In real-world history The Dam Busters had to fly multiple missions to bring down the Nielefeld viaduct, because even they were struggling to bring down this very small target using the Grand Slam bomb (another invention by Barnes Wallis of bouncing bomb fame). In this fictional scenario the PCs are dropped behind the lines with a mission to mark the target with fire.
It would also be handy for sealing pockets, panniers, and trunks I suspect. Not to mention closing that bottle of wine against your friend that's drunk too much already.
So, how do you get the potions?
The thieves guild sometimes have them for sale, 2 in 6 for availability, and then a cost of 150gp.
Magical stores have them on a 3 in 6, and charge 200gp.
***
The mission was a hit on a convoy. A rich lawyer had purchased a one of kind A.I. and was transporting it, my team's job was to hit that convoy, locate the A.I. and steal it for the customer.
The team was three unnamed characters (names is a table yet to be written), Engineer, Heavy, and NetLogger. They rolled up on the convoy seeking the vehicle carrying the A.I.
The first vehicle they encountered was a likely looking transporter, but it turned out to be a dummy. My NetLogger however managed to sneak into the driver's phone and grab some intel' that would make identifying the correct vehicle easier.
Next vehicle approached was a van full of gun men, some smooth nudging and ramming pushed the van out of the convoy to fall way back and beyond concern. My team now knew that any similar vehicles could be ignored.
Next vehicle turned out to be a cop in an unmarked vehicle, obviously the lawyer running the show had some contacts down town! the cops started shooting and my team returned fire, and simultaneously hacked his cop car computer. The intel, gained help eliminate other vehicles in the convoy. The cop caught some bullets and fell out of the convoy.
The team rolled up on the next most likely vehicle... but a chromed up raging cyborg punched through the roof of the vehicle and started blasting away. The team returned fire, but in a very short time Engineer was dead, Heavy seriously injured and the cyborg almost untouched. NetLogger made the call, and the team bailed on the mission, sadly unsuccessful, they lost "Notoriety".
***
The game mechanic worked well, and I proved the mission is doable, rolling one pip higher on the dice for the vehicle check would have had my team hitting the truck with the A.I. and only dumb luck made them hit the car carrying the cyborg.
Now I need to put some more thought into the "tween-mission" rules. The team need to recruit a new team member, and I need to weigh up the factors that will figure into that. With damaged notoriety definitely playing a hand.
In Mekton (giant fighty robots) the life path generates not only a family for you, but breaks down the relation ships with your relatives and co workers. Do you have sibling rivalry? Hope so, because that will make for a very infesting character play. These relatives can come into your story at any point for twists and rescues.
In Vaesen, your character has to have been through a terrible mythic trauma. You can make one up yourself, or pick from a list. You also get motivations for your character's involvement in seeking the beasties. This is so much better than going in with a bland character, you are given a drive and reason to push the story forward,
Even Classic Traveller had a sort of life-path system, you would follow the character through their employment and you would have to invent any details around that framework. BUT as the versions have iterated up to Mongoose's, they've enhanced the life path by adding events into the term system. So you start with a character's employment history, but also some life charging events that you can bring into the actual play.
With this addition of character history you are better equipped to make an interesting and rich story, you start armed with threads to pull on.
Of course classic D&D and OSR games don't incorporate more than class and stats which is a very poor form of life path. I actually think that's fine for playing with others and the story emerges much easier between the player's characters, which is something that is just not there for solo play.
If someone is looking to make a small RPG product, can I request that you pump out a life path system for all the classic OSR races and classes? Please. Pretty please.
The rules he presents will need some careful application to your game session. The idea being that "personal grooming and visiting a fresher" is required in order to prevent your character entering the throne room smelling like a beavers bottom.
A possible problem with applying these rules is players getting annoyed with having to actually say that their character is doing something so mundane as freshening up. I've come across this sort of thing in D&D games where players want me as the referee to assume Dwarves are checking for slopes all the time, and elves are always looking for secret doors. Yet, as I've said to these players, if you can't be bothered to mention it, I can't either, and your character definitely wont.
