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 H.B.M.C. wrote:
If you think that Space Marine's can't be RP'd, then really that's more of a 'you' problem than the game's problem.

Of course they can, the problem is that they can only be RPed in certain ways if they are to be true to the fluff. You are not going to have a Marine infiltrating anywhere for example.

That's not really true either.

 schoon wrote:

Game mechanic borrows from TORG Eternity (primary influence), and the feel of Savage Worlds, D&D 5th, and Savage Rifts

That last one makes me feel a bit more positive about this. Though it does creak a bit at the higher power levels (where the margin between "fine" and "dead" can be a bit too thin depending on how many damage dice are rerolled), Savage Worlds Rifts generally holds up well to varied power levels, and has a very fast and intense feel. In my message-board game (link below for those interested), I was able to move from a fight with 30 stormtroopers and robots to an APC vs jet cycles chase sequence without ever feeling the system was really dragging.

http://www.rpol.net/game.cgi?gi=69532&date=1504574151

 adamsouza wrote:
Because Space Marines will seldom be skilled at anything but combat. You'll need the guys that are good at gathering information, dealing with the local government, a psyker, someone who can actually pilot and repair vehicles, etc...

So a low level Inquisitorial agent, a Space Marine, an Imperial Navy Pilot, and Admech techpriest could all have useful rolls in an adventuring party.

Eh, that seldom works out in practice. When a fight breaks out that can't best be summed up with "The combat monster PC massacres everything, no need to roll dice.", then it's going to be the combat monster rolling dice for 1-2 hours while everyone else makes a token effort in between looking at their phones. And when a social situation comes up, it's the other way around. Either way, you've got a player being bored.

There's a saying about Jedi characters in the Star Wars RPG's--that either everyone should play one, or nobody should play one.

There are ways around that problem, of course--Mutants & Masterminds had a nice system where characters could indirectly contribute to combat through distracting, aiding allies, taunting enemies, etc.

Well, it depends. In my last BC campaign...
- Our Nurgle-ish Heretek managed to be more hardy than Marines.
- The Slaanesh cultist was a mastermind in getting minions (she was directly responsible for collecting 100 psykers and putting them in a room, forcing them to push their powrs just to see what would happen) and picking up plot hooks.
- My TS Sorcerer helped the group a lot outside combat.

The only guy that didn't do much outside combat was the Khorne Berserker, but, well... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Pseudomonas wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
If you think that Space Marine's can't be RP'd, then really that's more of a 'you' problem than the game's problem.

Of course they can, the problem is that they can only be RPed in certain ways if they are to be true to the fluff. You are not going to have a Marine infiltrating anywhere for example.

In our really long Deathwatch campaign our squad infiltrated a Tau fortification using various tools (carefully chosen time of attack, elimination of sentry drones, special equipment such as smoke bombs to feign a fire).

It is harder for Space Marines, especially depending on the Marine size your group decides to go with (we go with 9') but not impossible, and some Marines such as Raven Guard are scarily good at it.

A Raven Guard is what I played, by the way. I managed to get something like 70-80 BS and agility and just went full Sam Fisher Space Marine on the poor Tau.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
That's not really true either.

They could maybe get to a location unseen (although they have significant drawbacks due to their sheer size) but they will never be able to pass themselves off as anything other than a Marine. 'Espionage' type game play is impossible with a Marine outside of very specific settings and espionage gameplay is very common in the RPGs that I have played.

Pseudomonas wrote:
They could maybe get to a location unseen (although they have significant drawbacks due to their sheer size) but they will never be able to pass themselves off as anything other than a Marine. 'Espionage' type game play is impossible with a Marine outside of very specific settings and espionage gameplay is very common in the RPGs that I have played.

I think you're coming at this backwards:

Why would Marines be sent in for the purposes of espionage in the first place if they're so terrible at it?

And if the answer is "Well maybe the group has to, and the Marine won't help", then you've pretty much given the chief reason why Black Industries (and later FFG) separated the games out into types.

One thing I hope the game does have is "templates" for parties, with guidelines on what sort of characters will fit into each, to pre-empt That One Guy who will argue that his Dark Eldar can work just fine alongside the puritanical Inquisitor, if you were a GOOD GM.....

I'm thinking of the Iron Kingdoms RPG, where you could choose a template for your adventuring party ("Occult investigators", "Cygnar spec-ops team." or "Trollkin defending their hometown.", and gained bonuses and assets based on that. A typical framework might be:

All of / the majority of characters must be (race) or (class)
The group chooses one character with (class) to be the leader. They gain the Natural Leader talent.
The characters gain (trait)
The party have an office / pirate ship / safehouse / village to call home.

