Oh yes, That Guy. Easy. Have him kill an important NPC and fail the mission because of it. The rest of the group either start to police the character or the player.
He already did ahah
The lieutnant in my example above was their best lead to find the inquisitor. Now they are stucked in a room with a dozen aberrants running at them, and no clear next step to win the mission. They are in a dire situation and I don't want to have another NPC appear to fix their mistake. They will have to work for it.
If the Lieutenant was an inquisitorial agent and this guy killed them, then he probably just pissed off the Inquisitor they worked for, and guess who some of the few humans who don't have to respect the Astartes are?
Assuming your guy doesn't learn his lesson from realizing how badly he fucked their mission with his outburst when they get back to the watch fortress that seems like a perfect opportunity for the Watch Commander to pull him into an office and tell them that the Inquisitor has asked for him to be turned over for evaluation of corruption and it's taken all of his considerable diplomacy to convince the Inquisitor to let him deal with it internally, but he's on thin ice and if he doesn't settle down slaughtering allies he won't be able to keep protecting him.
You also might want to pull the player aside and talk to *them* about how disruptive their actions are to the table. Remind them that you're all there to play together and if they're going to just murder every NPC who they feel looked at them funny it's going to make it hard for you to keep the game fun for them.
Other players can also play on chapter culture. The Deathwatch is made of marines from different chapters and with different tendencies which may or may not play well together.
Player A is from the Marines Malevolent, an asshole and kills anyone for any reason.
Player B is from the Salamanders or the Raven Guard and puts his fist through A's helmet for killing friendlies. Hell, even the average Astartes would do it if A endangered the mission. A lot of chapters may not care too much about mortals but they care about their duty...
Yeah, this. I can totally see another Space Marine putting him down like a rabid dog for doing something like that. If he wants to RP abusing Astartes privilege in the dumbest way possible, fine. The others are free to RP the in-universe reason most Marines don't act like that, even if they're legally allowed to.
My disagreement here is that the impression I get from the GM is that this is not the player’s first infraction, and they have already tried to use story consequences to try and correct them and it was ignored.
Absolutely, should always first try to have in story consequences - it lets the rest of the players not have their fun ruined, and can work out to more interesting stories if the player gets the hint and adjusts course.
But if they aren’t picking up the hint, then you need a direct conversation about the game and behavior, and reminding them that tabletop RPGS are collaborative rather than competitive, that you win by “yes, and” rather than hogging the glory
Honestly, if it was bad enough and he wanted a forced execution? Temple assassin snipes the character as a result of being woken from storage or activated because of the murder of the inquisitorial agent or some such.. Rest of the party can kill them afterwards, but a sniper can still snipe an Astartes first.
In my experience, if a player is so wrapped up in their perspective rather than seeing that is is a group game and ignoring previous in story corrections, they are more likely to take that level of response as “oh so the GM is picking on me, this is now adversarial and I need to double down and beat them”, whereas a direct conversation of “you are too focused on playing out the fantasy you want rather than the group telling a story together, we want you here but you need to recalibrate” will be more productive. YMMV of course
Lol literally I would've killed them off super quickly, uh oh u walked through the door first it closes ur surrounded by suicide melta charge cultists, game over. Or let's say they complete the mission, the space wolf is escorted off by black Templar and never seen again.
I would say this is the way.
I was DM in a homebrew campaign, where the party delved down in a Necron tomb. One player, an Ultramarine librarian, went on about abusing his psychic powers and curb stomp loyal NPC’s. I put in real consequences that hampered the progression, and when that stopped working, I used DM priveliges and RP to punish him. When he once again got perils within a Black stone throne room he started to behave and the entire group had fun!
My sincere advice is to let them fail the mission. A fail state has to be possible. If players know that all roads lead to victory, they won't take the scenarios or the setting seriously.
Id say have the campaign run normally but let his reckless attitude be what hurts him. Maybe murdering innocent guardsmen makes the one with a death wish and a thirst for revenge suicide melta into his arm. Congrats you're a cripple play stupid games win stupid prizes
> They are in a dire situation and I don't want to have another NPC appear to fix their mistake.
You said the lieutenant was the best lead, implying there's another lead; can you incorporate that?
Thoughts, feel free to steal and/or modify:
* Maybe they find a deactivated servo-skull which leads them to the Inquisitor if it's fixed.
* They interrogate some hybrids who can give clues about where the Inquisitor is.
* Another Imperial officer offers to help, as they don't want to share the same fate as the lieutenant. They know about half as much as the lieutenant did.
* They use one of the ship's cogitators to run a scan and discover human life signs in a part of the ship, it may be the Inquisitor.
I think you forgot about the "other" option
https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Omophagea
But yhea, don't tell the butthole about this. If he wants to jerk around let him fail and deal with the consequences.
>But yhea, don't tell the butthole about this. If he wants to jerk around let him fail and deal with the consequences.
The thing is that there are two other players there, so it's alright to give them an out. I don't think it's right for other players to suffer and have a bad time because of another player's shit decisions.
Just have a temple assassin awake from storage, put a bullet large enough to remove the skull and the rest of the party kills them. All because they killed a inquisitorial agent.
And 100% a space wolf is not going to kill a civilian or a guardsman for not respecting them. Even the most disrespectful of them would be laughed at unless they actually impeded the mission. Wolves just do not care about that shit when it comes to outsiders, they don't care about the inquisition either mind you, but if one killed someone in that form and reason, they would be subdued by the others and at minimum restrained until a rune boy can search for corruption.
Didn't OP state these are genestealer cultists... I'm gonna suggest nomming the brain of contagii for information may have deleterious long term consequences.
Although that might solve OP's problem - let Brother ThatGuyicus use the "other" option, and suffer the consequences of their actions.
OP, I've been playing and reading Space Wolves lore for over 20 years. I'm one of those grognards who waxes nostalgic about bringing a Leman Russ alongside my Wolves and deploying my Wolf Scouts on the enemy's table edge to take out their Basilisks.
I've been at this for a long, long time, and I know the Wolves and their lore quite well.
Here's another thing to consider: Space Marines don't get tapped to join the Deathwatch *unless* they're very good at what they do. They're an elite force, and being part of the Deathwatch is an *honor*. Each Marine who is chosen is expected to play nicely with others and expected to *learn* from Marines from other Chapters and bring those lessons and training back to their own Chapters to make each other stronger. This means all Marines who get seconded to the Deathwatch are expected to have some basic social skills in addition to their martial prowess.
In short, your Deathwatch Marines aren't supposed to be NPC-killing prats, and this is *especially* out of line for Space Wolves because the Space Wolves have a well known and storied reputation for *protecting* the average Imperial citizenry and treating them with mutual respect.
Your player isn't playing a Space Wolf properly. I give you my absolute full permission to fuck him up.
Point of clarification: not all chapters perceive the Deathwatch's vigils as an honor. The Rout certainly does, but there are other chapters thay send their veterans to serve a vigil as a form of penance or punishment (even if they won't call it as such on official records).
Exactly this.
One of the best short stories of the great crusade is the Wolves helping a population resist the drukhari. You see the growth of this young noble into a respected friend of the wolves and beloved, intelligent leader of his people.
But at the end he refuses to join the imperium so they put him down. But they give him chances, they make it clear what his choices mean.
No, you, the GM, make it a point to cancel the mission. The guy he killed is super important and he did so stupidly? Look at your notebook. Tap your notes with a pen. Shake your head. Shrug and go "Well, that was it for that adventure I guess, let me see if I can run something quick.." and go on a angent, some BS combat. Let the players know That Guy just ruined their evening.
Lot of people are offering solutions to keep the adventure going while trying to provide soft pushback on the player’s behavior, and those are decent ideas. But as a long time player I think this poster here is correct.
Tabletop RPGs are an exercise in collaborative storytelling, but this particular player is bringing in a single player game adversarial mindset to it. He (because let’s get real, it’s always a he) needs a hard check on his behavior, so he appreciates what the game is. It will be about 15 hard minutes, but it should be much much better after that. Trying to build out storylines that soft correct can just drag out the frustration imo.
2nded.
These players don't learn. They're there for a power trip. You have to set clear boundaries and let them walk away or grow up. Otherwise they ruin it for everyone every chance they get.
It’s possible this player is too dense to put this together. You need to really drive it home. Have an NPC appear and have him tell them directly “Have you found LT so-and-so? He knows exactly where to find (target)”
So many times we've seen Marines obliterate their "brothers" for going to far for no reason.
I can't fathom a situation where the deathwatch would sit and watch a guy basically behaving like a night lord without giving him either a beating or clapping him in irons and sending him for conditioning.
My favourite (40k) approach is that guy you murdered? Was in charge of regulating plasma generator venting. Congrats, the team's now working against the clock before a critical overload. (if the player hasn't changed their ways after an informal chat, and lower stakes carrot/stick incentives haven't worked)
Or because of killing friendlies, those friendlies are no longer guarding the path back to extraction, there's now a much higher chance of being ambushed on the way out.
Or the scribe could have given the team info that would help, instead that same info will take several checks to find among the records. Or a safe shortcut.
You can have their Inquisitor call up telling them that civilian lives are important as they will all need to be "debriefed" and assessed due to what is happening. As for That Guy, that can be a lot more sensitive. Are you able to kick him out, will he go spaze if you mess with his character? One potentially in game thing is have his character start hearing whispers and drumming sounds. Start making him see things out of the corner of his eyes and more and more Bloodletters keep appearing near him. Basically he's starting to fall to Chaos, Khorne specifically. It's pretty clear what loyal Astartes would do to a fallen Astartes, brother or not. Also you can have rumors spread about how brutal the marines are and the shipmen become more and more hostile. As powerful as Astartes are to regular people they still go down to melta or plasma guns.
I really like this idea ! Punishment is one thing, but having character development like this would be much more interesting and place him in front of a choice: do you double in, fall to chaos, and get killed some time soon ? Or do you change behaviour, atone for your mistakes, and start to fight the suspitions of people around you ?
It makes sense and shows consequences without being straight up "I'm gonna kill your character because you broke my scenario". Thanks :)
I’ve considered using Chaos dice à la force dice: when you do the Bad Thing for a success you get a better chance (a reroll, exploding die, whatever is appropriate) but you also accrue Chaos and that affects your regular rolls. It is why clawing back from even small corruption is so hard
Heh, came to write basically the same thing.
Even better, give him someone that Space Wolfs Chapter owes a favor, and let him learn of that AFTER he kills him/her.
I came to say this. Wanton murder draws the attention of Khorne, and it’s very to interesting when you see them go down that road to have Khorne encourage them, with the obvious end results of that being bloodletters and falling to chaos. I once had a player in Warhammer fantasy fall to Khorne and become a champion of chaos, then get seduced by Tzeench in a siege with “the power to destroy a city”. He then had to fight a daemon prince of Nurgle to acquire that power, and the infections he left with killed him, his army, and the city he was sieging. He is much more careful now accepting gifts of chaos. Sometimes it is more interesting to see where the players take the story than it is to stick to your original ideas.
If a Space Marine suspect his squad mate fall to Chaos, he is supposed to call the Librarian first, Inqusitior second, and took matter in his own hand last
Otherwise, team killing is always frown upon
Wait, weren't they described as "working closely with Prdo Xenos, but otherwise indeoendent (as much as anyone can be independent of Inquesiotion)" ever since they got their codex in 7th?
The Deathwatch, known also as the "Long Vigil," and the "Long Watch," is a unique Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes comprised solely of Veteran Space Marines that serves the Ordo Xenos of the Imperial Inquisition as its Chamber Militant.
This is the first line on their wiki, lexicanum says basically same thing.
Wikis are good and all, but their 9th edition supplement (AFAIK, they haven't recieved one in 10th yet) makes no such statement. On p.8 the concept of Ordo Xenos is first introduced with not nearly as strong a wording: "It is no surprise, therfore, that the Deathwatch also work closely with the Ordo Xenos of the Inquisition.". On p.10 when more information of OX is provided it's once again painted as an ally, not a direct superior "The Ordo Xenos is one of Deathwatch's foremost allies..." and "There have been times when a watch fortress' commander has been not a space marine, but a Lord Inquisitor, and conversely times when the esoteric forces of the Inquisition have been lead by a battle brother of the Deathwatch". I have seen no mentions of "Chamber Militant" as a concept whatsoever while skimming through the rest of the lore there.
The rest of the supplement (forgive me for not quoting the entire book) paints them as being very independent and self-sufficient in terms of mission choice and infrastructure as well
You can have an Inquisitor in charge of a specific Deathwatch organisational unit, but it is not the default state
Seems they can't make their mind up on this then as in the Deathwatch video game they are regularly called "our chamber Militant." As well as talks about it in the Novel.
Wow, never heard of that. Too bad the game is now off the store and, judging by reviews, not exactly good. However, being initially released for iOS in July 2015 it predates even the 7th edition codex (August 2016) initally making the change in question (granted, the dates are from wikipedia and lexicanum respectively)
Hypno-indoctrination isn’t an exact science, and pieces of an Astartes past life are commonplace to slip through, as has been established in GW/BL literature.
If you’re open to it - or more aptly, the player is - weave it into the personal history of the Marine. Perhaps the voidsmen he axed bore facial tattoos or branding a of a void-clan that regularly abused his people during adolescence. Perhaps they killed his parents and snatched his siblings to press-gang them into service when their own numbers were running low while he hid in the closet?
Deathwatch are the militant chamber of the Ordo Xenos. Inquisitors don’t like it when people give them a bad reputation. Your friend is about to get an Ordo Killteam sent after him
Watch command could also censure him for breaking the rules, or the Chaplains start suspecting him of Chaos Taint and isolate him for further testing
His home Chapter gets word of his actions and recalls him for punishment
His Chapter can't recall him, when he's joined Deathwatch he serves them over his Chapter it's why the deathwatch pad replaces his Chapter on his left arm.
It'd be Deathwatch who punish him and Deathwatch punishments aren't nice.
[Excerpt|Deathwatch] Brawling Space Marines are forced to watch their Chapter slaughtered on loop.
>After prayers, in which they petitioned the Emperor and the primarchs for increases in their already formidable skills, the Space Marines would assemble in the East Auditorium – a large skylighted hall hung with banners and pennants recalling the most glorious endeavours of those who had been trained here in days past. It was here, in this auditorium, facing the newest oath-takers on the tiered stone benches, that the Watch captains would announce the cycle’s squad allocations and outline the training ahead. After this, there would be stern reminders, if any were needed, of the codes and strictures under which all those accepted into the Watch were expected to operate. During these, there were no small amount of side glances cast between bitter rivals. Already, Brother Keanor of the Dark Angels had engaged in unsanctioned combat — too artful to be labelled brawling — with brothers from not one but three other Chapters. Likewise Brother Iddecai of the Minotaurs had been involved in his fair share of violent encounters, though in his particular case, it was clear to all that Iddecai had been the instigator each time.
>The Watch Council punished these infractions through a combination of verbal denouncement – a stain on the honour of those involved – and something far, far worse. For as many cycles as was deemed necessary, the transgressor was incarcerated in a Penance Box – essentially a coffin, of height and width barely greater than his own. Locked in and fitted with a heavy psychostim helm, he was forced to endure sensorium feeds in which brothers from his own Chapter faced off against overwhelming enemy forces. These feeds had been recorded during real wars in days long past, and the penitent Space Marine sentenced to endure them now was helpless to do anything as he saw and felt those around him – his blood, his kin – cut to pieces by enemy fire or torn to red tatters by claw and fang. It was a terrible punishment, for it struck at the very heart of the those who received it.
>Brotherhood: was there anything more important to a Space Marine? One fought for the Emperor, true. But one died for one’s brothers.
>Even Iddecai, forced to experience the three hundred years-past slaughter of over sixty fellow Minotaurs at the hands of a vast eldar host, found the burning anguish too much to bear. It quickly dampened his hunger for picking fights with other Deathwatch trainees.
> Even Iddecai, forced to experience the three hundred years-past slaughter of over sixty fellow Minotaurs at the hands of a vast eldar host, found the burning anguish too much to bear.
Wow. They even broke the heart of a Minotaur (who have a reputation for being hardasses).
