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Tuchuul
2010-11-23, 02:04 PM
Hi there, epic long time lurker, first time poster.

After running very successful Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader campaigns, I decided to go out today and spring for a few copies of Deathwatch, as an early Christmas present from me to me. :smallbiggrin:

I want to run it this Friday or Saturday but my creative juices just aren't flowing. I'm not a fan of using FFG adventures, some aren't that great and I think at least two of my players may have read the scant few available to download on PDF for themed tabletop games.

My problem stems from the fact I'm good at running horror and political campaigns which really don't affect Space Marines in the same way. I've been reading my old Pendragon books for some knightly tales that I can adapt into the grim darkness of the future, but it's a slow process and I'm not really feeling the 40k vibe.

Does anyone have any suggestions for reading material or even a little awesome nugget of adventure goodness stuck in their head?

Thanks for reading,
Kevin.

Kesnit
2010-11-23, 02:08 PM
Have you read a lot of the 40K books, and have your players read a lot of 40K books? If you have but they haven't, you might "borrow" some plot lines from one or a few Space Marine books.

Tuchuul
2010-11-23, 02:19 PM
Alas that option has been ruled out very quickly. I have 2 ex-GW staff members who are all big fans (obviously) in the group and the others are general GW fluff, if not business practice, fans.

Unless it's Horus Heresy novels. I'm the only one reading them at the moment. Most stopped after Battle for the Abyss.

Kaun
2010-11-23, 04:22 PM
Orks have taken over that colony. Purge them and yell for the emperor a lot!.

I have never seen any attraction in Deathwatch.

I think to make it interesting you would have to run a lot of against the odds style games.

The Glyphstone
2010-11-23, 04:24 PM
Can you get your hands on a copy of Space Hulk, the board game? At least three of the scenarios there are basically tailor-made to be adapted into Deathwatch missions - string them together and you've got a mini-campaign.

Tiki Snakes
2010-11-23, 05:05 PM
How about you come up with a plot/situation/etc that would, for Dark Heresy characters, represent a doom-laden, we'll get out alive if we're incredibly lucky grimdark potential TPK.
Then allow the Marines to appropriately smash their indomitable way through it with their superior firepower and badass-ery.

Just throw together the kind of no hope, Hive-full-of-heretics kind of clusterfudge situations and see what kind of things mankind's finest can come up with and pull off. Bonus points for gratuitous epicness and pornographically indulgent scale.

Lycan 01
2010-11-23, 05:07 PM
If you can, pick up Heroes of the Space Marines and/or Legends of the Space Marines. Not only are they great anthologies, but they also have tons of cool story ideas, including one about an actual Deathwatch squad boarding an Ork starship to kill a Weirdboy.

The Commander
2010-11-23, 06:37 PM
Just think up a scenario for Dark Heresy or Rogue Trader, then multiple it by 10. For example, if you dreamt up a scenario where a gang is hiding a rogue psyker, have an entire hive overrun with said gang and have multiple pyskers ring-leading them. Don't tell the Marines this, of course, then you have an interesting situation where the Marines don't know who to trust and have (possible) powerful psykers on the loose.

Some possible ideas to stem adventures from are:
-The Marines are the vanguard of an assault on an Enemy or Xeno's held world, they need to soften up targets and elimate leaders before the main assault
-The Marines are called in to rescue something/someone(s) from a war-zone
-The Marines are tasked with scouting out some ruins/planet that have been known to have been Xenos in origin
-The Marines are called in to assist in the defence of a planet, they must make sure the planet's morale remains in check and must repel attempts made at critical points on the planet to ensure it remains under Imperial control
-The Marines are tasked with finding something that is known to be heavily guarded and/or extremely heretical/Xenos in nature

Just some ideas...

Lycan 01
2010-11-23, 08:16 PM
Ever played "Dead Space" before? Y'know, uber-freaky game involving a forsaken space mining vessel full of parasitic aliens that take over and mutate dead bodies. Yeah, do something like that. Garbled distress call comes in from a mining colony, and then all communication is lost. The Inquisition decides to send in the Deathwatch team to figure out what the situation is.

