destroyed.

The planet the Kill team lands on is littered with Space marine relics from a chapter that used (and still does) call the Cluster it's home. So the remaining operational tech on the Battle cruiser is able to detect the power sources and the Inquisitor sends the Kill team to investigate two of the near by sources.

Thankfully due to the fact that I have a co-Gm splitting the party will make the 10 pc's manageable. But from here on out is were I start running into writers block. I've bounced Ideas of the co-Gm but both of us are kinda stuck on how to proceed. We want the Star clusters Human empire to be the main Antagonist, and to split the campaign into mini 'Chapters' each one involving one of the Systems, thus 5 Chapters in total.

And we both want the local Space Marine chapter to aid the Kill team. The Chapter is a custom built one made to be one of the first founding chapters from one of the lost Primarchs (mary-Sue I know but it sounds cool). The Chapter has been resisting the local Empire for the last 4 thousand years and has been able to recruit new blood from two systems feral warriors (whom resist the encroachment of the Empire), Both recruitment worlds are also Death worlds. Most of the Chapter was out of the system, on crusade when the system was cut off from the warp, so only about 10% of the chapter was in system at the time.

The Kill team can recognize the Chapter as it did survive being cut off from it's recruitment worlds by finding a new one, (That and the cut off 'Crusaders' were primarily fleet based. Think Black Templars). Mind you the Kill team will know different facts about the Chapter than what the ….'Survivors' will know.

…..Wow come here asking for advice and the first thing I give is a Massive block of text.

Please any Feed back will be welcome!

Sara_Oko said:

Welcome to the horrors of GMing Deathwatch! May your reign of terror last a dozen (character) lifetimes!

Okay, I know you're primarily wanting feedback in the story concept, which I'll get to in a second. Fisrtly, though, I feel obliged to mention a couple of things:

1.) Use the Errata. The weapon rules especially. If you're not sure why, look through the Gamemaster section of the forum and look at the myriad horror stories that come from people talking about how their kill-team one shotted greater daemons. That's primarily because of the core weapon rules.

2.) The secondary reason characters one shot daemon princes is the steel power rise as the characters increase in rank. This problem doesn't have one solution, but it will come up in your game. There have been a half dozen threads written about the issue across the forum, it's worth spending a half an hour to look them up and have a look at some of the solutions presented. There are a lot of gaming styles on the forums, the chances are good thatsomeone would have found something that either works for you or inspires a solution for you. Needless to say, if you find a good solution we all want to hear it

3.) If no one is playing an apothecary, throw the Techmarine a medicae-capable Servo Skull. If no one is playing an Apothecary OR Techmarine in a ten player game, may Him On Earth have mercy on your soul. Despite the armour, damage will fly thick and fast in this game, and if there are no heals available, the kill team is in trouble. There's a reason the first rule of every RPG is "Protect the Cleric"

As far as the story goes, I'd personally not throw the old legion in immediately. Let them keep their distance. Sometimes, on a mission, the kill team thinks they see astartes in the background. Once or twice they'll come across a scene of carnage, where some of the xenophillious human enemy have been clearly massacred with Boltgun fire. Drop hints in slowly. Then throw in a mission that's a lot harder than expected - maybe the kill team is ambushed, or just over extend themselves. Then have a squad of these other astartes come to the rescue and introduce themselves.

I'm a big believer in the old thought that in games, players respond best to mysteries. If there's somehting mysterious that keeps toying with them, they'll want to know more about it. They'll strive to find out what's going on. THen, when they do find out, the emotional payoff really benefits the game.

As for mission ideas - these poor jerks have been cut off from the Imperium of man. So, what are their immediate concerns? They'll want to find out the nature of those warp storms, see if they can be circumnavigated, and whether they're too powerful to block astropathic communications. So you could run some missions where the group has to raid the human worlds, breaking into their heavily guarded astropathic facilities and stealing starcharts, astropaths, and ancient navigational equipment. Maybe the local human empire considers their astropath-equivelents (human-xenos psychic hybrids, maybe?) a military commodity, so you need to launch raids on their naval and military fortresses to get the info you need. Once they have the info they need to travel the system, you might have a better idea of how your game works with the large number of players, and what sort of missions they respond to best.