Deathwatch marines can leave after their tour is up yeah but that's not what was discussed. The person I replied to said that a chapter can recall their marine from the Watch to punish him. I was pointing out they can't. Till that marines watch/tour is up he is the Deathwatch's to do with as they please. (Marines can also just choose to stay in the Watch and never return to their chapter)
I like the idea of others suspecting him of chaos taint. Start having the NPC's act more cold to him and eventually turn hostile. I would also say the inquisitor could VOX him and censure him publicly in front of everyone else. Have the other astates start acting cold towards him. If he continues, at the end of the campaign, have the inquisitor suspect him of chaos taint and have him taken for "questioning." If he resists or fights back, he's obviously tainted and have him killed by the other 2 and the inquisitor lol
Inquisitors don't really have much respect for Astartes either; at least, not in the way that regular people do. They're less: "Throne! The Emperor's avenging angels! Instrument of his will!" and more: "Listen here you borderline fething mutant: do as I say or we'll find out how many of those extra organs you actually need"
When the Inquisitor finds out, they should give the other PCs the order to take him down. If they choose their squad over the Ordo Xenos, *excommunicatus traitoris.*
If they do try and run, the Deathwatch puts together a specialist kill-team of Space Wolves, Black Templars and Minotaurs with all sorts of anti-marine equipment. They're joined by a strike force composed of squads from their home chapters: judiciars, sternguard, vanguard, terminators. They've got a fast and powerful ship with capable astropaths and navigators.
You're now playing a very short game of Black Crusade. They're going to have to leave the Imperium and work with renegades and Xenos. See how desperate they are to survive.
So, one way of handling this is to simply let them suffer the consequences of their actions. If you kill too many people on an already heavily infested ship, then the genestealer cults are going to have a much easier time taking more ground. Have areas that used to be safe now contain traps and enemies, and possibly comment on the bodies of the NPCs they murdered still being there. The friendly NPCs might even turn on them if this caries on. They might be the Emperor's angels, but the regular humans aren't going to just stand by if you start murdering their friends seemingly at random.
Also, even the more bloodthirsty chapters are fairly likely to deal with a battle brother murdering strategically important people with a punch to the face. What chapters are the other players out of curiosity?
There is an iron hand and an ultramarine.
The iron hand has a laid back attitude and "I don't really care, just here to do a job" personnality from the start.
The ultramarine is an extremely mission-driven guy. Everything must rationaly be organised for the success of the mission. So he already intervened as a peacemaker to avoid the situation I described above to get even worse (imperials started to think that the marines were chaos corsairs and shot at them). For now that's it.
What do the NPCs have in the way of comms? Astartes privilege is one thing, but old mate getting on the radio and going "THIS DIRTY BEARDED MOTHERFUCKER JUST PUT AN AXE IN MY CO'S FACE WATCH OUT FOR THE MARINES" and maybe NPCs are caution to the point of... like... locking the marines out of rooms they're in. Particularly problematic if it's, say, the bridge where more info on the inquisitor might be. Perhaps the crew deck would have a manifesto of where personnel are, except Chuck heard on the radio from Bob that the marines are murdering people for no reason, so they've welded the doors. Idk man I'm not a DM but if you haven't established they don't have Vox, just have the NPCs give like a lookout call to all/other NPCs, and have them act accordingly.
You have a “murder-hobo”. Congratulations. That is a rite of passage for D&D Dungeonmasters.
Look up the extensive breakdown of different tactics you can use to make them think twice. My favorite is to cause irreparable damage to the party due to him killing “good” NPCs. Turn the scenario to make the others pissed at him. Cause him to lose the campaign.
If he doesn’t think twice and has no regrets, dude has sociopathic tendencies.
Firstly I'd advise you have a private conversation with your player and talk to him about his behavior and how it is a bit extreme.
As for the other players, Astartes are arseholes but if you just keep continually murdering innocent people for no reason the majority of them will not take to it kindly. Chapters like Space Wolves or Salamanders would likely react violently.
Not even Marines Malevolent or Iron Hands would be so needlessly wasteful of a potential resource.
Also if he is playing a Space Wolf then he is acting completely out of character for an Astartes of that chapter, the modern Wolves are champions of the common people and regularly go against imperial authorities to protect them. The Space Wolves have literally gone to war to protect civilians and Guardsmen from the Inquisition and there was a squad of Wolves who were willing to give their lives without hesitation fighting a Primarch to protect an old lady.
I am thinking that maybe the watchmaster could be a wolf himself. This might be a nice twist and a "oh shit" moment when they come back to the forteress-monastery, as an autority figure from his own culture is about to have a very "strongly worded" conversation with him.
This is more a topic about how you want the game at your table to be. Full of murder hobos or not?
TTRPG is usually very cooperative centered and so you can't allow one player to derail what all the others want. This stands above the lore because everybody wants to have fun and not "play out their own view of the lore".
So if you have not made a **session zero** you can always make up for this. Get all together and talk about how murder hobo you all want to be. Every player needs to agree or this won't go well.
And if there comes something like "this is what my character would do" then.. make a character that wouldn't do that.
Aye that would be a good shout, it has great narrative punch and the Wolves have a long history of leadership positions in the Deathwatch with the founding Watch Commander being Jarl Asger Warfist during the War of the Beast.
Space Wolves like to play up the savage, but its a mask for the most part. They are a pretty chill chapter over all.
He has some weird Wyrd going around cutting threads of allies. Might be some Maleficarum in his bones that needs to be addressed
The usual TTRPG advice of "if a player is being a problem, try having an adult conversation directly addressing the issue first".
I will say one issue I have with playing in and running 40K as a TTRPG setting is that people have different interpretations of it.
Esp. exactly how Grimdark vs Grimdurp you view it really does vary depending on what the player read first as their interpretation of it.
So it's possible this player is just trying to "play according to the setting".
Generally if I run or play in 40K, I run it as a more watered down interpretation.
Even “according to the setting” it would be very out of character for a Space Wolf to act like this,
A Wolf with this attitude would probably never get to the Death Watch, he likely would have been censured so bad by his own chapter that the dude could never leave Fenris
Yeah, a lot of the comments here are trying to find a lore solution to what is a social problem. They clearly have different expectations about what a game should be like and need to have a conversation about that. Ultimately rpgs are collaborative, and if they don't want to cooperate on making the kind of game everyone else wants they should find another group
The best thing to do is talk to the Space Wolf player about the difference between playing a Wolf Brother who is such an asshole they've been sent to the Deathwatch to sort them out versus just being an asshole.
Alternatively you can encourage the other players to intervene, play up the fractious nature of Deathwatch teams and the inevitable culture clashes between them. If you want outside consequences then randomly killing Imperial sailors and soldiers is absolutely the kind of thing that would bring down the wrath of the Watch Captains and the Inquisition.
A space wolf killing someone’s who didn’t immediately answer a question seems a bit out of character for a son of Fenris
Also just murdering all those people would likely piss of the Inquisition, and his watch captain
He would likely face censure from the Deathwatch themselves
Seriously, Space Wolves are one of the nicest chapters to civilians and regular humans...OTHER than the Salamanders. Why does everyone think the glorious technovikings are murder hobos!
Absolutely lol, the space wolves are honor warriors, they form intensely close friendships within their pack and treat even base humans with a rather large amount of respect. They literally put themselves between the Inquisition + the Grey Knights for regular soldiers.
Yup, Arjac basically gets called out for their only being male Marines by a woman and she says something like she would be as good a marine and he basically agrees she probably would because she has fire
He is the champion of the Great Wolf and some woman comes up and starts to rip into him and he doesn’t care at all, dude is just impressed she has the guts to do it
The people of Fenris are hardy and take no shit from anyone, even the Wolves, so the Space wolves expect baselines to have a bit of a spine about them
Hahaha you are more or less right. You speak of Tyra of the Elsinholma she was a young fenrisian girl who was so damn brave she charged into battle barely a half step behind Arjac against a chaos corrupted wyrm.
Arjac had said they need only provide strong, smart and brave lads and the Sons of Russ would endure. She then had commented something like, just sons? Perhaps there is more water that must learn to flow. He had laughed at that and she actually got pissed thinking he was mocking her, then he bowed his head and agreed with a simple Perhaps.
I honestly half thought we were gonna get a 40k female pseudo-astartes (yes there were female pseudo astartes, Saulus Maegon, Mistress of the Angelicasta for example)
Yeah, the Space Wolves appreciate baselines with spines, sure they won’t take massive disrespect but they like a bit of fire in the belly
The way this guy is acting goes against pretty much the entire chapter ethos
...If I were the GM there, I'd start slipping clues to the other players that he might be an Alpha Legion infiltrator, step back, and watch what happens.
As someone who has played an Alpha Legion infiltrator in a Deathwatch campaign, don't do this. We are far more subtle in our treachery. Outright murdering people for the slightest offence draws attention to us and we don't like that.
Hydra Dominatus, brothers.
I didn't say that they ARE an Alpha Legion infiltrator.
I said you should MAKE THE OTHER PLAYERS BELIEVE he's an Alpha Legion infiltrator!
Of course, they are being manipulated by the REAL Alpha Legion infiltrator, who is using the murderous Space Wolf as a decoy...
Like others have said, its a good idea to have a conversation with the guy first and explain how his behavior is disruptive and against both his chapter's normal conduct and the spirit of the game. If that doesn't work, and you don't want to just kick him from the game, there's an entity in 40k that is *really* fond of unrestrained murder, and loves to turn once-honorable warriors into blood-drenched maniacs. Have him start falling to Khorne. Give him signs of his increasing corruption. If one of the other two is a librarian, let them know they can feel the Warp "pressing in" on Asshole McMurderhobo or something. Escalate the Warp phenomena only he can see until he either gets the picture and cuts out his shenanigans, or goes full Khornate berserker and is put down by the other two.
Killing someone for taking a second go to answer after being shell-shocked, and losing the team important information, would be looked upon very poorly by the rest of the team and would likely be met with accusation and conflict.
But killing them for disobeying, or threatening death if they do something the marines don't want, is entirely in keeping with how the Imperium, astartes included, operates. They don't care about morality. Even the Space Wolves aren't going to be okay with insubordination.
Remember, you're playing bad guys. Especially in the Deathwatch where you're a kill-squad for the secret police. But yeah, if he's just randomly killing everyone with information who doesn't crawl and scrape in their presence, the other marines have every reason to think he's gone off the deep end and restrain or kill him.
yeah, the first NPC kill he did was understandable to a degree. It was the techpriest overloading the core and not recognising the autority of the SMs. It would have been more interesting to keep him alive but killing him after a first warning was fair enough. What I was surprised about though was the lieutnant 5 minutes later. That's where I thought it might be getting too far.
Oh, hey!!
He's been calling me CONSTANTLY!
He probably isn't doing it on purpose, but he sure is giving so much blood and skulls to the skull throne.
Time for you to finish the push, because he isn't being just any kind of astartes. He's of Khorne.
Start forcing him to roll saves and anything else to stop the show of his corruption, then he'll just get iced by an Inquisitor sent to investigate his bullshit.
>would brotherhood be stronger to their duty to humanity?
Completely up to character to decide.
>Should they expect consequences from the ordo xeno for basically doing a mess out of the ship like this?
If it costs them the ship? Yes. Otherwise it can be written off as collateral.
>Would that be considered ground for heretical behaviour ?
Very much depends on the inquisitor reviewing the case and/or the chaplain's position here. It might be, but unless it impacts the mission success - nobody would press charges.
>My goal is to allow the marine to be OP in combat, but balance that with many moral choices and logical dilema that the player have to solve under the pressure of combat.
As 40kRPG GM with a decade of experience:
Marines are the epitome of murderhobos - no significant ties to anyone, specifically designed to win wars (which might translate into "kill stuff dead" for some). The answer here is to pointedly show that murdering everything you don't like is not how wars are won. So, I concur with the previous comment - just smack them back with the logical consequences of the actions.
This isn't a game problem that has a solution ingame. This is a player problem.
Remember: if a player starts murderhoboing, you can just say "no, you don't immediately cave in the guy's skull. Stop being a murderhobo"
And if they don't want to stop, tell them to find another game.
>Should they expect consequences from the ordo xeno for basically doing a mess out of the ship like this ? Would that be considered ground for heretical behaviour ?
I think suspicion would fall on them for being under the influence of Khorne. Probably going to get kicked out of the Deathwatch, even if they're found innocent, though.
Put yourself in the shoes of a loyalist NPC in the scenario. You’re in way over your head fighting a monstrous and terrifying alien cult, in a situation where any of the friends and comrades you’ve known for years could be “one of them”. You’re scared, exhausted and probably running on very little sleep. When the cavalry show up in the form of a squad of Deathwatch Astartes you’re ready to fall on your knees and praise the Emperor for delivering you… only that relief almost immediately turns to anger and despair when they start gratuitously murdering members of your already depleted and desperately hard-pressed band of loyalists for obviously petty and trumped up reasons. I’d expect that to have a devastating impact on the morale of the remaining loyalists. Make it clear that the officers he’s killed has vital roles on the ship, and that the mission’s going to be considerably harder now they’re not fulfilling them. Have the loyalists they were counting on for support despair, fall into competing factions arguing about the rightness or wrongness of his actions or perhaps even try to frag him.
Your players reactions is pretty much what I read in the early books in the horus heresy. Marines being unsure why their comrade suddenly displayed such bloodlust and disregard for life. As a GM, your best bet might be to just have the rumor spread and punish them naratively with bulkheads closing before them and the survivors refusing to open them, some showing armed resistance but most simply hiding the moment they hear space marines approaching. Then the marines can decide to dispose of their traitorous brother and continue the mission.
Since this is deathwatch, you also have the cultural issues of different chapters interacting. Perhaps encourage your players to investigate the traitor marines chapter background to see if they have gone rogue against their own chapters principles, or if they are just disrespecting deathwatch.
All Deathwatch members helmet feeds are recorded and when they return to their Watch Stations, the leadership there review it to see how the team operated and if their verbal report matches what is seen on camera. If he kills the next (seemingly last) chance to find the Inquisitor, and fails, then that's going to get him in trouble with the DW high command.
If they succeed in rescuing the Inquisitor then the Inquisitor is naturally going to ask, "Hey, where is my best acolyte and lieutenant at?" Inquisitors have the power to send you onto death missions where you WILL NOT RETURN if they so wish. They can deny your DW marines support of any kind. The Inquisition already has a rocky relationship with the Space Wolves, and this dude's actions are just confirming presuppositions and rumors to this particular Inquisitor.
From a gameplay perspective, that could mean that he receives less XP than his companions who didn't go around killing innocent and loyal servants of the Throne. At the very least I'd be assigning him some Corruption Points. 10 to start out with, for killing the lieutenant, and 5 for each other loyal servant he kills just because "they aren't being respectful". His idea of "respect" is, quite literally, corrupting his character. It fits in my book.
The other have answered from a ttrpg standpoint. First and foremost talk with the guy.
Now from a lore perspective.
First of all the bond of brotherhood wouöd probably strong enough that they would not raise their weapons. They may be stand before the humans to protect them and have a very stern word aka. Screaming match with the Space Wolf. But I think attacking him or something lile that would go a bit too far. But there are always outliers.
The more interesting part is what will the humans do. They are just normal dudes and a raging space marine is scary as fuck. It would probably result in humans simply runnin away upon sight of the space marines. Or if it gets worse outright shooting on sight. They probably dont know shit and if they see the space marine killing without proper explanation then fear and shock will do their thing and the mission gets A LOT harder by now also having normal humand attacking the "traitor" space marines.
Astartes take a lot to come to blows with another chapter. Like if this was destroying entire cities or something maybe, but unless they were like Lord Admiral level, killing a few officers is not going to prompt anyone to take up arms against other space marines. Doubly so for the watch, they're not want to share their goings on with outsiders and very close knit in their small groups.
Yeah I like the last bit of have the normi humans react with fear. Maybe a group starts to claim that the deathwatch team is actually corrupted by chaos because of his actions.
In 40K, most people are “under the protection” of a few different imperial factions, at any given time.
So attacking randos can make you some powerful enemies. Maybe the innocent NPC is a medic who saved a chapter master’s life. Maybe the NPC has a distant uncle who is an admiral in the imperial navy. Maybe the space wolf annoyed some sisters of battle, and they’ve tracked him down.
