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It can't be stressed enough that if you want to get a feel for how to manage inter-party workings where one of the PCs happens to be a captain, read Patrick O'Brian. Or any age of sail novel, really. Captains get to boss people around, yeah, but they're also people, and most of them are very aware that there is a fairly hard limit on how much they can push. Especially in a situation where you have people who are less 'in the chain of command' and more 'my buddy, who knows cool poo poo and is hanging out with me while we kill/bribe Xenos.' Plus, specialists are there for a reason. It's expected that in times of crisis the captain will be providing a firm figurehead for the crew and snapping off orders and so forth but there are also innumerable customs, unwritten rules, and loopholes that not only the PCs but the crew will expect them to follow, and repeated violations are the number one cause for mutiny.
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Jun 24, 2013 15:40
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While we're on the topic of Rogue Trader: has anyone attempted to adapt the horde rules to it, or do they just plug in? I GMed a session a few days ago and it included encounters with a lots of orks, and maybe this is just my inexperience at running games showing, it was totally unmanageable and clearly started to drag for the players. I don't think I'll be using the rules very often but it would be nice to have them when my players decide to get into big fights.
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Jun 24, 2013 19:22
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I'd like to play a Deathwatch game where all the characters were the same chapter. In this way, it wouldn't have to be "Deathwatch".
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Jun 24, 2013 20:21
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I wanted to use the Deathwatch rules to put together a campaign based around the Celestial Lions. For those not in the know, the Celestial Lions are a chapter of Space Marines that is horrified by brutal actions of the Inquisition, and is very vocal about their opposition. poo poo starts going badly for them - a ship with senior officers is 'mysteriously' disappeared in the warp; they get terrible intelligence resulting in their forces being ambushed and outclassed repeatedly. Then when things get really bad, snipers start taking out their Apothecaries, eventually killing them all (this means their gene-seed can no longer be harvested and the chapter is effectively doomed). In the 'present', the Lions have been reduced to a mere 96 Marines. I've always thought it would be cool to run a game based around the collapse of a decorated chapter. I'd start the campaign during the Battle for Armageddeon, with the Lions getting lovely intelligence and getting pounded to pieces - the players would get to see the chapter pulled down around them. Then I'd give them escort duty on the final surviving Apothecary (unless one of the players is one, in which case he's it!) and give them a chance to alter the standing history. From there, all sorts of options - trying to unravel the conspiracy against them, deciding whether to try and bring it to light or hunt down its members, the potential for saving the Legion, etc. In my head, I believe the Inquisition has orchestrated it's destruction and once the existing members are dead they will use their genestock from Mars to re-establish the Chapter with a new founding more pliable to the Inquisition - so I would let the players discover that and decide what to do with it. My group is already in a game though, and I am too lazy to put it together for a PbP or anything, though.
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Jun 24, 2013 21:00
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Lasting Damage posted:While we're on the topic of Rogue Trader: has anyone attempted to adapt the horde rules to it, or do they just plug in? I GMed a session a few days ago and it included encounters with a lots of orks, and maybe this is just my inexperience at running games showing, it was totally unmanageable and clearly started to drag for the players. I don't think I'll be using the rules very often but it would be nice to have them when my players decide to get into big fights. I used the horde rules when running my ork CYOA, and they fit in just fine with the RT rules.
