Ahoy all
Recently I've been mulling over the experiences I had with GW when I was growing up and one of them was the instore campaigns they used to have.
Out of interest I was wondering if you could perhaps share you experiences with them and the reason as to why they stopped.

Wasn't that "Throne Of Skulls" thing they did recently a Store Campaign?..Or was that more of a Tournament thing?

High_Marshal_Helbrecht wrote:Wasn't that "Throne Of Skulls" thing they did recently a Store Campaign?..Or was that more of a Tournament thing?

I think it was a tournament type thing, I'm not entirely sure since they never informed me about it when I went into my local shop, while informing me about a big apocalypse game they were doing, I'd assume it would be somewhere on the mentions list

Ah well, if that wasn't a campaign then I don't know im affraid!

The last time I was in a GW the starter set for 40K came with cardboard ork Dreds!!

GW hasnt had a summer campaign for a few years. For 40k there were several, The Eye of Terror, Armageddon, and the last one, whose name escapes me but was the one responsible for introducing the Vostroyans.
On the fantasy side there was Albion, The Storm of Chaos, and The Nemesis Crown. One could mention Lustria, which was never developed into a campaign but was more of a sourcebook release which introduced rules for Jungle warfare.
The campaigns were worldwide affairs in which registered clubs and GW stores could fight themed battles and report their results on the GW website, which would influence the outcome of the campaign in the official fluff, in some cases advancing the timelines.
What happened to them is anyones guess. While they were designed to promote starting new armies with new units and special characters I dont know if they were profeitable enough to justify their cost. With studio staff cuts and other corporate cost cutting I fear they were made redundant. Also mentionable was the cries of fix from the net communities who seemed hyper critical of the entire thing.

Summer campaigns were scrapped because people would manipulate the mechanics for their self-reporting system.

The honor system doesn't always work well in these cases.

snurl wrote:GW hasn't had a summer campaign for a few years. For 40k there were several, The Eye of Terror, Armageddon, and the last one, whose name escapes me but was the one responsible for introducing the Vostroyans.
On the fantasy side there was Albion, The Storm of Chaos, and The Nemesis Crown. One could mention Lustria, which was never developed into a campaign but was more of a sourcebook release which introduced rules for Jungle warfare.
The campaigns were worldwide affairs in which registered clubs and GW stores could fight themed battles and report their results on the GW website, which would influence the outcome of the campaign in the official fluff, in some cases advancing the timelines.
What happened to them is anyone's guess. While they were designed to promote starting new armies with new units and special characters I dont know if they were profitable enough to justify their cost. With studio staff cuts and other corporate cost cutting I fear they were made redundant. Also mentionable was the cries of fix from the net communities who seemed hyper critical of the entire thing.

The summer spent playing the "13th Black Crusade" campaign was one of the best for me,I was part of the Orks " Green Kroozade" and I swear my friends and I played more games and had more fun than I've had in some time..it would be nice if GW did something along those lines again.

FITZZ wrote:
The summer spent playing the "13th Black Crusade" campaign was one of the best for me,I was part of the Orks " Green Kroozade" and I swear my friends and I played more games and had more fun than I've had in some time..it would be nice if GW did something along those lines again.

This is a stance that has always bothered me.

Why does GW need to organize it? I mean, with a few days worth of effort--you and your friends could easily organize it yourselves.

Kanluwen wrote:

FITZZ wrote:
The summer spent playing the "13th Black Crusade" campaign was one of the best for me,I was part of the Orks " Green Kroozade" and I swear my friends and I played more games and had more fun than I've had in some time..it would be nice if GW did something along those lines again.

This is a stance that has always bothered me.

Why does GW need to organize it? I mean, with a few days worth of effort--you and your friends could easily organize it yourselves.

Problem is, it wasn't official, and wouldn't really effect the story line. (I am guessing, never played one)

Kanluwen wrote:

FITZZ wrote:
The summer spent playing the "13th Black Crusade" campaign was one of the best for me,I was part of the Orks " Green Kroozade" and I swear my friends and I played more games and had more fun than I've had in some time..it would be nice if GW did something along those lines again.

