Gameline Overview: Deathwatch

There are many RPG gamelines out there, all vying for your hard earned money and more importantly your time. Some gamelines are huge beasts with hundreds of books spread across editions (Dungeons and Dragons, and Traveller spring instantly to mind.) Some are smaller and complete while yet more put up with a steady release schedule and haven't yet made it to the realms of hundreds of books. Maybe dozens of books.

So I'm going to start a new type of posting to give an overview of some of these gamelines so people can see what all is available for them, what kind of material is published and a general overview of what it is about plus any other related information I think may be useful.

So first post, Deathwatch, published by Fantasy Flight Games.

Deathwatch is a game set in the Warhammer 40K universe (Wikipedia is as good a place as any for a primer on the setting,) in which the players take on the role of a member of the Deathwatch a powerful and secretive organization dedicated to combating the fouls xenos that plague mankind. Each member of the Deathwatch is a Space Marine (Adeptus Astartes,) a veteran of their particular chapter who has been sent to represent them in the Deathwatch. As such the players are already powerful at the beginning of the game.

So what do the players do? Mostly they run around and kill stuff, mainly aliens but also with a healthy dose of heretic and Chaos thrown in for good measure. Sounds like it could be boring, and that was my initial reaction to the line until I started reading it. The line is well written, and the published adventures and materials do a good job of making them characters into more than just mindless killing machines.

The default setting for the game is the Jericho Reach, a new front in mankind's continual war to claim all of the galaxy. Using a gate of alien technology the Imperium has launched a crusade into the Jericho Reach, an area that used to belong to humanity millenia ago, in an attempt to bring them back into the fold and the light of the Emperor. The Deathwatch have always been in the Jericho reach watching for threats and trying to put them down when they arise and this new crusade has stirred things up a bit. While the Deathwatch will assist the crusade at times, it is not their objective and at times will cause them to clash with it.

So far a fair amount of material has been released for the line. All items in the line are in a hardback full colour format, and the majority has been released in PDF format on DriveThruRPG.

• Deathwatch rulebook: 400 pages including all the rules needed for play and a starting adventure
• Deathwatch Game Master's Kit: A four panel hardboard GM screen that you could beat a player to death with and a 32 page booklet consisting of an adventure and an enhanced system for generating missions for the players
• Rites of Battle: 256 pages containing enhanced character creation, background and abilities, new equipment, honour and reknown system and an overview of Watch Fortress Erioch the Deathwatch's main base in the Jericho Reach
• The Emperor Protects: 144 pages containing 3 large adventures
• Mark of the Xenos: 144 pages of aliens, heretics and chaos opponents for your games, plus more rules on hordes and mass battles
• First Founding: 144 pages. Details on four more Space Marine chapters for players to come from, details on the traitor Space Marine legions, some specific chapter related equipment and a 20 page adventure
• The Achilus Assault: 144 pages. Information on the Imperial Crusade into the Jericho Reach, the most important worlds embroiled in their assault and finally important NPCs in the crusade
• The Jericho Reach: 238 pages on the enemies facing the crusade, Chaos, Tau and Tyrannids. More details on the three main arms of the crusade and adventuring and fighting inside those warzones
• Rising Tempest: 144 pages. A three part mini-campaign
• Honour the Chapter: 144 pages. Details on creating characters from younger Space Marine chapters, adventure seeds

Deciding what to run

Do you ever have problems deciding what game to run? Those who know me know that my RPG collection is well in excess of 1,200 physical books, with at least 40 different settings and a multitude of editions among those settings. That's just physical books, you can probably double that if you include PDF related games excluding those I have physically. As a result when deciding to actually run something again (I was never out of role-playing, I still collected and read, I just didn't actually play) the choice was rather difficult.

So how do you decide what to run? If you're anything like me you're easily got into the mood for a particular game/setting based on external influences. This is useful for really getting into a particular game, not so useful for when you thought you'd made your mind up then watch a cool movie or TV series which throws you off on a tangent again. For six months I went up and down my collection, reading as much as I could from one setting for a week, another setting for a night, and perhaps yet another setting book to flick through while sat on the porcelain throne. Not exactly conducive to focusing and figuring out one game.

I went through stages with maybe a dozen different games, but finally it started focusing down to just a handful.

1. Call of Cthulhu
2. Shadowrun
3. Deathwatch
4. Traveller

How to decide. Well there are obviously many factors in deciding what to run, and all of them did have an input. A good set of questions are;

• What does my gaming group like? Well I don't have a group right now, so that's of no help.
• What is selling well in my area? I live in Toronto and the perennial best sellers appear to be D&D and Pathfinder. I have no inclination to run either of those, so again no help.
• Which rule system do I like, or can I stand learning? This was really the death knell to Deathwatch at this time, I just couldn't be bothered going through all those rules. I love the 40K setting, and I'm sure I could run it easily, but the thought of the rulebook just put me right off.
• Which can I just run with almost no effort? Call of Cthulhu I've always loved, but I find it can be complex to get an adventure just right. I wanted to ease myself in again and didn't want the hassle associated with trying to get the atmosphere right, do the writing etc at this point, so Cthulhu unfortunately was set aside for now.
• How easy can I run with the setting, make stuff up and add colour at the drop of a hat? Traveller and Shadowrun both have universes that I'm very familiar with. Pulling detail out of nowhere would be child's play with both games.
• What would just plain be fun? Both Shadowrun and Traveller are fun in their own way, but I think these days people can associate with and get into character more easily with Shadowrun and the default characters.

So there we go, games narrowed down and the winner of what game I am going to run is Shadowrun Legend of the Five Rings.

Hold on what? That wasn't an option. Well sometimes no matter how much process you apply to something, your gut just jumps in and makes a last minute decision for you. C'est la vie. So yes, I've been reading up on running Legend of the Five Rings. It ticks all the boxes above for me that the other games did, and I've always loved the setting. So Five Rings ho! (and yes I watch Big Bang Theory too, and know ho means calling attention to a destination, but who cares. Five Rings ho!!)