Hello Everybody

I am running a Deathwatch campaign and I have a problem: The players cannot express the right role playing needed in order to make the game fun and nice to play.We are playing almost six months now and they still cannot play their characters in the right way,they are always like machines "Attack that,quote for the Emperor,attack the other,quote for the Emperor etc.". I am trying to make them express the nature of the Marine better through Chapter demeanour and Personal ones and through missions with variety of choices and general more role playing ones but they are like dice machines.I even made a PC in order to push them forward and gave them books to read etc.Any tips on this matter from the more experienced would be very nice because it's a pity to stop playing this wonderful RPG game. Thank you for your time .

Hi,

I understand your popint of view, those kind of player are boring when you see clearly that the only point making DW a good game is Rp by the characters. In this game you don't rush for money, you doesn't have to worried about armouir, weapons and gears, You are already an allmighty astartes.

So the only real good thing to do is to have the best possible incarnation of the characters by their players.

First for you witch book do you give them to read, and for the fact do they read them, (if RP had not improved i will be tempted to say no).

Second, look at the link; It is how I give my player knowledge and also feeling about the universe they play. With those little story I can give them all the needed background for their character.

If really thatr do n ot change things a bit change players.

Maybe try to be as boring than them before, maybe they will understand at witch point you have fun with them.

If you are french and on paris or near I would like to play very much and I'm not a pain in the ass player, I will play anything with equal pleasure.

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=214&efcid=3&efidt=689705

Good luck with your machine player.

Thank you I've read the article and it seems a very nice idea and yes next time I'll see truly if they are reading anything,maybe I'll temp them with some rewards in order to read I'll see thanks again . Any other ideas? .

P.S I am far from France

The only way I can imagine to use other than those write in th previous post is maybe a trick learn from a RPG call Feng Shui.

It is a Hong Kong theme RPG, player are in this game push to RP because every action undertaken by the player are more difficult if it lakes any form of action theme movie description.

In a warhammer 40K universe it will make any roll without good RP more difficult like -20% and more the action is describe more bonus the player get.

More for example: to lose one point of action making the noise of shotgun arming make the next attack +1 dmg.

It's maybe a little difficult to put in game in DW but can be quite usefull.

Yes that is a very good idea in order to get things described,I was thinking a similar idea thanks again I'll post the results from the next session .

How much non-combat stuff are you running?

I found to get my players into character, it helped me to start running missions from when they got the mission, to after they had given their mission report to the Watch-captain. As a general rule, it folllowed these stages.

1.) Receive mission, mission intelligence and requisition. Retire to Strategium.

2.) In the strategium, the characters (not players) may make enquiries about mission objectives with the Interregators on board. Requests can be placed to local navy, Departmento Munitorium and any local Astartes chapter for assets to be deployed. each one of those contacts should have an NPC face. Don't let your players just write down "Imperial Guard Asset - Reserve Platoon. 15 req" on their sheets; let them inform Major Szantovitch that the Rebo 132nd "Justicars" are being requisitioned by the inquisition.

3.) To the Forge! The master of the forge needs to release the weapons and vehicles that the squad take with them. Do they treat their equipment well? If they keep bringing their rhino back damaged, there's a good chance he might be less happy to give up the goods. he'll do it, of course, but he may take the group to task about their poor handling of the sacred machina that he gives them.

4.) Grabbing Relics? To the chapel, where the Chaplain of your watch house will ritualistically lower the stasis fields the relics are kept in, bless each one seperately, and allow special chapter serfs to bear them to the arming chambers.

5.) Pregame. What do your astartes do before the mission begins? Do they pray in the chapel? Feast, drink and sing? Go down to the training cages to get just a little extra practice in and to get their body producing combat stimms before the mission? (NOTE: It sounds like this might be the step your guys need help with, get ready to provide options. Don't let them all just pray though. Or if you do, work towards making it interesting - maybe work out a sermon the chaplain could give.)

6.) Arming up. In the arming cages. Describe how they armour up. A set of personal serfs help them into their armour, sacred oils are massaged into any of their neural links that might seem slightly inflamed or infected. A series of carts are run up to the astartes bearing their boltguns and other weapons of choice. A selection of bolt magazines, so that the character can run a number of them through the boltgun and see which mags feel like they have the smoothest connection to the gun. As the armour is activated, having the characters feel the neural backlash of the armours machine spirit - a millenia old animus with its own personality and desires. If a character has a machine spirit roll on their armour that is contrary to their characters personality (such as a Fear causing armour on a fairly emotionless Techmarine), is there a conflict between them? Does the character have to spend a few moments exerting his will over his armour before battle?

