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Does anyone else play Only War.
I play a bunch and I've seen a couple threads about it pop up, but Fantasy Flight's 40k RPGs don't seem to be too popular on here. What gives?

I think most people go on the FFG forums to discuss the 40k RPG..

I run a Dark Heresy campaign, did ran Only War a couple of times, played a little too (had a cowardly stormtrooper of all people)

I GMed a couple of games, and played one. Mostly, by the time OW was released, my groups had felt a little tired of the grimdarkness because we had been playing DH and RT for so long.

I have it and use it as a resource for my off-and-on again Dark Heresy game, but I don't run pure Only War (my players would resist a strictly military game).

I like it quite a bit.

We play a lot of Deathwatch and have tried Only War. My personal take is that they are both epic in different ways but I prefer DW.

DW gives you more of a 'us against the world' feel while still delivering giant cataclysmic battles, while Only War works very well to pull in the whole big panoply of Imperial military hardware and makes you feel like a cog in the vast IG machine, but an important cog at least.

DW wins for me though because it also gives a lot of latitude to work in small tight engagements and close quarter firefights, and more importantly it feels easier to work in politics and interactions with other imperial agencies (and naval combat). I feel like the fact that your chars in DW are important and recognized as such by npcs, and have a lot of latitude for personal decisions, makes the game richer and in some ways easier to run. I also appreciate the ability to directly expose the team to a lot of the high end weirdness of imperial tech.

Naturally the tone of each will depend a lot on your GM and group. You could run Rambo using OW as easily as you could run Saving Private Ryan and it remains a lot of fun.

I find the baseline engine to be a tad inelegant and the actual content to be very fiddly. While I enjoy 40k has a video game or board setting, I'm not fan of it for an RPG. I prefer my settings a bit on the brighter side, with more granular detail on the day-to-day living of the common person. 40k is this big setting painted in broad strokes and that isn't my cup-o-tea RP-wise.

I've played DH,RT & DW and my problems with the line seem to only get more pronounced the bigger and more iconic the elements being dealt with are.

We do. Tried a few sessions with Pathfinder and other more standard RPGs before discovering there was a 40k one. We're still coming to grips with it but, given we've all been friends for some 6 years now, we're having a blast.

My advice is be careful when giving your players free reign with regiment and character creation. Currently running a campaign where they're are a Drop Regiment from a Penal Colony armed to the teeth with melta-bombs and demo-packs. Their justification for 2nd & 3rd generation descendants of literal convicts having such fancy gear? Every single bit of it is stolen.

As a GM, I find the experience to be somewhat analogous to the Last Chancers + Grav Chutes. Except for these guys there's no Colonel Schaeffer to keep them in line.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Bugger, is this unwarranted thread necromancy? It was the first thread to come up when I searched 'Only War'.

I've run some Dark Heresy in the past, it's fun for short games and so on.

I ran a Rogue Trader campaign, really enjoyed it, but mostly for the group and the story. The "engine" is not that easy to work with and the character advancement is quite limited. I also disliked that they re-printed gigantic sections of the books with each new system and had multiple versions of the same equipment at times.

If I were to run another 40K game I'd take a generic sci fi system that was streamlined and just run it in that. That said the books are lovely quality and the rogue trader one especially gives lots of adventure hooks and cool ideas.

I've played some Only War. On our first mission, my brothers (Heavy Gunner and driver class (forget the name)) and I (sergeant) had to investigate an Imperial base. While there, some Orks drive up. The gunner goes to the roof to man the emplaced Heavy Bolter, while the other two of us take out the orks coming inside. After a brief (but brutal) fire fight inside, I was the only one left standing. Meanwhile, the gunner continued pouring bolter shells into the Trukk, until it exploded, catching him in the explosion, and causing all his ammunition to explode. 6 missions later I got killed by a Chaos Space Marine (after blowing off his leg) because I had forgotten to activate my force field.

My Dark Heresy campaign is going to transition into an OW campaign, assuming the Retinue can quit their squabblings and internal power-struggles in time to return the final 3 of 7 Living Saints. They've lost 1, and are on the cusp of losing another if they don't start paying attention to the person strongly believed to be its most-likely incarnate.

As the Emperor Himself said, "Can six succeed where seven failed?"

Also, Hastur, the King in Yellow, has arrived on the planet, to lead the forces of Chaos in a final, cataclysmic war to take possession of the world.

Played Only War as a psychopathic Sergeant of a Drop Troopers squad. It was pretty badass, dual wielding hot-shot laspistols and base jumping off mountains.

Then my vox orderly got sniped first contact, and the rest of my squad (on the first engagement) decided to join Chaos after being pinned down by snipers, including the Commissar. If I had been there for that session, I would've blammed them right there and then.
Instead, I showed up a session later, got in a vehicle with my former friends, and activated every explosive on my person.

For the Emperor indeed.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
decided to join Chaos after being pinned down by snipers, including the Commissar.

Didn't realise that Chaos Snipers shot evangelical bullets.

 Humble Guardsman wrote:

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
decided to join Chaos after being pinned down by snipers, including the Commissar.

Didn't realise that Chaos Snipers shot evangelical bullets.

Neither did I.
They were fairly new players to the setting, didn't realise that Chaos isn't just some enemy guys, it's THE END OF THE WORLD enemy guys.