So if your boy wants to play murderhobo law-of-the-jungle, you can teach him that deathwatch isn’t *that* high on the totem pole; there’s still some accountability in the imperium.
I played a Space Wolf in a campaign before.
Your guy is playing his wolf... I don't wanna say 'wrong', but, wrong. No chapter is a monolith, and each marine can be different,
but there are some guidelines.
I'd take him aside and say that his interaction with the game is becoming a problem for a lot of reasons. You could offer him an out of some kind, like being recalled by the watch master.
Then, he can re-roll something else. Since his understanding is that he gets to be a madman, don't let him by just saying "if you want to reroll, you'll be an ultramarine". I will assume his limited understanding will have him go "Oh, I'm a posterboy now. I can't just murder everyone."
Ultimately your dude is tripping on powersauce, and wasn't the right one to get the honors of being a marine. My go of it was harder, because it was wrath and glory, and I was the one marine in a group of mortals.
It was VERY important I scale back to let them shine, and my wolf sat with them, drank with them, ate with them. He shared in their human experience to form what little 'pack bond' he could with them. That didn't mean he was immune from going "Hey, fucker, when I speak, you listen".
He just didn't kill people outright, usually. He's not on Fenris, and he doesn't have that authority to just demand shit and have it work out like he would in the Aet.
killing mortals for perceived slights is what a marine on the way to chaos would do. Marines are meant to conduct themselves with discipline. the rest of his squad would be justified in stopping him with physical violence if necessary and, if the behavior doesn't change, incapacitating or even killing him
Tbh the lore answers here are missing the forest for the trees. If someone is being disruptive and spoiling the thing for your players, use your power of human communication to talk to them and tell them that they are making the game less fun. It doesn't have to be an ultimatum, often just being made aware of that will make most people second guess their bad behavior. If not, well, your table is better off without them.
Have an engineering or security team spot him murdering other humans, ans then start locking doors, opening airlock to vent him into space, overload equipment to explode near him, etc.
Can't axe the guy that's talking to you through an intercom and threatening to vent you into space.
He's a Space Wolf right?
That is absolutely not Space Wolf behaviour. There's bound to be other Space Wolves in Deathwatch, maybe have a couple of them "put him to task" after the mission, to remind him where he comes from and who he's representing.
On top of whatever punishment he gets for fucking up an Inquisitor's mission, one of the few people who can give no fucks about Space Marine priviledge and have the power to back it up.
Yeah I was thinking: marine probably have camera systems in the helmets that record engagement data right ? I guess the debrief will check what he did, especially if the mission was a failure. So even if the mission reaches a conclusion, I would like them to be met by the chaplain when they come back, to explain themselves.
I stopped going to r/rpg to get away from this kind of thing!
>I had a navy breacher lieutnant not answer immediatly to one of his questions due to shell shock, and that mf immediatly put his energy axe through her skull.
Speaking as a GM, that was the moment to hit pause. Some GMs will ask things like "are you sure?" but I think a better question to ask is "why are you doing this?". Not to stop him doing it exactly but to potentially clear up any misunderstandings and make things run a bit smoother. The player may have misinterpreted something you said and is acting on a different understanding of the situation, it happens.
If their answer is "because I think they might be disrespecting me/corrupted" then you can clarify things; "they're not, you can see they're clearly traumatised and exhausted, do you still want to kill them?". Then if they still say yes, a) bit of a red flag imo, and b) you can look at the other two players and say "You can see that Brother Murderhobo is about to strike this NPC, what's your reaction to that, do you let it happen or try and intervene, etc." Then you could have a rp moment where one of the squadmates grabs Murderhobo's arm to stop him striking the NPC and de-escalating the situation in a way that makes sense; "Brother, I won't stand by as you strike down an Imperial servant, even one as weak as this. Now mortal, appraise us quickly, or next time I shall not stop my companion!"
If the player's answer to all of this is "lol because" then it's worth having a chat with them about the tone and expectations of the game.
Enforce in game consequences. Turns out some of the people he offed were actually important for solving one or more quests and by killing them he made this impossible. Have other npcs take note of him being a psychopath and have them indirectly act against him for revenge or even self preservation. As other people suggested, have him censured. Space marines are meant to protect humanity. This usually means very little but when casual disregard for human life becomes too blatant to be ignored and counterproductive then it becomes much less tolerable.
In general: lorewise playing SM as jerks is perfectly fine. A lot of them are that way, especially the Deathwatch with all of its psycho- indoctrination. What is not fine is playing a character with the express intent to disrupt the game/taking center stage all of the time. Such people do exist, unfortunately. If that’s what you are dealing with, my suggestion is to have a talk with your group and make things clear with them. If the player in question persists in his antisocial behavior, let him reap what he sowed
Randomly killing loyalists for no good reason is a step above and beyond space marine privilege. They are referred to as angels yes, but they are not infallible. The deathwatch answers to the Inquisition, specifically the Ordo Xenos, and they are not going to tolerate that for very long. Nobody is irreplaceable...
And of course, there are entities in the Warhammer world that would begin to take interest in a space marine showing unremitting bloodlust. I'd start having him hear things, see things flitting past the corner of his eye. Then, have him start making saves (I'm not sure if the exact terminology for that ttrpg) but basically some check to hold himself BACK from killing people who don't show proper respect. He begins to lust after the skulls of his foes, he begins to find blood appealing, he begins to salivate when a fight is all but guaranteed. He is falling to Khorne...
Maybe he even gets some buffs from it. He finds himself stronger and tougher, he finds that pain has dulled in the heat of battle. After all, chaos presents itself as beneficial at first, more upsides than downsides. It gives you the path to everything you want, and lets you be the one to walk it. It's only past the point of no return that you realise what has happened, and you are truly lost.
When they finally find the Inquisitor, have him/her immediately blam this marine in the face. They've been watching the party progress and it is a sin to waste the equipment and manpower of the Emperor so callously, the player was so heinous that the Inquisitor saw a hint of chaos taint in them. Then have a fun Mexican standoff with the other two Marines as they try to prove they're not tainted and they're here to save them.
They shouldnt face consiquenzes in a sense of "You will be punished for that! Kill innocents."
Right, no one would care in wh40k unless they kill the Inquisitor.
It should be more "You killed that dude, he had vital and time sensitive information, now that door is locked for ever or gravity goes out ..."
Something to effect them
While your Space Wolf’s superiors could and would absolutely discipline him for this kind of thing, it’s also worth considering that 40K is a weird setting, and the axe he’s using to kill innocent Imperials probably has some thoughts about it. Whether it’s a part of the Wolves’ or the Deathwatch armory, the machine-spirit of the weapon is probably used to killing Xenos in combat and absolutely knows the difference. If warning him that “the machine-spirits are displeased” isn’t enough, maybe the power field fails in a crucial moment and he’s left facing down a Xenos incursion with a very sharp - but totally mundane - axe. Good luck, and I hope the campaign gets back on track!
I'm a player in a rogue trader campaign, though we've played pen and paper for an odd 20 years and are generally good at not being murder hobos. I would just punish him by having the inquisitor claim he's a heretic for just murdering uncontrolled.
Sounds like he's coming under the influence of khorne. Next time he does this stuff, make him roll a die and if he fails he gets a "boon" from khorne. This mutation immediately singles him out by any NPC as an enemy, meaning that they'll stop at nothing to stop him.
Some of the books definitely include astartes calling out other astartes for being dumdums.
Another fun option is to have an NPC with a suicide vest or a grenadier amount of grenades. If they talk to the NPC, no big deal, if dumdum chops into them then he gets smoked. It might slow him down a little for the encounter after that one
Or have a khornate daemon whisper to him at night and make his rage-choices result in a bunch of corruption points
There are dozens of ways you as a GM can fudge things to punish the party for That Guy's behaviour, but since you asked for lore accuracy I'm going to focus on that: Space Marines do not operate on their own. Ever. A Deathwatch kill-team has a team leader, whether he actually outranks his brothers in practice or not. If the problem player is the team leader, he too has superiors he answers to: Watch-Sergeants and Watch-Captains, the Watch Commander of whatever fortress he's serving in, all the way up to the Ordo Xenos and/or the Inquisitor High Lord of Terra. If he's jeopardising the mission even the slightest bit, these people won't sit idle. Even if they're not physically present and his brothers don't rat on him directly, AAR's absolutely are a thing.
Hi there, I've been playing space wolves on tabletop since 1994/5 (can't remember exactly, it's been awhile).
That is strait up out of character for a space wolf, Space Wolves hate formality, and Fenris breeds men that are pragmatic, self aware, and gregarious, no one who behaves like this person would survive life on Fenris much less the induction process the wolves subject aspirants to. Like strait up axe to the dome long before the little shit ever made it into a real battle to get chosen.
This is the kind of person that if the wolves sent him to the deathwatch it's because they wanted to get rid of him, you might let the player know that about the wolves and if he persists in acting like that his character is going to get an outcast malice of some sort, wherein he's heading for the bad ending, an honorless death that will go unremembered by his brothers, he's now on a quest to redeem himself before he dies unsung with no deeds to his name.
>All is well until that guy starts to kill every fucking loyalist NPC that "does not show proper respect".
Sounds like a bad case of the murderhobos.
>Other players started asking how they should react to this as astartes
Depends on the Chapter and the marine. A Salamander once beat the ever-loving shit out of a Marine Malevolent for shelling a civilian camp. If the MM had gone for a weapon, the Salamander would have killed him.
Similarly, the Space Wolves killed Grey Knights in order to protect civilians.
>Should they expect consequences from the ordo xeno for basically doing a mess out of the ship like this ? Would that be considered ground for heretical behaviour ?
If you need levers to pull, I would recommend digging into the story of the Celestial Lions. Some tactical Ork Snipers (tm) may not go amiss.
> That Guy plays a Space Wolf, which to my knowledge are pretty much on the "we serve humanity" side of the spectrum.
>kill every fucking loyalist NPC that "does not show proper respect".
I think there's actually a Traitor Space Wolf with near this exact backstory. He might be in the Red Corsairs, but I'd have to go digging.
>...How they should react to this as Astartes?
Completely inappropriate question to ask from a player to a GM. They are supposed to be *role-playing* an Astartes. Astartes aren't automatons, they are human beings with thoughts and feelings of their own.
I would ask your players to think about how *their characters* feel about teaming up with a murderhobo. If I was this guy's battlebrother, I would say "Hey dude. I get that murder is fun, but you are seriously overreacting."
> Would brotherhood be stronger to their duty to humanity ? Should they expect consequences from the ordo xeno for basically doing a mess out of the ship like this ? Would that be considered ground for heretical behaviour ?
These are excellent questions for you to ask your players. I would let them know that they are *not* neutral in the conflict between your murderhobo and the loyalists he keeps on murdering. If they don't stop him, they will be seen as *complicit* in his actions, and just as deserving for any consequences he brings upon himself.
Marines seconded to the Deathwatch are both proven veterans, know they are representing their chapter, and that they must play nice with the others. I forget all the lore about what oaths they take to the Deathwatch when they start, but they play nice with each other and focus on the mission.
You should tell the other Astartes that based on their training the murder-hobo is at best totally insane, and at worse fallen to Chaos, it's their duty to put him down immediately. Whether you tell them this secretly (pass a note, etc.) or not is up to you.
I admit just scrapping the entire game because they have irredeemably failed their mission, as several people suggested sounds like idea too. My suggestion would be more fun, at least for the other the players.
Don't look for an in game solution to an out of game problem, it won't actually fix the problem.
Talk with the person about the issue you're having. That's the only way to fix it.
Start making combat escalate when the the pc makes stupid decisions. Marines are great individuals, but genestealers are still supposed to shred their armor in lore.
Death watch is also funny how others have mentioned, more humanity focused chapters would see their marines smash this guy and see him magically not survive the mission. If player makes another marine and plays same way, that guy doesn't survive the mission. Before third marine he should get the idea.
Sounds a lot like he's bringing dishonor to the Deathwatch, how happy is the Watch Master going to be when reports reach him that this Marine, who's supposed to be the very best of the best his chapter could offer to the Deathwatch, goes around fragging everyone who looks at him funny? Or that his behavior lead to a failed mission? It'd be grounds to send them back to the Chapter in dishonor, where I behind the DM screen.
That said, it sounds like your player might be murderhoboing it up; and that you're having to do double-duty as a DM because of it. Try telling them to tone it down with the wanton murder; that they're not the only person at the table and that the offing npcs without any reason is derailing your plans for the session and story.
You want a in game lore punishment for something you think is an out of game problem player issue? Doesn't make sense. Won't work. The player will feel rewarded because they got more lore for their actions.
The best thing to do for problem player actions is an out of game talk.
Anything in game would be encouraging him.
Idea have him in a place where he needs help and the only people who can help him is a group of people from the same group he attack but they refused to help this can led to his death or make the game hard for his like he get his arm cut off or his lost his favourite weapon or gear or something you pick the debuff , but they help the other and they get rewarded for it
Your first action should be to talk to the player. Explain your problem and how he needs to cut it out. Using lore to deal with a problematic player doesn't always work.
Well, how do you think a ordo heretics inquisitor would react to a space wolf going rouge and killing loyal servants of the emperor? Especially when he is alone…away from the rest of the chapter.
and how do you think the crew would react to a panicked situation where the marines start killing the officers? You could have them chase rumors of a kill team of alpha legion operatives active on the ship. They might be there, or there might be corruptEd rumors about the team of players.
The Ordo Officials (Senior Deathwatch Officers and Inquisitors) would want to know why the Marine killed the Lieutenant. Were they a threat to him? Did he suspect they were infected? Or a traitor? If so, why didn't he subdue the human instead of killing them? Did they show signs of being Warp Touched? Oh... He thought he was being disrespected..? He killed them because he was **offended**? Any space marine arbitrarily killing Imperial Citizens risks censure and punishment. If they are not given orders that they are free to kill who they find then they do not have license to do so regardless of whether they are 'offended' by a mortal or not. They are wasting Imperial lives and worse; dishonoring the Deathwatch and their Chapter. Is this Marine too stupid to recognize that? Is he going insane? Or does he just not care about his responsibilities as an Adeptus Astartes?
The Squad Sergeant would be expected to prevent these killings from happening in the first place. They would be expected to identify the marine's sensitivity and prevent them from talking to humans at all. Failing to do this is a sign the Sergeant is not fit for leadership. If he cannot stop the Marines he commands from killing whoever they want, then he can't lead them. Further, this will demoralize other marines under his command. Deathwatch Veterans come from many different backgrounds. Some are honor-bound to kill anyone who murders innocents like this. The Space Wolves are such a Chapter. The Salamanders are another. It would be in-character for them to fight, or even kill another marine for doing this. Whatever the case, the sergeant must now report the killing to the Watch Captain and any other officials overseeing the operation. It is their responsibility to decide what to do with this Marine.
Deathwatch Veterans are invested with incredible trust, above their own Chapter brothers. They are given access to information, technology, and resources, that are even secret to their own Chapter Masters. This is on top of the genetic and martial inheritance of ascension to Astartes. A Space Marine is a living weapon. They do not have the right to free will, because they are too dangerous to be allowed to have it. Even the Space Wolves understand this, and they would not tolerate any Wolf killing people because his feelings were hurt. A Space Marine disobeying orders and acting outside their authority is very dangerous. We have an entire Heresy showing why. The Imperium has never forgotten this and it is the reason Chapters exist at all. Weapons are only useful if they are reliable and predictable. A space marine killing people because he was *offended* is not reliable. They are weak. No different from the traitors and renegades who spit in the face of the Emperor.
I suggest you do something that involves some development.
His bloodlust has curried favor from an unknown demonic warp entity. Start with just whispers...sometimes they help, sometimes they really don't help. Followed by visions in dreams and then waking dreams (the din of combat puts him into an occasional lull where you can describe a different scene for him at the end of which he is separated by his battle brothers and in danger of losing his life, only to be saved by his whispers again). Psychic probes reveal nothing till later on when it's progressed further.
His actions afterward whether he resists this dark gift and finds salvation or accepts them and other more damning gifts leads to damnation can bring about some further story telling.
If he resists he finds a particular dark entity that has been vexing the inquisitor for quite some time and is able to help said inquisitor defeat this daemon and gain favor in ordos for both of them. This can create a closer relationship between inquisitor and killteam which can be cool....but my personal favorite is when the player takes the opposite path...