It doesn't take much to apply these rules quickly and easily. Not visiting a fresher only matters...when it matters. Who cares about freshening up when nipping to the corner shop, but who cares when meeting the King? Huge difference. So if players talk about polishing their armour before meeting the King but DONT mention that visit to the most important room, that's when you can bring the rules into action.
I came up with this idea while trying to fall asleep. I'm not sure if it kept me awake or if I was filling time until I could relax enough to sleep. Anyway, the big idea is that you play as a minion of the DC character The Joker. Not playing the big guy himself but rather playing one of the little people that makes his plan possible.
So as his minions, you're the one that's got to get the bombs on the other boat, piling the money into a nice burnable pyramid. Maybe you never even follow the big guy onto a heist, those guys are the disposable ones.
I don't see your PCs as able to take on big names, the Batman would shrug them off, the Joker likewise would shrug off any aggression from the PCs. That's not to say the PCs cant do anything, they are completely capable of defeating civilians and cops, they are thug-like henchmen that get things done.
I've no idea what system would work best for this idea, or if it even needs its own system. If you know if this idea's been done, or if you know what system might suit this idea best, please post a comment below.
Maybe you've come across this, little thing. You've read through a new RPG loved every line, and then come to use it. You crack open the book and sit down to create characters, vehicles, homesteads, whatever, and then you find THE little thing.
In Scarlet Heroes the little thing I found was just the movement speed of Player Characters. I'd played two or three sessions when I wanted to work out if my halfling guy could outrun a hobgoblin. I went back to the book, and well, I couldn't find the speed of a PC. Surely I was just missing it. I nipped online tried to DuckIt and came up without a straight answer. A few gallant attempts were made in posts referencing various spells and comparisons that could be found in the rules, but in the end it just wasn't laid out in the book in plain language.
[If this were audio, this is the bit where you'd hear the record scratch sound effect]
Only I couldn't build a ship. THE little thing here was the missing drive table in the ship building section. Literally an entire table needed to carry out a core action of the rules was missing. When I convinced myself I wasn't missing something I turned to DuckDuckGo, and low and behold there was official errata giving me the missing data. I was so disappointed. Fortunately this "little" oversight was not repeated in Mongoose Traveller, or indeed in Cepheus Engine, and I still had the original Traveller to fall back on.
Another "little thing" I came across was with MERP. I've played a lot of MERP and simply ignored this little thing as it didn't get in the way, in fact it was kind of the opposite of the problems mentioned above. There was an additional spell-casting table printed right in there but no rules discussion of what the table was for or how to use it. Odd, and entirely possible that I've been playing Spell Casters completely wrong in MERP for years.
But this is a good thing, and here's why! (<== What great headline.)
I remember days long games of the classics, MERP, D&D, Runequest, Traveller, Call of Cthulhu (in which we did some dungeon crawls), Spacemaster, and these games lasted the entire day. Yet... the more I think back, those days were actually long drawn out affairs. I remember them included trips to the shops for snacks, or even pizza. I remember taking breaks to watch films (on VHS!), and even the odd game on Nintendo. Therefore when I probe a little deeper, they were great fun times, but they were more "themed" around roleplaying rather than doing the actual roleplaying.
Fast forward to today, my last year long campaign was played in strict two hour sessions. My IP blast of games using FATE to play in the Dune, Judge Dredd, and Tron universes were likewise only 2 hour sessions. When I joined a group playing Monster Hunters, they were running two hour sessions.
In short the two hour time frame is much easier for a grown ass adult to carve out and reserve for play, and the two hour sessions are packed full. I've never played a two hour game where it was session-zeroed, that sh*t would take the entire session. No, instead players were given pre-gens, rolled them up before hand, or we were playing games where characters are created through play. The point here being that no one playing wanted to "waste" time on the preliminaries.
