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As the first of the adventure books for the past game launches felt, this one feels like the designers are trying to send us a message with their vision of the game. The first Rogue Trader adventure book, Into the Expanse, felt like an epic campaign notebook. It demonstrated how the game was envisioned to play and gave both players and storytellers a glimpse at how to structure both endeavors and the freedoms being a Rogue Trader can grant. The first adventure book for Dark Heresy was more of demonstration of the three styles of games Dark Heresy tends to gravitate towards. It showcased how to run Investigative, action, and horror games for the servants of the Inquisition. This book tends to blend a little of both, and for good reason.
There is a lot of people who think that playing Deathwatch is all about killing things, end of story. Interestingly enough, that’s the point of the original Dungeons and Dragons which (as we all know) grew from a tabletop miniatures game. Now, before we start flaming about the differences or similarities that may (or may not) exist, I only bring this up to remind us all that a game is what we make it. And The Emperor Protects tries to make the same statement, by demonstrating different types of missions with very different objectives it gives both the Storyteller and players different views on how to play these monstrous killing machines and shows us some situations where dropping on the target and killing anything that moves may not be the best strategy.
But does it deliver?
So, let’s take a tour of the book, shall we?
The cover is a fantastic image of a Space Marine, wearing what looks like Artificer Armor, kneeling in a pile of his dead brothers holding a Power Sword. It’s a very evocative image, and one that serves as a reminder that not every Brothers story ends well. The book is the usual high quality hardcover I have come to expect from Fantasy Flight. The binding is also what I would expect, I have found that their bindings to be very sturdy and lend well to long term use.
The book is then broken down into four chapters, an introduction for the adventures to come and the adventures themselves. The introduction breaks down what ties these three adventures together. Turns out some Chaos Marines are planning to hijack the Warp Gate by redirecting the terminus from the space between the Kronos Expanse and the Calaxis Sector to… Someplace else. By doing this the games setting, the Jericho Reach would be cut off from the Imperium and the crusade doomed. Without supplies from the gate the humans would be crushed by the Tau, Tyrannid, and other local races and factions.
As our heroes wander through these adventures they come across pieces of this master plan by the Alpha Legion and a Chaos Sorcerer. The first two adventures contain elements that direct the players to the hints of the players with the conspiracies finale coming in the third adventure. The Introduction also discusses pacing for the adventures, suggesting the use of these adventures in a non-liner method by spacing them between other adventures. There are also some sidebars discussing modification to use the adventures as standalone vignettes for shorter adventures or one night games. Each adventure also presents a different twist on the search and destroy scenario. The first adventure puts the players in the role of Diplomat to a warrior culture, encouraging the players to role play in the society and recruit a world (or not) to the crusade. The second is an investigation, giving the players a chance to explore their gumshoeing. The final adventure is an undercover operation deep in enemy territory, and presents them with situations where acting as a heroic Space Marine could blow the mission and ultimately doom the Imperium.
I strongly suggest that anyone wanting to run these adventures either makes a choice to integrate them in a much larger campaign or drop the connections. My players completely missed the links in these adventures, and some of the leaps of logic required in the last leg of the adventure are a little stretched. In my home campaign I had introduced a unknown threat making Tyrannid beacons, this thread tied several elements of the adventure together for my players. They had discovered the beacons on Tomb worlds for those rich in setting lore, and Necron ruins factor into the second adventure with Tyrannids factoring in the first adventure. Since my players are not too familiar with the Warhammer 40K setting beyond what I teach in my games their motivations for the final stretch were much more personal, they concluded that the Chaos Sorcerer was luring the Hive fleet into the sector. It took a Tech Marine NPC and a Watch Captain NPC to explain the warp gate threat to them. The pieces of the puzzle are there, but my party is excited to play the hell-bent for bolter Space Marines and they just did not pay too much attention to their surroundings. It’s just my opinion but these threads are too obscure as written in a three part story, but would work great woven in a larger and more varied plot that threads them many times. Or just drop the connections, hand them their orders and send them on their way.
The first of the three adventures discusses a journey to the planet of Aurum at the request of the Crusade’s spokesman. It turns out this Feral world has some remarkable resources that the Crusade can use; as a result they are working to resolve issues diplomatically rather than with force. Unfortunately the locals are not too impressed with the Imperium toadies sent to negotiate with them and diplomacy is not going so well. The Kill team has been dispatched to the planet due to suspicions that there may be some Xeno influences at work there, but also to try and finally resolve the crisis on the planet peacefully.
I really liked the construction of this adventure. The planets capital is well described, and several optional encounters help give ideas for fleshing the environment out at Storytellers discretion. The story addresses several approaches to the issues at hand, everything from ignoring the local restrictions on travel to befriending the planets ruler. It gives plenty of options to explore the environment at the player’s discretion and gives good hints on how to get the story back on track if they wander too far afield.