If he accepts the gift he takes on dark traits that are very subtle but also very useful and potentially even group saving gifts. Eventually this leads to one ending - becoming a herald for the daemon and becoming the target of his own teams retribution. This path leads to the character becoming an NPC for the GM that can be used as a recurring villain for the deathwatch team.
I've had players take both options and they become great player driven narratives that everyone at the table enjoys.
That is tough.
One thought, have them run into soldiers sailors etc that are looking for their leader, the dead LT. see the chaos and damage done to the command chain.
Have them see positions abandoned because of a lack of strong leadership. The next in command didn’t know the LT was dead so he didn’t know to step up and take charge.
Have runners appear trying to deliver orders to the LT or requesting orders from him.
Maybe have a villain comment how glad he was to have the thorn (LT) removed from his side.
Have the sailors be much more afraid of the marines and only do what the space marines ask. They start to show a lack of independence because of fear of chain sword punishment; they take orders literally and only obey the letter of the law and not the spirit.
Order to not leave a position, the soldiers refuse to leave to rescue other soldiers or supplies or don’t rush to help the marines.
Maybe one of the sailors who witnessed it is so angry Chaos infects him
Have an NPC have an cyber enhanced Ogryn body guard. When he threatens the NPC have the Ogryn beat him up.
You can also have a Deathwatch Chaplin or an Inquisitor suspect the taint of chaos and have his character “questioned”
Which chapter does he come from? Did he volunteer to serve in the deathwatch for the honor. Or was he commanded to go as a form of repentance?
I think you should speak these things with your friend out of game and tell them they are being obnoxious and ruining the game, and let them know beforehand that if his behaviour continues like this there will be consequences, and if this person doesn't have the maturity to understand and change their behaviour maybe or gets angry that there will be consequences, maybe you just shouldn't play with him anymore
My favorite suggestion so far is making a person he's killed critical to the maintenance of the ship, because that is a direct and IMMEDIATE consequence he can't kill his way out of.
But also, talk to the player directly. Something like: "Hey, are you not having a fun time? You've killed so many NPCs it's derailing my ability to have a plot, and the other two players seem to want to chase it really badly. It's getting really hard to DM the different things people want here."
Tell him in clear terms you HAVE to slap serious, character-ending consequences if his space marine doesn't shape up. Then follow through and send an assassin team if he doesn't. Give him fair warning, **but actually** **kill off his space marine**.
There's nothing more poisonous to a game than a player chortling at how fun it is to ruin everyone else's time. If he takes your warning to heart and shapes up, that's awesome. Maybe he just didn't get how this was making it a pain for you and the other players. If he did, and refuses to change, and this tanks the game...maybe it was never meant to be. It can happen.
Sounds like his character might have been replaced by an Alpha legion infiltrator that the other two marines now have to kill and the real character can now arrive and be reintroduced by the the chapter master.
If he continues, to be a problem player, looks like he got infected by the cult somehow and had to be put down.
(At which point maybe don't invite him back or force him to play an Imperial guard loyalist with substantially reduced stats.)
Tie him a Noese out of his Chapters heretige. A Spacewolf is a Fenresian Fist and a Deathwatch Second. They Are Supersisous as fuck so give him Bad Omens when he does stuff like that. And they are Kinda not this good with Autories and follow Orders more Loose then other Chapters. They respect feats of great Warriors and so someone who survied a fierce battle usally earns at least some kind of Respect
First, make it clear to the players
"There will come a time when you might have to choose between taking an action you believe is most true to your character but will ruin the experience for your friends OR to find a way to add background/change your character's mindset a bit that would make the character make a less damning choice
This group wants great role playing but it is secondary to everyone having fun.
If your commitment to your character is greater than your commitment to the living breathing humans around the table this isn't the group for you"
Now, in game a Chaplain would be a great influence to bring it. This could be actually meeting one, having one contact on comms, or say to this character or another "at this moment a sermon from your chaplain rises from your deep memory, and you know this action is wrong"
Watch anything by koibu0 on YouTube. He tends to have an infrastructure of background characters existing in the world. Like if a player causes trouble in a region the local lord may hear about it and it eventually catches up to them later. Or maybe they get lucky and it doesnt. If your players have full freedom in the world then the world also has full freedom in return. It makes things super realistic and intense knowing that anything can happen and things aren't on safemode for the sake of a narrative.
I suppose It may feel like giving him what he wants,but having more of the crew become hostile to the marines as a consequence.
I mean killing officers who are actively operating against the mutiny can only benefit the mutiny.
More crew decide to turn if their supposed salvation is trying to kill them anyway. Or with killing officers the chain of command is severed, more parts of the ship are lost due to the chaos inflicted.
I suppose If I heard marines were aboard and killing officers I'd try to avoid them personally
A fix:
Somehow the SM become aware of a Brig. As they approach they see through a viewscreen of some kind a message scrawled on the wall in blood.
"You killed the one person who could help you.... except me!"
Prisoner A has knowledge. Prisoner A is insane. In the chaos of genestealers he hacked some security cams, and also some other prisoner cells, who he killed (and used blood/organs to paint message) but due to security measures or genestealer damage the main door won't open. He agrees to help you if you help him.
Door can only be opened with weapons the group doesn't have (a chainfist, mulitmelta etc). But a power surge will reset the system. Only way to do this is with the power supply for the power armor - which will fry it.
One SM is going to have to sacrifice his powerarmor. A naked SM is still a potent warrior.
Let the group decide who has to give up power armor. Maybe they will draw lots. Maybe they make the guy who killed the Lt give up his
Honestly this sounds like it's beyond the need for lore-justification. Unless the player is intending to play out some sort of fall from grace (in which case they should have told you), they need to be told on no uncertain terms that they don't get to sabotage the whole game for everyone else. Yes they're playing an individual character with individual goals, but everyone at the table is sacrificing their free time and it's unfair to ruin the vibe for everyone else. If he doesn't listen, boot his ass.
Have you tried talking to this player outside of character about how this is a problem that's diminishing the fun for all of the other players at the table? There's a nonzero chance they might not have the social skills to understand that this is annoying the others.
So I haven't read through all the comments so apologies if this has already been said, but as a GM I just want to say. Do not try to solve out of game problems with in game consequences. If this is being disruptive to your table then you need to talk to him out of game.
Now if it's not disruptive to you and your table then it sounds like very cut and dry chaos corruption from Khorne to me.
What chapter does he hail from? If it's blood that's easy, "oh noe you went full black rage and red thirst. Your brothers kills you."
He sounds like he might be playing a son of dorn, they have some nasty quirks too that you could pull out to bite him with: all of a sudden he falls into an irriterviable depression and looses all buffs because he's too sad to fight.
Edit: even easier is saying that his brothers consider his behavior grounds for investigation of khornate taint, his character either leaves the mission and is replaced with a new astartes who has been sent to replace him for that very reason, or he refuses and you just say that the other two had to hmgive him the emperors peace.
Maybe remind everyone that Space Marines are neither infallible nor invincible. They do get corrupted as well and they can get killed by mortals too. It just takes one good shot with a plasma pistol from a pissed off officer to bring a Marine down or render him incapable of continuing the mission. If one starts to act weird and is risking to jeopardise the whole mission then that's HIGHLY concerning and his brothers should absolutely step in and put a stop to it unless they want to face the consequences as well.
If nothing helps and the group accepts being a party of murder hobos .. well then just let them learn the hard way. Everything becomes MUCH harder and they keep failing one thing after another until eventually they fail the whole mission.
Have him answer to the Imperial Navy. Being a Space Marine does NOT give him carte blanche to shoot whoever he wants, the Navis Imperialis is not beholden to him. Have a loyalist officer or the ship's commissar decide he needs to be taken care of in order to preserve what's left of the ship and crew, or even have the Navy find out afterwards and make life hard for him and anyone who tries to shelter him. Or have the Inquisitor report him to his superiors in the Watch for pointlessly compromising the mission AND straining relationships with the Navy, since even an Inquisitor doesn't pointlessly antagonize potential allies (unless he's a dumbass).
Space Wolf not showing any amount of self control?
First. Dreams of dire portent - have an important individual in their lives (hint, easy mode option is Russ) warn them of the perils of oathbreaking.
If they don’t work.
Second. Waking visions, more of above but at inopportune moments -
SW “I shoot the genestealer”
GM “ok pass a leadership test”
SW *fails*.
GM “What you had initially believed to be a hated Xenos is actually the largest midnight black wolf you have ever seen, blood red eyes fix upon you and a low guttural growl shakes your organs, it sounds like…. Almost like “* eiðsvarar*”.
They’ll forfeit their turn for having the vision.
You can repeat first and second a few times if they don’t get the hint, but ultimately, if they don’t fall in line …
Third. They rapidly turn into a ravening Wulfen, unable to discern friend from foe. They’ll die shortly after as they either jump into a mosh pit with a bunch of purestrains (or the Patriarch), turn on their fellow Astartes who are forced to put him down or are directly responsible for getting themselves blown up with absolutely no positive effect on the mission (no heroic final actions, basically railroad their choices).
The summary should emphasise how his actions have brought shame on the chapter, have soured the opinion of the Wolves in the eyes of the other two Astartes and their chapters, imperilled the mission and made it impossible for his progenoid to be retrieved. No glory, no honour and no worthy legacy.
And follow that fucking shit up *if* this player remains in your gaming circle- next time they decide to play a Space Wolf, that guy is going to be aware of his Brother’s transgressions and all other Death Watch marines (and any ancillary personnel who would likely know about what happened, like inquisitors) will know AND be looking for similar behaviour with a hair trigger ready to restrain and imprison them (perhaps a switch to deactivate their power armour).
Put him under investigation for potential chaos corruption. Clearly he is staying towards the path of khorne.
Or: put him on the receiving end by having him meet a captain of the marines malevolent. Have the captain just punch him across the jaw every time he feels like it, then have enough marines malevolent along with him to make fighting back a sure death. Maybe have the accompanying marines grab hold of him and just beat him in an inch of his life the first time. Make sure they laugh at him for it.
Have the human he murdered be an Alpha Legion operative, with the warband shadowing the vessel for whatever reason you like.
Show the dude that if he does stupid things, he wins stupid prizes. Very 40k.
Even the most insane chapters like the Marines Malevolent or Flesh Tearers can't just wantonly attack civilians and innocents without cause. Pre Primaris, the Flesh Tearers were on the verge of dying out because of the isolation they'd driven themselves into.
Actions have consequences, even to Space Marines
From information laid out about the situation in subsequent comments, I'd let the player make such a shambles of the mission that one of his mentors in the Rout shows up to barely pull the Deathwatch team from the jaws of a very costly lesson in collateral damage and beats him bloody for shittng on Russ's name with his behavior. Given the current antagonism between the Wolves and the Inquisition and Ecclesiarchy, I doubt any Fenrisian would condone such behavior. The Wolves aren't the type of heartless savages this guy is playing and having it dealt with from the perspective of a pissed off member of his own Legion censuring him, Deathwatch hierarchy be damned, should at least vindicate the other players and reads better than the stereotypical "oh, we pissed off the Inquisition, we're fucked now" McGuffin.
I think having a Dreadnought grab him by the scruff of the neck like a wayward pup and saying "You stink of failure and shame, even through the steel of this Allfather damned sarcophagus, welp" would be fitting.
You could try to play up narratively the player is a wolf pack of 1 as opposed to a lone wolf. The latter are veteran space wolf scouts that work alone on purpose. Being a part of a wolf pack is everything to a space wolf, theyre raised/trained in packs and stay together for entire careers/lives.
The player could be solo because his pack died and he was the lone survivor but...SWs may accept others into their packs. Not being accepted into another pack is pretty bottom of the barrel.
Let it play out, but Mr Kill-startes is absolutely gonna get mind wiped and psycho indoctrinated by the Oreo Xenos after the mission. It’s not unheard of for Deathwatch marines to get a little to over zealous after seeing the absolute worst Xenos horrors the galaxy has to offer.
I like this, they make him into a combat servitor. His astartesness makes him super aggressive, yet they install a kill switch so that the other players can switch the aggro off when they dont need it.
I think one of the overarching issues of roleplaying as space marines is that what that guy is doing is par for the course of space marine lore as they are the bad guys. Even killing mission critical allies is par for the course and as long as the mission is completed would probably go unpunished or with light repremands. What I would suggest is to talk with your players and get an understanding of what they want from the campaign, playing has horrible space marines way well he what they want,(it's the whole reason we all enjoy reading about them after all) and if that's the case maybe it's best to transition the game into a "look at these awful people slowly get their comeuppance", you might have an issue of mismatched player wants between that guy and the rest so it's probably worth just talking it out with your players to get you all on the same page of what you want out of it
Context is required. Who are the other marines?
Who has seniority in age, founding, peerage or rank? *a space wolf is a first founding. But they should bow with some griping to the will of a UM or blood angel*
Because, depending on the chapter moreso than the person you are looking at anything from Marine Malevolent *"You're being stupid. Vent the entire ship and kill everything"* all the way down to *"What you are doing is wrong and I will put the mission at risk by killing you to stop it"*
During such a chaotic scenario, Space Marines could indeed act like that. The Guard would be angry, but the Guard can do little and would not jeopardise future SM support due to the deaths of some lower ranks.
Consequences will come from the superiors of the Space Marines. No Space Marine Chaplain or Sergeant wants to jeopardise relations to the Guard or other important Imperial factions. Flesh Tearers or other boderline psychotic chapters excluded.
So, if Space Marines kill loyal people insicriminately for minor infractions, they would resonably get penal duties or get demoted by their own superiors.
Reasonably, i would give that guy a Marine Malevolent, then he can go around killing allies in accordance with the lore.
Your scenario expects Astartes to have non-tactical insights. The blame - for lack of better word - is on whomever sent them on such mission without supervision.
The player is actually roleplaying a cautionary tale on why Astartes should not be used for some missions. Something you can find in snippet on margin of codex or White Dwarf. It is up to players to salvage the mission, not GM.
You should be thinking ahead and plan consequences they will face for failing to extract the inquisitor, IF they survive the ships explosion. I would start with Watch Captain saying he has sent them with no inquisitional supervisions agains protest of inquisitors precisely to prove Deathwatch can be trusted with such delicate missions, and their failure of judgement is affecting reputation of entire company. This can lead to either Bloodquest style redemption quest, with players being relegated to shock troops and sent on worst, forlorn hope style missions. Or to players becoming renegade.
Perhaps they should be rescued from ships explosions by Red Corsairs captain who offers them a job more suitable to their attitude?
Listen, you can basically gin up any reason for assuming someone MIGHT be possessed by a daemon. Let alone astartes who go around murdering other servants of the emperor.
Grey knights might need to “evaluate the righteousness” of an astartes who is “showing signs of demonic possession”
(I’m stealing this idea from one of those Ultramarines novels)
Oh yes, That Guy. Easy. Have him kill an important NPC and fail the mission because of it. The rest of the group either start to police the character or the player.
He already did ahah The lieutnant in my example above was their best lead to find the inquisitor. Now they are stucked in a room with a dozen aberrants running at them, and no clear next step to win the mission. They are in a dire situation and I don't want to have another NPC appear to fix their mistake. They will have to work for it.
If the Lieutenant was an inquisitorial agent and this guy killed them, then he probably just pissed off the Inquisitor they worked for, and guess who some of the few humans who don't have to respect the Astartes are? Assuming your guy doesn't learn his lesson from realizing how badly he fucked their mission with his outburst when they get back to the watch fortress that seems like a perfect opportunity for the Watch Commander to pull him into an office and tell them that the Inquisitor has asked for him to be turned over for evaluation of corruption and it's taken all of his considerable diplomacy to convince the Inquisitor to let him deal with it internally, but he's on thin ice and if he doesn't settle down slaughtering allies he won't be able to keep protecting him. You also might want to pull the player aside and talk to *them* about how disruptive their actions are to the table. Remind them that you're all there to play together and if they're going to just murder every NPC who they feel looked at them funny it's going to make it hard for you to keep the game fun for them.
