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Hi y'all, now I'm not a massive stranger to D&D or RPGs but I'm no way an expert, also I've never hosted/lead one myself and my personal (and smallish) tuesday night gaming group have never ventured away from table top games. But we talk about trying an role play/D&D style game a lot.

So, what I was wondering is...is Deathwatch a good place to start? Is it easy enough for a novice to get to grips with, and if so is it fun?
I love the idea of it, but it's got a hell of a sticker price to buy on impulse.
Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated

I would start with Dark Heresy or Rogue Trader first. DW is basically a game of bolter-porn, with the narrowest range of character archetypes available of any of FFG's 40K RPGs.

Though it really depends on your play-group. If they are the sorts of people who prefer to min/max their characters and get in fights with everything they encounter and have frequent and lengthy battles where they roll lots of dice and wave their e-peens around, then DW is the game to play.

If they are more story/character driven, and prefer things to be a bit more low-key on the power level, then Dark Heresy, where the PCs are members of an Inquisitor's retinue, is the game to play. Of all of FFG's 40K games, DH is my favorite.

FFG's Rogue Trader game is kind of a mix between the two. The characters tend to have access to more-powerful gear and greater wealth in the beginning of the game (compared to DH characters), but are never on the same power-level as the Space Marines of DW.

I would definitely suggest Deathwatch! its great fun and you can use most of your existing 40K models

If you want to 'hear' a demo game, search the for the D6G lost chapters (ep1-2), a podcast epsiode of a demo game of Deathwatch.

 Psienesis wrote:
I would start with Dark Heresy or Rogue Trader first. DW is basically a game of bolter-porn, with the narrowest range of character archetypes available of any of FFG's 40K RPGs.

Though it really depends on your play-group. If they are the sorts of people who prefer to min/max their characters and get in fights with everything they encounter and have frequent and lengthy battles where they roll lots of dice and wave their e-peens around, then DW is the game to play.

If they are more story/character driven, and prefer things to be a bit more low-key on the power level, then Dark Heresy, where the PCs are members of an Inquisitor's retinue, is the game to play. Of all of FFG's 40K games, DH is my favorite.

FFG's Rogue Trader game is kind of a mix between the two. The characters tend to have access to more-powerful gear and greater wealth in the beginning of the game (compared to DH characters), but are never on the same power-level as the Space Marines of DW.

This. As someone who GM'd a Deathwatch campaign, Space Marines are so overpowered that it's extremely difficult to put them in any serious danger. Most things have a really hard time causing any damage.

 Andilus Greatsword wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
I would start with Dark Heresy or Rogue Trader first. DW is basically a game of bolter-porn, with the narrowest range of character archetypes available of any of FFG's 40K RPGs.

Though it really depends on your play-group. If they are the sorts of people who prefer to min/max their characters and get in fights with everything they encounter and have frequent and lengthy battles where they roll lots of dice and wave their e-peens around, then DW is the game to play.

If they are more story/character driven, and prefer things to be a bit more low-key on the power level, then Dark Heresy, where the PCs are members of an Inquisitor's retinue, is the game to play. Of all of FFG's 40K games, DH is my favorite.

FFG's Rogue Trader game is kind of a mix between the two. The characters tend to have access to more-powerful gear and greater wealth in the beginning of the game (compared to DH characters), but are never on the same power-level as the Space Marines of DW.

This. As someone who GM'd a Deathwatch campaign, Space Marines are so overpowered that it's extremely difficult to put them in any serious danger. Most things have a really hard time causing any damage.

Yea, but this is a guy trying to pitch roleplaying games to people who play tabletop. So these people want to see their favorite space marine character go out and do some over-the-top action slaying everything in sight. Or at least that's one way they may be thinking.

So I would ask the group. Do you guys want to be ultra-badasses and walk through everything portraying your favorite chapter?
Or do you guys want to play a more realistic, gritty investigation campaign where death is a very real possibility.

I've played most of the FFG's systems (all apart from Only War and Black Crusade just for a bit) and here are my opinions on them:

Dark Heresy: wouldn't play again. The premise (Inquisitor's retinue) is fun and solid, the mechanics not so much. It's the first system they designed and it shows. Whatever your char can do tjere's a tech-priest build that does it better, mid-rank psykers play at a way higher power level than everyone else and some careers and alt ranks (like Crimson Guard or BoM Sister of Battle) also have a way different power level that the other options.

