GM Radio Rob
Apprentice Douchebag
Posts: 64
Currently Playing: Nothing yet.
Currently Running: Deathwatch
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Post by GM Radio Rob on Apr 24, 2018 15:13:03 GMT -8
(I was going to post this in the thread I had about making Final Sanction more enjoyable, but I think it's better as its own thread.) I've been bitching a fair bit about Only In Death, my Deathwatch campaign / podcast, lately. I've got a bit burned out on turning our sessions into a podcast and some of the more fiddly issues with running the game (combat, map design) have been driving me up the wall. Add to those the inherent Grim Dark hopelessness of the 40K setting and I've been thinking about retiring the game and doing some Tales From The Loop instead. ... Okay, look. Is it just me, or does the idea of letting your mates directly at the pure swagger of playing Space Marines seem like one of the coolest ideas ever? Something beyond not wanting to disappoint my friends is refusing to toss this game out entirely. It's just... While running the downloadable Final Sanction adventure seemed like a good idea for us to get to grips with the game, it feels, I dunno, like it doesn't bring matching swagger in return. Sure, fending off a Genestealer infestation is pretty badass in theory, but grinding against multiple nameless hordes of rebels and the odd alien murder machine (Genestealers are very killy in melee, even against Marines) seems the exact opposite of fun, at least for me as the GM. Nameless hordes are just nameless hordes; they just move and shoot. Genestealers are pretty much the Xenomorphs of the setting; they charge in or sneak up and slice you to pieces. I like the idea of NPCs with personalities and objectives that the PCs are in the way of, who will: - cut and run when the players get the upper hand and the objective appears out of reach
- who will achieve the objective, say "Ha! What poor quality the Deathwatch shows! Mayhap you will be better next time!" and depart if the dice / poor decision making go against the players.
(The NPCs I cooked up so far for the Lordsholm PDF base were all very serious and under stress and all very apt for the situation they were in and I sort of like them, yet it's the very pressure of the setting that makes them less interesting.) My problem is, I'm not sure how to build out the Jericho Reach, the setting of the Deathwatch RPG, so that it's full of people I'd like to pretend to be - i.e. with swagger in the same general zone of the player characters, hammy personalities with opportunities for cool dialogue and the odd witty quip - doing interesting things that the player characters are likely to be sent in to interfere with? (I keep thinking of creating a town for Tales From The Loop, and something in me says that the Jericho Reach - an entire sector of space - is just the same thing, scaled up.) How do you folks handle making interesting campaign settings?
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GM Radio Rob
Apprentice Douchebag
Posts: 64
Currently Playing: Nothing yet.
Currently Running: Deathwatch
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Post by GM Radio Rob on Apr 24, 2018 15:42:18 GMT -8
In light of Tales from the Loop, I was just thinking of Stranger Things, when some of he most fun we have is when we see the lead characters, particularly the kids, when the pressure's off, goofing off and having fun playing D&D, Dragon Quest and Dig Dug, cosplaying the Ghostbusters or trying to gain intel on the new, skateboarding ginger kid in town (is she the mysterious MADMAX with the new high score?).
It seems drastically opposed to the idea of Space Marines as characters. Yet...
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GM Radio Rob
Apprentice Douchebag
Posts: 64
Currently Playing: Nothing yet.
Currently Running: Deathwatch
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Post by GM Radio Rob on Apr 24, 2018 15:44:21 GMT -8
Also, opportunities for Space Marines to go undercover:
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Post by greatwyrm on Apr 24, 2018 17:47:09 GMT -8
One thing in particular caught my attention. ...grinding against multiple nameless hordes of rebels and the odd alien murder machine (Genestealers are very killy in melee, even against Marines) seems the exact opposite of fun... Don't grind nameless hordes, narrate them. Only do the battles that are really important. They're the F'n Space Marines. They wade through the rebels and just hose off their armor afterward. Have a couple of them just make up something cool they did along the way. All that really matters is if they can take over the control room fast enough to stop the bomb. That's the battle you actually play out.
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GM Radio Rob
Apprentice Douchebag
Posts: 64
Currently Playing: Nothing yet.
Currently Running: Deathwatch
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Post by GM Radio Rob on Apr 25, 2018 16:06:06 GMT -8
Thanks, Greatwyrm. Deathwatch is set up with an option for big mobs of grunt-grade NPCs and there's a certain badassness in taking them out but I think some sort of named NPC lieutenant in charge of them should be there to lend personality.
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GM Radio Rob
Apprentice Douchebag
Posts: 64
Currently Playing: Nothing yet.
Currently Running: Deathwatch
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Post by GM Radio Rob on Apr 25, 2018 16:11:07 GMT -8
I had a thought today: Rather than try and plan a campaign, just do one session/mission with some cool NPCs (a Fallen Dark Angel, a Chaos Space Marine, a Tau detachment) all after the same MacGuffin that the Kill-team are after. And maybe have the MacGuffin in the possession of someone cool too. Just have it on the one planet / in the one city to keep the scale small.
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Post by Linus on May 1, 2018 5:48:08 GMT -8
I dunno about "swagger", and "fun" is of course subjective, but 40K has always struck me as a hilarious setting, much in the vein of Paranoia, at least when played straight. The setting is so ridiculously over-the-top that it is impossible to take it serious, which makes it even funnier when you embrace that and play up the operatic elements: a dead-serious melodrama to the sounds of planet-sized annihilation. So if the mechanics allow it, an idea could be to just make more of everything whilst maintaining a straight face - or a perpetual scowl of determination, if you prefer. It is a specific taste of humour, and perhaps not everyone's cup of British pitch black satire, so YMMV.