It made it easy to say "This is what the game's about."

 Elemental wrote:
One thing I hope the game does have is "templates" for parties, with guidelines on what sort of characters will fit into each, to pre-empt That One Guy who will argue that his Dark Eldar can work just fine alongside the puritanical Inquisitor, if you were a GOOD GM.....

Urgh, 99% of the time no.I mean we have The Visarch alongside black templars and so on, and I imagine in universe a few attitudes may be changing, but whats the point of having the setting if people just want to keep going against/breaking it just for their own benefit. There are a few people wanting to be special snowflakes. Dont get me started on KDK players fluffily includin psykers/covens in their armies...'yeah man khorne is so cool with it!..,marines in inquisitor etc,.just for in game benefits. Theres nothing wrong with doing cool stuff but blaming the gm for that?

 Elemental wrote:

 schoon wrote:

Game mechanic borrows from TORG Eternity (primary influence), and the feel of Savage Worlds, D&D 5th, and Savage Rifts

That last one makes me feel a bit more positive about this. Though it does creak a bit at the higher power levels (where the margin between "fine" and "dead" can be a bit too thin depending on how many damage dice are rerolled), Savage Worlds Rifts generally holds up well to varied power levels, and has a very fast and intense feel. In my message-board game (link below for those interested), I was able to move from a fight with 30 stormtroopers and robots to an APC vs jet cycles chase sequence without ever feeling the system was really dragging.

http://www.rpol.net/game.cgi?gi=69532&date=1504574151

 adamsouza wrote:
Because Space Marines will seldom be skilled at anything but combat. You'll need the guys that are good at gathering information, dealing with the local government, a psyker, someone who can actually pilot and repair vehicles, etc...

So a low level Inquisitorial agent, a Space Marine, an Imperial Navy Pilot, and Admech techpriest could all have useful rolls in an adventuring party.

Eh, that seldom works out in practice. When a fight breaks out that can't best be summed up with "The combat monster PC massacres everything, no need to roll dice.", then it's going to be the combat monster rolling dice for 1-2 hours while everyone else makes a token effort in between looking at their phones. And when a social situation comes up, it's the other way around. Either way, you've got a player being bored.

There's a saying about Jedi characters in the Star Wars RPG's--that either everyone should play one, or nobody should play one.

There are ways around that problem, of course--Mutants & Masterminds had a nice system where characters could indirectly contribute to combat through distracting, aiding allies, taunting enemies, etc.

Urghh hate the Savage Worlds system. Almost anything but that - well not Rolemaster but pretty much anything else.

You can include marines in games and make them work - just don't have them in your low level games as that is very tricky.

 Kirasu wrote:
Anything is better than FFG with their proprietary dice nonesense

What are you spouting off about?

FFGs rpg system used percentage dice to resove.

No proprietary dice at all.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

And if the answer is "Well maybe the group has to, and the Marine won't help", then you've pretty much given the chief reason why Black Industries (and later FFG) separated the games out into types.

Indeed, and this is the very reason why I have concerns over this game. I can see most games of Wrath and Glory devolving into pure murderporn and that holds little interest for me.

I've never heard of this company.

The designer seems to have some experience.

Not really holding out much optimism.

Still have my FFG books.

Only War being quite brilliant in my opinion.

Mitochondria wrote:
I've never heard of this company.

The designer seems to have some experience.

Not really holding out much optimism.

Still have my FFG books.

Only War being quite brilliant in my opinion.

Theyre the company behind The Dark Eye, I believe? Biggest P&P RPG in Germany, iirc.

Mitochondria wrote:

 Kirasu wrote:
Anything is better than FFG with their proprietary dice nonesense

What are you spouting off about?

FFGs rpg system used percentage dice to resove.

No proprietary dice at all.

I think he's talking about FFG's last version of the Warhammer Fantasy setting RPG they put out.

Well, that and FFG's love of proprietary dice systems too!

One way we tried (temporarily for a short time) to address that in Black Crusade was to disallow sorcerers leaving tech/magic to "normal" humans. Additionally, I suggested (as the marine character) to only use my starting chainsword and bolt weapons leaving the humans to specialise as wanted/needed in melta/plasma. The marine in effect was the combat jack of all trades. It worked because I suggested it but I could easily see others chafing at the idea. In the end I suspect the only two ways to adequately do it are to either nerf the marine abilities compared to the fluff to something more manageable and/or start the group at higher xp levels.

As for Savage World, in Rifts I've found the combat cyborg to be a good starting character astartes equivalent if you rename abilities.

Pseudomonas wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
That's not really true either.

