Deathwatch: After the first session.

On Wednesday night a bunch of us from our local group got together to play our first game of death watch. Here is what my feelings were after the action.


Character creation: making a super-soldier is actually a lot easier than the emperor leads on about. All you need is a few d10 which is cool cause then you don't have nerd rage when you lose your d20. One of my most favorite aspects of character creation is that they help you really flesh out your marine as an individual. Not only do you get to pick your chapter and job (assault marine, devastator, librarian, etc.) but you also get cool things Ike power armor history and demeanor traits. For example, my librarian's power armor howls like a blood thirsty beast and causes fear in game. My demeanor is stoic, which is kind of fitting for a librarian. Gear doesn't play such a big part in character creation because you can select new gear at the beginning of each mission to best "optimize" yourself. All in all character creation was great fun and did a good job turning my faceless killing machine (which most people think marines are) into a servant of the emperor with his own thoughts and quirks.

When it was all said and done we had the following members of our deathwatch squad:
- blood angels librarian
- dark angels devastator
- space wolf tactical marine
- ultramarine tech marine
- storm warden assault marine
- black templar apothecary

Roleplaying as a marine:

It was a little odd at first, because most of us didn't really get how to role-play a Space Marine RPG. Once I kicked in my Military training habits I began to feel more comfortable with how to play it.

There are some different aspects, like mission briefings and superior officers that aren't available in other genres of RPG, which can allow the GM to lead you in the right direction. Another odd part is actually balancing the humor and joking around our group normally does with the Stoic and not joking manner of the Space Marines. For example, my character was driving the Land Speeder and two of the guys in particular kept making reference to "go bring the car around," Astartes would never speak like this to another Astartes. That is going to take some getting used to... If we ever do... Hopefully the GM doesn't punish us too much for not talking like marines.

Combat:

To be honest, we were all a little thrown by how much fighting there isn't (granted this is the first session). Just like any RPG you spend a lot of time walking around and investigating things. We spent most of the evening playing around with a xenos 'St. Louis arch,' before we decided to blow it to bits with all the demo charges the IG bunker had on hand, lol.

Once we did get into combat we were dropped into what we thought was a hotbed. Something like 350-ish kroot (horde strength 35) were attacking about 75 guardsman. I missed a turn because I was landing the speeder while the rest of my squad used grav chutes and jump packs from the thunderhawk to jump directly in. By the time I got to the combat the horde of kroot had been routed and wiped out to the model. Needless to say we felt like super warriors beating up on little ants... It fit right in with the fluff.

All in all it was a great night, though my Blood Angel was pissed about having to fly the landspeeder and has now vowed to never fly it again because he wanted to be in the thick of things. Can't wait for next week.

Duke