Hey /tg/ how does one make an only war game not to "rail roadey" and by that I mean not just go here and shoot this and listen then to some dude talk about the emps. Any ideas?
>>43853458
Make things not go to plan, their transport gets fuckled on the way to the objective and so on. Let the PCs do their thing because obviously command is incompetent and you know better. Throw in some stuff that soldiers would do outside of "go place, shoot"´, shit like being pulled into a gambling ring and the commissar is sniffing it out. Hell even parade duty is hilarious.
If they ever gain a reputation for being the soldiest soldiers to ever soldier have some higher-ups pull them into some sort celebration of their heroism and shit. Soldiers trying to socialize with nobles is bound to cause shenanigans.
>>43853458
Put the players in charge. They are given the orders "Assault Key Targets and Secure Assets." Give them free reign to figure out what are the Key targets and the assets to secure are.
>>43853561
How could this ever go wrong...
Send them off alone to do something far away. Think the Apocalypse Now river scenes. That little group was on a mission, but they weren't being babysat by command and could divert course on their own initiative. Just make it so they've actually got something to do at the end, rather than escorting someone else.
>>43853527
>Soldiers trying to socialize with nobles is bound to cause shenanigans.
One of my favorite tropes ever.
This whole post is great. Listen to this Anon OP.
>>43853458
Black humour
>this is how I only war
I had an idea for a less rail-roadey set of Only War sessions. The premise is that it starts kind of rail-roady to set the stage and then becomes player-driven after the first fight. Feel free to use it:
The stage of the adventure is a Hive world under a massive Tyranid assault. Capital has already fallen to the swarm within hours and the Tyranids are advancing on the second largest city (guys who have played Deathwatch may recognize that I recycled the setting of the Hive world Castobel). The players are a group of quickly trained and badly armed conscripts stuck in a trenchline on the outskirts of the Hive. Players are ordered to hold a pillbox-style bunker at all cost, in order to buy time for the evacuation of citizens and important personnel. Tyras are attacking in waves of increasing intensity, ramping up the pressure. After two or three probing waves of gaunts the Tyras mount an overwhelming attack on the defensive line, with Cranifexes and all, something sure to totally destroy the players. At this moment a garbled message from High Command comes through the vox, ordering every defender to withdraw deeper into the city. Meanwhile, the Tyras are coming down hard on the bunker the players are stuck in. The round that the players are just about to be totally whiped out, one last vox message comes through, frantically stating that the defenders of the city are now prepared to sacrifice themselves for the Emperor. The next second, the whole world goes white with intensely bright light! Moments later, players who did not temporarely go blind (Toughness test) from the flash may witness the swarm in front of their bunker burning to cinders, shortly followed by a blastwave of black smoke, ash and debris, flooding the bunker and knocking everybody out...
Throw in a plot hook that makes the team go off the rails.
Like say the squad is just wrapping up a patrol during the tail end of a xenos invasion of a garden world when they happen to stumble across something more interesting than orders
![battlefield__bad_company_by_revraph[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/YoPpyUH.jpg "battlefield__bad_company_by_revraph[1].jpg")
>>43853840
Such as pic related
Not OP, but I also have a question. How does one find an Only War game in his area? I love the concept of the game, but don't know any gaming groups in Geneva and have no clue how one would go about finding them.
>>43853860
>>43774627 is a good place to start.
Roll20 can snag you some games as well.
As for meatspace? No idea. Head to our FLGS and hope there's someone there who is doing OW?
>>43853809
When the players awaken again, they find theirselves in an ash-covered wasteland, full of incinerated Tyranid creatures and humans alike. The main spire of the Hive is gone, replaced by a rapidly rising pillar of smoke. Soon, a black soothy rain sets in...