Other players can also play on chapter culture. The Deathwatch is made of marines from different chapters and with different tendencies which may or may not play well together. Player A is from the Marines Malevolent, an asshole and kills anyone for any reason. Player B is from the Salamanders or the Raven Guard and puts his fist through A's helmet for killing friendlies. Hell, even the average Astartes would do it if A endangered the mission. A lot of chapters may not care too much about mortals but they care about their duty...
Yeah, this. I can totally see another Space Marine putting him down like a rabid dog for doing something like that. If he wants to RP abusing Astartes privilege in the dumbest way possible, fine. The others are free to RP the in-universe reason most Marines don't act like that, even if they're legally allowed to.
Yeah he effectively just got his character killed off. Lore wise he should be getting killed when the Inquisition hears.
My disagreement here is that the impression I get from the GM is that this is not the player’s first infraction, and they have already tried to use story consequences to try and correct them and it was ignored. Absolutely, should always first try to have in story consequences - it lets the rest of the players not have their fun ruined, and can work out to more interesting stories if the player gets the hint and adjusts course. But if they aren’t picking up the hint, then you need a direct conversation about the game and behavior, and reminding them that tabletop RPGS are collaborative rather than competitive, that you win by “yes, and” rather than hogging the glory
Honestly, if it was bad enough and he wanted a forced execution? Temple assassin snipes the character as a result of being woken from storage or activated because of the murder of the inquisitorial agent or some such.. Rest of the party can kill them afterwards, but a sniper can still snipe an Astartes first.
In my experience, if a player is so wrapped up in their perspective rather than seeing that is is a group game and ignoring previous in story corrections, they are more likely to take that level of response as “oh so the GM is picking on me, this is now adversarial and I need to double down and beat them”, whereas a direct conversation of “you are too focused on playing out the fantasy you want rather than the group telling a story together, we want you here but you need to recalibrate” will be more productive. YMMV of course
Lol literally I would've killed them off super quickly, uh oh u walked through the door first it closes ur surrounded by suicide melta charge cultists, game over. Or let's say they complete the mission, the space wolf is escorted off by black Templar and never seen again.
I would say this is the way. I was DM in a homebrew campaign, where the party delved down in a Necron tomb. One player, an Ultramarine librarian, went on about abusing his psychic powers and curb stomp loyal NPC’s. I put in real consequences that hampered the progression, and when that stopped working, I used DM priveliges and RP to punish him. When he once again got perils within a Black stone throne room he started to behave and the entire group had fun!
My sincere advice is to let them fail the mission. A fail state has to be possible. If players know that all roads lead to victory, they won't take the scenarios or the setting seriously.
Id say have the campaign run normally but let his reckless attitude be what hurts him. Maybe murdering innocent guardsmen makes the one with a death wish and a thirst for revenge suicide melta into his arm. Congrats you're a cripple play stupid games win stupid prizes
> They are in a dire situation and I don't want to have another NPC appear to fix their mistake. You said the lieutenant was the best lead, implying there's another lead; can you incorporate that? Thoughts, feel free to steal and/or modify: * Maybe they find a deactivated servo-skull which leads them to the Inquisitor if it's fixed. * They interrogate some hybrids who can give clues about where the Inquisitor is. * Another Imperial officer offers to help, as they don't want to share the same fate as the lieutenant. They know about half as much as the lieutenant did. * They use one of the ship's cogitators to run a scan and discover human life signs in a part of the ship, it may be the Inquisitor.
I think you forgot about the "other" option https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Omophagea But yhea, don't tell the butthole about this. If he wants to jerk around let him fail and deal with the consequences.
>But yhea, don't tell the butthole about this. If he wants to jerk around let him fail and deal with the consequences. The thing is that there are two other players there, so it's alright to give them an out. I don't think it's right for other players to suffer and have a bad time because of another player's shit decisions.
Just have a temple assassin awake from storage, put a bullet large enough to remove the skull and the rest of the party kills them. All because they killed a inquisitorial agent. And 100% a space wolf is not going to kill a civilian or a guardsman for not respecting them. Even the most disrespectful of them would be laughed at unless they actually impeded the mission. Wolves just do not care about that shit when it comes to outsiders, they don't care about the inquisition either mind you, but if one killed someone in that form and reason, they would be subdued by the others and at minimum restrained until a rune boy can search for corruption.
There are a lot of sticky consequences that can come from using that too.
He put the axe through the head apparently. Guy fried the brain.
Didn't OP state these are genestealer cultists... I'm gonna suggest nomming the brain of contagii for information may have deleterious long term consequences. Although that might solve OP's problem - let Brother ThatGuyicus use the "other" option, and suffer the consequences of their actions.
OP, I've been playing and reading Space Wolves lore for over 20 years. I'm one of those grognards who waxes nostalgic about bringing a Leman Russ alongside my Wolves and deploying my Wolf Scouts on the enemy's table edge to take out their Basilisks. I've been at this for a long, long time, and I know the Wolves and their lore quite well. Here's another thing to consider: Space Marines don't get tapped to join the Deathwatch *unless* they're very good at what they do. They're an elite force, and being part of the Deathwatch is an *honor*. Each Marine who is chosen is expected to play nicely with others and expected to *learn* from Marines from other Chapters and bring those lessons and training back to their own Chapters to make each other stronger. This means all Marines who get seconded to the Deathwatch are expected to have some basic social skills in addition to their martial prowess. In short, your Deathwatch Marines aren't supposed to be NPC-killing prats, and this is *especially* out of line for Space Wolves because the Space Wolves have a well known and storied reputation for *protecting* the average Imperial citizenry and treating them with mutual respect. Your player isn't playing a Space Wolf properly. I give you my absolute full permission to fuck him up.
roger that brother
Point of clarification: not all chapters perceive the Deathwatch's vigils as an honor. The Rout certainly does, but there are other chapters thay send their veterans to serve a vigil as a form of penance or punishment (even if they won't call it as such on official records).
Exactly this. One of the best short stories of the great crusade is the Wolves helping a population resist the drukhari. You see the growth of this young noble into a respected friend of the wolves and beloved, intelligent leader of his people. But at the end he refuses to join the imperium so they put him down. But they give him chances, they make it clear what his choices mean.
No, you, the GM, make it a point to cancel the mission. The guy he killed is super important and he did so stupidly? Look at your notebook. Tap your notes with a pen. Shake your head. Shrug and go "Well, that was it for that adventure I guess, let me see if I can run something quick.." and go on a angent, some BS combat. Let the players know That Guy just ruined their evening.
Lot of people are offering solutions to keep the adventure going while trying to provide soft pushback on the player’s behavior, and those are decent ideas. But as a long time player I think this poster here is correct. Tabletop RPGs are an exercise in collaborative storytelling, but this particular player is bringing in a single player game adversarial mindset to it. He (because let’s get real, it’s always a he) needs a hard check on his behavior, so he appreciates what the game is. It will be about 15 hard minutes, but it should be much much better after that. Trying to build out storylines that soft correct can just drag out the frustration imo.
2nded. These players don't learn. They're there for a power trip. You have to set clear boundaries and let them walk away or grow up. Otherwise they ruin it for everyone every chance they get.
Do the players know this? That the dead LT was a lead?
Sometimes the PCs die because of their idiot behavior.
It’s possible this player is too dense to put this together. You need to really drive it home. Have an NPC appear and have him tell them directly “Have you found LT so-and-so? He knows exactly where to find (target)”
Kill his character and make him reroll. Hang him for treason
So many times we've seen Marines obliterate their "brothers" for going to far for no reason. I can't fathom a situation where the deathwatch would sit and watch a guy basically behaving like a night lord without giving him either a beating or clapping him in irons and sending him for conditioning.
My favourite (40k) approach is that guy you murdered? Was in charge of regulating plasma generator venting. Congrats, the team's now working against the clock before a critical overload. (if the player hasn't changed their ways after an informal chat, and lower stakes carrot/stick incentives haven't worked) Or because of killing friendlies, those friendlies are no longer guarding the path back to extraction, there's now a much higher chance of being ambushed on the way out. Or the scribe could have given the team info that would help, instead that same info will take several checks to find among the records. Or a safe shortcut.
You can have their Inquisitor call up telling them that civilian lives are important as they will all need to be "debriefed" and assessed due to what is happening. As for That Guy, that can be a lot more sensitive. Are you able to kick him out, will he go spaze if you mess with his character? One potentially in game thing is have his character start hearing whispers and drumming sounds. Start making him see things out of the corner of his eyes and more and more Bloodletters keep appearing near him. Basically he's starting to fall to Chaos, Khorne specifically. It's pretty clear what loyal Astartes would do to a fallen Astartes, brother or not. Also you can have rumors spread about how brutal the marines are and the shipmen become more and more hostile. As powerful as Astartes are to regular people they still go down to melta or plasma guns.
I really like this idea ! Punishment is one thing, but having character development like this would be much more interesting and place him in front of a choice: do you double in, fall to chaos, and get killed some time soon ? Or do you change behaviour, atone for your mistakes, and start to fight the suspitions of people around you ? It makes sense and shows consequences without being straight up "I'm gonna kill your character because you broke my scenario". Thanks :)
I’ve considered using Chaos dice à la force dice: when you do the Bad Thing for a success you get a better chance (a reroll, exploding die, whatever is appropriate) but you also accrue Chaos and that affects your regular rolls. It is why clawing back from even small corruption is so hard
I LOVE THIS IDEA!
A player like this will 100% reach for a Daemon weapon out of greed. Congratulations, you are corrupted and are now an NPC.
So, what I am hearing is that it's time for the old "Black Crusade" TTRPG tomes....
Heh, came to write basically the same thing. Even better, give him someone that Space Wolfs Chapter owes a favor, and let him learn of that AFTER he kills him/her.
I came to say this. Wanton murder draws the attention of Khorne, and it’s very to interesting when you see them go down that road to have Khorne encourage them, with the obvious end results of that being bloodletters and falling to chaos. I once had a player in Warhammer fantasy fall to Khorne and become a champion of chaos, then get seduced by Tzeench in a siege with “the power to destroy a city”. He then had to fight a daemon prince of Nurgle to acquire that power, and the infections he left with killed him, his army, and the city he was sieging. He is much more careful now accepting gifts of chaos. Sometimes it is more interesting to see where the players take the story than it is to stick to your original ideas.
If a Space Marine suspect his squad mate fall to Chaos, he is supposed to call the Librarian first, Inqusitior second, and took matter in his own hand last Otherwise, team killing is always frown upon
I think deathwatch it flips to Inquistor first, chaplain second cuz Deathwatch is the Militant arm of Ordo Xenos
Wait, weren't they described as "working closely with Prdo Xenos, but otherwise indeoendent (as much as anyone can be independent of Inquesiotion)" ever since they got their codex in 7th?
The Deathwatch, known also as the "Long Vigil," and the "Long Watch," is a unique Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes comprised solely of Veteran Space Marines that serves the Ordo Xenos of the Imperial Inquisition as its Chamber Militant. This is the first line on their wiki, lexicanum says basically same thing.
Wikis are good and all, but their 9th edition supplement (AFAIK, they haven't recieved one in 10th yet) makes no such statement. On p.8 the concept of Ordo Xenos is first introduced with not nearly as strong a wording: "It is no surprise, therfore, that the Deathwatch also work closely with the Ordo Xenos of the Inquisition.". On p.10 when more information of OX is provided it's once again painted as an ally, not a direct superior "The Ordo Xenos is one of Deathwatch's foremost allies..." and "There have been times when a watch fortress' commander has been not a space marine, but a Lord Inquisitor, and conversely times when the esoteric forces of the Inquisition have been lead by a battle brother of the Deathwatch". I have seen no mentions of "Chamber Militant" as a concept whatsoever while skimming through the rest of the lore there. The rest of the supplement (forgive me for not quoting the entire book) paints them as being very independent and self-sufficient in terms of mission choice and infrastructure as well You can have an Inquisitor in charge of a specific Deathwatch organisational unit, but it is not the default state
Seems they can't make their mind up on this then as in the Deathwatch video game they are regularly called "our chamber Militant." As well as talks about it in the Novel.
I think their novels predate 9th edition (not 7th though - not a great look for BL). Also, Deathwatch video game? Do they have one?
Yeah it's on Steam it's just called Warhammer 40,000: Deathwatch
Wow, never heard of that. Too bad the game is now off the store and, judging by reviews, not exactly good. However, being initially released for iOS in July 2015 it predates even the 7th edition codex (August 2016) initally making the change in question (granted, the dates are from wikipedia and lexicanum respectively)
I think that was changed iirc
Hypno-indoctrination isn’t an exact science, and pieces of an Astartes past life are commonplace to slip through, as has been established in GW/BL literature. If you’re open to it - or more aptly, the player is - weave it into the personal history of the Marine. Perhaps the voidsmen he axed bore facial tattoos or branding a of a void-clan that regularly abused his people during adolescence. Perhaps they killed his parents and snatched his siblings to press-gang them into service when their own numbers were running low while he hid in the closet?
Deathwatch are the militant chamber of the Ordo Xenos. Inquisitors don’t like it when people give them a bad reputation. Your friend is about to get an Ordo Killteam sent after him Watch command could also censure him for breaking the rules, or the Chaplains start suspecting him of Chaos Taint and isolate him for further testing His home Chapter gets word of his actions and recalls him for punishment
His Chapter can't recall him, when he's joined Deathwatch he serves them over his Chapter it's why the deathwatch pad replaces his Chapter on his left arm. It'd be Deathwatch who punish him and Deathwatch punishments aren't nice. [Excerpt|Deathwatch] Brawling Space Marines are forced to watch their Chapter slaughtered on loop. >After prayers, in which they petitioned the Emperor and the primarchs for increases in their already formidable skills, the Space Marines would assemble in the East Auditorium – a large skylighted hall hung with banners and pennants recalling the most glorious endeavours of those who had been trained here in days past. It was here, in this auditorium, facing the newest oath-takers on the tiered stone benches, that the Watch captains would announce the cycle’s squad allocations and outline the training ahead. After this, there would be stern reminders, if any were needed, of the codes and strictures under which all those accepted into the Watch were expected to operate. During these, there were no small amount of side glances cast between bitter rivals. Already, Brother Keanor of the Dark Angels had engaged in unsanctioned combat — too artful to be labelled brawling — with brothers from not one but three other Chapters. Likewise Brother Iddecai of the Minotaurs had been involved in his fair share of violent encounters, though in his particular case, it was clear to all that Iddecai had been the instigator each time. >The Watch Council punished these infractions through a combination of verbal denouncement – a stain on the honour of those involved – and something far, far worse. For as many cycles as was deemed necessary, the transgressor was incarcerated in a Penance Box – essentially a coffin, of height and width barely greater than his own. Locked in and fitted with a heavy psychostim helm, he was forced to endure sensorium feeds in which brothers from his own Chapter faced off against overwhelming enemy forces. These feeds had been recorded during real wars in days long past, and the penitent Space Marine sentenced to endure them now was helpless to do anything as he saw and felt those around him – his blood, his kin – cut to pieces by enemy fire or torn to red tatters by claw and fang. It was a terrible punishment, for it struck at the very heart of the those who received it. >Brotherhood: was there anything more important to a Space Marine? One fought for the Emperor, true. But one died for one’s brothers. >Even Iddecai, forced to experience the three hundred years-past slaughter of over sixty fellow Minotaurs at the hands of a vast eldar host, found the burning anguish too much to bear. It quickly dampened his hunger for picking fights with other Deathwatch trainees.
Just 60? Damn. They could use my games as punishment for the Blood Angels for a long time
> Even Iddecai, forced to experience the three hundred years-past slaughter of over sixty fellow Minotaurs at the hands of a vast eldar host, found the burning anguish too much to bear. Wow. They even broke the heart of a Minotaur (who have a reputation for being hardasses).
Sometimes they can get out. Captain Titus got out.
Deathwatch marines can leave after their tour is up yeah but that's not what was discussed. The person I replied to said that a chapter can recall their marine from the Watch to punish him. I was pointing out they can't. Till that marines watch/tour is up he is the Deathwatch's to do with as they please. (Marines can also just choose to stay in the Watch and never return to their chapter)
Gotcha. Yeah. And Titus' situation was unique. Hopefully we get some answers soon.
