Deathwatch: Final Sanction

My friends know that I’m a guy who just isn’t into roleplaying the typical western hero type we all know from action movies and games made in America. E.g. bald or crew-cut gruff marine types who teach us that empathy is that queer feeling you get when you aren’t killing enough stuff every second, or for your wife and kids (who are invariably kidnapped, dead, or kidnapped and then dead). A different take on the trope are Games Workshop’s Space Marines, who are bald or crew cut gruff paladin types who have a verbal tic where they say Emperor, Throne or latin administrative terms a lot of times while killing stuff.

Or at least that’s what I used to think. My media exposure to Warhammer 40k Space Marines thus far had led me to believe they were basically robots that kill aliens. However, other sources have challenged this belief, much to my pleasure, including Fantasy Flight Games’ Deathwatch and its preview module Final Saction. Based on the d100 system used first for Dark Heresy and then for Rogue Trader, both favorites of mine (Imperial Guardsmen and Sisters of Battle are awesome), Deathwatch adds the ability to play as the Imperium’s Adeptus Astartes, the powerful Space Marines devoted to the Emperor of Mankind. This is something people have been waiting for since Dark Heresy.

Deathwatch surprised me, particularly as I read the series of preview and design articles on Fantasy Flight Games’ site which really helped me see Space Marines in a new light. Deathwatch is not just a game about killing aliens as space marines, though it can easily be that. But Fantasy Flight Games not only adds some good mechanics for setting your battle brother apart in personality, background and demeanor so that he is not solely an alien killing machine, but also gives plenty of opportunities in the included adventure Final Sanction to roleplay your battle brother and not just his heavy bolter.

Deathwatch adds a couple of impressive new mechanics to the Dark Heresy system. The Hordes mechanic really allows for Space Marines to play in their natural place as the few best warriors of mankind against the thousandfold scourges of the grimdark millennium. A Horde uses a single stat block and is basically a single creature, but with new rules and a boatload of wounds that help to simulate the large quantities of enemies fighting against your Battle Brother at once.

Personal and Chapter Demeanours help you to distill the personality of your Space Marine and really get into his shoes, as well as providing great incentives to make decisions and take the spotlight as the Battle Brother you’re playing that set you apart from the rest of the Kill-Team. On the crunchier side of things, Space Marines are insanely tough, as they should be. They have multipliers to their strength and toughness bonus, the letter combined with their legendary suits of armor and their high wounds means that a group of Space Marines can take on even hideously powerful creatures like the Lictor in Creatures Anathema and come out winning.

All these things also generate pretty much the single, petty complaint I have against Deathwatch so far. I really liked it when Rogue Trader introduced a system whereby very experienced Dark Heresy characters could mix with starting Rogue Trader characters and be roughly equivalent. I hope that Deathwatch has something of that nature, but it seems doubtful, with the many enhancements Space Marines have that go above and beyond what just extra Experience Points can cover. I really hope something like that is included!

The adventure itself, Final Sanction, is fairly succinct yet able to provide quite a few hours of material. I love the use of Objectives to delineate the important events and less important that the Space Marines must pursue. Primary Objectives are what you must do to win, Secondary Objectives help advance primary objectives by securing allies or equipment or other concrete aid for the Kill-Team and Tertiary Objectives can be pursued for glory and renown, even if they do not offer direct aid in the Mission. The basic situation is fairly simple – there’s genestealers and nutjobs and you shoot them – but the provided NPC allies, locations and objectives can add up to a very satisfying and multi-faceted adventure. From the once-broken Planetary Defense Forces now rallied by your battle brothers, to the cowardly governor-general, to the blind teenage psyker girl that speaks in strange riddles, to the horrible monsters that plague the city, Final Sanction provides a lot of entertainment and diversity to what at first glance just seems to be a big shooty module.

Fantasy Flight Games made a believer out of me and I really look forward to when Deathwatch releases. If I had a better grasp of the overall GLORIOUS 40k CANON and didn’t feel overwhelmed by the notion that I might screw it something up in designing adventures, I would probably try to run my own Deathwatch campaign.