Posted on January 13, 2011
Does Role-playing a Space Marine seem stupid to anybody else?
If I ever buy this book it’s probably going to be almost entirely so I can see the artwork that goes into it, but it looks like the Roseville-based boys at Fantasy Flight games have decided that they’d like BRose to start role-playing.
I’m listening to a podcast review of it right now, and it doesn’t sound like you do a whole lot of actual decision-making (since the Space Marines are basically invulnerable and all their decisions are made for them by the chapter), but in terms of heavy bolter-on-guardsmen wish fulfillment, this seems like $60 well spent.
Yeah, of the three 40k roleplaying systems, (the other two being Rogue Trader and Dark Heresy), this seems the least interesting.
There are all sorts of reasons people play combat heavy rpgs, but I imagine one of the reasons is to play someone in a terrifying situation who girds their loins and acts heroic. And you can’t really get this with Space Marines – they are incapable of fear, so their loins never need girded and their acts are simply acts, not heroic ones. There is a difference between being brave (experiencing fear and acting heroically anyway) and being immune to fear. Excitement – even if we think of non-dangerous activities – surely involves some degree of trepidation, which surely involves some degree of fear.
You may as well be playing Car Door Assembly Production Line. Although the guns that have a magazine feed of tiny missiles may make up for it.
Gotta say, though, the review I’m listening to makes it sound like there’s some really cool combat mechanics. There’s a lot of detail in the character creation (your millenia-old armor can give marines unique talents and stuff), bonuses and traits that come from how you make up your squad, and there’s special damage mechanics for fighting hordes of enemies. Plus there’s tables for making missions more difficult at random which sounds pretty appealing.