The Hive has just nuked itself, using atomics from an ancient weapons cache found deep in the underhive. The Hive, its remaining population and most of the Tyranid swarm have been wiped out. Local HQ has perished in the blast, no vox contact can be made to the remaining Hive cities halve a continent away. The players are on their own (possibly blinded and/or horribly burned and barely alive for those who were "smart" enough to be outside the bunker when the nuke went off). From here on, it is a game of survival. All the players know is that the population of the now gone Hive was to be evacuated to a minor Hive city somewhere across the endless deserts of their world. The players are alone, have no vox contact, radiation may soon become an issue and they may soon realize that some of the hardier Tyranids have, albeit heavily wounded, survived the blast. To make matters worse, they should learn after a while (maybe from another survivor they encounter) that the Hive's subterranean plasma reactors have been heavily damaged by the blast and are just hours away from a catastrophic meltdown, which would finally reduce the struck city and surrounding areas to molten slag.
Players may from here on proceed as they wish. They may try to gather survivors, look for some kind of transport to get out of the city and cross the desert to safety (maybe encountering convoys of refugees under attack from forward elements of the swarm). They may try to reinstate the safeties on the plasma reactors, buying time or they may just go crazy and prepare for one last stand against the remaining Tyranids.
>>43853908
You could run this adventure on the go, just setting up some scenes the players might stumble upon: A blackened Carnifex "corpse" that suddenly comes alive, with reduced wounds of course to give them some semblance of a chance. A damaged tank that they may be able to repair in order to get out of the city before the reactors go critical. A bunch of heavily wounded civilians and soldiers in an underground field hospital treated by a medicae almost blind from the blast and on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Tunneling Tyranids like Raveners bursting from the ground, having been shielded from the bomb below ground. Players feeling suddenly sick, the radiation taking its toll on them, etc etc.
The escape from the destroyed Hive, the trek through the desert to the safety of the remaining Hive cities, the whole fight for survival may provide a huge number of possibilities to the players. Just set the stage, let the world around them burn to cinders and let them decide how to somehow survive their predicament.
>>43853527
>>43853561
>>43853644
These. Give them a rank that doesn't mean they get to order people around, just that they answer to a higher authority on the field and other officers won't be able to command them, then give them a vague mission and a bigass area of operation with an active war going on. They can go straight for the objective, maybe risking being cut off from their lines because the enemy is pushing an advance, or cooperate in the war effort, risking their objective becoming harder to reach.
>>43853809
>>43853908
>>43853961
That sounds good. The Only War campaign my DM runs is fucking dull. He absolutely refuses to do anything thats outside conventional millitary RP
>>43853458
Don´t play with millitary buffs. They tend to have zero concept of a good entertaining story and only care about millitary realism
I played in a OW game that the GM put a lot of effort into. We (the players) had a tank, a radio, and a map of the overall battle. After the initial landing on the planet we were trying to take back from a separatist Guard faction we were directed to one section of the battlefield and told to hold it against enemy forces. This was basically the tutorial step. After the battle the GM redrew the battle lines and enemy forces on the map to show where the bad guys were pushing through and where the allies were winning.
Then the shenanigans began. Surprise attack from the enemy, whole forward command detachment gets leveled by a Leman Russ. We use the deceased Major's vox to call in Griffon mortars and destroy the enemy tank. The position is too far forward of the red line to reinforce though. The party has comms with the rear, but whoever their highest ranking member is (hopefully they have a lieutenant) is now in charge. So now the party, and possible a few support elements, have to choose their own path and decide how they are going to effect the overall battle.
It was a fun game.
Two questions regarding DH 2ed: did someone scan Enemies Without and are there any rules for lightning claws ?
>>43853458
The thing about Only War is that it can do everything from Black Hawk Down to Black Adder. Find what your party wants to play.
>>43856230
You could try porting over the rules for lightning claws from Deathwatch. I know it has them.
In summation, OP: Stop being a faggot/shitty GM.
One leadership method is to tell specialist troops what you need them to do not how to do it. If your regiment are recon specialists, you would be told WHAT to recon not HOW. This leaves a lot to the individual team. The thing with Only War is unless you purposefully separate them from the rest of the army the players wont decide the WHAT, they will have orders and can only decide the HOW.
Take inspiration from some good war films/shows that are a little different from the typical.
And tell your players to knock it off with them negative waves.