A little note on using pregens here. When I provide pregens, they are a place holder, and if the game goes beyond one session, the player can come back to the second session with their own new character and just drop it in to replace the pregen.
With only two hours to play, the scenarios have no filler-scenes, no slow initial pacing to ease players in, the time constraint means that you drop the characters into the middle of the scenario and game just goes. There's no roleplaying of "the boring bits", the journeys between locations are reduced to "cut to the next scene". Combats can not be long drawn out affairs, with staid and reserved counting squares on the board and moving slowly, it needs to move at pace. The end result is that its a literally action packed session that everyone gets the most out of.
If you haven't tried strict short sessions, I urge you to try it. If you are still able to play for a day, try and organise your day into a series of different 2 hour games. It could be great experience, almost like a con.
There are games out there that are designed for short sessions, one of which you might want to look at is called Challenge Dungeon.
There's certainly enough here to throw the outlines together in a random way that can inspire your imagination.
But there's something different and special about this! As well as the usual PDF you also get an automated version of the product. In the package you get an HTML (web page) that you can run in your browser. Simply dragging the file out Windows Explorer and dropping it into your browser starts it up. On screen you get a button to push, and pushing it runs the generator. What I liked about this was the fact you could just keep pushing the button until you get a set of results that suit your wants/needs.
I've not seen this combined PDF/HTML option before, but I do hope to see more of it.
Edit: I see the product's been updated since I wrote the above, more tables/features added.
Erin and Wizard leaves the room heading south to a door they'd glimpsed. They pass a side passage but can't see to the end. Listening at the door reveals nothing. Nerin gently edges the door open to find an empty room. There are three other exits all with text scrawled on them the one to the east says "Storage", so they opt to go that way. Nothing heard, so Nerin quietly opens the the door. Beyond is a 20' corridor and another door.
Another listen at the woodwork reveals multiple whinning voices beyond. Nerin quietly opens the door and inch and sees 6 Kobolds. He and Wizard nock arrows and shoot through the gap and both down a Kobold each, before Nerin Slams the door. Both our heroes back up and nock another arrow. There's shouting from beyond the door, then a breath's length of silence, and the 4 Kobolds burst into the room. Wizard flinches sending the arrow wide, but Nerin's arrow hits his target but it lodges harmlessly in the kobolds belt.
Wizard bravely comes to stand behind Nerin. "We should see if knows of a treasure horde."
Nerin lets fly an arrow killing the kobold. "All I see is an ear worth gold."
Nerin sets to recovering a ear from each foe and Wizard enters the room.
Statues line the walls, and he find two bags of coin, one of copper, the other silver. He spills the copper across the floor, "Worthless".
Nerin comes in brandishing three ears, "And I found 41 silver pieces in their pockets."
Wizard holds up the bag. "About a 1000 silver by my guess."
"Huh!" Nerin kicks through the copper and pulls open the door at the far end of the room revealing an empty storeroom. He slams the door. "The Mayor said there were Goblins. Where are they?"
"We must keep looking, sooth?" Wizard smiles.
Nerin leads the way back to room with four doors, he listens carefully at the southern door hearing nothing. Slowly opening the door, he find a short corridor. Carefully testing the ground they move to the next door. Hearing nothing. Nerin edges the door open a crack to see walls lined with shelves stuffed full of bones. "A bonarium. This is not a goblin cave they do not honour the dead's bones." He pulls open the door and enters the room and walks straight to a door in western wall. Listening he hears nothing and opens the door for a peek. A corridor stretches away westward. "Come, lets find these missing goblins."
Walking to the corridor they shortly come to a door in the north wall. Wizard puts his ear to the wood. "I hear kobold voices." He whispers.
"Stand aside, ready your bow." Nerin readies his own bow and cracks the door. They see six kobolds one of which is clearly the boss. Nerin lets fly at the boss. The boss screams and rips the arrow from his arm as Wizard fires a missing one of the smaller kobolds. Nerin kicks open the door and readies his spear.