Rogue Trader: it's by far the most fun and open-ended of the bunch. It's also pretty balanced, with a few caveats: Teleportariums, frigates, you can easily push most skills into 'I never fail' region rather quickly and if one or more PCs focus on combat they will quickly become as tough as a marine, makimg having a few Deathwatch monster books handy. In our Rt/Dw campaign both the Arch-Militant and the Void-master could duke it out with a marine and win.


Deathwatch; Also fun but a bit limited for long term campaigns as there isn't much non-combat action to be had in Deathwatch. Most fun we've had was by merging it with Rogue Trader: we had our Rogue Trader Pcs and a Deathwatch team aboard (our Rt also made it to Inquisitor). If you go for it, do.use errata weapon stats, they make bolters less of an obvious choice.

Thanks guys! That's really given me a feel for not only the game but what else is out there by FF (whose output as a company I love already) and in all honesty I think Icculus hit the nail on the head, and totally gets where I'm coming from...the group will get fired up with just getting to be marines from their favourite chapters, and basically strut about the place blow things to bits. I've always found combat tiresome in D&D, and personally love just exploring and developing a narrative arc, but the my mates will just be excited to sip beer, roll dice and kill things Also, I see this outing as something of a 'gateway' exercise that could, or could not lead to more cerebral RPGs.

wufai wrote:
I would definitely suggest Deathwatch! its great fun and you can use most of your existing 40K models

If you want to 'hear' a demo game, search the for the D6G lost chapters (ep1-2), a podcast epsiode of a demo game of Deathwatch.

Cheers mate will download that now!

If you want to be Marines going around blowing stuff up, I'd suggest Black Crusade over Deathwatch. I mean it's automatically better because you get to be Chaos rather than silly loyalists, plus there are even human classes if you decide easy-mode (ie marines) is lame :p

But seriously, Black Crusade (and Only War, if you want to be a real man and play as an Imperial Guard trooper) have alot of refinements over the previous games.

Also, if you've never GM'd before I'd suggest reading up on a few GM tips. You'll want to put a little bit of effort into setting up a campaign as well - there are pre-built campaigns included in the books which are good starting points.

Yeah, if your group just wants to RP as the various Marines and ICs they deploy on the table-top, then DW is definitely the game for them. It can be made to be fairly "Heroic", in that you have 4 or 5 Space Marines against a horde of thousands, and yet manage to kill all of them in like 5 rounds without taking any damage.

The whole "we RP as Space Marines" thing kind of turned me off to Deathwatch. Reminds me of a game of we played where I was an Exotic Dancer in a Black Crusade game. The focus was on just people who were abandoned by the Imperium and had to make their own way in the galaxy, but weren't really dedicated to Chaos per say. A couple of people decided to play as Chaos Space Marines and took the "maim burn kill" attitude to Role Playing.

We basically ended up playing two different campaigns where I and the other sane person in the party joined a Rogue Trader crew and had a good time exploring while the CSM players systematically exterminated all lifeforms on the space station we started the campaign on.

dark heresy 2.0 just came out apparently. that might be a good place to start

Just my personal experience:

Deathwatch is GREAT in getting a game started. You don't faff around with 'you meet in a tavern'. You have missions. Those missions have parameters and goals. You execute them and they pick you up. Next mission.

Seriously, it's that easy. It's GREAT if you want action, because it focuses naturally on the action. I'll argue to my dying breath that you can roleplay even in combat, so I don't think that it's roll-play or roleplay. It makes it very easy for the GM to start up a new adventure, and end the old one. There's none of this "I visit with my girlfriend", "I check in on my old father.", "I go shopping for a hat," stuff which normal humans would normally do, so should probably do in a RPG too.

On the other hand, you are all playing Deathwatch Marines. It does really give you a fairly narrow group of archetypes to experiment with. You can't have the Han Solo, the Luke Skywalker, and the C3P0. All Deathwatch Marines are going to be loyal marines that do a fairly good job of representing their Chapter, or you are roleplaying wrong. The Chapters don't send screwups and loose cannons to the Deathwatch. These are serious vows of service. It can mean that your roleplaying is a bit bland. There's not really any "I'm just in it for the loot" or "Tagalong characters" or 'reluctant heroes'. You aren't just marines, you are exemplary marines.

