Just Starting Deathwatch

By eponette, in Deathwatch Gamemasters

Hi,

We organize every 6 month a RPG weekend with friends. This year, we decided to try DW. There will be 6-7 players.

As we play in french, I bought what is available in this language (Core rules, DM screen, Emperor protects and Rites of battle.)

What do you suggest we play during this WE? Most of the players have played or are still playing dark Heresy, therefore, we know the basic rules. I want it to be fun, with fights but also role play, investigations, … (we are all older than 40, with 20-30 year of RPG)

Also, where can I find new Chapters?

Any other advices are welcome (I have a month to read all rules, and prepare the adventure(s) for the we…

Thanks

New chapters and rules for creating your own succesor chapters, can be found in the book Honor The Chapter.

Since you only have a weekend to play, you start of at Rank 2 or 3 in order to have access some of the nicer gear and abileties right away.

There are some other Chapters (Raven Guard, White Scars, Iron Hands, and Salamanders) in First Founding ; if you are just playing a one-shot game, though, I doubt it would be worth buying just for that…

As for what to play, I recommend 'Sword of Vigilance', the final chapter of The Emperor Protects- I think it's the best-written adventure in the book. It is assumed that you will be playing it as the conclusion to events launched in the first two chapters, so you will have to tinker with the beginning to make it a one-shot. Just have the PCs sent to Sammec based on intelligence gathered by others ( Return of the Jedi -style: "-many Bothans gave their lives…"). It's pretty Chaos-focused (one of the things I dislike about the Jericho Reach setting) and xeno-light and, if I'm remembering correctly, it makes little use of Hordes (one of the big differences between Dark Heresy and Deathwatch ), but aside from that it's a good, semi-epic mission that veteran gamers can probably fit into a marathon weekend.I would suggest making the PCs Rank 4 or 5- and roll them up/buy skills before that weekend- with so many tables to draw from, it could take hours to finalize multi-Rank characters, and you don't want that time eating into your limited gaming time.

Coincidentally, I also have a special gaming weekend coming up this spring, running a DW mission for some people who we couldn't fit into our (already too numerous) 'regular' gaming group; I'm planning on running Sword of Vigilance as a one-shot using Grey Knights (from the Dark Heresy sourcebook Daemonhunter ) PCs (but Deathwatch rules).

As there will be 6-7 PCs, do you think I should increase the opponents (from any official scenarii). Because most of them are for 4-5 players.

Also, for these scenarii, which level should they be : Final sanction, Shadow of madness (if it is the correct title in english), Extraction and any of the 'Emperor Protects' scenarii (they a re the only one available in french right now)