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Post by uncommonman on May 1, 2018 7:09:53 GMT -8
I think you have to help the players get some good banter going, look at war movies they have some good gallows humor: youtu.be/iH5R4tgGdDkyoutu.be/-XCNJ7WCl7gPs. Not sure if I got the right scenes (I'm cooking right now) but hopefully I did...
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GM Radio Rob
Apprentice Douchebag
Posts: 64
Currently Playing: Nothing yet.
Currently Running: Deathwatch
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Post by GM Radio Rob on May 5, 2018 5:51:11 GMT -8
Thanks for the feedback, folks! I think the combat banter is slowly coming along, uncommonman; we've got a couple of Grim, Serious Space Marines plus a Scots Techmarine who likes to blow things up.
I've been working on the starting scenario a bit further and I'm trying to work out whether I'm overthinking. As before, I figured the starting mission would be a simple Retrieve The MacGuffin that I figured the Chaos Marine would want as well.
I figured the Chaos Space Marine and his cultists would intercept the Kill-team at the site where the MacGuffin was located, and either the players or the Chaos Marine would get it. But, as the Tau want it also, they'd hit the Chaos Marine (or maybe the players) en route to the exfil site and abscond with the MacGuffin and take it somewhere, like...
... well, what does the MacGuffin do that everyone wants it? Maybe the Chaos Marine wants it because he's heard it's a source of power of some kind; he doesn't know what it does but reckons he can torture someone into telling him.
... but the Tau do know. It's part of a system of five artifacts that, when placed at specific locations around and in the centre of the city, will activate a force field over the capital city of the planet the mission is set on, a Human-held world in the Reach that's just been invaded by the Tyranids. They didn't build it and they don't know who did (ancient xenos tech), but it works.
And that seems like a cool idea - a domed city with humans, Tau, some Tyranids and some Chaos Marines, with the Kill-team trapped in the middle. And once the Tau squad activate the shield and leave, the Dark Angel player gets a glimpse of someone else aboard their troop transport - the very Fallen Dark Angel he glimpsed years back.
(Oooh! Oooh! Oooh! And there's an ancient Watch Station (Deathwatch base) where the players can hide out and resupply in the midst of sorting out what they're doing in the city, and maybe their Watch Captain is with them so he can give them missions, and maybe there's another Kill-team or two for the whole competition factor, and maybe, MAYBE the Watch Station is built into this mountain range that forms part of the shield and it has a camouflaged hangar bay that somehow penetrates the shield, so the players have a way out that could also be a risk of letting more Tyranids in and, and...)
Then, of course, I started thinking: What if none of this happens? What if the players roll well against the Chaos Marine and get the artifact, then roll well against the Tau and exfiltrate with the artifact. I mean, fair enough, but there goes a cool idea that revolves around keeping them in one place.
Well, okay then: What if the shield is already up, astropath comms to the planet are going unanswered, and the Kill-team are being sent in to find out what happened to a prior Kill-team and retrieve the artifact the first team were sent to retrieve (say Kill-team 1's frigate and a Tyranid bio-ship wiped each other out in orbit, but not before the bio-ship dropped some spore pods onto the surface).
Hmm. I had an idea about a crashed alien ship that was bringing the artifacts to the planet millennia ago, so maybe that's where the players and the Chaos Marine go first only to find the artifacts are all gone already (the Tau have taken them to set the shield up, saving the city from the advancing Tyranids). Either the players work out that they went in the general direction of the capital or the Chaos Marine does and they must chase him down. Thus do they come across the Watch Station and the entrance through the shield to the city.
And while the Marines may or may not try to take the artifacts, a local Inquisitor wants to keep the shield up as the undercity is artifact rich (as it used to be an alien city), and future sessions are about the struggle against the Tau and the Chaos cult to get more artifacts and get them off-planet, with the Fallen Dark Angel turning up every now and again to make mysterious pronouncements and throwing spanners in works...
I dunno. Is this making a bit more sense?
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GM Radio Rob
Apprentice Douchebag
Posts: 64
Currently Playing: Nothing yet.
Currently Running: Deathwatch
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Post by GM Radio Rob on May 5, 2018 6:50:34 GMT -8
Okay. Breaking the above down a bit:
Currently: 3 players. General player wish list: Go up against a Chaos Marine. One player, the Dark Angel, has "Encountered the Fallen" (the secret, shunned part of the Dark Angels) and wants to play on the mystery of the Fallen and that his Chapter have told him to forget having ever seen one of them after grilling him for the details.
Current idea for First Mission: Players are sent to planet Sophrosyne to: - Retrieve ancient alien artifact (probably the Inquisition want it) - Find out what happened to the last Kill-team assigned to the mission.
Initial beats: - Find crashed ancient alien ship - no artifact - Encounter Chaos Space Marine (Fight!) - Get leads that indicate the artifact was taken to Sophrosyne's capital city.
Possible future beats: - Find secret entrance to Watch Fortress - Enter city - Encounter Tau - Fallen Dark Angel makes mysterious appearance
Worry: Starting to feel a bit railroad-y.
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