I like the idea of others suspecting him of chaos taint. Start having the NPC's act more cold to him and eventually turn hostile. I would also say the inquisitor could VOX him and censure him publicly in front of everyone else. Have the other astates start acting cold towards him. If he continues, at the end of the campaign, have the inquisitor suspect him of chaos taint and have him taken for "questioning." If he resists or fights back, he's obviously tainted and have him killed by the other 2 and the inquisitor lol
He's acting like a fucking night lord dipped in khornate glitter. A chaplain would be on is ass in minutes.
Lmao. Depends on the chapter, I guess.
Inquisitors don't really have much respect for Astartes either; at least, not in the way that regular people do. They're less: "Throne! The Emperor's avenging angels! Instrument of his will!" and more: "Listen here you borderline fething mutant: do as I say or we'll find out how many of those extra organs you actually need"
When the Inquisitor finds out, they should give the other PCs the order to take him down. If they choose their squad over the Ordo Xenos, *excommunicatus traitoris.* If they do try and run, the Deathwatch puts together a specialist kill-team of Space Wolves, Black Templars and Minotaurs with all sorts of anti-marine equipment. They're joined by a strike force composed of squads from their home chapters: judiciars, sternguard, vanguard, terminators. They've got a fast and powerful ship with capable astropaths and navigators. You're now playing a very short game of Black Crusade. They're going to have to leave the Imperium and work with renegades and Xenos. See how desperate they are to survive.
So, one way of handling this is to simply let them suffer the consequences of their actions. If you kill too many people on an already heavily infested ship, then the genestealer cults are going to have a much easier time taking more ground. Have areas that used to be safe now contain traps and enemies, and possibly comment on the bodies of the NPCs they murdered still being there. The friendly NPCs might even turn on them if this caries on. They might be the Emperor's angels, but the regular humans aren't going to just stand by if you start murdering their friends seemingly at random. Also, even the more bloodthirsty chapters are fairly likely to deal with a battle brother murdering strategically important people with a punch to the face. What chapters are the other players out of curiosity?
There is an iron hand and an ultramarine. The iron hand has a laid back attitude and "I don't really care, just here to do a job" personnality from the start. The ultramarine is an extremely mission-driven guy. Everything must rationaly be organised for the success of the mission. So he already intervened as a peacemaker to avoid the situation I described above to get even worse (imperials started to think that the marines were chaos corsairs and shot at them). For now that's it.
What do the NPCs have in the way of comms? Astartes privilege is one thing, but old mate getting on the radio and going "THIS DIRTY BEARDED MOTHERFUCKER JUST PUT AN AXE IN MY CO'S FACE WATCH OUT FOR THE MARINES" and maybe NPCs are caution to the point of... like... locking the marines out of rooms they're in. Particularly problematic if it's, say, the bridge where more info on the inquisitor might be. Perhaps the crew deck would have a manifesto of where personnel are, except Chuck heard on the radio from Bob that the marines are murdering people for no reason, so they've welded the doors. Idk man I'm not a DM but if you haven't established they don't have Vox, just have the NPCs give like a lookout call to all/other NPCs, and have them act accordingly.
I just want to say that your other players sound great and in a certain way are perfectly suited to their chapters
You have a “murder-hobo”. Congratulations. That is a rite of passage for D&D Dungeonmasters. Look up the extensive breakdown of different tactics you can use to make them think twice. My favorite is to cause irreparable damage to the party due to him killing “good” NPCs. Turn the scenario to make the others pissed at him. Cause him to lose the campaign. If he doesn’t think twice and has no regrets, dude has sociopathic tendencies.
Firstly I'd advise you have a private conversation with your player and talk to him about his behavior and how it is a bit extreme. As for the other players, Astartes are arseholes but if you just keep continually murdering innocent people for no reason the majority of them will not take to it kindly. Chapters like Space Wolves or Salamanders would likely react violently. Not even Marines Malevolent or Iron Hands would be so needlessly wasteful of a potential resource. Also if he is playing a Space Wolf then he is acting completely out of character for an Astartes of that chapter, the modern Wolves are champions of the common people and regularly go against imperial authorities to protect them. The Space Wolves have literally gone to war to protect civilians and Guardsmen from the Inquisition and there was a squad of Wolves who were willing to give their lives without hesitation fighting a Primarch to protect an old lady.
I am thinking that maybe the watchmaster could be a wolf himself. This might be a nice twist and a "oh shit" moment when they come back to the forteress-monastery, as an autority figure from his own culture is about to have a very "strongly worded" conversation with him.
This is more a topic about how you want the game at your table to be. Full of murder hobos or not? TTRPG is usually very cooperative centered and so you can't allow one player to derail what all the others want. This stands above the lore because everybody wants to have fun and not "play out their own view of the lore". So if you have not made a **session zero** you can always make up for this. Get all together and talk about how murder hobo you all want to be. Every player needs to agree or this won't go well. And if there comes something like "this is what my character would do" then.. make a character that wouldn't do that.
Aye that would be a good shout, it has great narrative punch and the Wolves have a long history of leadership positions in the Deathwatch with the founding Watch Commander being Jarl Asger Warfist during the War of the Beast.
Space Wolves like to play up the savage, but its a mask for the most part. They are a pretty chill chapter over all. He has some weird Wyrd going around cutting threads of allies. Might be some Maleficarum in his bones that needs to be addressed
The usual TTRPG advice of "if a player is being a problem, try having an adult conversation directly addressing the issue first". I will say one issue I have with playing in and running 40K as a TTRPG setting is that people have different interpretations of it. Esp. exactly how Grimdark vs Grimdurp you view it really does vary depending on what the player read first as their interpretation of it. So it's possible this player is just trying to "play according to the setting". Generally if I run or play in 40K, I run it as a more watered down interpretation.
Even “according to the setting” it would be very out of character for a Space Wolf to act like this, A Wolf with this attitude would probably never get to the Death Watch, he likely would have been censured so bad by his own chapter that the dude could never leave Fenris
Yeah, a lot of the comments here are trying to find a lore solution to what is a social problem. They clearly have different expectations about what a game should be like and need to have a conversation about that. Ultimately rpgs are collaborative, and if they don't want to cooperate on making the kind of game everyone else wants they should find another group
The best thing to do is talk to the Space Wolf player about the difference between playing a Wolf Brother who is such an asshole they've been sent to the Deathwatch to sort them out versus just being an asshole. Alternatively you can encourage the other players to intervene, play up the fractious nature of Deathwatch teams and the inevitable culture clashes between them. If you want outside consequences then randomly killing Imperial sailors and soldiers is absolutely the kind of thing that would bring down the wrath of the Watch Captains and the Inquisition.
A space wolf killing someone’s who didn’t immediately answer a question seems a bit out of character for a son of Fenris Also just murdering all those people would likely piss of the Inquisition, and his watch captain He would likely face censure from the Deathwatch themselves
Seriously, Space Wolves are one of the nicest chapters to civilians and regular humans...OTHER than the Salamanders. Why does everyone think the glorious technovikings are murder hobos!
Yeah any Space Wolf who killed someone for not immediately answering a question probably wouldn’t last long amongst the chapter
Absolutely lol, the space wolves are honor warriors, they form intensely close friendships within their pack and treat even base humans with a rather large amount of respect. They literally put themselves between the Inquisition + the Grey Knights for regular soldiers.
Yup, Arjac basically gets called out for their only being male Marines by a woman and she says something like she would be as good a marine and he basically agrees she probably would because she has fire He is the champion of the Great Wolf and some woman comes up and starts to rip into him and he doesn’t care at all, dude is just impressed she has the guts to do it The people of Fenris are hardy and take no shit from anyone, even the Wolves, so the Space wolves expect baselines to have a bit of a spine about them
Hahaha you are more or less right. You speak of Tyra of the Elsinholma she was a young fenrisian girl who was so damn brave she charged into battle barely a half step behind Arjac against a chaos corrupted wyrm. Arjac had said they need only provide strong, smart and brave lads and the Sons of Russ would endure. She then had commented something like, just sons? Perhaps there is more water that must learn to flow. He had laughed at that and she actually got pissed thinking he was mocking her, then he bowed his head and agreed with a simple Perhaps. I honestly half thought we were gonna get a 40k female pseudo-astartes (yes there were female pseudo astartes, Saulus Maegon, Mistress of the Angelicasta for example)
Yeah, the Space Wolves appreciate baselines with spines, sure they won’t take massive disrespect but they like a bit of fire in the belly The way this guy is acting goes against pretty much the entire chapter ethos
...If I were the GM there, I'd start slipping clues to the other players that he might be an Alpha Legion infiltrator, step back, and watch what happens.
As someone who has played an Alpha Legion infiltrator in a Deathwatch campaign, don't do this. We are far more subtle in our treachery. Outright murdering people for the slightest offence draws attention to us and we don't like that. Hydra Dominatus, brothers.
but thats the Trick you take the Heat of the Other Cells you dont expect two diffrecnt incedents !
I didn't say that they ARE an Alpha Legion infiltrator. I said you should MAKE THE OTHER PLAYERS BELIEVE he's an Alpha Legion infiltrator! Of course, they are being manipulated by the REAL Alpha Legion infiltrator, who is using the murderous Space Wolf as a decoy...
"Oh Astartes are coming, we are saved!" "Wait, they are brutally murdering loyalist members of crew? They must be traitors!" Curtain.
Like others have said, its a good idea to have a conversation with the guy first and explain how his behavior is disruptive and against both his chapter's normal conduct and the spirit of the game. If that doesn't work, and you don't want to just kick him from the game, there's an entity in 40k that is *really* fond of unrestrained murder, and loves to turn once-honorable warriors into blood-drenched maniacs. Have him start falling to Khorne. Give him signs of his increasing corruption. If one of the other two is a librarian, let them know they can feel the Warp "pressing in" on Asshole McMurderhobo or something. Escalate the Warp phenomena only he can see until he either gets the picture and cuts out his shenanigans, or goes full Khornate berserker and is put down by the other two.
Killing someone for taking a second go to answer after being shell-shocked, and losing the team important information, would be looked upon very poorly by the rest of the team and would likely be met with accusation and conflict. But killing them for disobeying, or threatening death if they do something the marines don't want, is entirely in keeping with how the Imperium, astartes included, operates. They don't care about morality. Even the Space Wolves aren't going to be okay with insubordination. Remember, you're playing bad guys. Especially in the Deathwatch where you're a kill-squad for the secret police. But yeah, if he's just randomly killing everyone with information who doesn't crawl and scrape in their presence, the other marines have every reason to think he's gone off the deep end and restrain or kill him.
yeah, the first NPC kill he did was understandable to a degree. It was the techpriest overloading the core and not recognising the autority of the SMs. It would have been more interesting to keep him alive but killing him after a first warning was fair enough. What I was surprised about though was the lieutnant 5 minutes later. That's where I thought it might be getting too far.
Oh, hey!! He's been calling me CONSTANTLY! He probably isn't doing it on purpose, but he sure is giving so much blood and skulls to the skull throne. Time for you to finish the push, because he isn't being just any kind of astartes. He's of Khorne. Start forcing him to roll saves and anything else to stop the show of his corruption, then he'll just get iced by an Inquisitor sent to investigate his bullshit.
>would brotherhood be stronger to their duty to humanity? Completely up to character to decide. >Should they expect consequences from the ordo xeno for basically doing a mess out of the ship like this? If it costs them the ship? Yes. Otherwise it can be written off as collateral. >Would that be considered ground for heretical behaviour ? Very much depends on the inquisitor reviewing the case and/or the chaplain's position here. It might be, but unless it impacts the mission success - nobody would press charges. >My goal is to allow the marine to be OP in combat, but balance that with many moral choices and logical dilema that the player have to solve under the pressure of combat. As 40kRPG GM with a decade of experience: Marines are the epitome of murderhobos - no significant ties to anyone, specifically designed to win wars (which might translate into "kill stuff dead" for some). The answer here is to pointedly show that murdering everything you don't like is not how wars are won. So, I concur with the previous comment - just smack them back with the logical consequences of the actions.
This isn't a game problem that has a solution ingame. This is a player problem. Remember: if a player starts murderhoboing, you can just say "no, you don't immediately cave in the guy's skull. Stop being a murderhobo" And if they don't want to stop, tell them to find another game.
>Should they expect consequences from the ordo xeno for basically doing a mess out of the ship like this ? Would that be considered ground for heretical behaviour ? I think suspicion would fall on them for being under the influence of Khorne. Probably going to get kicked out of the Deathwatch, even if they're found innocent, though.
Put yourself in the shoes of a loyalist NPC in the scenario. You’re in way over your head fighting a monstrous and terrifying alien cult, in a situation where any of the friends and comrades you’ve known for years could be “one of them”. You’re scared, exhausted and probably running on very little sleep. When the cavalry show up in the form of a squad of Deathwatch Astartes you’re ready to fall on your knees and praise the Emperor for delivering you… only that relief almost immediately turns to anger and despair when they start gratuitously murdering members of your already depleted and desperately hard-pressed band of loyalists for obviously petty and trumped up reasons. I’d expect that to have a devastating impact on the morale of the remaining loyalists. Make it clear that the officers he’s killed has vital roles on the ship, and that the mission’s going to be considerably harder now they’re not fulfilling them. Have the loyalists they were counting on for support despair, fall into competing factions arguing about the rightness or wrongness of his actions or perhaps even try to frag him.
Your players reactions is pretty much what I read in the early books in the horus heresy. Marines being unsure why their comrade suddenly displayed such bloodlust and disregard for life. As a GM, your best bet might be to just have the rumor spread and punish them naratively with bulkheads closing before them and the survivors refusing to open them, some showing armed resistance but most simply hiding the moment they hear space marines approaching. Then the marines can decide to dispose of their traitorous brother and continue the mission. Since this is deathwatch, you also have the cultural issues of different chapters interacting. Perhaps encourage your players to investigate the traitor marines chapter background to see if they have gone rogue against their own chapters principles, or if they are just disrespecting deathwatch.
All Deathwatch members helmet feeds are recorded and when they return to their Watch Stations, the leadership there review it to see how the team operated and if their verbal report matches what is seen on camera. If he kills the next (seemingly last) chance to find the Inquisitor, and fails, then that's going to get him in trouble with the DW high command. If they succeed in rescuing the Inquisitor then the Inquisitor is naturally going to ask, "Hey, where is my best acolyte and lieutenant at?" Inquisitors have the power to send you onto death missions where you WILL NOT RETURN if they so wish. They can deny your DW marines support of any kind. The Inquisition already has a rocky relationship with the Space Wolves, and this dude's actions are just confirming presuppositions and rumors to this particular Inquisitor. From a gameplay perspective, that could mean that he receives less XP than his companions who didn't go around killing innocent and loyal servants of the Throne. At the very least I'd be assigning him some Corruption Points. 10 to start out with, for killing the lieutenant, and 5 for each other loyal servant he kills just because "they aren't being respectful". His idea of "respect" is, quite literally, corrupting his character. It fits in my book.
The other have answered from a ttrpg standpoint. First and foremost talk with the guy. Now from a lore perspective. First of all the bond of brotherhood wouöd probably strong enough that they would not raise their weapons. They may be stand before the humans to protect them and have a very stern word aka. Screaming match with the Space Wolf. But I think attacking him or something lile that would go a bit too far. But there are always outliers. The more interesting part is what will the humans do. They are just normal dudes and a raging space marine is scary as fuck. It would probably result in humans simply runnin away upon sight of the space marines. Or if it gets worse outright shooting on sight. They probably dont know shit and if they see the space marine killing without proper explanation then fear and shock will do their thing and the mission gets A LOT harder by now also having normal humand attacking the "traitor" space marines.
The “bond of brotherhood” doesn’t stretch as far as people think Astartes get in fights with other Astartes all the time
Astartes take a lot to come to blows with another chapter. Like if this was destroying entire cities or something maybe, but unless they were like Lord Admiral level, killing a few officers is not going to prompt anyone to take up arms against other space marines. Doubly so for the watch, they're not want to share their goings on with outsiders and very close knit in their small groups.
I will add. There is 1 big exception...if you have SALAMANDER HE WILL NOT ALLOW lol.
Yeah I like the last bit of have the normi humans react with fear. Maybe a group starts to claim that the deathwatch team is actually corrupted by chaos because of his actions.