They could maybe get to a location unseen (although they have significant drawbacks due to their sheer size) but they will never be able to pass themselves off as anything other than a Marine. 'Espionage' type game play is impossible with a Marine outside of very specific settings and espionage gameplay is very common in the RPGs that I have played.

Indeed. Every good RPG will, at least once, have situations where the PCs will need to sneak around or pass themselves off as something other than what they actually are. Marines just can't do that.

Plus the general role-play options for a marine just aren't interesting. If you are being true to the fluff, which I think is imperative for any 40k RPG, the Marine just wouldn't have many compelling things to do outside of combat.

Say your group are Inquisitorial acolytes, so there is some justification for a marine being in the group. Your group is assigned to investigate a social gathering being put on by some noble family that you suspect of having some ties with some group of heretics. There is an upcoming exclusive event which you want to infiltrate.

The Marine is going to be utterly useless except to come in and save the party if a fight breaks out. He can't infiltrate the party disguised as a guest. He can't sneak around the rest of the noble's estate disguised as a servant, he might be able to sneak, but that's really pushing it. It's not going to be much fun for the Marine player.

Or lets just think about the players "mucking about" between adventures. You're improvising some down time actions for your players before they ship off to the next adventure. Maybe the group decides to go shopping for gear, and maybe have some misadventures along the way. The Marine has no reason to go shopping, go out drinking(unless he's a space wolf), or generally just hang out with the rest of the PCs. All he really has any justification to do is stay back at their base of operations and maintain his gear and practice with his weapons.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Indeed. Every good RPG will, at least once, have situations where the PCs will need to sneak around or pass themselves off as something other than what they actually are. Marines just can't do that.

Every 'good' RPG? Are they true Scotsmen as well?

This sounds like some very narrow-band thinking.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Plus the general role-play options for a marine just aren't interesting. If you are being true to the fluff, which I think is imperative for any 40k RPG, the Marine just wouldn't have many compelling things to do outside of combat.

Again, the roleplay aspect is up to you and the GM. If you're struggling with this, it's an issue that you are having, not an issue with the game.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Say your group are Inquisitorial acolytes, so there is some justification for a marine being in the group. Your group is assigned to investigate a social gathering being put on by some noble family that you suspect of having some ties with some group of heretics. There is an upcoming exclusive event which you want to infiltrate.

The Marine is going to be utterly useless except to come in and save the party if a fight breaks out. He can't infiltrate the party disguised as a guest. He can't sneak around the rest of the noble's estate disguised as a servant, he might be able to sneak, but that's really pushing it. It's not going to be much fun for the Marine player.

Or lets just think about the players "mucking about" between adventures. You're improvising some down time actions for your players before they ship off to the next adventure. Maybe the group decides to go shopping for gear, and maybe have some misadventures along the way. The Marine has no reason to go shopping, go out drinking(unless he's a space wolf), or generally just hang out with the rest of the PCs. All he really has any justification to do is stay back at their base of operations and maintain his gear and practice with his weapons.

Again, you're just making it clear why the games were split.

I'm sorry but all of this "They can't work together!"... then don't!

A RPG is what the players and the GM want to it to be. If they put rules for roleplaying Space Marines, Demons, Dark Eldar, Taus, Orcs and Necrons, that means they should be played all together? "But maybe a player insist in playing a Necron with a human party!" So say him then thats absurd. Easy.

Jezz people, asking for limitations to "balance" the players parties. The rules representation of the different things in a RPG should be as fluffy as possible. If a Space Marines need to have rules that makes him incompatible with a 100% normal human party, whats exactly the problem? If you can't think a way to make that roleplay work, don't do it.

Roleplayers need to understand the setting where they are roleplaying, his rules and limitations.

I don't think it is a problem is every character isn't suited for every task.

A capable GM and party can easily figure out ways around any of these somewhat arbitrary restrictions.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Plus the general role-play options for a marine just aren't interesting. If you are being true to the fluff, which I think is imperative for any 40k RPG, the Marine just wouldn't have many compelling things to do outside of combat.

Again, the roleplay aspect is up to you and the GM. If you're struggling with this, it's an issue that you are having, not an issue with the game.

Well, in this case it really is an issue with the fluff. Space Marines aren't normal human beings. They utterly fanatical brainwashed warrior monks. They simply don't do anything outside of fighting, training and praying. They are very good at those things, but anything else they will simply see as being not worth their time.
In an RPG, this is fine if you are playing combat scenarios, but in scenarios without combat its going to suck. This is not a problem of just 40k rpgs, but with overly specialised characters in general. Either someone is going to get bored when the adventure gets to place where he can't do anything, or you need to run two different scenarios simultaneously so that the overly specialised character can go off and do something useful elsewhere while the rest of the party is busy.
Or of course, you need to never let the adventure go to a place where the overly specialised character will be useless, but in the case of a Space Marine that means avoiding non-combat scenarios as much as possible which is extremely limiting on a campaign.

