Starting a Deathwatch campaign

[Inquisitor Eisenhorn]

I've got a second session of running the Rising Tempest scheduled tonight, and as I'm preparing this afternoon, I have to admit I'm getting pretty exhausted by the Deathwatch rule set and might migrate the campaign over to try wrath and glory after this. 

 

As cool and detailed (insanely detailed!) these books are, the granularity of the rules coupled with weird editorial choices and errors have left me feeling like I'm doing more work than I should have to to make this game work. 

 

For example, I was just looking over the rules profile for the Ebon Cosh troopers and their "purgation carbine" has a damage of 1d10 + 4 and 0 Pen.  If I'm not mistaken, that will literally never damage one of my PCs, and they don't have a horde profile that would jack up the damage to 3d10, although I suppose I could make them one (who knows, maybe it was omitted by mistake!) or the Kroot of the Syal Kindred have a "needle rifle" that does 1d10 R damage, and is toxic.  Like, what? the weakest PC I have has a combined armor/toughness rating of 18, or 16 if they get hit in a limb.  That's literally never going to hurt one of my PCs either, unless I'm missing something which I might be, but I don't have the time to hunt through tons of PDFs to figure out how this is supposed to work. 

 

And I'm left kind of feeling like if I have to just wing it to make stuff like this work, what is the point of all that granularity?  It feels like these books were written by the most enthusiastic passionate people but that nothing actually works the way it's supposed to, or if it does, it's too easy to overlook the rule that makes it click into place. 

 

This would probably be less of an issue if my group was as hardcore as I am about this stuff, but they basically have a level of commitment which is: show up, say what they want to do, and mainly leave the math to me, which I don't think works when a shooting action has a WS test, hit locations, additional hit allocation, damage rolls, Armor and toughness modifiers as well as armor penetration, as well as any relevant skills and traits that further modify those things...

 

Anyways, I'm just a little burned out given how much energy I've put into the rules to this point and realizing that I don't think I can keep it up.  I look at a single NPC profile and there is just a wall of skills traits and talents that I need to read about and I could never keep it all straight.  It's a good point that I can just do what I can manage and not sweat the stuff I miss, but then I run into situations like I mentioned earlier where a terminator punches a carnifex and does no damage repeatedly because I missed how the SB multiplier works, and it made for a rather disappointing situation for my PC.

 

Sorry, I'm just sort of journaling here!  Any thoughts or insights are always appreciated.  One of the best part of this campaigns has been how supportive this board has been of my efforts!

[A.T.]

Deathwatch is built on the legacy of the earlier games, particularly the original Dark Heresy where your typical starting character had a dozen wounds, toughness 3, next to no armour, and a weapon dealing d10+2 damage that hit perhaps one time in three.

 

The enemies as well started out more simplistic. You simply didn't need something that had unnatural traits or fancy talents to threaten the party when some unwashed hive scum with a frag grenade was a deadly threat, and most of the game revolved around investigation.

[TechCaptain]

Personally, my commitment level is i would do the math and rolls if allowed just so I could spend good time building personality, history, and generally just building up story in universe of a game. 

[Inquisitor Eisenhorn]

Deathwatch is built on the legacy of the earlier games, particularly the original Dark Heresy where your typical starting character had a dozen wounds, toughness 3, next to no armour, and a weapon dealing d10+2 damage that hit perhaps one time in three.

 

The enemies as well started out more simplistic. You simply didn't need something that had unnatural traits or fancy talents to threaten the party when some unwashed hive scum with a frag grenade was a deadly threat, and most of the game revolved around investigation.

That makes sense.  I got all of the Deathwatch stuff as a humble bundle so I'm not salty about the poor editing, etc. And the amount of campaign narratives and lore are amazing, but yeah it's clear it seems like the enemies included in these books weren't edited to give proper consideration to the scale of the threat Deathwatch operatives bring.  I know that some folks from this board were involved in playtesting so if any of them are here I'd love to get their insight!

 

I'm in the process of familiarizing myself with Wrath and Glory and was able to do a pretty good job of recreating the PC profiles in that rule set.  I'll report back on how it goes next week! 

[Lucerne]

When in doubt, give the enemy heavy weapons.

 

FFG  stuff also needs house ruling so yeah slap that horde modifier on.

 

Don't use Wrath, better the sourcebook with flaws that has some fun bits than concentrated mediocrity.

 

Instead, err on the side of overkill.

 

"Oh, your PCs are badasses? Pity the traitor guard brought Leman Russes, air support that they can call in if you don't play it smart, and spam heavy weapons"

 

or

 

"I heard you like rogue psykers/CSM"
 

Edited August 12, 2020 by Lucerne

[TechCaptain]

When in doubt, give the enemy heavy weapons.

 

FFG  stuff also needs house ruling so yeah slap that horde modifier on.

 

Don't use Wrath, better the sourcebook with flaws that has some fun bits than concentrated mediocrity.

 

Instead, err on the side of overkill.

 

"Oh, your PCs are badasses? Pity the traitor guard brought Leman Russes, air support that they can call in if you don't play it smart, and spam heavy weapons"

 

or

 

"I heard you like rogue psykers/CSM"

 

I love it when a GM/DM adjusts to how the characters are built and makes players think critically instead of falsely adjusting stats to create situations. 

 

And that situation is awesome answer to most things, I generally prefer to play a stealthy type of character for those kinds of things however.