The kobolds charge, Nerin skewers 2 of them and they can get a hit on him, Wizard backs up and loads another arrow. Nerin's spear quickly takes out the boss kobold and another of his minions. The last two kobolds run to the back of the room quailing in fear.
With the enemies dispatched the heroes move in and study the room. The sound of snivelling comes from a cage suspended above the floor. Wizard jumps to get a view of what's in there. He sees 5 small children.
"Human children. We should free them." Wizard tells Nerin.
"Why? What reward would be gained?" Nerin asks as he cuts the ears from the dead kobolds.
Wizard rubs his chin. "Perhaps the humans would be grateful for their return."
Nerin spears the two kobolds and takes their ears. "They might at that. Cut them down. We'll take them."
Wizard cuts the rope and the cage crashes to the ground, the children scream and cry.
"Bind their hands, and to each other." Nerin orders as he searches the big kobold. "Ah ha! Gold and silver."
Pushing the children ahead of them, Nerin and Wizard continue along the corridor, often rebuking the children for making noise. As they turn a corner they see a dim glimmer of light ahead. "Cover your lamp. Wait here. " Nerin whispers, and edges ahead to investigate. He sees 5 orcs in the room ahead working on something by the wall. He returns to Wizard telling him to leave the lamp with the children and bring his bow. They bow sneak back and nock arrows.
They loose, Wizard hits his Orc but Nerin misses. In disgust he throws his bow aside prepares his spear. Wizard draws his sword and they both move forward into the fray. Nerin takes out 2 Orcs and Wizard took a slash to his arm.
Nerin polishes off the final two orcs swiftly, and turns angrily Wizard. "Why draw sword if you can not fight, fool. Bind your wounds."
Wizard binds his wound as Neric picks up his bow and takes the ears.
Wizard picks recovers the children and together they return to the village to claim a reward. They got 75gp reward for the ears, and and sadly an attempt to convince the mayor to pay for the rescued children fails.
How much damage does as choosing Armour Piercing vs Hollow Point vs a guy in ballistic armour differ? Simple Modernity has the answer!
This book contains modern classes for you to play including Soldier (well duh), Heavy Gunner, Crook, Specialist, Sniper, Survivalist, Contract Killer, and Medic. This cool range of classes means you can easily throw together a party for almost any modern game, everything from specialists dropping HALO onto a terrorist held sky scraper, through to crooks carrying out a heist.
However I think my favourite idea for these rules is carrying a modern force through time to the distant past or across a rift into a fantasy world. It makes me go squee! Ever since I read about "Rome, Sweet Rome" I've wanted to play as modern troops taking on the might of ancient Rome! Simple Modernity is set up to deliver that game.
There's a great book series by Myke Cole (Shadow Ops) that runs with the scenario of magic reawakening in our world. People world wide are manifesting magical abilities and of course the government cracks down on that. But there's more, rifts between planes can be opened and there is a modern military base in a fantasy-style world under siege from all the goblin tribes. In short Simple Modernity is giving you the tools to play THAT game.
How about dropping a few modern weapons into your gonzo Basic Fantasy game?
Summary: If you want the simplicity of OSR in a modern game, take a look at Simple Modernity
Why is it bad?
It is the opposite of fun. Just think about being that Magic User, at the beginning of the session you pick that spell to memorise and never get to use it. Gosh what sterling quality fun that is! The perfect spell that's needed in the minute...was not memorised, more sterling fun.
It is not good story telling. When a Magic User pulls out the perfect spell at just the right time, you have a story to tell and share. When the Magic User just shrugs in response to a desperate need from the party there's no story there, no exiting flash of fiction to cause gasps and tales over beer in the years to come. It's a nothing burger.