I am of the opinion that as a GM, you don't need to allow just everything. As Galas said, just because there are rules for playing as Orks, Eldar and Space Marines doesn't mean they all should be played at the same time. I always discuss with my players beforehand what kind of campaign we want to be running, so they can adjust their characters to fit in.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Again, the roleplay aspect is up to you and the GM. If you're struggling with this, it's an issue that you are having, not an issue with the game.

Eh, the game can make these issues greater or lesser. Common problems are:

--The GM getting applications for a wildly varied party. Either they have to butt heads with players who might be resistant to changing their character concepts, or some players have to play off-character just to explain why their puritanical Confessor is working with an Ork or whatever.

--Variations in power level can leave players feeling useless because either there are big chunks of sessions where their character can't contribute, or because Bob over there can do everything they can, and more (say, a Techmarine opposite an Enginseer).

--The lack of coherancy (and party members with wildly differing goals) makes it hard to give the group a common goal or reason to stay together.

These are all issues that the game can help with or fail to address. Of course, some groups won't care about any of this. They'll play a Grey Knight, Ork Freebooter, Battle Sister (who keeps giving the Grey Knight dirty looks, for some reason), Dark Eldar Haemonculus and a Nurgle sorcerer who all team up to fight crime and they'll have canon-mangling fun, and that's completely fine. But as mentioned above, I hope there's some solid guidelines to creating compatible and themed parties of the same power level.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Plus the general role-play options for a marine just aren't interesting. If you are being true to the fluff, which I think is imperative for any 40k RPG, the Marine just wouldn't have many compelling things to do outside of combat.

Again, the roleplay aspect is up to you and the GM. If you're struggling with this, it's an issue that you are having, not an issue with the game.

Well, in this case it really is an issue with the fluff. Space Marines aren't normal human beings. They utterly fanatical brainwashed warrior monks. They simply don't do anything outside of fighting, training and praying. They are very good at those things, but anything else they will simply see as being not worth their time.

Thats just isn't correct. Blood Angels are famous for doing arts. Painting, music, etc...
The Guardians of the Covenant for example, are the most monastic of all Space Marines. They spent a lot of time writting old books, and looking for old sacred texts in the galaxy, etc...
Plus Ultramarines, White Consuls, etc.. are well known for being excelent diplomants and statemens. Not all marines are Khorne Berzerkers that can't say anything more than "KILL MAIN BURN!"

 Galas wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Plus the general role-play options for a marine just aren't interesting. If you are being true to the fluff, which I think is imperative for any 40k RPG, the Marine just wouldn't have many compelling things to do outside of combat.

Again, the roleplay aspect is up to you and the GM. If you're struggling with this, it's an issue that you are having, not an issue with the game.

Well, in this case it really is an issue with the fluff. Space Marines aren't normal human beings. They utterly fanatical brainwashed warrior monks. They simply don't do anything outside of fighting, training and praying. They are very good at those things, but anything else they will simply see as being not worth their time.

Thats just isn't correct. Blood Angels are famous for doing arts. Painting, music, etc...
The Guardians of the Covenant for example, are the most monastic of all Space Marines. They spent a lot of time writting old books, and looking for old sacred texts in the galaxy, etc...
Plus Ultramarines, White Consuls, etc.. are well known for being excelent diplomants and statemens. Not all marines are Khorne Berzerkers that can't say anything more than "KILL MAIN BURN!"

There's some you'd expect to be like this, but many of them know Diplomacy is on the table for things. I mean hell Space Wolves are very well known for contests of skill (from fighting, to drinking, to uh.. "Singing"). But they still have people who mingle with the local populace, help out others and generally.. Not be completely mindless fighters.

A space Marine sticking out like a sore thumb though isn't exactly an ARBITRARY restriction. now that said a GM could make it work, if while the others are hobnobbing with the elements, the marine is infiltrating with a bunch of abhuman workers through the servants enterance, and is poking around there.

another idea, (one that is actually codified in the new Trek RPG) is sub characters that can be played by a player in a scene where their character wouldn't nesscarily be involved.

the ioriginal dark heresy for example kinda suggests this with grey knights, in that it suggests running them as sort of a secondary party for special strike scenerios etc.