This is a stance that has always bothered me.

Why does GW need to organize it? I mean, with a few days worth of effort--you and your friends could easily organize it yourselves.

No doubt, my friends and I have organized small campaigns before...but what I meant was a larger "community encompassing" campaign.
believe me Kan...it was a great summer.

Happygrunt wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:

FITZZ wrote:
The summer spent playing the "13th Black Crusade" campaign was one of the best for me,I was part of the Orks " Green Kroozade" and I swear my friends and I played more games and had more fun than I've had in some time..it would be nice if GW did something along those lines again.

This is a stance that has always bothered me.

Why does GW need to organize it? I mean, with a few days worth of effort--you and your friends could easily organize it yourselves.

Problem is, it wasn't official, and wouldn't really effect the story line. (I am guessing, never played one)

The official ones don't affect the storyline either.

They started doing them around the same time as White Wolf pretty much shot themselves in the foot with letting the playerbase dictate stuff from their campaigns.

GW though, realized it probably wouldn't end well


Automatically Appended Next Post:

FITZZ wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:

FITZZ wrote:
The summer spent playing the "13th Black Crusade" campaign was one of the best for me,I was part of the Orks " Green Kroozade" and I swear my friends and I played more games and had more fun than I've had in some time..it would be nice if GW did something along those lines again.

This is a stance that has always bothered me.

Why does GW need to organize it? I mean, with a few days worth of effort--you and your friends could easily organize it yourselves.

No doubt, my friends and I have organized small campaigns before...but what I meant was a larger "community encompassing" campaign.
believe me Kan...it was a great summer.

I really prefer the smaller, intimate campaign settings.

I didn't like how some of the GW campaign interactions went. I didn't like having people holler "WE NEED TO ATTACK HERE!!!!11!!" or trying to start up demands based upon nothing at all.

It also irked me that there was no real way to prevent "scouting" within the discussion boards for posting results.

Kanluwen wrote:

Happy Grunt wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:

FITZZ wrote:
The summer spent playing the "13th Black Crusade" campaign was one of the best for me,I was part of the Orks " Green Kroozade" and I swear my friends and I played more games and had more fun than I've had in some time..it would be nice if GW did something along those lines again.

This is a stance that has always bothered me.

Why does GW need to organize it? I mean, with a few days worth of effort--you and your friends could easily organize it yourselves.

Problem is, it wasn't official, and wouldn't really effect the story line. (I am guessing, never played one)

The official ones don't affect the storyline either.

They started doing them around the same time as White Wolf pretty much shot themselves in the foot with letting the player base dictate stuff from their campaigns.

GW though, realized it probably wouldn't end well

Well,in several small ways the campaign I was part of did affect some minor fluff, a penal planet was destroyed and the Green Kroozade got recognized as an "official Waaagh".

St. Josmane's Hope was pretty much guaranteed to get offed!

FITZZ wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:

Happy Grunt wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:

FITZZ wrote:
The summer spent playing the "13th Black Crusade" campaign was one of the best for me,I was part of the Orks " Green Kroozade" and I swear my friends and I played more games and had more fun than I've had in some time..it would be nice if GW did something along those lines again.

This is a stance that has always bothered me.

Why does GW need to organize it? I mean, with a few days worth of effort--you and your friends could easily organize it yourselves.

Problem is, it wasn't official, and wouldn't really effect the story line. (I am guessing, never played one)

The official ones don't affect the storyline either.

They started doing them around the same time as White Wolf pretty much shot themselves in the foot with letting the player base dictate stuff from their campaigns.

GW though, realized it probably wouldn't end well

Well,in several small ways the campaign I was part of did affect some minor fluff, a penal planet was destroyed and the Green Kroozade got recognized as an "official Waaagh".

My envy for you burns as hot as 1000 suns. You made your mark in history. I wish to someday have a little piece of official cannon for 40k.

The Fall of medusa V (or something) was pretty great, wish they did something like that again.

Kanluen wrote:St. Josmane's Hope was pretty much guaranteed to get offed!