Those 'exemplary marines' are the biggest problem I have in the game. It is still locked into this 'leveling up/advancement' mindset. Despite the fact that you are freaking awesome compared to a normal human, you still start as playing what feels like a pretty inexperienced Marine (instead of one of their veterans) and quickly gain experience and improvements. I really feel like Deathwatch Marines should already be insanely bad-ass, and really only have an opportunity to slowly develop and build the unique skills offered by the Deathwatch. However, this would make the game even more impenetrable by new players, as they'd be handed even more complex characters with even more convoluted sets of abilities. Still, it bugs the hell out of me that your Deathwatch Marine might not be all that great of a shot, or not terribly impressive in combat, or be a Librarian with just a few psychic powers.

Honestly roleplaying games depend far more about who you are doing them with. A good GM and a good group of friends can make a crappy system fun and likewise if you don't like the people you game with, it will be miserable no matter how good the system is. However all the games have their own feel.

Death Watch: It's all about fighting your way through anything as a squad of space marine heroes. Typically these games really focus on combat so you can expect a bunch of dungeon crawls

Rogue Trader: Become a space privateer, see exotic places, meet exotic people,???, profit. You and your fellow crew mates sail about space to find the booty.

Dark Heresy: Think Call of Cthulhu in space. You and your fellow wacky acolytes do investigations for an inquisitor. Expect there to be a lot more mystery and plot. Also expect to lose a character since you'll often run into problems beyond what you're capable of.

Only War: Play as a Guardsmen. This one plays like the movie Aliens. You build a party of badass guardsmen, send them into a warzone, and watch most of them die horribly. Playstyle is simmilar to death watch it's just scaled so that you're weaker.

Black Crusade: This one is all over the board. As one poster put, it depends on your party. Sometimes it will feel more like evil Death Watch and sometimes it will run more like Dark Heresy or Rogue Trader. If you really hate yourself, build a party of cultists and see how long they lasts (not very)

Da Butcha wrote:
Just my personal experience:

Deathwatch is GREAT in getting a game started. You don't faff around with 'you meet in a tavern'. You have missions. Those missions have parameters and goals. You execute them and they pick you up. Next mission.

Seriously, it's that easy. It's GREAT if you want action, because it focuses naturally on the action. I'll argue to my dying breath that you can roleplay even in combat, so I don't think that it's roll-play or roleplay. It makes it very easy for the GM to start up a new adventure, and end the old one. There's none of this "I visit with my girlfriend", "I check in on my old father.", "I go shopping for a hat," stuff which normal humans would normally do, so should probably do in a RPG too.

On the other hand, you are all playing Deathwatch Marines. It does really give you a fairly narrow group of archetypes to experiment with. You can't have the Han Solo, the Luke Skywalker, and the C3P0. All Deathwatch Marines are going to be loyal marines that do a fairly good job of representing their Chapter, or you are roleplaying wrong. The Chapters don't send screwups and loose cannons to the Deathwatch. These are serious vows of service. It can mean that your roleplaying is a bit bland. There's not really any "I'm just in it for the loot" or "Tagalong characters" or 'reluctant heroes'. You aren't just marines, you are exemplary marines.

Those 'exemplary marines' are the biggest problem I have in the game. It is still locked into this 'leveling up/advancement' mindset. Despite the fact that you are freaking awesome compared to a normal human, you still start as playing what feels like a pretty inexperienced Marine (instead of one of their veterans) and quickly gain experience and improvements. I really feel like Deathwatch Marines should already be insanely bad-ass, and really only have an opportunity to slowly develop and build the unique skills offered by the Deathwatch. However, this would make the game even more impenetrable by new players, as they'd be handed even more complex characters with even more convoluted sets of abilities. Still, it bugs the hell out of me that your Deathwatch Marine might not be all that great of a shot, or not terribly impressive in combat, or be a Librarian with just a few psychic powers.

Interestingly, if you read the book "Blood of Asaheim", it has a Space Wolf that has just returned from Deathwatch service. He references the many things he learned(in combat, tactically, and as a team member) and experienced in Deathwatch on more than one occasion in the book.

I'm not a huge fan of any of the 40K RPG games, but I think Deathwatch is by far the weakest. The reality is that Space Marines make terrible protagonists, and the roleplaying opportunities are just about nil if you intend to actually play "Space Marines" and not "stereotyped human characters with identifiable human motivations masquerading as transhuman Space Marines."

In the end, it's basically a roll playing game. There will be high body counts and lots of dice rolling. It's a fun game for an extremely casual playing group because the characters are overpowered and there's not a whole lot of setup involved, story-wise. In fact, in a lot of ways, the shallower the story, the more authentic the game of Deathwatch you're probably playing anyway.