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Jun 24, 2013 21:28
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So I've got a question about Deathwatch and Breaching Augurs: How are DMs handling them? They're clearly the best melee weapon RAW, so how do you keep players from taking them 100% of the time? Our group's plan going in is "No str bonus" on them, which brings the damage a bit more down to normal
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Jun 24, 2013 23:10
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Bear Enthusiast posted:With the response to my earlier question I'm sure we're being too literal again, but we more confusion about how Endeavors will work. I'll be honest and say when I run Rogue Trader I just scrap the achievement point system as its too much work for the GM. There are three basic ways Rogue Trader campaigns can work. One is the GM just hand the players the Endeavour. Two is for the players to have a port of call station/planet where they keep going back to for more endeavours and three is to make up a map and have the players point somewhere and then they go explore. An endeavour is a big scale thing, exploration like that sounds super uninteresting (at least to me). Instead take one of the published adventures as an example. The Frozen Reaches is my favourite. The premise of the endeavour is that a planet is coming under attack from an Ork Waaagh and needs help but the Imperial Navy has essentially left them to get overrun (mostly) . As a result the planet's government is willing is sell off all its lucrative mining assets to the players at very good value. This means that the player would need to help defend the planet or lose all their new mining rights to the orks. The Endeavour breaks down into 3 parts. Part 1 is a big social event involving the players showing up and getting all the different elements of the government, planetary military, adeptus mechanicus, the two other Rogue Traders who have shown up and the Imperial Navy vessel thats still hanging around (emphasis on the convincing them not to leave). You rally everyone together using you various skills and then move to part 2. Part 2 is the big military action and naval combat stuff where you hold off the ork invasion. Lots of fleet combat, lots of decisions on the ground about how you dealt with things in part 1 etc. Its simple but lots of cool stuff in there. Part 3 is the realisation that the overwhelming horde of orks isnt going to be stopped and its about you going on the offensive to go hunt down the Warboss and putting an end to the Waaagh altogether. Its a bit of exploration mixed with a final showdown and big boarding action where the players go into to deal with the warboss themselves. Thats how you build it. You have political intrigue and low key exploration to begin with and then build up to deal with the large scale conflict that your setting in motion in the early part of the endeavour. The key point is that the universe as it is, means your not making more profit. So you need to go in and shake everything up or when you see things being shaken up you jump in and make sure you benefit from that. Bear Enthusiast posted:Edit: Also while I'm here, how do you guys handle someone being in charge? Generally in our games that always leads to people getting mad at being ordered around, but our RT feels like he doesn't have a lot to do if he can't boss everyone around. For me at least this wasn't an issue. My Rogue Trader was in charge but not a dick about it, playing the huge egotistical flamboyant character who the rest of the crew had to suffer through but knew they were more capable. So they take an order from the captain, and then immediately disregard it to solve the problem how they thought it should be solved. As to dealing with it all you need to remember is that each section of the ship and the players who associate with it have little to no reason to actually cooperate with the captain if its not in their interest. If the Rogue Trader pisses off the Explorator the mechanicum personnel on the ship just shut the engines down and refuse to start it up again until the issue is resolve. If he pisses off the navigator then he refuses to transport them anywhere (killing the navigator would just mean no other navigator house would ever supply him with a navigator again if not outright send assassins after the Rogue Trader). If you piss off the arch militant...well you got yourself a very heavily armed military force on board your ship. The point is your not supposed to boss people around for the sake of bossing people around. Your job as a Rogue Trader is to be a leader. In Star Trek for example, Picard doesn't just order people to do random stuff. He goes to Data and asks 'whats the problem and how do you think we should solve it?' He then orders Data to go implement that solution. The expert is still following orders but in reality is just acting out what they already think they should do.
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Jun 25, 2013 00:47
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I might even go so far as to say that the Rogue Trader is actually the primary support character. Your special ability can only be used to assist someone else's roll, you gain a bunch of talents that enhance the capabilities of your allies in combat. You are "in charge" and are a potential social-combat monster, but you're significantly weakened without your crew and you should know it.
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Jun 25, 2013 00:53
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kingcom posted:The point is your not supposed to boss people around for the sake of bossing people around. Your job as a Rogue Trader is to be a leader. In Star Trek for example, Picard doesn't just order people to do random stuff. He goes to Data and asks 'whats the problem and how do you think we should solve it?' He then orders Data to go implement that solution. The expert is still following orders but in reality is just acting out what they already think they should do. Picard is basically the best model for a RT captain's command style unless you're playing an inept one for laughs. The RT is probably best as a competent melee fighter and a loving social wrecking ball in one. ed: As we've talked about earlier in the thread, a Rogue Trader's best job is to be the final word on what "the plan" is after the whole party has discussed their various ideas. He's also the signal to the GM that, "We're done talking, Steve the Archmilitant's plan is the one we're going with," which helps immensely in keeping the game moving. Pharmaskittle fucked around with this message at 01:33 on Jun 25, 2013 |
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Jun 25, 2013 01:15
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MisterShine posted:So I've got a question about Deathwatch and Breaching Augurs: How are DMs handling them? They're clearly the best melee weapon RAW, so how do you keep players from taking them 100% of the time? Breaching Augurs? Doesn't it say the target has to stand still?
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Jun 25, 2013 01:42
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Rites of Battle posted:The augur can also So its clearly supposed to be a weapon. But its too loving good in that role
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Jun 25, 2013 03:04
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I'd rule that you'd have to Grapple before you can use it on a dude that doesn't want to be drilled in the face.