That was the name I couldn't remember...
I get what your saying Kan...the system definitely had some bugs in it and the opportunity for "unsportsmanlike behavior" was certainly there,but all and all I still had a blast.

FITZZ wrote:

Kanluen wrote:St. Josmane's Hope was pretty much guaranteed to get offed!

That was the name I couldn't remember...
I get what your saying Kan...the system definitely had some bugs in it and the opportunity for "unsportsmanlike behavior" was certainly there,but all and all I still had a blast.

The mega events were the best part, quite frankly.

Medusa V's Harakoni Warhawk event was a pinnacle Games Day event for me. I'm just irked I didn't get a t-shirt, but I do think there's a few photos out there of me at the game

Happygrunt wrote:

FITZZ wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:

Happy Grunt wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:

FITZZ wrote:
The summer spent playing the "13th Black Crusade" campaign was one of the best for me,I was part of the Orks " Green Kroozade" and I swear my friends and I played more games and had more fun than I've had in some time..it would be nice if GW did something along those lines again.

This is a stance that has always bothered me.

Why does GW need to organize it? I mean, with a few days worth of effort--you and your friends could easily organize it yourselves.

Problem is, it wasn't official, and wouldn't really effect the story line. (I am guessing, never played one)

The official ones don't affect the storyline either.

They started doing them around the same time as White Wolf pretty much shot themselves in the foot with letting the player base dictate stuff from their campaigns.

GW though, realized it probably wouldn't end well

Well,in several small ways the campaign I was part of did affect some minor fluff, a penal planet was destroyed and the Green Kroozade got recognized as an "official Waaagh".

My envy for you burns as hot as 1000 suns. You made your mark in history. I wish to someday have a little piece of official cannon for 40k.

Well...it was me and about 200 other Ork players worldwide....but yeah...it was really cool to get mentioned by GW.

FITZZ wrote:

Happygrunt wrote:

FITZZ wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:

Happy Grunt wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:

FITZZ wrote:
The summer spent playing the "13th Black Crusade" campaign was one of the best for me,I was part of the Orks " Green Kroozade" and I swear my friends and I played more games and had more fun than I've had in some time..it would be nice if GW did something along those lines again.

This is a stance that has always bothered me.

Why does GW need to organize it? I mean, with a few days worth of effort--you and your friends could easily organize it yourselves.

Problem is, it wasn't official, and wouldn't really effect the story line. (I am guessing, never played one)

The official ones don't affect the storyline either.

They started doing them around the same time as White Wolf pretty much shot themselves in the foot with letting the player base dictate stuff from their campaigns.

GW though, realized it probably wouldn't end well

Well,in several small ways the campaign I was part of did affect some minor fluff, a penal planet was destroyed and the Green Kroozade got recognized as an "official Waaagh".

My envy for you burns as hot as 1000 suns. You made your mark in history. I wish to someday have a little piece of official cannon for 40k.

Well...it was me and about 200 other Ork players worldwide....but yeah...it was really cool to get mentioned by GW.

Wait, wasn't the fight for the space over Cadia a HUGE BFG event? As was the ground battle? 13th crusade I believe.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Kanluwen wrote:

FITZZ wrote:

Kanluen wrote:St. Josmane's Hope was pretty much guaranteed to get offed!

That was the name I couldn't remember...
I get what your saying Kan...the system definitely had some bugs in it and the opportunity for "unsportsmanlike behavior" was certainly there,but all and all I still had a blast.

The mega events were the best part, quite frankly.

Medusa V's Harakoni Warhawk event was a pinnacle Games Day event for me. I'm just irked I didn't get a t-shirt, but I do think there's a few photos out there of me at the game

Can you find some pic's to prove this?

I miss them as well. I still have my slayer army from the storm of chaos. I still get it out for an occasional game just to see how my opponents will react.

If anyone is interested, go over to warseer and do a search for eye of terror or any of the other campaign names. Rereading the old threads may help shed some light on why campaigns are no longer on the menu.

