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I am just wondering which one you guys preffer playing since I would rather GM a game people will like as opposed to one they are ambivalent about.

Playing? Rogue Trader.
Running? Dark Heresy.
Both? Deathwatch.
Truth? All three. They're awesome.

Yeah, they are all fantastic. You just have to pick a "style."

Dark Heresy is still my favorite. Though rogue trader is growing on me the more I get accustomed to it. Agreed though they're all a great series of games. Looking forward to trying black crusade also when its out.

My personal favourite is Rogue Trader, the amount of freedom the GM and players have is just awesome. But in the end, all three (or should I say, four) have their own things that I immensely enjoy.

I guess my question is if you had to choose one which would it be

What would you like to present to your players?

Something with investigative, mystery undertones and combat? Go with Dark Heresy.

Something involving exploration, making money and ship combat? Go with Rogue Trader.

Something with a massive amount of over the top combat? Death Watch baby.

edit.

Like I said, personally I'd go with Rogue Trader, which offers IMHO massive amounts of freedom to both the GM and the players. Give them a ship and set them free!

BrookM wrote:What would you like to present to your players?

Something with investigative, mystery undertones and combat? Go with Dark Heresy.

Something involving exploration, making money and ship combat? Go with Rogue Trader.

Something with a massive amount of over the top combat? Death Watch baby.

edit.

Like I said, personally I'd go with Rogue Trader, which offers IMHO massive amounts of freedom to both the GM and the players. Give them a ship and set them free!

Well main problem with exploration and alot of investigative is most of the group knows nothing about 40k

Prep some light reading material and jam that down their collective throats first. I did the same with my group, it certainly helped them on their way a bit.

BrookM wrote:Prep some light reading material and jam that down their collective throats first. I did the same with my group, it certainly helped them on their way a bit.

Any recommendations for that, only thing I can think is ciaphas cain

The Eisenhorn and Ravenor series. Great stories in their own right also.

EDIT: Also if you made me pick one it would always be Dark Heresy.

Wardragoon wrote:
Well main problem with exploration and alot of investigative is most of the group knows nothing about 40k

You don't need to know much, the game has lores that players can use to get information, and the rulebook spells out the basics for them.

Wardragoon wrote:I guess my question is if you had to choose one which would it be

If I had to choose one? Dark Heresy. I loves me the Inquisition, so it would be them every time.

Wardragoon wrote:

BrookM wrote:Prep some light reading material and jam that down their collective throats first. I did the same with my group, it certainly helped them on their way a bit.

Any recommendations for that, only thing I can think is ciaphas cain

I was thinking more along the lines of background info found in the rulebooks, not novels.

The backstory in the main rulebook outlining the basic history of the Calixis sector and some of its main planets should help get them oriented. The rulebooks have alot of back story in them.

It would be a toss up between DH and RT for me. Very similar games but RT is less leathal at the start due to higher starting level and is slightly moore complex I'd say.

Both are damn good but I keep coming back to DH. (probably due to owning more of the books to DH than RT.)

cant wait for Black crusade!

deadman564 wrote:cant wait for Black crusade!

uhhh whats black crusade going to be based around?

Being part of a chaos warband. http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_minisite.asp?eidm=154

Chaos and things that those jerks do.

^ awwww come on CSM and cultists aren't that bad....

Rouge Trader never really grew on me. I love Deathwatch and Dark Heresy though. I tried running a DH campaign and all the players just kept complaining about not enough fighting and of the fighting that there was was small and disappointing. I started running DW and they love the mass ability to blow stuff up.

Personally, I would go with DH or RT, the first for the excellent scope and the feeling that you're not just another group of overpowered and well equiped alpha males who go around indiscrimiately smiting evil and saving the world. The second for its wide range of options and the fact you're less likely to get horrifically mauled as you are in DH.

Having said all that however, if your players know almost nothing about 40k - I'd suggest DW as a starting point whilst you drip feed them quantities of background material (Lexicanum articles and BL books that are centred around non space marines are good for this). I say DW because it only requires a small amount of background knowledge about the various Space Marine Chapters. The information about the Ordo Xenos and the DW organisation itself comes from the GM. I have been led to believe that it is far more combat focused than either of the other 2 games, although like any RPG, the amount of RP interaction is not only influenced by the rules, but also by the players. It's premise certainly lends itself to combat over RPing however.

Dastardly Dave wrote:Personally, I would go with DH or RT, the first for the excellent scope and the feeling that you're not just another group of overpowered and well equiped alpha males who go around indiscrimiately smiting evil and saving the world. The second for its wide range of options and the fact you're less likely to get horrifically mauled as you are in DH.