There's no rational reason for it. I've read the original D&D and plenty of other OSR games, and I've never read a rational reason for it. Sure there's some literary inspiration reference in a book I've never read, but what good is that too me? Am I supposed to go read that book in order to enjoy this game? Not going to happen, So within the game, what the heck is the reason for the limitation imposed by slots? There needs to be a world-reason given for it to make sense. To me the whole structure just feels like a mechanical restriction imposed for a non-story reason. I won't argue that its imposed because of "balance" because there is no balancing a 1st Level MU and Fighter. So I see no genuine mechanical reason for it either.
What is better? I'll offer a suggestion here, but it is just one idea.
Lets start by retaining the restrictions of the power of spell, thus a 1st level MU can still only cast 1st level spells. This restriction make story sense to me, as the character progresses they learn to handle more powerful spells. So lets keep it.
The existing rules allow higher level MUs to cast more spells, so again this makes sense. A MU learning his craft could clearly learn to use their power more efficiently. So lets keep that.
I suggest we add to the above a points system for casting spells. These points will be representative of the amount of spell casting power that that the MU can wield.
Thus a 1st level spell costs 2 points to cast, and a first level MU has 2 points to spend.
At second level the MU gains 2 more points to spend.
At third level the MU can now cast 2nd level spells. So lets say a second level spell costs 4 points to casts. The MU at third level gets 2 more power points. This allows them to cast three 1st level spells, or a 2nd level spell and a 1st level.
As levels progress the cost of spells by level and the number of power points the caster gains could be adjusted.
So there you have it. An idea for a better spell system that would be more story-friendly and offer more versatility. I might add that the progression I came up with in this post doesn't have to replicate OD&D exactly, in fact its probably better if it doesn't especially if you are striving for "balance".
Imagine your game, everyone's sitting forwards at the table, the standoff off is tense, the rhetoric is passing backwards and forwards between PCs and NPCs, players are fully engaged, it escalates to strong words, then finally to violence as someone draws their sword.
...and the entire game grind to a halt as the mechanisms of "initiative" kick in and everyone sits back starts checking their phones and grabbing snacks. There ladies and gents, you have a failed mechanism. Initiative is just about the least interesting aspect of any combat. It needs to be quick, and it needs to be smooth, it needs to get out of the way.
The very worst initiative system I've come across, has been repeated in multiple systems and follows this process. Everyone rolls their own initiative then in initiative order you go round the table asking what each PC is going to do this round, then you go around again with every person carrying out the declared action. OMG what a dire slow onerous process. Not only does it destroy any pace the game may have achieved but it ends up with some portion of the players not even being able to do what they want because the situation/environment has changed before play comes round to them!
My question to budding game designers, is what are you trying to achieve with your complex slow-ass initiative system? Is your goal some sort of "realism". Ask yourself, does realism make your game better for the players, and if it does, at what cost? me, I say realism generally destroys play.
Well, that's lots of moaning, but does this moaning ninny have an answer for you? An answer that's quick and easy? Yes I do. Its called "Going clockwise round the table". But I'm not going to explain how that works :)
WTH
A couple of days ago I say the cover image for "Coyote & Crow" on the promoted row of RPGs at DriveThruRPG. That small image peeked my interest, it was cartoony and evocative so I clicked through to read more. Well done marketing department!
The game's listing is full of more evocative and inspiring art and when you read over the description it sounds really imaginative. The America's were never colonised, historic world wide disasters, new technologies that add a sheen of sci fi. I read all that and got more excited. so I clicked the preview.
All my excitement died as I read that sample from the game.
Was it the rules that peeved me? No.
Was it the layout? No.
Was it the internal art? No.
It was the hectoring, the lecturing, the talking down, the horrific, ridiculous, speechifying right there in the introduction.
"If you do not have heritage native to the America's..."
That was the line that started the paragraph that destroyed my interest in the game. It goes on to tell me what I can and can't do in the game... my game, at my table, in my house, with my friends.