Happygrunt wrote:

FITZZ wrote:

Happygrunt wrote:

FITZZ wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:

Happy Grunt wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:

FITZZ wrote:
The summer spent playing the "13th Black Crusade" campaign was one of the best for me,I was part of the Orks " Green Kroozade" and I swear my friends and I played more games and had more fun than I've had in some time..it would be nice if GW did something along those lines again.

This is a stance that has always bothered me.

Why does GW need to organize it? I mean, with a few days worth of effort--you and your friends could easily organize it yourselves.

Problem is, it wasn't official, and wouldn't really effect the story line. (I am guessing, never played one)

The official ones don't affect the storyline either.

They started doing them around the same time as White Wolf pretty much shot themselves in the foot with letting the player base dictate stuff from their campaigns.

GW though, realized it probably wouldn't end well

Well,in several small ways the campaign I was part of did affect some minor fluff, a penal planet was destroyed and the Green Kroozade got recognized as an "official Waaagh".

My envy for you burns as hot as 1000 suns. You made your mark in history. I wish to someday have a little piece of official cannon for 40k.

Well...it was me and about 200 other Ork players worldwide....but yeah...it was really cool to get mentioned by GW.

Wait, wasn't the fight for the space over Cadia a HUGE BFG event? As was the ground battle? 13th crusade I believe.

Yes, but it wasn't restricted to just Cadia.

Part of the whole deal was that Abbaddon 'bought' the loyalty of several Ork Klans to wrongfoot the Imperium on other fronts.

Kanluwen wrote:

FITZZ wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:St. Josmane's Hope was pretty much guaranteed to get offed!

That was the name I couldn't remember...
I get what your saying Kan...the system definitely had some bugs in it and the opportunity for "unsportsmanlike behavior" was certainly there,but all and all I still had a blast.

The mega events were the best part, quite frankly.

Medusa V's Harakoni Warhawk event was a pinnacle Games Day event for me. I'm just irked I didn't get a t-shirt, but I do think there's a few photos out there of me at the game

Can you find some pic's to prove this?

Even if I could, I wouldn't share them

What I look like while having fun is not for me to share with Dakka! You'll only get Kan in srs mode.

GW's Fluff has been stagnant ever since the Medusa Campaign, which supposidly happened in the last year of the 41st millenium. After that alot of "Legacy" characters were released in the codex books and the fluff didnt have much of a direction anymore. That could be the fluff reason why they havent done a campaign, as anything would move the timeline forward to the 42nd millenium.

The other main reason was probably due to the score padding mentioned above. I remember how the store basically was ready to give their majority win to the imperial side when Medusa started, because literally half the patrons were Space Marines, to say nothing of the Imperial Guard and Inquisitorial players.

I'd love more campaigns, but only on the condition of them promising to allow and maintain the army lists they produce for them.

If not, who the hell wants to shell out that sort of money on an army that's illegal in under 6 months.

MeanGreenStompa wrote:I'd love more campaigns, but only on the condition of them promising to allow and maintain the army lists they produce for them.

If not, who the hell wants to shell out that sort of money on an army that's illegal in under 6 months.

One thing that Privateer Press does is create one-off versions of a unit for the
duration of a league. So if you use model x during the month of the league, it
counts as special version y.

Counts-as characters and units would be a nice touch for a GW league/campaign. They
just shouldn't sell it as a "whole new army" unless they plan to continue forward
support for said armies. If it's clear from the beginning that the model rules are
temporary, I think people would be more willing to try those new ideas out again.

Another thing GW could do would be custom wargear for campaign play.

Variant armies such as SM chapters, Kabals, and Klanz are perfect for Campaigns, provided that they can conceivably be made from existing miniature stock, as well as be re-intergrated as soon as the books become invalidated. Things like the Lost and the Damned though, really shouldnt be made into a campaign army. It's the only army I can think of that really cant fit "back" into any other codex. 13th Company can comfortably revert back to Space Wolves, and Ulthwe Strikeforce is basically a normal Ulthwe army with no heavy tanks.

Fantasy campaign had the Dwarf Slayer army with special models with
chain axes or something like that. There's no re-integrating that.