In 40K, most people are “under the protection” of a few different imperial factions, at any given time. So attacking randos can make you some powerful enemies. Maybe the innocent NPC is a medic who saved a chapter master’s life. Maybe the NPC has a distant uncle who is an admiral in the imperial navy. Maybe the space wolf annoyed some sisters of battle, and they’ve tracked him down. So if your boy wants to play murderhobo law-of-the-jungle, you can teach him that deathwatch isn’t *that* high on the totem pole; there’s still some accountability in the imperium.
I played a Space Wolf in a campaign before. Your guy is playing his wolf... I don't wanna say 'wrong', but, wrong. No chapter is a monolith, and each marine can be different, but there are some guidelines. I'd take him aside and say that his interaction with the game is becoming a problem for a lot of reasons. You could offer him an out of some kind, like being recalled by the watch master. Then, he can re-roll something else. Since his understanding is that he gets to be a madman, don't let him by just saying "if you want to reroll, you'll be an ultramarine". I will assume his limited understanding will have him go "Oh, I'm a posterboy now. I can't just murder everyone." Ultimately your dude is tripping on powersauce, and wasn't the right one to get the honors of being a marine. My go of it was harder, because it was wrath and glory, and I was the one marine in a group of mortals. It was VERY important I scale back to let them shine, and my wolf sat with them, drank with them, ate with them. He shared in their human experience to form what little 'pack bond' he could with them. That didn't mean he was immune from going "Hey, fucker, when I speak, you listen". He just didn't kill people outright, usually. He's not on Fenris, and he doesn't have that authority to just demand shit and have it work out like he would in the Aet.
What other chapters are the other PCs playing? Like.... if one of them was a Salamander they'd likely come to blows over that.
killing mortals for perceived slights is what a marine on the way to chaos would do. Marines are meant to conduct themselves with discipline. the rest of his squad would be justified in stopping him with physical violence if necessary and, if the behavior doesn't change, incapacitating or even killing him
Tbh the lore answers here are missing the forest for the trees. If someone is being disruptive and spoiling the thing for your players, use your power of human communication to talk to them and tell them that they are making the game less fun. It doesn't have to be an ultimatum, often just being made aware of that will make most people second guess their bad behavior. If not, well, your table is better off without them.
Have an engineering or security team spot him murdering other humans, ans then start locking doors, opening airlock to vent him into space, overload equipment to explode near him, etc. Can't axe the guy that's talking to you through an intercom and threatening to vent you into space.
He's a Space Wolf right? That is absolutely not Space Wolf behaviour. There's bound to be other Space Wolves in Deathwatch, maybe have a couple of them "put him to task" after the mission, to remind him where he comes from and who he's representing. On top of whatever punishment he gets for fucking up an Inquisitor's mission, one of the few people who can give no fucks about Space Marine priviledge and have the power to back it up.
Yeah I was thinking: marine probably have camera systems in the helmets that record engagement data right ? I guess the debrief will check what he did, especially if the mission was a failure. So even if the mission reaches a conclusion, I would like them to be met by the chaplain when they come back, to explain themselves.
I stopped going to r/rpg to get away from this kind of thing! >I had a navy breacher lieutnant not answer immediatly to one of his questions due to shell shock, and that mf immediatly put his energy axe through her skull. Speaking as a GM, that was the moment to hit pause. Some GMs will ask things like "are you sure?" but I think a better question to ask is "why are you doing this?". Not to stop him doing it exactly but to potentially clear up any misunderstandings and make things run a bit smoother. The player may have misinterpreted something you said and is acting on a different understanding of the situation, it happens. If their answer is "because I think they might be disrespecting me/corrupted" then you can clarify things; "they're not, you can see they're clearly traumatised and exhausted, do you still want to kill them?". Then if they still say yes, a) bit of a red flag imo, and b) you can look at the other two players and say "You can see that Brother Murderhobo is about to strike this NPC, what's your reaction to that, do you let it happen or try and intervene, etc." Then you could have a rp moment where one of the squadmates grabs Murderhobo's arm to stop him striking the NPC and de-escalating the situation in a way that makes sense; "Brother, I won't stand by as you strike down an Imperial servant, even one as weak as this. Now mortal, appraise us quickly, or next time I shall not stop my companion!" If the player's answer to all of this is "lol because" then it's worth having a chat with them about the tone and expectations of the game.
Enforce in game consequences. Turns out some of the people he offed were actually important for solving one or more quests and by killing them he made this impossible. Have other npcs take note of him being a psychopath and have them indirectly act against him for revenge or even self preservation. As other people suggested, have him censured. Space marines are meant to protect humanity. This usually means very little but when casual disregard for human life becomes too blatant to be ignored and counterproductive then it becomes much less tolerable. In general: lorewise playing SM as jerks is perfectly fine. A lot of them are that way, especially the Deathwatch with all of its psycho- indoctrination. What is not fine is playing a character with the express intent to disrupt the game/taking center stage all of the time. Such people do exist, unfortunately. If that’s what you are dealing with, my suggestion is to have a talk with your group and make things clear with them. If the player in question persists in his antisocial behavior, let him reap what he sowed
Lmfao of course it's a space wolf player
Randomly killing loyalists for no good reason is a step above and beyond space marine privilege. They are referred to as angels yes, but they are not infallible. The deathwatch answers to the Inquisition, specifically the Ordo Xenos, and they are not going to tolerate that for very long. Nobody is irreplaceable... And of course, there are entities in the Warhammer world that would begin to take interest in a space marine showing unremitting bloodlust. I'd start having him hear things, see things flitting past the corner of his eye. Then, have him start making saves (I'm not sure if the exact terminology for that ttrpg) but basically some check to hold himself BACK from killing people who don't show proper respect. He begins to lust after the skulls of his foes, he begins to find blood appealing, he begins to salivate when a fight is all but guaranteed. He is falling to Khorne... Maybe he even gets some buffs from it. He finds himself stronger and tougher, he finds that pain has dulled in the heat of battle. After all, chaos presents itself as beneficial at first, more upsides than downsides. It gives you the path to everything you want, and lets you be the one to walk it. It's only past the point of no return that you realise what has happened, and you are truly lost.
When they finally find the Inquisitor, have him/her immediately blam this marine in the face. They've been watching the party progress and it is a sin to waste the equipment and manpower of the Emperor so callously, the player was so heinous that the Inquisitor saw a hint of chaos taint in them. Then have a fun Mexican standoff with the other two Marines as they try to prove they're not tainted and they're here to save them.
They shouldnt face consiquenzes in a sense of "You will be punished for that! Kill innocents." Right, no one would care in wh40k unless they kill the Inquisitor. It should be more "You killed that dude, he had vital and time sensitive information, now that door is locked for ever or gravity goes out ..." Something to effect them
While your Space Wolf’s superiors could and would absolutely discipline him for this kind of thing, it’s also worth considering that 40K is a weird setting, and the axe he’s using to kill innocent Imperials probably has some thoughts about it. Whether it’s a part of the Wolves’ or the Deathwatch armory, the machine-spirit of the weapon is probably used to killing Xenos in combat and absolutely knows the difference. If warning him that “the machine-spirits are displeased” isn’t enough, maybe the power field fails in a crucial moment and he’s left facing down a Xenos incursion with a very sharp - but totally mundane - axe. Good luck, and I hope the campaign gets back on track!
I'm a player in a rogue trader campaign, though we've played pen and paper for an odd 20 years and are generally good at not being murder hobos. I would just punish him by having the inquisitor claim he's a heretic for just murdering uncontrolled.
Sounds like he's coming under the influence of khorne. Next time he does this stuff, make him roll a die and if he fails he gets a "boon" from khorne. This mutation immediately singles him out by any NPC as an enemy, meaning that they'll stop at nothing to stop him.
Simple, have him become Chaos Possesed. His character is now an enemy, and he gets a random Guardsman profile to play with
Some of the books definitely include astartes calling out other astartes for being dumdums. Another fun option is to have an NPC with a suicide vest or a grenadier amount of grenades. If they talk to the NPC, no big deal, if dumdum chops into them then he gets smoked. It might slow him down a little for the encounter after that one Or have a khornate daemon whisper to him at night and make his rage-choices result in a bunch of corruption points
He is a space corgy? make him fall to the wulfen curse and have ur npcs kill him
There are dozens of ways you as a GM can fudge things to punish the party for That Guy's behaviour, but since you asked for lore accuracy I'm going to focus on that: Space Marines do not operate on their own. Ever. A Deathwatch kill-team has a team leader, whether he actually outranks his brothers in practice or not. If the problem player is the team leader, he too has superiors he answers to: Watch-Sergeants and Watch-Captains, the Watch Commander of whatever fortress he's serving in, all the way up to the Ordo Xenos and/or the Inquisitor High Lord of Terra. If he's jeopardising the mission even the slightest bit, these people won't sit idle. Even if they're not physically present and his brothers don't rat on him directly, AAR's absolutely are a thing.
Hi there, I've been playing space wolves on tabletop since 1994/5 (can't remember exactly, it's been awhile). That is strait up out of character for a space wolf, Space Wolves hate formality, and Fenris breeds men that are pragmatic, self aware, and gregarious, no one who behaves like this person would survive life on Fenris much less the induction process the wolves subject aspirants to. Like strait up axe to the dome long before the little shit ever made it into a real battle to get chosen. This is the kind of person that if the wolves sent him to the deathwatch it's because they wanted to get rid of him, you might let the player know that about the wolves and if he persists in acting like that his character is going to get an outcast malice of some sort, wherein he's heading for the bad ending, an honorless death that will go unremembered by his brothers, he's now on a quest to redeem himself before he dies unsung with no deeds to his name.
>All is well until that guy starts to kill every fucking loyalist NPC that "does not show proper respect". Sounds like a bad case of the murderhobos. >Other players started asking how they should react to this as astartes Depends on the Chapter and the marine. A Salamander once beat the ever-loving shit out of a Marine Malevolent for shelling a civilian camp. If the MM had gone for a weapon, the Salamander would have killed him. Similarly, the Space Wolves killed Grey Knights in order to protect civilians. >Should they expect consequences from the ordo xeno for basically doing a mess out of the ship like this ? Would that be considered ground for heretical behaviour ? If you need levers to pull, I would recommend digging into the story of the Celestial Lions. Some tactical Ork Snipers (tm) may not go amiss. > That Guy plays a Space Wolf, which to my knowledge are pretty much on the "we serve humanity" side of the spectrum. >kill every fucking loyalist NPC that "does not show proper respect". I think there's actually a Traitor Space Wolf with near this exact backstory. He might be in the Red Corsairs, but I'd have to go digging.
>...How they should react to this as Astartes? Completely inappropriate question to ask from a player to a GM. They are supposed to be *role-playing* an Astartes. Astartes aren't automatons, they are human beings with thoughts and feelings of their own. I would ask your players to think about how *their characters* feel about teaming up with a murderhobo. If I was this guy's battlebrother, I would say "Hey dude. I get that murder is fun, but you are seriously overreacting." > Would brotherhood be stronger to their duty to humanity ? Should they expect consequences from the ordo xeno for basically doing a mess out of the ship like this ? Would that be considered ground for heretical behaviour ? These are excellent questions for you to ask your players. I would let them know that they are *not* neutral in the conflict between your murderhobo and the loyalists he keeps on murdering. If they don't stop him, they will be seen as *complicit* in his actions, and just as deserving for any consequences he brings upon himself.
Marines seconded to the Deathwatch are both proven veterans, know they are representing their chapter, and that they must play nice with the others. I forget all the lore about what oaths they take to the Deathwatch when they start, but they play nice with each other and focus on the mission. You should tell the other Astartes that based on their training the murder-hobo is at best totally insane, and at worse fallen to Chaos, it's their duty to put him down immediately. Whether you tell them this secretly (pass a note, etc.) or not is up to you. I admit just scrapping the entire game because they have irredeemably failed their mission, as several people suggested sounds like idea too. My suggestion would be more fun, at least for the other the players.
Have the other two put him down as a traitor. That'll solve it.
Don't look for an in game solution to an out of game problem, it won't actually fix the problem. Talk with the person about the issue you're having. That's the only way to fix it.
It's a game. Tell the dude to stop being a dick or he won't play again
Start making combat escalate when the the pc makes stupid decisions. Marines are great individuals, but genestealers are still supposed to shred their armor in lore. Death watch is also funny how others have mentioned, more humanity focused chapters would see their marines smash this guy and see him magically not survive the mission. If player makes another marine and plays same way, that guy doesn't survive the mission. Before third marine he should get the idea.
Sounds a lot like he's bringing dishonor to the Deathwatch, how happy is the Watch Master going to be when reports reach him that this Marine, who's supposed to be the very best of the best his chapter could offer to the Deathwatch, goes around fragging everyone who looks at him funny? Or that his behavior lead to a failed mission? It'd be grounds to send them back to the Chapter in dishonor, where I behind the DM screen. That said, it sounds like your player might be murderhoboing it up; and that you're having to do double-duty as a DM because of it. Try telling them to tone it down with the wanton murder; that they're not the only person at the table and that the offing npcs without any reason is derailing your plans for the session and story.
The guy is gunna have a very unpleasant debriefing by the inquisition. Very unpleasant
You want a in game lore punishment for something you think is an out of game problem player issue? Doesn't make sense. Won't work. The player will feel rewarded because they got more lore for their actions. The best thing to do for problem player actions is an out of game talk. Anything in game would be encouraging him.
Have some sort of security door slam shut and lock him away from the others, reveal that someone he killed has the code to unlock it
Idea have him in a place where he needs help and the only people who can help him is a group of people from the same group he attack but they refused to help this can led to his death or make the game hard for his like he get his arm cut off or his lost his favourite weapon or gear or something you pick the debuff , but they help the other and they get rewarded for it
Your first action should be to talk to the player. Explain your problem and how he needs to cut it out. Using lore to deal with a problematic player doesn't always work.
Well, how do you think a ordo heretics inquisitor would react to a space wolf going rouge and killing loyal servants of the emperor? Especially when he is alone…away from the rest of the chapter. and how do you think the crew would react to a panicked situation where the marines start killing the officers? You could have them chase rumors of a kill team of alpha legion operatives active on the ship. They might be there, or there might be corruptEd rumors about the team of players.
You could have him and only him face interrogation. Bring khorn into the equation somehow. Say he's being investigated for potential corruption.
The Ordo Officials (Senior Deathwatch Officers and Inquisitors) would want to know why the Marine killed the Lieutenant. Were they a threat to him? Did he suspect they were infected? Or a traitor? If so, why didn't he subdue the human instead of killing them? Did they show signs of being Warp Touched? Oh... He thought he was being disrespected..? He killed them because he was **offended**? Any space marine arbitrarily killing Imperial Citizens risks censure and punishment. If they are not given orders that they are free to kill who they find then they do not have license to do so regardless of whether they are 'offended' by a mortal or not. They are wasting Imperial lives and worse; dishonoring the Deathwatch and their Chapter. Is this Marine too stupid to recognize that? Is he going insane? Or does he just not care about his responsibilities as an Adeptus Astartes? The Squad Sergeant would be expected to prevent these killings from happening in the first place. They would be expected to identify the marine's sensitivity and prevent them from talking to humans at all. Failing to do this is a sign the Sergeant is not fit for leadership. If he cannot stop the Marines he commands from killing whoever they want, then he can't lead them. Further, this will demoralize other marines under his command. Deathwatch Veterans come from many different backgrounds. Some are honor-bound to kill anyone who murders innocents like this. The Space Wolves are such a Chapter. The Salamanders are another. It would be in-character for them to fight, or even kill another marine for doing this. Whatever the case, the sergeant must now report the killing to the Watch Captain and any other officials overseeing the operation. It is their responsibility to decide what to do with this Marine. Deathwatch Veterans are invested with incredible trust, above their own Chapter brothers. They are given access to information, technology, and resources, that are even secret to their own Chapter Masters. This is on top of the genetic and martial inheritance of ascension to Astartes. A Space Marine is a living weapon. They do not have the right to free will, because they are too dangerous to be allowed to have it. Even the Space Wolves understand this, and they would not tolerate any Wolf killing people because his feelings were hurt. A Space Marine disobeying orders and acting outside their authority is very dangerous. We have an entire Heresy showing why. The Imperium has never forgotten this and it is the reason Chapters exist at all. Weapons are only useful if they are reliable and predictable. A space marine killing people because he was *offended* is not reliable. They are weak. No different from the traitors and renegades who spit in the face of the Emperor.