Note please, it's not a request, not some friendly guidance, but instructions. This game is so desperate to tell me, the client, the purchaser, how to behave and how to act that they put this rude and impudent instructional right there at the front.
So what's the game actually like, how does it play? Damned if I know, I haven't bought it. I wont buy it now. It seems to be a lecturing document rather than a fun time. Notice I say "seems", I say that because I'm fully aware this is all first-impressions, and the reality of the game may be different, but the marketing people fecked up here. Create a good first impression is a rule of society and marketing, and they seem to have forgotten that.
Waste Runners is a small 34 page game set in a changed near future, its kind of a post apocalypse setting not not quite. Rather than the entire world being devastated a huge swathe of central Europe was ruined in a flash. Most of the people are gone, those that remain are "changed".
The PCs come into this game as "Waste Runners" people, agents, soldiers, or operatives tasked with entering the waste and recovering, discovering or investigating.
I find the whole background fascinating, going into this strange waste armed to the teeth and likely to meet almost anything gives you an endless variety of scenarios. "Changed" survivors gives you tons of possibilities, and when you throw in competing waste runners and foreign militaries there is just so much fun to be had. Militaries going in to recover weapons, criminals seeking bullion, scientists needing to study, lots of opportunities. I've even got a couple of scenario ideas in my head that might make it to published products at some date in the future.
The rules are based on the Cowpunchers game system, based around the three stats of Vigor, Finesse, and Smarts. It uses D6s, and skills and penalties add or subtract dice from your roll. Every 5-6 you roll on the dice is a success, and various tasks may require different numbers of successes.
This game is for you if you are a gun-fan, nine pages of guns are listed and stated, so your operative can get truly geared up. A bullet-types, armor types, vehicles, along with survival rules (food and water) create relatable environments where surviving may easily become the only part of the mission that matters.
In short, as you can likely tell, I like what this game offers, and at the price its a bargain too.
No. Just don't do it!
It seems that every time I hit up Amazon I get adverts or suggestions for "fancy" dice, especially "Lovecraftian" dice. No doubt the Lovecraft shenanigans is because of my podcast, but it really gets my goat because they are the worst example of dice.
These disgusting dice show the numbers of the faces, sure, but then do everything with colour and engraved scrollwork to make the dice actually unusable. If you get up close and turn the die round you can even sometimes see what the number is! Cool eh?
No.
As fun to own and show your friends as these fancy dice are they are absolutely awful at the table. When you're roleplaying the dice are there to resolve a question and get the hell outta the way. When some doofus rolls up with his bag of exquisite accurate engraved, multicoloured boulders I know we're in for a session where squinting at dice is going to destroy the ebb and flow of the game.
I'm not a complete Neanderthal when it comes to dice. I don't demand that D6's have pips, I'm even okay with dice having some translucency. But they MUST be legible by people sitting across from you.
There's one more thing. D100. No. Throw that ball of shite in the bin and never let me see it again. Keep your "funny fancy" dice at home.
No, I'm not talking about cheaters, nor am I talking about fudging the dice behind the GM screen.
What I AM talking about is choosing to break the rules as a group. I think anyone who's played RPGs for a while will have played in a game where the players have house ruled some aspect of the game, but I'm not talking about that either.
What I am talking about is breaking the rules in a defined way. I guess the best known game that does this is Magic the Gathering, which has some basic easy to follow rules, but then every other card that gets played introduces a rule breaking change. Another card game that's similar is "Killer Bunnies".
Those are card games but what about RPGs you say?
The first time I heard about this in an RPG was a game of "Heroic Cthulhu" being GMed by Logan Horsford. In that game he had/has a vast deck of cards. Following a few simple rules players get a hand of cards, and through play at the table they play the cards and get given new cards. This is all in addition to the normal role playing, not a replacement for it.