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Jun 25, 2013 16:23
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I posted in the recruitment thread but I'll post here too. I've reopened recruitment for the game of OW I'm running, here http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3534431&pagenumber=2#post416846716
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Jun 25, 2013 16:33
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We just didn't use Breaching Augurs. We agreed it looked sort of silly and no-one had made a Gurren Lagen chapter, so no drills for us. Plus, our assault marine liked a customized, cut down autoshotgun and chainsword too much to use anything else, our techmarine had his backfist, and I was terrible at melee. I imagine if they'd come up we'd have decided to cheapen their cost and use them like Lascutters+. It just seems a bit wrong for Marines to run around with a breaching drill tunneling through enemies. Unless you make an Assault Marine with maxed out agi and get the time dialation field thing so that you can jet through a whole swarm at hypersonic speed with your drill. Then it's perfectly acceptable and you should do that.
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Jun 25, 2013 17:17
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Night10194 posted:Unless you make an Assault Marine with maxed out agi and get the time dialation field thing so that you can jet through a whole swarm at hypersonic speed with your drill. Then it's perfectly acceptable and you should do that. Or you're a Dreadnaught. How hard is it to run one of these games as PBP? Combat could crawl more than normal with the defense roll thing.
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Jun 25, 2013 17:23
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Can someone tell me where that Night Lord was talking about all the Ultramarines successor chapters turning into one big legion is from? It's usually synonymous with talk of "hey, the UM fluff has been good lately", and I'd like to read it.
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Jun 25, 2013 23:13
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Yeah, I've heard stuff like that too. It makes sense because unlike, for example, Blood Angels, Ultramarine successor chapters are mostly still bros, coordinate joint operations, and use the same playbook. Plus it's not unheard of, since those Space Wolf fuckers never divided themselves up anyway.
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Jun 26, 2013 02:08
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Firstborn posted:Can someone tell me where that Night Lord was talking about all the Ultramarines successor chapters turning into one big legion is from? Its in ADB's Night Lords series which starts with Soul Hunter followed by Blood Reaver and Void Stalker. It may also be mentioned else where but its definitely also a point in that series. A very awesome point. All the Ultramarines and their successors are codex chapters, so they follow the rules, but if poo poo needed to get done they are all willing to fall under the UM's command at the drop of a hat. Emperor help everyone if Guilliman wakes up. The Space Wolves maintain legion strength with their great companies. The Dark Angel successor chapter masters and higher ups are all part of a secret conclave so they are effectively a legion. The Black Templars + Iron Fists + Crimson Fists are basically a legion.
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Jun 26, 2013 05:27
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Regarding breaching augurs, you (as the GM) can always just have the QM say "Sorry, we're fresh out of breaching augurs. I just assigned the last one."
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Jun 26, 2013 05:36
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Firstborn posted:Can someone tell me where that Night Lord was talking about all the Ultramarines successor chapters turning into one big legion is from? Karandras posted:It's in Void Stalker, yeah. This Red Corsair is talking to a Nightlord and the conversation is something like" Jerkface posted:The Black Templars + Iron Fists + Crimson Fists are basically a legion. I really like the conspiracy theory that the Feast of Blades is really a Marine laundering system where the successor chapters can shuffle their members off into the Black Templars as the true descendants of Dorn and then recruit more Marines on paper.
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Jun 26, 2013 06:14
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Karandras posted:Marine laundering
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Jun 26, 2013 12:22
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Karandras posted:I really like the conspiracy theory that the Feast of Blades is really a Marine laundering system where the successor chapters can shuffle their members off into the Black Templars as the true descendants of Dorn and then recruit more Marines on paper. Tell me more of this conspiracy theory. I don't know anything about it, and a quick search was unhelpful.
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Jun 26, 2013 22:34
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Asehujiko posted:This is now my favourite tabletop gaming phrase. This is my new favourite phrase period.
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Jun 27, 2013 00:05
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Night10194 posted:We just didn't use Breaching Augurs. We agreed it looked sort of silly and no-one had made a Gurren Lagen chapter, so no drills for us. Plus, our assault marine liked a customized, cut down autoshotgun and chainsword too much to use anything else, our techmarine had his backfist, and I was terrible at melee. I imagine if they'd come up we'd have decided to cheapen their cost and use them like Lascutters+. It just seems a bit wrong for Marines to run around with a breaching drill tunneling through enemies. Glad to see I wasn't the only one who thought of "drilling to the heavens" upon hearing about breaching augurs. I tried to talk the guy who's gonna play the Techmarine in my group into getting one, but he stubbornly clings to his servo arm. Which is probably better in most cases anyhow.