Dark Heresy works best the less you rely on the mechanics and the more you focus on story. But in the end, it (and the other FFG systems) is a "leveling" game, and those often become very difficult to control long term.

here is a very entertaining roll play series Dark Heresy.

This series will show you how the game feels and progresses.

to my knowledge all of the 40k series by FFG share very similar rule sets, so the combat should be similar to how it is in death watch.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:

In the end, it's basically a roll playing game. There will be high body counts and lots of dice rolling. It's a fun game for an extremely casual playing group because the characters are overpowered and there's not a whole lot of setup involved, story-wise. In fact, in a lot of ways, the shallower the story, the more authentic the game of Deathwatch you're probably playing anyway.

I'm genuinely curious why so many people seem to think Deathwatch is easy mode ith OP characters. From my experience that's RT.A Rogue Trader cbat vhar will be equal or better than a marine for most of his career (except very low and very high rank) and, if you stick to Rt monster books will be fighting weaker enemies.

Da Butcha wrote:
Just my personal experience:

Deathwatch is GREAT in getting a game started. You don't faff around with 'you meet in a tavern'. You have missions. Those missions have parameters and goals. You execute them and they pick you up. Next mission.

Seriously, it's that easy. It's GREAT if you want action, because it focuses naturally on the action. I'll argue to my dying breath that you can roleplay even in combat, so I don't think that it's roll-play or roleplay. It makes it very easy for the GM to start up a new adventure, and end the old one. There's none of this "I visit with my girlfriend", "I check in on my old father.", "I go shopping for a hat," stuff which normal humans would normally do, so should probably do in a RPG too.

On the other hand, you are all playing Deathwatch Marines. It does really give you a fairly narrow group of archetypes to experiment with. You can't have the Han Solo, the Luke Skywalker, and the C3P0. All Deathwatch Marines are going to be loyal marines that do a fairly good job of representing their Chapter, or you are roleplaying wrong. The Chapters don't send screwups and loose cannons to the Deathwatch. These are serious vows of service. It can mean that your roleplaying is a bit bland. There's not really any "I'm just in it for the loot" or "Tagalong characters" or 'reluctant heroes'. You aren't just marines, you are exemplary marines.

Those 'exemplary marines' are the biggest problem I have in the game. It is still locked into this 'leveling up/advancement' mindset. Despite the fact that you are freaking awesome compared to a normal human, you still start as playing what feels like a pretty inexperienced Marine (instead of one of their veterans) and quickly gain experience and improvements. I really feel like Deathwatch Marines should already be insanely bad-ass, and really only have an opportunity to slowly develop and build the unique skills offered by the Deathwatch. However, this would make the game even more impenetrable by new players, as they'd be handed even more complex characters with even more convoluted sets of abilities. Still, it bugs the hell out of me that your Deathwatch Marine might not be all that great of a shot, or not terribly impressive in combat, or be a Librarian with just a few psychic powers.

Thing is, a DW Marine is already extremely badass when compared to a starting CSM in Black Crusade. The Squad-Mode/Solo-Mode buffs alone make a DW Marine just dread killy. And compared to just about anything in DH/Ascension, they are god-like. A group of high-level DH characters might be able to kill 1 DW Space Marine, but they will definitely know that they were in a hell of a fight.

Other than that, though, I agree with you completely. If you have a gaming group that doesn't do well with ambiguous storylines, or tends to get off onto stupid tangents, then DW is great because the gameplay is generally very linear, in that it is all built around a mission parameter against some kind of Xeno.

I personally love Deathwatch. I actually own most of the books too, which I never thought I'd say. I agree that Space Marines pretty much rape anything they touch, but at the same time, in the game that I DMed a little bit ago, I was doing a Tzeentch/Daemon oriented list with twists and a lot of story, as much as I could possibly fit in. I also bought some books from Black Crusade, Rogue Trader, and Only War, and with a little tweaking, you can add a lot more enemies. Heck, a seemingly weak Eldar Shadowseer went up against the group and pretty much single handedly killed one party member (Though, he burned a fate point), and damaged most of the others, while taking a decent time to actually kill him. Plus, the group was left off about to fight a Trygon Prime, shortly after slaughtering through a warehouse of Orks, and the party is most likely going to die. So, yeah the power scaling is intense, but it makes for that much more intense battles.

All in all, I would highly recommend it. However, make sure your party knows how to roleplay Space Marines. That might be difficult at first.

I'll be honest. I've only played Only War.