The basic scenario is pretty predictable, however. Basically there are Genestealers present, and they have infested a town. Shortly before the Kill Team’s arrival the Broodlord broke free and has begun infesting the capital. The Kill team shows up, discovers the tainted town, kills a bunch of the local Genestealers, and then gets treated to a party. As expected, the Broodlord crashes this party to try and infest the visiting emissary of the Crusade and then a big fight breaks out, the winners claim the prize. Of course, if the Kill Team has incited a planetary war there is less a party as a desperate counter attack by the brood during the battles between the Imperials and the Locals. Despite this, however, the adventure moves smoothly and logically from one point to the next. There are some investigative elements, but if the party is just in it for the killing they can follow the clear breadcrumbs from one encounter to the next. I found running to be very simple, and with a good mix of options for players trying different approaches.
The second adventure is a mission to a key world in the Well of Night, an imperial staging world that helps guard the Warp gate itself. An inquisitor has gone missing and one of their colleges has enlisted the Deathwatch to look into their disappearance. Turns out the Inquisitor was looking into a Cold Trade (Xeno Artifact smuggling operation) ring on the planet and he may have disappeared at a Xeno site. Accompanying the aforementioned college, the Kill team is sent to find the fate of this missing inquisitor.
As smooth as I found the first adventure, I found this one to be much less intuitive. As soon as they land the Inquisitor falls prey to a trap, leaving the Kill Team to do the research for the mission to come. Even harder is the fact that there are several connections for different approaches, but they don’t seem to be connected so the Kill Team struggles with what to look into next. When I was running the adventure they found the journal in the inquisitor’s room, but ignored most of the evidence presented to hunt the Cold Trade ring. They found the cult of Xeno Worshipers, but interrogated and investigated nothing burning the whole thing down. I struggled to direct them back onto the track, and after some ham fisted hints they got to the undersea climax.
This adventure felt much more like a loose set of scenes, and much more of a rail, but the links that keep the adventure on track are hard to string together. This would have made a great quick-start, with characters custom tuned to the adventure at hand; or as a Dark Heresy adventure, running down a Cold Trade cult. Instead it feels off for a Kill Team, the emphasis is on research and investigation. My players kept trying to jump into fights and ignore clues. Once we got to the undersea city things got back on track, as the game moves to exploring the city and fighting Necron and Alpha legion forces. Overall I feel the adventure needs some work on the front end.
The final adventure takes the fragments from the first two adventures to reveal the ultimate plot, the Chaos Sorcerer and the Alpha Legion plan to recalibrate the Warp Gate to point somewhere else, and the Kill Team has been deployed to destroy their plot before they cut the Jericho Reach from any help for the foreseeable future. If they have been vigilant, or you have spoon fed them enough details, they may even be the ones to present this challenge to their Deathwatch masters!
One of the things I really liked was this nice chart that shows what the players actions have done to affect this final mission. For example, if they started a war on Aurum then their available Requisition goes down as their resources are dedicated to the war effort on the planet. Each effect is nicely thought out so it becomes easy to demonstrate the impact of the player’s actions up to this mission. It even included some things the players can do at their final destination to improve their odds.
After convincing (or being ordered by) the Deathwatch they make a troubled sneak attack on the Dark Mechanicum Apostate world. A poisonous and molten world full of warp twisted creatures, they make their way across the world heading towards a plant that is making the components needed to carry out the Chaos Sorcerer’s plans. As they make their way they discover that all the materials being gathered are to create a huge stealth ship that will get close to the warp gate and then corrupt it with the sorcery-tech they are developing. Of course, everyone plans to stab everyone else in the back (isn’t that always the way with evil?) but for now their alliances hold.
The players are offered different solutions to disable the ship, make some new allies on the Apostate world, and then challenge the masters of the conspiracy in their fortress/mechanicum plant and decide the fate of the Jericho Reach. This one, again, offered many options from a straight fight to turning the factions on one another to weaken them. The final battle is also fairly epic as they fight Chaos space marines, Sorcerers and deranged tech priests. I have not had a chance to finish running my players through this final act, at the time of this writing they have landed on the planet but life has interfered with our game for now so much that we won’t get back to the table until the middle of March, but I like the structure of this final act and feels more in tune with the first act with its possibilities and it feels more free for the players to run it the way they want. I look forward to seeing them wrestle with doing what is right for the mission and what is right for their souls.
In summery this is a good book, but not a great one. I personally prefer setting books full of plot ideas rather than completed adventures like this one, but as far as completed adventures go they are mostly well thought out and realized creative visions. While I struggled with one of the adventures, the other two moved smoothly and I like the more free-form approach that Fantasy Flight books seem to have in the two adventure books I have run. If you’re looking for a good, relatively low maintenance, one shot game this will fit your bill nicely with only a few minor tweaks. If you’re looking for some fresh ideas, some challenging situations to integrate into your campaign or inspiration for something other than a running fight on a planet then this will satisfy. If you’re looking for a low maintenance campaign, this is not for you. This is better than some advetures I have seen and run, but not entirely my cup of tea.
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