Having said all that however, if your players know almost nothing about 40k - I'd suggest DW as a starting point whilst you drip feed them quantities of background material (Lexicanum articles and BL books that are centred around non space marines are good for this). I say DW because it only requires a small amount of background knowledge about the various Space Marine Chapters. The information about the Ordo Xenos and the DW organisation itself comes from the GM. I have been led to believe that it is far more combat focused than either of the other 2 games, although like any RPG, the amount of RP interaction is not only influenced by the rules, but also by the players. It's premise certainly lends itself to combat over RPing however.

Thats largely what I am doing, though I do have a pair of players who always play like standard RPG barbarians, y'know kicking down doors without even checking if its locked. That said I know only the basics of fluff and I know the most in the group so I am using it to introduce the group to the 40k universe and also to get away from the d20 system for awhile.

The shop that I normally game at got me into playing in their Deathwatch Game. I finally broke down and ordered my copy of the "Deathwatch" Core book and a C.M. Iron Warrior's Warsmith figure to mod into my TechMarine.

I'm a reader but not a player.

Of the 3 Death Watch looks the most like a normal RPG, though a very high level one. Dark heresy looks a lot like Shadowrun, investigation and intrigue punctuated by very fatal battles.

I worry that the freedom and resources the players have in Rogue Trader would just make a game unmanageable. Why would anyone risk their character when you have literally 10s of thousands of minions?

And who knows what shape Black Crusade will take.

Kid_Kyoto wrote:I worry that the freedom and resources the players have in Rogue Trader would just make a game unmanageable. Why would anyone risk their character when you have literally 10s of thousands of minions?

\

I think the players and GM just need to be genre savvy enough to work around this. If the PCs send in the crew to make sure the Killbots have reached their pre-set kill limit,t hen I bet something will happen like a crew member wandering into the Forgotten Vault and trying on the Spiffy Helmet that drives said crewmember insane and releases the Improved, Scarier Kill Bots that use IPv6 so their kill limit is much, much higher.

Or something like that.

Think classic Star Trek, but with a 40k layer of dirt, grime, and corruption. The PCs have minions, but they're busy keeping the ship from falling apart and keeping the noble family that pays the bills happily drunk while the 'main cast' (I.E. the PCs) does all the fun stuff.

Balance wrote:

Kid_Kyoto wrote:I worry that the freedom and resources the players have in Rogue Trader would just make a game unmanageable. Why would anyone risk their character when you have literally 10s of thousands of minions?

\

I think the players and GM just need to be genre savvy enough to work around this. If the PCs send in the crew to make sure the Killbots have reached their pre-set kill limit,t hen I bet something will happen like a crew member wandering into the Forgotten Vault and trying on the Spiffy Helmet that drives said crewmember insane and releases the Improved, Scarier Kill Bots that use IPv6 so their kill limit is much, much higher.

Or something like that.

Think classic Star Trek, but with a 40k layer of dirt, grime, and corruption. The PCs have minions, but they're busy keeping the ship from falling apart and keeping the noble family that pays the bills happily drunk while the 'main cast' (I.E. the PCs) does all the fun stuff.

I think yeah, it comes down to having mature players who agree they're in a pulpy kind of game where the first thing you do when you see a hostile planet/space hulk/whatever is have the captain and his entire bridge crew fly over to check it out.

As long as everyone agrees that's the kind of game this is you'll be fine.

Or, as I said, punish them for not having the sense of adventure of a small child as their minions stop getting bullied around. Imagine sending your minions off to do somethign, then getting a messaging that reads, "Not coming back. New boss Inquisitor Painfuldeath says thanks. Don't make a stink about this or he'll inspect the ship very carefully, even that room on deck 12 we don't talk about."

I also like the idea I had in an earlier RT thread that the player characters are more the 'expert consultants' of a Noble family that is too stupid/drunk/busy backstabbing each other to actually run their ship. They have a small mansion on the ship and occasionally send out requests (or *gasp!* invite a misbehaving crewman up for a talk!) but generally trust the PCs to go out and make money and such. A bonus is an option for new PCs is that a new PC can be explained as a noble taking a more active interest in the ship's affairs, and PCs may represent different branches of the noble family tree, so may have patrons with slightly different goals.

Death watch blows. Here's why:

4 marines, 1 GM

Marines all get heavy bolter.
GM thinks that a demon prince will be a great endgame boss.
Round 1: Demon prince dies.
Everyone: ಠ_ಠ