Kanluwen wrote:

Happy Grunt wrote:

FITZZ wrote:

Happy Grunt wrote:

FITZZ wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:

Happy Grunt wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:

FITZZ wrote:
The summer spent playing the "13th Black Crusade" campaign was one of the best for me,I was part of the Orks " Green Kroozade" and I swear my friends and I played more games and had more fun than I've had in some time..it would be nice if GW did something along those lines again.

This is a stance that has always bothered me.

Why does GW need to organize it? I mean, with a few days worth of effort--you and your friends could easily organize it yourselves.

Problem is, it wasn't official, and wouldn't really effect the story line. (I am guessing, never played one)

The official ones don't affect the storyline either.

They started doing them around the same time as White Wolf pretty much shot themselves in the foot with letting the player base dictate stuff from their campaigns.

GW though, realized it probably wouldn't end well

Well,in several small ways the campaign I was part of did affect some minor fluff, a penal planet was destroyed and the Green Kroozade got recognized as an "official Waaagh".

My envy for you burns as hot as 1000 suns. You made your mark in history. I wish to someday have a little piece of official cannon for 40k.

Well...it was me and about 200 other Ork players worldwide....but yeah...it was really cool to get mentioned by GW.

Wait, wasn't the fight for the space over Cadia a HUGE BFG event? As was the ground battle? 13th crusade I believe.

Yes, but it wasn't restricted to just Cadia.

Part of the whole deal was that Abaddon 'bought' the loyalty of several Ork Clans to wrongfoot the Imperia on other fronts.
.

Cadia was the "Primary focus" of the Campaign,but there were many sectors that could be fought over (at least for most races,Tau and Tyranids were limited to combat withing a small amount of sectors).
The campaign involved BFG and 40k and GW compiled the results of all battles daily and posted the results ,victories and losses in each sector on the website,planets and systems would go from being Imperial controlled to total anarchy and back again based on the tallied data from the participants.
The Green Kroozade was a confederacy of Oak players who decided not to go along with the Chaos factions who wished to post attacks in the Cadian sector,but rather pick a alternative sector and ,as a group,fight all our battles there,concentrating attacks on one planet until it fell,then moving on to the next.
The Scarus sector was chosen,and on day one of the campaign 150+ Oak players "attacked" the Imperial Forge world or Mordax-Prime (renamed Mordakka by the Green Kroozade),over the weeks more Oak players rallied to the "kroozades" banner and bit by bit More Dakka fell to the Orks,by the end of the campaign the Scarus (Skar-Uz) sector was on the verge of being taken.
It really was a fantastic summer.

malfred wrote:Fantasy campaign had the Dwarf Slayer army with special models with
chain axes or something like that. There's no re-integrating that.

The Dwarf Hewer never actually needed "reintegrating". From the get-go, it was listed as a "Dogs of War" unit for non-Slayer Dwarf armies.

Didn't they get rid of Dogs of War? Or was it already on its way out the door?

I think it was on its way out the door, but they did the Dwarf Hewer and Mengil's Manhide Flayers in such a way that you didn't need the Dogs of War rules to field those units with their respective armies.

Kanluwen wrote:Summer campaigns were scrapped because people would manipulate the mechanics for their self-reporting system.

I very much doubt that the outcome and/or how it was achieved played any part at all in the decision to stop doing them.

Just like any other event that GW (or pretty much any other company, for that matter) sets up, the 'summer' campaigns were first and foremost sales tools. I would suspect (and have heard rumours to the effect from various people over the years) that the sales boost returned from running these events simply wasnt sufficient to justify the expense and effort involved in setting them up and running them.

Kanluwen wrote:

FITZZ wrote:
The summer spent playing the "13th Black Crusade" campaign was one of the best for me,I was part of the Orks " Green Kroozade" and I swear my friends and I played more games and had more fun than I've had in some time..it would be nice if GW did something along those lines again.

This is a stance that has always bothered me.

Why does GW need to organize it? I mean, with a few days worth of effort--you and your friends could easily organize it yourselves.

