Deathwatch

 This showed up in-store last week and I have to say that FFG continues doing an amazing job with this line of RPGs. If you want to read some reviews you can check out some that I linked to the product page. But let me give you my brief view on what they did to make this intriguing.

Deathwatch could have just been Dungeonscrawls In Spaaaaaace! (which would be cool too) but what they decided to do is focus on the group dynamic. Specifically, the fact that you play Space Marines that have been taken away from your battle brothers and thrown in with space marines from other chapters who may not see things exactly the way that you do. This creates a possibility for inter-party conflict (which can be cool) and the goal to move beyond it to make the group better than the sum of its parts.

Read the reviews if you want the detailed skinny on how this works in a game mechanics way, I just wanted to point out that this was cool. One could have just phoned in the design of Deathwatch since we're talking about walking, talking killing machines running around smiting their foes with big guns, swords, axes, what-have-you. You probably still would have done well with it. But they went the extra mile and created the possibility for real drama. Kudos FFG designers.

 Since I am currently slightly obsessed with the idea of roleplaying Space Marines, I thought that I would point out this interesting thread on RPG.net. Specifically, it asks "What else can space marines do other than kill things?"

There are two reasons that I point out this thread. First of all, in the first few pages of the thread there's some really good adventure/campaign ideas and discussion about Space Marines in general. Really exciting stuff. Also, the last few pages have some good stuff as well. The other reason I point this thread out is that because there's about 17 pages of a train-wreck of a discussion about whether or not Space Marines can breed, and why there are not any female marines (and why having them would be bad/good/whathaveyou). It's sort of the best and worst of RPG.net all in one thread.