The card themselves break the rules of the game, or rather allow the players character to break the rules of the game. The simplest of cards would be something a "+10% chance on a skill check." Other cards might grant automatic success on a combat roll, a headshot with a gun, automatic pick pockets, or spotting a weakness. Each card modifies a rule, an action, scenario, plot point, and everyone effectively breaks the accepted rules.
You can knock up a set of cards to use in almost any RPG. If you go for it, don't rush to produce the cards. Its easy to make far too many that are just +1 or +2 as those are easy to come up with. Think about it for a while, try to make as many cards as possible unique, and allowing you to do things you wouldn't normally be able to do. For instance in D&D you might have a card saying "You convince your target". or "You hear the trap firing and get out the way."
Now the real pitch. I made a set of cards to use in Cepheus Engine or Traveller games.
I've upped my first character in Scarlet Heroes to level 2, and now its time to create another character in a different class to see how that feels. I wanted to try a wizard, but I'm guessing that a lone wizard is going to be very (too) squishy, so I've opted to run two PCs. This way I can put my level 2 halfling fighter in front and use the wizard for DPS.
What's nice in Scarlet Heroes is that they can use missile weapons and any melee weapon. However they only ever roll 1D4 for damage. I love this, now I can have my "gandalf" wielding a sword like the man in grey himself! With a bow, this upcoming wizard is entirely capable especially at low level. He only rolls 1D4, true, but that means his hits have a 75% chance of taking out a 1HD creature on one shot. that's pretty powerful especially when safely done from a distance..
My first thought was "Magic Missile", you know for firepower, but then I thought about that bow I plan on using. Magic missile does 1D6+1, meaning a result of 5-6 would mean the wizard could do 2HD of damage. that's good, but it is just one shot. Is that one-shot worth a spell slot? I kept this in my back pocket and looked through the 1st level options.
In the end I've opted to take "Shield" which gives the PC some protection, especially against missiles, and considering the Wiz is going to be at distance if at all possible it makes sense. I'm also taking "Sleep" as that can effect more than one target. I pondered Magic Missile again, but in the end that one-use issue ruled it out for me, and I've taken Read Languages. I want to be able to find more spells, so being able to read alien languages in a library seems like something a wizard would want.
Poor old wizard (no names at first level, what's the point) has a horrendous AC of 9 and only 4HP. Eek!
Then you get the official WH40K books, like Deathwatch,
After you've spent an hour building your awesome Space Marine player-character and are ready to start striding across the battlefield laying waste to the Emperors enemies, you get to your first encounter with the enemy and ...
Referee: "Roll to hit the enemies."
You: "So I've got my base to hit chance that's 32%. You said they were grouped together, so I can use my 'hordes bonus', that gets me to 36%. They are the declared enemies of my chapter, so that's anther 2%, so that's um... 38%. I was blessed by the chapters chaplain that puts me on 39%. Rodrick is suppressing them so that gets me to 42%. I roll ... 56. Gosh darn it I missed."
And that's where the official 40K games leave me. I'm looking at the beautiful books filled with glorious details and lore of a universe that is hideous and alluring, a place I want to game, but with a bittersweet taste. The actual game play especially combat, crawls at a snails pace. Instead of wiping swathes of enemies to jelly in an instant, I'm adding up small percentages that if I'm lucky allow me to hit one bad guy and maybe taken him out.
It fails, blocks your might say, the story you are trying tell. Its simply not fit for purpose.
After you've spent the full 30 seconds creating your character you dive into the action
Referee: "Roll to hit the enemies."
You: "7 on the D10, that's a hit, rolling 2D8 for kills, I kill 9."
Clearly you see the difference.
Deathwatch is a traditional detail orientated , methodical, plodding game, where as Three Sixteen is a rapid, rules-as-tool system that's almost entire story focused.
The background of Three Sixteen is almost a null, so combining the rules of it with the lore and background of Deathwatch is the way to go if you want that "feel" of Space Marines". Go ahead, mash them together, two great tastes in one!