7.) The Mission. Encourage your guys to be in character from the word go. If possible, encourage interaction with NPCs - even if that's just a crowd of imperial citizens forming around them, trying to touch their armour, or trying to learn their names so that the citizen can name their children after the astartes. These aren't super-soldiers; these are the Angels of Death, the God Emperor's wrath made flesh. It's statistically improbable that anyone in the Imperium will ever see an astartes in real life, but every single citizen knows that the angels of death will protect them against the horrors outside their little world. It's a huge deal, and your players should be in a position to have to realise that and respond to it.

8.) Decontaminate. Did you just fight Nids, Orks or the ruinous powers? You best BELIEVE you're in for decontamination. Run your players through it quickly, there's not a lot of roleplay potential here. One thing you CAN do though, is ask everone for their toughness rating and make a secret roll for each of them. If any of them fail, they have to go through far worse cleansing - perhaps a surgical removal of a tyranid ammunition beast that the astartes was hit with but remained dormant, waiting for a chance to kill later. Maybe a strange chaos toxin that requires the astartes blood to be pumped out, cleaned, and returned. Have fun with it.

9.) Debrief. Have the group tell, in their own words, the mission details to the watch captain. You can reward good in character roleplaying at this point by doing things such as giving bonus renown for a dramatic retelling, or bonus renown for anything that any character did that was above the call of duty.

Okay, hope that helps some!

Some really good stuff here. A few additional thoughts, to provide some extra perspective.

professor_kylan said:

In particular, here, I think that emphasising the choosing of a leader and the Oath-Taking process - elements of mechanical significance - is worthwhile. Taking an Oath prior to the mission is in essence a reaffirmation of a Space Marine's duties, beliefs and self-identity, so it's particularly relevant here.

professor_kylan said:

Go broader. All the enemies of Man are unclean in some way. Ensuring the purity of the Emperor's warriors is of utmost importance. The moral or technological threat of the Tau may taint a warrior's heart or defile the spirits of his wargear (being hit by an EMP grenade, for example). The witchcraft of the Eldar or the sorceries of Chaos may leave impurities upon the soul.

It is the duty of a Chaplain to ensure that a warrior's spirit is intact. It is the duty of a Librarian to ensure that his mind is pure. It is the duty of an Apothecary to ensure that a warrior's body is ready. It is the duty of a Techmarine to ensure that a warrior's wargear is functional. All are necessary to ensure that the Astartes remain true, pure and ready to confront the enemies of Mankind.

professor_kylan said:

A good point here, and one to be expanded upon. Renown is a matter of personal honour and glory, and should be as much a matter of the perceptions of your peers and betters as anything else.

For what it's worth, there isn't anything inherently *wrong* with playing their characters like machines if that's the way the players want to play the game. Indeed you can make a reasonable case that there *is* something a bit mechanical about the Astartes - they're massively indoctrinated semi-cloned supersoldiers after all, so it makes sense for them to be goal-oriented and not so big on small talk.

That said, I often find that an unwillingness to play "in character" stems from an uncertainty about what your character is actually supposed to do or be. If your players are unfamiliar with 40K then they might just not have much to get a handle on - Deathwatch is particularly unforgiving in this respect because everybody is playing a Space Marine, and I can imagine that for players who aren't really familiar with the setting and the lore, it might be hard to see what makes a Blood Angel different from a Space Wolf apart from the fact that they paint their shoulders different colours.

Chastity said:

This is a problem a lot of players have.

I usually give them some nudges on the roleplaying side if they are familiar with the setting. Talk to you player off-line about how his character can be more interesting or maybe give them a novel to read. 40K has quite a bit of source material to draw from. 40K table-top books have probably more information on the individual chapters then Deathwatch has in some instances. Mindset is also a big concern. Getting players to get into a character's frame of mind is important. Making them think like how their character would think is roleplaying at it's core. Even if all he says is "For the Emperor!" as long he makes decisions that his character would make he has roleplayed well. Also some player are just bad at roleplaying. As long as they try and is enjoyable to play with I like having them around.

I'd also suggest reminding all of your players about the ability to get bonuses from good roleplaying (i forget the exact name of this mechanic but it is in the demeanours section). If your players are trully ignoring the RP to just roll dice and succeed, i doubt they will pass up the opportunity to get some bonuses on their rolls and may not even realize that it is a way of pushing for more RP.

Here's a bit of advice. I've been running a game for the last 6 weeks or so. We started with the Extraction story from the DW rulebook (although I'd run the RPG day adventure with the pre-genned characters too).

I was finding it pretty dull even with a bunch of different enemies from MotX, and there's almost no room for RP in there (even when they did meet up with the guardsmen) so I started to add flashback sections, at first with the whole party (from when they joined DW) then individually from back with their own chapters (especially when there was something traumatic going on). It worked well to break it up, if I do say so my self, and gave a chance to add a bit of chapter character in. Only one of my 4 players is particularly experienced with 40K Lore and 2 of them are downright naive.