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Me and two other friends decided to take a break from our Dark Heresy campaign for some happy bashing time with Deathwatch, I volunteered as GM as I already have a half-formed idea for a Deathwatch campaign, it's my first time as DM however and I'm eager for any tips.

This is what I've got to work with…

An Iron Hand Techmarine
A Black Templare Assault Marine
And I'm playing either a Space-Wolf Tac. or Wolfscout with a Fenrisian wolf companion (first founding expansion) still undecided, as otherwise we don't have a large enough party.

A large splinter of the Dagon hive fleet is bearing down on the flank of the Canis Salient at the same time the Tau are slowly gaining the upper hand. The kill team has been given the mission of luring a Tau offensive into the path of the Dagon splinter fleet, allowing a counter offensive to drive the two forces into the black reef in a hammer and anvil maneuver reversing the fortunes of the theater, a larger more veteran kill team has been tasked with luring the Tyranids into the correct position for the ambush.

I decided to leave the method in which the kill team accomplish the objective open to them, as well as who to trust with the information. We've already done the debriefing, and preliminary trials that accompany the deathwatch, but we can still make minor changes to skills and Characters if needed. The consensus of the players was to convince the Tau that a Xeno Relic has been uncovered that would allow travel through the black reef which protects the Tau flank and feint a troop build up in the desired ambush location. So far it looks like the first priority will be to insert a fake relic onto Baraban that can then be extracted by imperial archeologists.

I've got the setting figured out, but what I've written up to now is honestly the extent of what I've got figured out. Details are really lacking, I'm playing with a lot of ideas in my head but not sure whether they're good or not, it's really the details that make the difference between a meh campaign and a good campaign and I appreciate input.

Things that I'm thinking about building in.

Whether or not to give them a relic from the black vaults that has a genuine effect to make it more believable, something that might counter-act the Baraban madness that spontaneously causes hallucinations.
Whether or not to alert lord Ebongrave (imperial commander in the area) that the Relic is fake, alerting him will allow cooperation, but will risk him giving away the game.
Running several Assassination missions in which the kill team kill eliminate the Tau strategists advocating caution but letting the more gun-ho Strategists "miraculously" survive.
Imperial generals trying to use the relic as a political bargaining chip to secure a cease-fire.
The veteran kill-team getting wiped out and the PCs having to finish their mission.

I'm happy to here about any cool adversaries or characters that you guys have built into your campaigns, or just brainstorming around the campaign as well as general GM tips.

Well...I can only offer a minor tip: use FAQ weapon tables, and be bit of a tightwad when it comes to recquisition points: otherwise, to keep the game challenging, you have to use absurd amount of adversaries.

In general, give players options and keep it open. Your ideas to add in are all pretty cool, but try not to force them into a plot, your players may not like that, or want to do some things. Making them make difficult decisions and inter party conflict is fine(a space wolf, black templar and iron hand are going to be pretty different) but make sure it does not get to conflict between players.

Since your going to be playing a character, make sure you can keep them objective. NPC's are great for allies, and you need another dood, but the NPC should never be the DM playing in their own game.

A black templar assault marine is going to want to kill, particularly some psykers. A few random chaos cultists or an aspiring psyker here or there will make for good roleplay and should make the player happy. Likewise, give the iron hand some tech based fun stuff, etc. Since tau have the melee skills of a 7 year old, I would add in some other CC based enemies.

We have just moved from Pathfinder to Deathwatch for a change and as a DM (but not the one running the game) I have noticed that if you hand the players to much they will slaughter bulk infantry like cultists. A good mix of enemies is needed so perhaps running Aspiring marine champions with the cultists will boost the encounter.

One thing our DM does and that I do is take some liberties with rule creations. Play around with the idea of chaos marks or inspiring presence. So if you throw a champion in with your cultist they might fight harder (There is a rule in pathfinder for orks were they will fight till there hit points fall below 0 down to minus whatever their toughness is...the rule is ferocity) .... Something like this will one surprise your players because they won't be able to mow down the enemy as fast and also provide you some more freedom especially since it fits with fluff of chaos marks and powers.

Another great thing is traps and events that can hamper players and use skills that they would not normally play with. These can be done in the form of mines that blow out under there feet dropping them into a cavern etc.

As said above, NPC's are great to help the party on tough mission. My DM sadly plays a character even if it is a NPC meaning that he meddles with our game play a little more then we like but hey you take the good with the bad!

Relics can be awesome but make sure you make them achievements. So perhaps the ord they are hunting is carrying *insert relic*. Also if you get sick of them using these relics to destroy things easily, perhaps instill a feeling that relics are not for constant use and should be returned to the vault when they have served their purpose.


These are a few idea's and as I said we are only starting this ourselves (tonight will be our 4th game with two players and a DM) so take them as your will but they are based more on my general view of running any role-play game with a storyline focus

 Brother Lem wrote:
We have just moved from Pathfinder to Deathwatch for a change and as a DM (but not the one running the game) I have noticed that if you hand the players to much they will slaughter bulk infantry like cultists. A good mix of enemies is needed so perhaps running Aspiring marine champions with the cultists will boost the encounter.

...But that's what Space Marines do! I feel like if a friend convinced me to play Deathwatch and I couldn't stride around the battlefield carving a swath through normal infantry and such, I'd be disappointed.

On the other hand, that shouldn't be a big deal. If anything, I feel like the rules from an older RPG, Feng Shui, would fit where attacks against 'mooks' (defined as minor characters... Your basic nameless goon, gang member, ninja 1 of 20, or otherwise minor character) were described not in doing damage or even difficulty to hit, but how many were taken out a turn. Defeating mooks was fun, but really jsut warm-up before the big fight with the boss-type characters. (Who had names: Feng Shui has a specific rule that name characters are mechanically different than unnamed.)

So, yes, I would agree that mixes of enemies are needed, but I wouldn't want to see my character nerfed at what the setting says he's supposed to be good at.

You don't want to Nerf them just challenge them. Last night four of us (A base Librarian, A base Apothecary, a base tac marine and a base devastator with Hvy Bolter) took on and defeated 9 Chaos Space Marines and 40 cultists. Aside from taking forever it was no challenge hahaha But I do get your point it would make no sense if every encounter against mass infantry was a challenge for a Space Marine.

Well you need to use the errata weapon stats otherwise the Heavy Bolter will negate pretty much anything you throw at them. Challenging the players in a game of Deathwatch is difficult. You've got to throw stuff at them that will cause lots of damage quickly, and in large enough numbers that they can't all gang up on it (with their no-doubt superior Initiative scores) and kill it before it can do anything.