So I recently started GMing Only war at my school with a campaign I wrote about the Tanith. Now I have recently recieved a copy of the Final Testamate book and am a little concerned when reading through the first few missions after the drop ship crashlands. Now we are still two weeks out from starting this campaign but i have some questions.

The book says that the battle through the ork caverns is a rolling battle that is told in narrative time based on the player's actions but I cant help feeling that this is cheating the players out of some good fights. For example it says that when the players fire at a large mob of boyz or gretchin that the combined volley from them and other squads wipes them out. It just feels like the players are being cheated out of a combat (of course I know that there is no way a group of four players can take out a mob of 20+ boyz). I was considering giving the players a leman russ to use in the beginning but I dont think any of the players are operators or tech preists which means that controlling the thing will be a nightmare for them. I want to make it feel like they are actually doing something rather then me just reading a story.

Also another issue is how can I tell the players what their choices are while still giving them control over what they do, in a few parts in the book there are places where the characters can pick from two or more options but these options might not be what they think they should do and they might decide to to something else entirely leaving me to come up with a new mission on the spot in order to kind of push them in the right direction so they feel like they are in control of their characters. I dont want to just read them the choices but the only other way i can think of is to have an NPC suggest something which again makes them feel like I am trying to push them in a certain direction.

After reading your post I am regreting special ordering a copy. I am now obligated to purchase a "pop-up story" adventure. If I had wanted a Fighting Fantasy adventure I'd just dig into my ancient TSR collection of Star Frontiers crap and be done with it.

Do you fight the Orks? Turn to pg. 113

Do you hide in the tunnels? Turn to pg. 39

Lame.

the campaign isnt like that, it is a good campaign it is just that the first few missions are more narrative then the rest of the campaign. as for the choices the characters make they arent really choices that effect the campaign as a whole, rather they just effect little details of the situation so that former decisions can give them an advantage or disadvantage.

my question was more about how can I make these first few missions less narrative and more involvement on the players part, and how can I make it so that the players do not feel like they are being pushed to do something.

Overall I enjoyed the campaign after some playtesting with a fellow GM who is running this at another school nearby (I GM a mission and he plays 3-4 characters then we switch every few missions and discuss what to do to improve our GMing and the campaign).

My concern is that if you make the opening less narrative and more involved you run the risk of it going too far the other way, I've had some of my most epic moments in Dark Heresy and the other FFG games in a narrative time situation. I don't think you should look at taking it off narrative time just managing it differently and rewarding smart use of the situation, topography, enemy and friendly positions etc. If you do switch from narrative to involved you changed the scope from a zoomed out view of a wide conflict on a battlefield to a close up view of just the squad and you run the risk of loosing the wider focus of what the Guard are doing there. By all means, if the players get into bother roll initiative and get them to have a fight but then duck back out into the narrative.

If you scrap narrative for the whole thing then you add a lot of reliance on the crunch of the system and the numbers game and being 100m away from the enemy in combat time with a 18m max run per turn is not a fun situation to be in as a player. Narrative time allows you to move the situation along, allow players to get shots in feel like they're contributing as part of a whole (to have their individual moments of glory later) and it allows this to be done at a swift pace. I can understand why it seems jarring but if you do get rid of the narrative time you need to find a way to move them over that battle quickly otherwise it's going to be a massive 2+ hour speed bump to the game in my opinion, depending on how you play and manage it. Just need to be aware of the positives and the negatives of both choices.

ConstantineRoth said:

Im not saying I want to get away from the narrative aspect, I just dont want the players to be sitting around with very little to do for the first few missions.

That's fair, it'd be good to hear how you decide to do it as it could be useful when I run games in future. Hope it goes well for you :)

My take on your first question would be (be careful, I haven't read the book thoroughfully yet):

Design two or three encounters for the PC during the major battle. As the book says, the actions of the PCs influence the outcome of the battle (if they are killing orks, all the guard are winning; if they are being wounded, all the guard are being slaughtered), so you should place them into situations that have some relevance on the overall situation.

Some examples I can think of right now:

- The liutenant of the characters platoon and his personal bodyguard are having a bad time fighting a group of orks. The liutenant himself is suffering from blood loss and is not going to survive much more. The players have to get there and save the LT's ass. They should also perform some first aids on the liutenant or he is going to die anyway… If the players succeed in this, the rest of the guard start fighting with more strength. If they don't succeed, half of the platoon starts running away.

- A group of orks are running towards a fortified position where they have some impressive big guns emplaced. The players have to try to get there first or stop the orks from reaching the weapons. If they succeed, they can use those same guns to do a lot of pain on the enemy side. If they don't succeed, things turn ugly for the guard…

- Suddenly, WAVES of gretchins charge! Gretchins don't stop commin, doesn't matter how many of them are killed by lasgun fire or flamethowers. These Gretchins are commanded by some runherds spread all over the place. The players have to reach a good firing position and try to snip half of the runherds in order to spread chaos and fear among the gretchin lines.

Stuff like that. Tailor some encounters like this to the interest of your players, their capabilities and their power level!

well the problem with this is that the players are spending the narrative trying to escape from the greenskin camps with thousands upon thousands of the xenos attacking, they shouldnt even stop for a minute or they will be overrun. I think I have an idea that will fix it though.

I might have a few mini-missions where the players need to shoot at a group of bomb squigs running at their convoy, or the players need to clear off the outside of the vehicle (or a nearby one) of greenskins that are climbing up the sides. yet another mission would be where a group of trukks or warbikes pull up alongside the convoy and the players need to shoot the orks off before they board the tank or just blow up the vehicles.

maybe just a few small things like that where the players need to deal with threats to the convoy as they speed toward the exit of the cave. It is just difficult because the sheer amount of orks attacking makes it a very unwiledy combat for a GM to do, we are talking about a company to regiment scale battle. Larger battles and thing like waves upon waves of infantry would kill the PCs before they got a chance to do anything and in this escape anyone who falls behind will basically be overrun and killed almost immediatly. 

That's the way to do it! "Mini-missions", as you call them, hehe.

Something I would do is try not to focus all those minimissions in combat. If you do so, a 90% of the Tests done during the first act of the adventure will be Ballistic Skills tests!! (and after you have killed 30 orks, it starts getting boring…).

- If there's a Medic in the group, make him rescue/heal an important officer or character.

- If there's an Operator, make him outmanouver a couple of warbuggies trying to make them crash while the other characters shot from the vehicle.

- If there's a Techpriest, make him get off the transport in order to open the main gates of the ork base to get to the surface.

- Priests, Comissars and Sarges may be obligued to go back the the tail of the convoy to try to regroup some squads terrified by the overall situation.

And so on…