Thanks for the Heads up, I'll try to keep that all in mind.

As for the Chapter I was going to hold off on their arrival until mid to late chapter 2, But drop hints of their presence. The feral tribes men on the planet they crash on has a 'wise' man that they look to. The wise man being a Short SM Chaplain, who watches the Kill team and asks them to aid the tribes men in any way the KT can.

Also wanted to have a Hidden Archeotech vault on the planet that the 2nd KT finds and investigates, But have no clue what to put in it, I know I want it to be something that puts the KT in contention with the Osiron Protectorate (the Human Empire thing). Maybe a Manufactorum facility from the DAoT.

Once again thanks for the Advice.

Abominable Intelligences that aid the Protectorate in their day to day lifes? That's certianly enough to ensure the absolute destruction of the empire. Perhaps the inner circle of the Protectorate may be a functional Man of Iron?

Never thought of that point….could be interesting. That combined with my original concept that the main House that leads the Protectorate has mixed in 'Heretical' ideas (Freedom of Thought, Freedom of speech, expression, etc.) and the use of advanced tech.

That and the ancestors of said house were the ones that rose up against the Chapter stuarts and did so using Chaos Sorcery to summon Daemons to fight the Space Marines. Thus the SM and all the Psykers they could get their hands on preformed a ritual (sacrificing themselves) that cut the system off from the warp, and banished all the daemons.

Yay! Ideas!

Thank you!

Ok now I'm running into the problem of:

I've intoduced the KT's to the two main groups and sent them off on tasks assosiated to said groups. But I don't know what to do from there, I could at this point wing it, but I don't know what my co-gm would do.

Only problem is he is basically letting me create Everything, then running with what I give him.

In the past when he's GM'd he pulls blatant rip offs of games he's played. Diablo 3 Star Wars Old Republic, etc… Thankfully no one knew where the references came from. Except me…. I was never playing directly in his games but heard his Players, and them him explaining what they've been through. His saving grace is that most of the players are not avid Video Game nuts. This makes me nervous about whats going to happen in my game, but I'm also nervous because Our previous GM who ran the 10 person Deathwatch game was supposed to have my co-gm's help (either co-gm'ing or spelling the GM off for a break) Which never happened.

Now I could just be getting nervous Because I'm supposed to start the game in the next 2 weeks (and I don't think I have nearly enough prepared) or just because this would be the first time running a game for this group.

Cheers!

Sounds like what you need to do is find something for him to blatantly rip off. Give him that as a guide, and you should be laughing - you'll know what he's doing and a general pace that he'll be doing it at.

I'd suggest that you should look at writing up a couple of fun missions. You have the overarching story in place, now it's time to fil it with the random junk that makes up the bulk of the game There's a chart in the book listing the different types of things that the Deathwatch do (Assassination, Kidnapping, that sort of thing) - write up a story for each of them and fit it into the games story. This will give you an idea of what types of missions your players enjoy. Maybe they love their stealthy missions, maybe they like blasting away at an endless horde of monsters climbing the cathedral they're standing on. Once you know what they like, you can focus more on that for later missions. Give the mission outline to your co-GM and mention the sort of feel you're wanting. If you put in ni terms of a video game he likes, he'll probably steal moments from that game, which makes him controllable.

When writing these missions, think about them in terms of CMOA - Crowning Moments of Awesome. Every mission should have a moment that makes people want to high five each other afterwards. Maybe it's a shootout on the back of a speeding hover train, maybe it's a fist fight on the edge of a starscraper. Make sure there's a CMOA - preferably spread out amongst the PCs so everyone has a story of how they totally [insert feat of awesomeness here] against that [Enemy of the Week]. If the scene plays out like it should be in a video game or movie, you're doing it right.

Last piece of advice here - relax. You've totally got this. You're clearly putting in more thought and work into this game than most GMs, you just got to make sure you're calm and don't get discouraged at the size of the task ahead of you.

Thanks again for the advice!

This means I'm going to have to do a bit of research into Games….hm… also might depend on how many players and which GM gets which group, but I think that could work great.

Thank you!

Always a pleasure to give a hand to someone new to the game.