Having bought Only War, I dug out the Gaunt's Ghost books again and have been motoring through them again.

Halfway through the seige of Vervunhive it occurred to me that it'd be a great idea (and hopefully easier than starting from scratch), to run a campaign during the Sabbat crusades in the background of the central Tanith storyline.

The theatre of operations in the novels is nearly always massive. It'd be interesting to run a seperate story which intertwines with the Tanith at keys points. The trick would be intertwining the two strands without directly affecting the Gaunt thread. Think the Tribbles revisited story in Star Trek DS9,

Anybody thought about doing similar? Anyone with ideas to contribute.

This may take a while for me to work on (two kids under two). Any help appreciated.

Found a useful chronological order to get us started.

I thinks it's an excellent idea. Apparently Gaun't Ghosts get a write up in Hammer Of The Emperor which might be of help when it hits the shelve.

Dan Abnett's books will be great for reference and inspiration and that link to the timeline will make you job easier in one way and yet harder in another, in my opinion.

Why I think it will be harder stems from that you are restricting your story to Gaunt's timeline. Should your story ever catch up to the curent time period or surpass it then you'll be treading into material that cannot sync up to the Ghosts as Dan Abnett hasn't written it yet.

Depending what is in Hammer Of Emperor you may have to come up with stats for what Dan Abnett has already created in addition to making up your own cast and places for your story. And then make sure that it all meshes together.

If anyone in your group has read the series then they may end up comparing what they see Dan Abnette's writing to the story your trying to tell.

Having said all that it would be amazing if it all came together - I have played in a game where the storyteller succesfully pulled it off based on an anime tv series.

The core rule book for Only War has a chapter on setting up an Imperial Guard game in there other gamelines that already have published material ready to be adapted into an Only War story. Thinking of the Jericho Reach from Deathwatch.

Heck the material on the Spinward Marches is a great starting point with several published adventures ready to go making a Storyteller's life much eassier

I wish you the best of luck on your endeavors though.

A final thought, when I was setting up my current game I asked the Players the type of game they wanted from the regiment they wanted to be part of to the enemy they would prefer to fight. We spent two nights building up regiment, characters, companions, NPCs. The story I wanted to tell changed a little based on the time spent with the group building everything up… Not that this was a bad thing. We even tok the time to build up the world and star system the Players came from by using the rules from Rogue Trader's Stars Of Inequity .

I ran a tanith campaign a few months ago, they are fun to play but be prepared for ALOT of stealth checks. The OW rules make it somewhat difficult to play them but overall they are worth it if you can make up good enough rules for them.

Scouting missions and actions behind the scenes of a campaign can make for some fun missions but you will need to get creative to avoid it getting monotonous.

Hi,

Awesome idea, let's do it!!!! I actually made a campaign based on Dan Abnett's book 'Traitor General', which is definitely the standout book in my opinion, it had a lot of material to work with for spin-offs and so on. I didn't worry about the chronology, TMI. The players in my group were happy to have Tanith PCs, and none of them were familiar with the WH40K world, but I think the campaign more or less worked (with a few little hiccups due to rushed game design on my part). I'd love to get some feedback on my scenario design if anyone is interested. We included a pitched battle leading up to the finale, psykers, Alpha Legion Marines, the Lifeward character as villians and for the most part turned out to be manageable threats.

Cheers

Artless303

Yes hammer of the Emperor has the First and only regiment already made up for you.

The main issue I see is Roleplaying in a believable manner the pre existing characters of that Universe.

Other then that, should be fun.

If I am reading the OP correctly, he doesn't want to have a campaign AS the Tanith 1st, but in the same theater as them - a familiar regiment with some well-known NPCs to make the players (and GM) feel engrossed in the atmosphere.

I think the series gives you a great point to begin from, as it details many of the battles and worlds that are a part of the Sabbat Worlds Crusade. However, at the same time, you are bound by the limits of the series and what happens. There will never be a mission that could determine whether or not the Tanith 1st get vital intel, or save Gaunt's life, because we all know that they don't get wiped out and he lives.

That being said, Only War is fairly location neutral. The rules for creating regiments are super flexible and the armory is pretty standard across the Imperium, so there won't be any great trouble bringing it to a different conflict.

I did some OW sessions with my players fighting severan dominate modified to be chaos blood pact soldiers. Added in a few chaos mutants and some organ decorated tanks and had them secure a LZ for friendlies.

It was mentioned they were fighting with the Tanith, but only 1/5 knew who were they were.. 40k noobs

If your players know the book/lore it'd at least be a cool cameo

Also the mention of main antagonist at one point in the Ghost books wouldn't hurt