Sure the first mission out I was the sole survivor. Yes, after almost every game session someone was rolling up a new character. But you know what? We are the first, last and often only line of defence the Imperium has against what is out there. And if I have to let my entire team die to complete the mission...I will. And I won't regret it.


Which is probably why after my character (finally) died they neglected to mention the amount of pain I put on the CSM before being put down...

My current DH campaign is going to segue into an OW campaign once this part reaches its natural conclusion.

Reading this thread, I'm struggling to think of how tame some of you guys' GM's must be for your Deathwatch marines to be borderline unkillable.

Within the first three sessions of my Deathwatch campaign, two of the players' Marines had sustained critical damage, and they'd only fought Stealth-suits, Fire Warriors and Pathfinders by that point.

You had to have buffed the Tau's weapons, because most Tau rifles can't even pierce a DW Marine's PA like 40% of the time.

Or your dice rolls were really good and you also granted NPCs a version of Righteous Fury (which I do, calling it Wrath of the Dark Gods).

 BlaxicanX wrote:
Reading this thread, I'm struggling to think of how tame some of you guys' GM's must be for your Deathwatch marines to be borderline unkillable.

Within the first three sessions of my Deathwatch campaign, two of the players' Marines had sustained critical damage, and they'd only fought Stealth-suits, Fire Warriors and Pathfinders by that point.

Yeah, Tau are pretty good, actually. Unfortunately I never got to send some after the players. And if all else fails, through in a Broadside. >.<

They're decent but, off the top of my head, the pulse rifle is 1d10+5 at Pen 4? Pen 6? And then has to deal with the Marine's Unnatural Toughness (granting, generally, a further 8 to 10 soak, on average).

 Psienesis wrote:
They're decent but, off the top of my head, the pulse rifle is 1d10+5 at Pen 4? Pen 6? And then has to deal with the Marine's Unnatural Toughness (granting, generally, a further 8 to 10 soak, on average).

Well yeah, but plenty of firepower, or bring them as a Horde, really increases their damage.

 Psienesis wrote:
You had to have buffed the Tau's weapons, because most Tau rifles can't even pierce a DW Marine's PA like 40% of the time.

Or your dice rolls were really good and you also granted NPCs a version of Righteous Fury (which I do, calling it Wrath of the Dark Gods).

Neither. I just you know... took the Marines' capabilities into account and and strategized around them, just like the Tau would actually do if they had to fight Marines.

I don't know where you're getting the idea that Tau have trouble piercing Marine PA? A pulse rifle will do an average of 1 wound per hit to a Marine in power armor and with TB8. They'll get an average of two degrees of success, meaning two wounds per Fire Warrior, in a group of ten Warriors. That's on average 20 wounds on a Marine in a single round of shooting- though of course dodging and cover will make that less likely. Stealth Suits do similar damage on average, but also have the flier trait and hard target, which makes them hard to put down and allows them to hit and run. Then you have Pathfinders, who can take Rail Rifles which put 13 wounds on a AP8/TB8 Marine on average. My Space Wolves assault marine got put into the criticals when the team got ambushed by Stealth Teams in a jungle and he chased them as they fell back into what was a second ambush, where he got lit up by a double rail-rifle wielding Pathfinder squad and two units of Fire Warriors. In one round they brought him down from about 23 wounds to -3. The Stealth suits doubled back using their jet-packs and ran interference on the rest of the squad who were trying to catch up, and the Space Wolves player had to burn a fate point to survive.

GM's need to get on mah level.

edit- Pulse Rifles are S/2/4 2d10+4 Pen 4.

I suppose it just depends on how the party reacts. From my POV, and basing it on what I see normally in a Kill Team, there's a few options that (assuming average dice rolls) allow the Marines to put the Tau down inside of 4 rounds of combat.

 Psienesis wrote:
I suppose it just depends on how the party reacts. From my POV, and basing it on what I see normally in a Kill Team, there's a few options that (assuming average dice rolls) allow the Marines to put the Tau down inside of 4 rounds of combat.

Throw in a Commander Battlesuit with some drones.

Throw in a Devastator Marine with a Heavy Flamer. The Tau don't have particularly high AGI scores, and you don't roll to hit with a flamer weapon. Once Tau are on fire, they tend to stay on fire, and die within a couple rounds.

The Astartes Heavy Bolter is *disgustingly* powerful. Laying down suppressive fire with that beast is likely to kill 2-3 Tau a round, assuming they're within its firing arc.