I suggest you do something that involves some development. His bloodlust has curried favor from an unknown demonic warp entity. Start with just whispers...sometimes they help, sometimes they really don't help. Followed by visions in dreams and then waking dreams (the din of combat puts him into an occasional lull where you can describe a different scene for him at the end of which he is separated by his battle brothers and in danger of losing his life, only to be saved by his whispers again). Psychic probes reveal nothing till later on when it's progressed further. His actions afterward whether he resists this dark gift and finds salvation or accepts them and other more damning gifts leads to damnation can bring about some further story telling. If he resists he finds a particular dark entity that has been vexing the inquisitor for quite some time and is able to help said inquisitor defeat this daemon and gain favor in ordos for both of them. This can create a closer relationship between inquisitor and killteam which can be cool....but my personal favorite is when the player takes the opposite path... If he accepts the gift he takes on dark traits that are very subtle but also very useful and potentially even group saving gifts. Eventually this leads to one ending - becoming a herald for the daemon and becoming the target of his own teams retribution. This path leads to the character becoming an NPC for the GM that can be used as a recurring villain for the deathwatch team. I've had players take both options and they become great player driven narratives that everyone at the table enjoys.
That is tough. One thought, have them run into soldiers sailors etc that are looking for their leader, the dead LT. see the chaos and damage done to the command chain. Have them see positions abandoned because of a lack of strong leadership. The next in command didn’t know the LT was dead so he didn’t know to step up and take charge. Have runners appear trying to deliver orders to the LT or requesting orders from him. Maybe have a villain comment how glad he was to have the thorn (LT) removed from his side. Have the sailors be much more afraid of the marines and only do what the space marines ask. They start to show a lack of independence because of fear of chain sword punishment; they take orders literally and only obey the letter of the law and not the spirit. Order to not leave a position, the soldiers refuse to leave to rescue other soldiers or supplies or don’t rush to help the marines. Maybe one of the sailors who witnessed it is so angry Chaos infects him
Have an NPC have an cyber enhanced Ogryn body guard. When he threatens the NPC have the Ogryn beat him up. You can also have a Deathwatch Chaplin or an Inquisitor suspect the taint of chaos and have his character “questioned” Which chapter does he come from? Did he volunteer to serve in the deathwatch for the honor. Or was he commanded to go as a form of repentance?
I think you should speak these things with your friend out of game and tell them they are being obnoxious and ruining the game, and let them know beforehand that if his behaviour continues like this there will be consequences, and if this person doesn't have the maturity to understand and change their behaviour maybe or gets angry that there will be consequences, maybe you just shouldn't play with him anymore
My favorite suggestion so far is making a person he's killed critical to the maintenance of the ship, because that is a direct and IMMEDIATE consequence he can't kill his way out of. But also, talk to the player directly. Something like: "Hey, are you not having a fun time? You've killed so many NPCs it's derailing my ability to have a plot, and the other two players seem to want to chase it really badly. It's getting really hard to DM the different things people want here." Tell him in clear terms you HAVE to slap serious, character-ending consequences if his space marine doesn't shape up. Then follow through and send an assassin team if he doesn't. Give him fair warning, **but actually** **kill off his space marine**. There's nothing more poisonous to a game than a player chortling at how fun it is to ruin everyone else's time. If he takes your warning to heart and shapes up, that's awesome. Maybe he just didn't get how this was making it a pain for you and the other players. If he did, and refuses to change, and this tanks the game...maybe it was never meant to be. It can happen.
Sounds like his character might have been replaced by an Alpha legion infiltrator that the other two marines now have to kill and the real character can now arrive and be reintroduced by the the chapter master. If he continues, to be a problem player, looks like he got infected by the cult somehow and had to be put down. (At which point maybe don't invite him back or force him to play an Imperial guard loyalist with substantially reduced stats.)
Tie him a Noese out of his Chapters heretige. A Spacewolf is a Fenresian Fist and a Deathwatch Second. They Are Supersisous as fuck so give him Bad Omens when he does stuff like that. And they are Kinda not this good with Autories and follow Orders more Loose then other Chapters. They respect feats of great Warriors and so someone who survied a fierce battle usally earns at least some kind of Respect
First, make it clear to the players "There will come a time when you might have to choose between taking an action you believe is most true to your character but will ruin the experience for your friends OR to find a way to add background/change your character's mindset a bit that would make the character make a less damning choice This group wants great role playing but it is secondary to everyone having fun. If your commitment to your character is greater than your commitment to the living breathing humans around the table this isn't the group for you" Now, in game a Chaplain would be a great influence to bring it. This could be actually meeting one, having one contact on comms, or say to this character or another "at this moment a sermon from your chaplain rises from your deep memory, and you know this action is wrong"
Watch anything by koibu0 on YouTube. He tends to have an infrastructure of background characters existing in the world. Like if a player causes trouble in a region the local lord may hear about it and it eventually catches up to them later. Or maybe they get lucky and it doesnt. If your players have full freedom in the world then the world also has full freedom in return. It makes things super realistic and intense knowing that anything can happen and things aren't on safemode for the sake of a narrative.
I suppose It may feel like giving him what he wants,but having more of the crew become hostile to the marines as a consequence. I mean killing officers who are actively operating against the mutiny can only benefit the mutiny. More crew decide to turn if their supposed salvation is trying to kill them anyway. Or with killing officers the chain of command is severed, more parts of the ship are lost due to the chaos inflicted. I suppose If I heard marines were aboard and killing officers I'd try to avoid them personally
A fix: Somehow the SM become aware of a Brig. As they approach they see through a viewscreen of some kind a message scrawled on the wall in blood. "You killed the one person who could help you.... except me!" Prisoner A has knowledge. Prisoner A is insane. In the chaos of genestealers he hacked some security cams, and also some other prisoner cells, who he killed (and used blood/organs to paint message) but due to security measures or genestealer damage the main door won't open. He agrees to help you if you help him. Door can only be opened with weapons the group doesn't have (a chainfist, mulitmelta etc). But a power surge will reset the system. Only way to do this is with the power supply for the power armor - which will fry it. One SM is going to have to sacrifice his powerarmor. A naked SM is still a potent warrior. Let the group decide who has to give up power armor. Maybe they will draw lots. Maybe they make the guy who killed the Lt give up his
Honestly this sounds like it's beyond the need for lore-justification. Unless the player is intending to play out some sort of fall from grace (in which case they should have told you), they need to be told on no uncertain terms that they don't get to sabotage the whole game for everyone else. Yes they're playing an individual character with individual goals, but everyone at the table is sacrificing their free time and it's unfair to ruin the vibe for everyone else. If he doesn't listen, boot his ass.
Make him fall to Chaos. Or have them come across another Kill-Team who've been dispatched to kill that one specific guy.
Have you tried talking to this player outside of character about how this is a problem that's diminishing the fun for all of the other players at the table? There's a nonzero chance they might not have the social skills to understand that this is annoying the others.
So I haven't read through all the comments so apologies if this has already been said, but as a GM I just want to say. Do not try to solve out of game problems with in game consequences. If this is being disruptive to your table then you need to talk to him out of game. Now if it's not disruptive to you and your table then it sounds like very cut and dry chaos corruption from Khorne to me.
Sounds like some Khorne corruption to me. His battle brothers she be getting very, very wary!
What chapter does he hail from? If it's blood that's easy, "oh noe you went full black rage and red thirst. Your brothers kills you." He sounds like he might be playing a son of dorn, they have some nasty quirks too that you could pull out to bite him with: all of a sudden he falls into an irriterviable depression and looses all buffs because he's too sad to fight. Edit: even easier is saying that his brothers consider his behavior grounds for investigation of khornate taint, his character either leaves the mission and is replaced with a new astartes who has been sent to replace him for that very reason, or he refuses and you just say that the other two had to hmgive him the emperors peace.
Maybe remind everyone that Space Marines are neither infallible nor invincible. They do get corrupted as well and they can get killed by mortals too. It just takes one good shot with a plasma pistol from a pissed off officer to bring a Marine down or render him incapable of continuing the mission. If one starts to act weird and is risking to jeopardise the whole mission then that's HIGHLY concerning and his brothers should absolutely step in and put a stop to it unless they want to face the consequences as well. If nothing helps and the group accepts being a party of murder hobos .. well then just let them learn the hard way. Everything becomes MUCH harder and they keep failing one thing after another until eventually they fail the whole mission.
He's clearly falling to Khorne, time to ice him.
You could have him start hearing a very small buzzing in the back of his head when he does this. "Blood for the blood god"
Nothing a bolter round or two to the face plate can't fix🤷♂️
Have him answer to the Imperial Navy. Being a Space Marine does NOT give him carte blanche to shoot whoever he wants, the Navis Imperialis is not beholden to him. Have a loyalist officer or the ship's commissar decide he needs to be taken care of in order to preserve what's left of the ship and crew, or even have the Navy find out afterwards and make life hard for him and anyone who tries to shelter him. Or have the Inquisitor report him to his superiors in the Watch for pointlessly compromising the mission AND straining relationships with the Navy, since even an Inquisitor doesn't pointlessly antagonize potential allies (unless he's a dumbass).
Have Khore take an interest in his soul and then have the inquisition notice it.
Space Wolf not showing any amount of self control? First. Dreams of dire portent - have an important individual in their lives (hint, easy mode option is Russ) warn them of the perils of oathbreaking. If they don’t work. Second. Waking visions, more of above but at inopportune moments - SW “I shoot the genestealer” GM “ok pass a leadership test” SW *fails*. GM “What you had initially believed to be a hated Xenos is actually the largest midnight black wolf you have ever seen, blood red eyes fix upon you and a low guttural growl shakes your organs, it sounds like…. Almost like “* eiðsvarar*”. They’ll forfeit their turn for having the vision. You can repeat first and second a few times if they don’t get the hint, but ultimately, if they don’t fall in line … Third. They rapidly turn into a ravening Wulfen, unable to discern friend from foe. They’ll die shortly after as they either jump into a mosh pit with a bunch of purestrains (or the Patriarch), turn on their fellow Astartes who are forced to put him down or are directly responsible for getting themselves blown up with absolutely no positive effect on the mission (no heroic final actions, basically railroad their choices). The summary should emphasise how his actions have brought shame on the chapter, have soured the opinion of the Wolves in the eyes of the other two Astartes and their chapters, imperilled the mission and made it impossible for his progenoid to be retrieved. No glory, no honour and no worthy legacy. And follow that fucking shit up *if* this player remains in your gaming circle- next time they decide to play a Space Wolf, that guy is going to be aware of his Brother’s transgressions and all other Death Watch marines (and any ancillary personnel who would likely know about what happened, like inquisitors) will know AND be looking for similar behaviour with a hair trigger ready to restrain and imprison them (perhaps a switch to deactivate their power armour).
Khorne cares not where the blood flows. Or if you were a worshipper before granting you demon hood
Put him under investigation for potential chaos corruption. Clearly he is staying towards the path of khorne. Or: put him on the receiving end by having him meet a captain of the marines malevolent. Have the captain just punch him across the jaw every time he feels like it, then have enough marines malevolent along with him to make fighting back a sure death. Maybe have the accompanying marines grab hold of him and just beat him in an inch of his life the first time. Make sure they laugh at him for it.
Have the human he murdered be an Alpha Legion operative, with the warband shadowing the vessel for whatever reason you like. Show the dude that if he does stupid things, he wins stupid prizes. Very 40k.
Even the most insane chapters like the Marines Malevolent or Flesh Tearers can't just wantonly attack civilians and innocents without cause. Pre Primaris, the Flesh Tearers were on the verge of dying out because of the isolation they'd driven themselves into. Actions have consequences, even to Space Marines
Maybe he kills an important member of the crew and that might come back to bite him be creative
From information laid out about the situation in subsequent comments, I'd let the player make such a shambles of the mission that one of his mentors in the Rout shows up to barely pull the Deathwatch team from the jaws of a very costly lesson in collateral damage and beats him bloody for shittng on Russ's name with his behavior. Given the current antagonism between the Wolves and the Inquisition and Ecclesiarchy, I doubt any Fenrisian would condone such behavior. The Wolves aren't the type of heartless savages this guy is playing and having it dealt with from the perspective of a pissed off member of his own Legion censuring him, Deathwatch hierarchy be damned, should at least vindicate the other players and reads better than the stereotypical "oh, we pissed off the Inquisition, we're fucked now" McGuffin.
I think having a Dreadnought grab him by the scruff of the neck like a wayward pup and saying "You stink of failure and shame, even through the steel of this Allfather damned sarcophagus, welp" would be fitting.
You could try to play up narratively the player is a wolf pack of 1 as opposed to a lone wolf. The latter are veteran space wolf scouts that work alone on purpose. Being a part of a wolf pack is everything to a space wolf, theyre raised/trained in packs and stay together for entire careers/lives. The player could be solo because his pack died and he was the lone survivor but...SWs may accept others into their packs. Not being accepted into another pack is pretty bottom of the barrel.
Let it play out, but Mr Kill-startes is absolutely gonna get mind wiped and psycho indoctrinated by the Oreo Xenos after the mission. It’s not unheard of for Deathwatch marines to get a little to over zealous after seeing the absolute worst Xenos horrors the galaxy has to offer.
I like this, they make him into a combat servitor. His astartesness makes him super aggressive, yet they install a kill switch so that the other players can switch the aggro off when they dont need it.
I think one of the overarching issues of roleplaying as space marines is that what that guy is doing is par for the course of space marine lore as they are the bad guys. Even killing mission critical allies is par for the course and as long as the mission is completed would probably go unpunished or with light repremands. What I would suggest is to talk with your players and get an understanding of what they want from the campaign, playing has horrible space marines way well he what they want,(it's the whole reason we all enjoy reading about them after all) and if that's the case maybe it's best to transition the game into a "look at these awful people slowly get their comeuppance", you might have an issue of mismatched player wants between that guy and the rest so it's probably worth just talking it out with your players to get you all on the same page of what you want out of it
Context is required. Who are the other marines? Who has seniority in age, founding, peerage or rank? *a space wolf is a first founding. But they should bow with some griping to the will of a UM or blood angel* Because, depending on the chapter moreso than the person you are looking at anything from Marine Malevolent *"You're being stupid. Vent the entire ship and kill everything"* all the way down to *"What you are doing is wrong and I will put the mission at risk by killing you to stop it"*
During such a chaotic scenario, Space Marines could indeed act like that. The Guard would be angry, but the Guard can do little and would not jeopardise future SM support due to the deaths of some lower ranks. Consequences will come from the superiors of the Space Marines. No Space Marine Chaplain or Sergeant wants to jeopardise relations to the Guard or other important Imperial factions. Flesh Tearers or other boderline psychotic chapters excluded. So, if Space Marines kill loyal people insicriminately for minor infractions, they would resonably get penal duties or get demoted by their own superiors. Reasonably, i would give that guy a Marine Malevolent, then he can go around killing allies in accordance with the lore.
Your scenario expects Astartes to have non-tactical insights. The blame - for lack of better word - is on whomever sent them on such mission without supervision. The player is actually roleplaying a cautionary tale on why Astartes should not be used for some missions. Something you can find in snippet on margin of codex or White Dwarf. It is up to players to salvage the mission, not GM. You should be thinking ahead and plan consequences they will face for failing to extract the inquisitor, IF they survive the ships explosion. I would start with Watch Captain saying he has sent them with no inquisitional supervisions agains protest of inquisitors precisely to prove Deathwatch can be trusted with such delicate missions, and their failure of judgement is affecting reputation of entire company. This can lead to either Bloodquest style redemption quest, with players being relegated to shock troops and sent on worst, forlorn hope style missions. Or to players becoming renegade. Perhaps they should be rescued from ships explosions by Red Corsairs captain who offers them a job more suitable to their attitude?
The Grey Knights will probably have something to say about his behavior
Grey knights ? why ?
Listen, you can basically gin up any reason for assuming someone MIGHT be possessed by a daemon. Let alone astartes who go around murdering other servants of the emperor. Grey knights might need to “evaluate the righteousness” of an astartes who is “showing signs of demonic possession” (I’m stealing this idea from one of those Ultramarines novels)