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Jun 27, 2013 05:03
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VanSandman posted:Tell me more of this conspiracy theory. I don't know anything about it, and a quick search was unhelpful. Okay, I'll run it down from the very top just in case. So immediately after the Heresy we have Robourte Guilliman's Codex Astartes advocating the breakdown of Legions into Chapters. Rogal Dorn really hates this idea and fights it verbally but knows that the Imperium needs unity more than anything so he reluctantly acquiesces but follows the letter, not the spirit. He gets his newest and most pragmatic recruits and makes them the Crimson Fists, gets his most tenacious siege experts and makes the the Imperial Fists and keeps his most loyal and true sons and makes them the Black Templars. This is the big departure, in Helsreach this shows the Black Templars are the real inheritors of Dorn's legacy and the 'true' legion. He just masks that fact by keeping the Imperial Fists as a strictly codex chapter sitting on Terra being obvious and distracting from his Black Templars continuing the Great Crusade. Before officials can come and record the number of Templars and make sure they're a nice codex Chapter he starts bundling them up into Crusades and writing them off the books and sending them into the galaxy. From this point on we know the Templars are way more massive than a Chapter but use creative accounting to keep the technical number of black and Maltese Cross Astartes to 1000. Then we've got the Feast of Blades which comes up in the Legion of the Damned books, of all places. It talks about a tournament held every 10 or so years between the Successor Chapters and the Fists and the winner gets Dorn's second sword and then hosts the next tournament. They pick a planet far away from everyone else and it's held in privacy like most Astartes culture stuff. A whole pile of Dorn's sons fly to a planet and a whole pile leave again to go their different ways after some casualties in training etc. I'm not sure if I read it on a forum or was just talking to some mates about it but if we agree that lots of the old Legions secretly kept their legion structure intact, at least informally (We know Ultramarines and Unforgiven have, for example) then the Feast Of Blades could easily be a front for funnelling appropriate Marines into the Black Templars. They are a huge chapter and have equally huge numbers of losses due to their way of fighting but manage to keep their fighting strength high at all times, it makes sense that they could be getting their numbers from somewhere else. Imagine if five or so Chapters meet up for the Feast of Blades, renew their vows and bonds of brotherhood then a half-company or two of worthy Astartes from each of them gets to paint their armour black and rejoin their 'true' Chapter. Then the Chapters break up again and the successors recruit back up to 1000 and all the accounting works out and Rogal Dorn keeps his word whilst still having his sons continuing the Great Crusade in all but name.
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Jun 27, 2013 05:15
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That post just made me respect the HELL out of Dorn  I used to think he was just some stiff, 'roided up Englishman with a fantastic moustache.
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Jun 27, 2013 05:23
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CommissarMega posted:That post just made me respect the HELL out of Dorn Totally! I like the idea of the breaking down of the Imperial Fists as Dorns big silent sacrifice with a little bit of satisfaction in sneaking something huge past Guilliman. Sigismund was Dorn's right-hand bro, the First Captain of the Imperial Fists and Dorn annointed him the first Emperor's Champion at the gates of Terra. When Dorn left the planet to fight Horus he put Sigismund in charge of the Palace. Then when he broke up the Legion he gave his favoured son the honour of remaking the Legion's soul with his personal heraldry and sending him off to keep fighting the Great Crusade that Dorn knew he'd never be able to fight again, as he had to stay back on Terra and rebuild the Imperium. Must've been hard to give that all up but he put his faith into his first son and sent him off to Suffer Not The Unclean To Live, Uphold The Honour Of The Emperor, Abhor The Witch, Destroy The Witch, and Accept Any Challenge, No Matter The Odds.
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Jun 27, 2013 05:32
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My IRL game wrapped up and we're debating switching from DH to OW, but some people are worried that if we do OW it will be only combat and be kind of monotonous. If we did use OW, I would probably DM it. What sorts of situations can I throw in that fit with the OW theme that are not combat related? I'd also have to figure how to make the combat that does happen a bit more interesting. What sorts of scenery is good for that?
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Jun 27, 2013 15:16
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Have a rival regiment? Play pranks on them! Or infiltrate their billet and Steal (back) supplies that you need to survive. Engage in a full on gang war. Already in the zone? Recon can cover straight exploration, covert ops gives you infiltration. Make friends with the natives. If you end up officers, you can play politics.