Salamanders are probably the best Space Marine Chapter to work with normal humans. Normally they live in Nocturne, as political figures, or with their old families, etc... so they are the most "Human" space marines.

I don't know about that one.

Do you play THIS game, or is this a hypothetical?

Because on MY end, I played this a few times and every time was a friggin HOOT. We put together a couple of different teams, depending on the setting.

Because we were trying the system, ( which ended up pretty much the same) before we put it to the side, for a "Later game" than never continued.

First one was Only War, with a squad, with attachments.

Second was the demo from the free batch of stuff in the Black Crusade.

Played a Third/ Fourth, but it ended in tragedy of a party wipe. ( Then we brought back a couple of the pre-gen characters, who ended up salvaging the corpses, getting the information for the missions/ rally point, and taking their stuff.)

Your example is kinda meh, on account that the GM should already have a couple of story arcs and hooks to them planned out, and throw the chum at the players, and let them deal with the issues. "What do you do with the off setting Space Marine..." " You have this mission, the chain of command has X,Y, and Z for support" " We need more ammo, and supplies before we roll out on mission again." "We need a heavy weapon for our team, how about we go find one at the Quartermasters?"

Or as is in Only War...
"So, you are wasting my precious logistical assistance for a Grenade Launcher!?!? Did you fill out document 2345? \ "No, that is a form 2346. You should have had that in 3 months before the offensive! I'll do you a favor because I know your Commissar, and I know for a fact that he will make an example out of you for filling out the proper forms, I'll cut you just a little slack and send you back to your XO, and not report you for violation. Just as long as you give me a couple of your lasgun powerpacs, as an act of good faith..."

And then you have to go back and steal the grenade launcher, or find one in the repo-depo, and you later find that the grenade launcher is broken, and you can only get about half of a standard grenade allotment, based on 5 other missions going on and a major offensive getting prepped for.

When you play Only War, you have to ham it up, too, and a Infantryman's Primer is almost a must to Gak the soldiers and hem and haw like real military do.

(Officers are morons, the higher the rank, the weaker the sauce, and technicality is the rule of the day.)

On the Black Crusade stuff, I'd be more of an anarchist, and the characters work together for temporary alliances, only to stick it to each other, unless you come in with your A game, and the characters hold their own as all type A personalities. If I play that one again, I think I'm going to gather up a team and start gathering troops, as well.
Such as when you take that demon ship over, you start subjugating the occupants, and make them dance to your tune.
gather up penal troops and getting down to chaos fun... Stuff like that.

YOU seem to have a block, in which you just need to go back and have fun with it. You have some extra people sitting around, you'd more want to get them off on their own, or set them to another task. I'm not going to go calling you , but I can easily see several other things that I would do if I had such a mix of people.

That Space Marine, should be going and getting some weapons, or lining up back up, or getting a bug out plan ready. Your scrounger should be boosting a vehicle. Your planner should be making back door deals, and setting up the planning. etc. I mean, we're talking 40K, not D and D. there should be no reason everyone isn't occupied, and in on a task.

 Galas wrote:
Salamanders are probably the best Space Marine Chapter to work with normal humans. Normally they live in Nocturne, as political figures, or with their old families, etc... so they are the most "Human" space marines.

...or Alpha Legion. Heh-heh. Just sayin'...

 Grey Templar wrote:


Indeed. Every good RPG will, at least once, have situations where the PCs will need to sneak around or pass themselves off as something other than what they actually are. Marines just can't do that.

What? Seriously, what on Earth are you talking about?

 Grey Templar wrote:
Plus the general role-play options for a marine just aren't interesting. If you are being true to the fluff, which I think is imperative for any 40k RPG, the Marine just wouldn't have many compelling things to do outside of combat.

It is patently clear to me now that so many of you making these comments have not ever actually played Deathwatch. I was in a campaign for a year, and then ran one myself for a year. Great fun. Some memorable combat sessions, sure, but there was so much more to it than this. You can froth at the lips about this all you like, but you've either never actually played Deathwatch or played a very poor version of Deathwatch.

Caliginous wrote:

It is patently clear to me now that so many of you making these comments have not ever actually played Deathwatch.

I have and the campaign that I played in was entirely about shooting things.

That's irrelevant here though as Deathwatch is entirely about Marines, there is no such thing as a mixed party.

Wrath and glory is apparently designed around mixed parties and In a mixed party a Marine has far more combat ability and far more authority than virtually any normal human (a tactical marine has the same approximate rank as a planetary governor...) while at the same time being very constrained by the fluff as to what they can actually do.

Basically I think that for this game to work and for it to do justice to the setting there needs to be very clear party creation guidelines and the GM and players really need to be on the ball.