The fun thing is, if you're going for the full Dead Space vibe, you can keep what the enemy is a secret at first. They just find blood-streaked hallways with bullet holes in the wall, dead bodies that have shot themselves rather than get killed by whatever it is, torn open air conditioning vents, and other stuff. And what is the enemy? Your call. It could easily by Tyranids, or you maybe throw in Necrons - they aren't statted, but that can easily be remedied by just having them be "shoot it a bunch of times til it falls over, and if it passes an attack roll, you better pray you make that Dodge roll" situations, or chase/escape scenes, maybe even keeping them secret til the end and having the last part of the mission being an escape from the mining station and/or setting up a self destruct sequence. Or, you could actually use the Necromorphs from Dead Space. I'm sure they'd be fun to stat out, and an "original" enemy would throw the 40K vets in the group for a loop. :smallamused:

king.com
2010-11-24, 03:40 AM
Deathwatch is an interesting beast (and when I actually get my hands on my own copy of the rules we can go from there) in that your characters are designed to be sledgehammers but a fun roleplaying game means that you have to use other tools.

I got plenty of scenarios for Deathwatch but my campaign ideas are limited to 2.

Genestealer (or any foul Xeno for that matter) Cult = Investigation with a nice potential for monsters which can rip even space marines in half giving you both threat and a reason why the Deathwatch dont just blast everything to smitherines. This is kinda the implied campaign given in the book so I've heard.

A cult worshipping Necrons would be very interesting.

OR (the one im working on)

Campaign involving the players more like a super hero team during the Crusade. Your called where Xeno attacks are being brought up, all across the sector, far behind Imperial battlelines, get a particularly nasty Inquisitor (Im going with a borderline heretic Istavian myself) who wants the crusade to fail for whatever reason and the Deathwatch can pick up traces of his activities throughout their missions to clear up his acts. Maybe evidence of human activity working with Tau (they could find a psyker amongst them with a good psynscience but with all the armour you cant tell their human), a bit of evidence of experimentation of tyranids, and the research later used to destroy an Imperial outpost.

All little tiny things which can involve them in the rebuilding efforts of the Crusade and still offer variety and opportunities for investigation, horror and of course action (DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA "FOR THE EMPEROR!").

Psyx
2010-11-24, 06:16 AM
Pillaging Pendragon is a great idea. I'm sure there's stuff in The Boy King that'd be suitable.

Or... Steal Beowulf. It's an excellent story and would be well suited with a few modifications. Likewise Greek mythology would be ripe with tales of Persius and other heroes that can be re-tuned.

Failing htat.... go for something epic that's unthinkable in any other game. Pick a historical battle to read up on (Waterloo, say), then re-tool it to be 'Imperial forces versus someone else' and throw the PCs into the thick of it in a variety of set-piece encounters that are crucial to the battle. ['Right, you're being charged by a couple of thousand guys... And when you're done with those, you can see some chaos land raiders rolling up behind them.']

How about taking out a Chaos/Orc Titan... working up from dealing with the infantry outside it, breaching, climbing up the 'legs' through more defences, and finally kicking in the doors at the top!

Sir Swindle89
2010-11-24, 10:29 AM
They go down to a chapter's planet to pick up a new Deathwatch member and find that most of the marines have gone traitor/mutant geneseed/genestealer hybrid/whatever.

Antics ensue.

The Glyphstone
2010-11-24, 10:31 AM
They go down to a chapter's planet to pick up a new Deathwatch member and find that most of the marines have gone traitor/mutant geneseed/genestealer hybrid/whatever.

Antics ensue.

I think the GW regulars would start throwing books at him for that, but YMMV.:smallbiggrin:

Matthew
2010-11-24, 11:01 AM
Or... Steal Beowulf. It's an excellent story and would be well suited with a few modifications.

That is a great idea. I vote for this.

Psyx
2010-11-24, 11:48 AM
^It occurred to me as I was writing. I don't know why I didn't think of it before, and I'll certainly be doing it myself. Likewise the storming a Titan thing.

As we've just started playing the game ourselves and are all rabid about it, we've actually decided to try something new: round robin GM-ing, where we each take a turn behind the screen of death and ignorance (PCs aren't going to be present on missions where they are GMing, because we all consider DMPCs to be possibly the lamest thing since dark elves wielding a case of scimitars...).