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Jun 27, 2013 16:07
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I have not played a ton of OW stuff, but here are a few ideas: 1) Use the OW system to run a Hive Gang - instead of being part of an Imperial Guard regiment, you are part of a sprawling mass of a House in an enormous hive, representing the bottom-rung fighters of huge manufacturing and mercantile interests. (ref: Necromunda). At it's basic level it is pretty similar to OW - you are a gang of dudes engaged in a war with other dudes. But, you also have to live in the same city as those dudes. And there are a lot of other people you aren't fighting. So sure, sometimes it's guns-blazing into a rival gang's hideout, but other times it's beating the streets trying to work out who just punked your Stim operation, or trying to negotiate with one faction to make sure they don't stab you in the back while you're putting down some rivals. So there are elements of investigation, negotiation, diplomacy, etc. 2) Use the OW framework to represent some free-lancers with a range of skills. They handle whatever weird situations people need them to. Maybe something is going on and workers keep disappearing from your chemical factory. Are they deserting? Why? Or is there something more sinister going on. Maybe a small settlement is being threatened by bandits, only they don't seem to care as much about loot as human flesh. What's really going on? If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the Aquila Team! 3) Your game opens as part of a regular OW setup - your regiment is putting down a rebellion on an Imperial world. The Governor has gone off the deep-end and tried to declare sovereignty, so here you are to remind him that the Imperium doesn't like quitters. First two-three sessions are giving the rebels a good kicking. IG now controls the planet. But the Governor disappeared in the fighting, and he had executed the entire Planetary Council. The PDF had sided with him, and so they are either dead or gone to ground. So now the IG are essentially responsible for the reconstruction and governance of the planet until the Administratum pulls their act together. Squads are deployed to hunt surviving rebels, but also charged with maintaining order and trying to keep the planet running. So you have combat elements against surviving rebels, but the squad also has to deal with things like distributing emergency supplies to the populace. Maybe the power grid goes down, and they need to find the people and the parts to bring it back up. You're surrounded by people who are Imperial Citizens, many of them loyal, but any one of them could be a rebel laying low. How do you know that guy you let into the power station is a real engineer and not a saboteur? What are you going to do about it? I think this works best if the planetary revolt is purely political, not Xenos or Chaos influence (at least on the surface). Maybe it's manufacturing world that relies on regular shipments of food to survive, and those stopped coming - people panicked, poo poo got real. That way you can't just hose everyone down for being cultists.
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Jun 27, 2013 16:27
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Clanpot Shake posted:What sorts of situations can I throw in that fit with the OW theme that are not combat related? "Snipers have reported some xenos ruins in the jungle to our left flank. Take your squad and go check them out." "The Chaos fleet has broken through the blockade. We have to evacuate this hive!" "We've heard reports of narco-gangs running their manufacturing and distribution out of this refugee camp. Go find out whats going on and stamp it out." "Thanks to that big storm, all of our supply roads have been washed out. We need you to safeguard this convoy and help it through the rough terrain." "A few of us suspect a senior officer of heresy. You've been assigned to act as our regiment's liaisons to the crusade's command staff. Find out everything you can."
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Jun 27, 2013 16:31
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Ashcans posted:I have not played a ton of OW stuff, but here are a few ideas: Oh god, FFG please put out a Necromunda RPG ruleset as the next book
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Jun 27, 2013 16:51
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Someone was going to do an OW game as a PbP here, but it folded up before even getting through recruitment. I was so gutted. 
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Jun 27, 2013 16:54
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Ashcans posted:Someone was going to do an OW game as a PbP here, but it folded up before even getting through recruitment. I was so gutted. Clanpot Shake's doing one right now, and he just opened up another slot or two. Link should either be further up this page or on the last one, you should check it out.
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Jun 27, 2013 17:02
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I also just took recruits for both my OW games (last chancers & normal IG). I will post here if I am ever recruiting again.
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Jun 27, 2013 18:35
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I specifically meant an OW/Necromunda game (although I realize now that was totally unclear in my post). I do watch the PbP stuff for people recruiting, though! A lot of the time I am late to the party and my ideas are crap, though. 
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Jun 27, 2013 18:40
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Ashcans posted:I have not played a ton of OW stuff, but here are a few ideas: These are all really cool and now I kind of want to run a game inspired by The Wire where the players are Avonius Barksdalius' enforcers sent out to beef over corners.
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Jun 27, 2013 19:02
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Omarius imminent.
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Jun 27, 2013 19:32
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Clanpot Shake posted:My IRL game wrapped up and we're debating switching from DH to OW, but some people are worried that if we do OW it will be only combat and be kind of monotonous. If we did use OW, I would probably DM it. What sorts of situations can I throw in that fit with the OW theme that are not combat related? I'd also have to figure how to make the combat that does happen a bit more interesting. What sorts of scenery is good for that? I recommend watching a lot of episodes of: MASH Hogan's Heroes McHale's Navy Tour of Duty China Beach also watch: Von Ryan's Express Heartbreak Ridge that should get you started
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Jun 27, 2013 19:36
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I was just going to watch a bunch of R Lee Ermey clips on youtube, but thanks for the references.
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Jun 27, 2013 19:38
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