And a few months worth of effort to fight the legal challenges by GW for your use of their IP?

If any campaign was going to be large enough to be fun (like the 13th Black Crusade, or the 3rd War for Armageddon were. They were literally world-wide, it was nice to be part of something larger than you and your friends and your store!), it would be large enough for GW's legal attack dogs to savage.

Plus, last last 7 years haven't been kind to non-GW LGSes, friendly and otherwise.

If GW were to have a campaign like that again, it'd give me a reason to actually visit their stores.

Otherwise, I'll stick with the FLGS. Much nicer.

Fafnir wrote:If GW were to have a campaign like that again, it'd give me a reason to actually visit their stores.

Otherwise, I'll stick with the FLGS. Much nicer.

Well,the nice thing about the campaign I was a part of was that even if you weren't close to a GW store,you could still participate.
So long as you and your opponent were both registered on the GW site,you could fight you battles anywhere,GW,FLGS or even at home.
After the game,you and your opponent simply went online,entered the results of your battle and what sector/planet they were fought on and GW tallied them up.

I'd prefer a more organized system, and from a marketing perspective, it would do GW good to do it in such a way too. I've only been in the wargaming hobby for 3 years, so I can't say anything from actual experience.

By having the games take place in store, you could organize bigger games and have more control over the legitimacy of your results.

And for GW, people would have another reason to actually go to their stores (in all honesty, for all the reasons that I can find to not go to their stores, I can't think of a single reason to actually go to them), meaning people would be in their stores, playing plenty of games, and be much more likely to actually buy something rather than just relying on people to buy things based on a temporary codex.

The armies presented in storm of chaos were described in the book as official. It was a low blow by GW to reverse that.

Doctor Optimal wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:

FITZZ wrote:
The summer spent playing the "13th Black Crusade" campaign was one of the best for me,I was part of the Orks " Green Kroozade" and I swear my friends and I played more games and had more fun than I've had in some time..it would be nice if GW did something along those lines again.

This is a stance that has always bothered me.

Why does GW need to organize it? I mean, with a few days worth of effort--you and your friends could easily organize it yourselves.

And a few months worth of effort to fight the legal challenges by GW for your use of their IP?

What the hell are you talking about?

The only way GW would be setting up "legal challenges" is if you're trying to sell your campaign setup.
Which is, in any case, is a jerk move.

If any campaign was going to be large enough to be fun (like the 13th Black Crusade, or the 3rd War for Armageddon were. They were literally world-wide, it was nice to be part of something larger than you and your friends and your store!), it would be large enough for GW's legal attack dogs to savage.

Again: what the hell are you talking about with the legalities?
Why do you need a campaign to be "larger than you and your friends and your store!"?
The world-wide campaigns were nice and all, but there's nothing at all stopping you and your friends and your stores actually running your own narrative campaigns.
Bigger, in this case, does not mean fun.

Plus, last last 7 years haven't been kind to non-GW LGSes, friendly and otherwise.

Not sure what this has to do with you and your gaming group/LGS organizing your own campaigns.

snurl wrote:The armies presented in storm of chaos were described in the book as official. It was a low blow by GW to reverse that.

If you expected the armies in a campaign book to be valid years past the ending of that campaign...
I don't know what to tell you other than .

Fafnir wrote:If GW were to have a campaign like that again, it'd give me a reason to actually visit their stores.

Otherwise, I'll stick with the FLGS. Much nicer.

As Fitzz mentioned: you didn't have to go to a FLGS or a GW shop to report wins/losses, both 'players' just had to be registered(there were reports early on of one guy making hundreds of false reports). That's part of the problem with the setup that GW used for their campaigns. The other part definitely was people cracking the mechanics and exploiting the hell out of them.

Fafnir wrote:I'd prefer a more organized system, and from a marketing perspective, it would do GW good to do it in such a way too. I've only been in the wargaming hobby for 3 years, so I can't say anything from actual experience.

All the organization in the world doesn't mean jack if people don't show up. Having been the guy running the Lustria campaign for my old FLGS--I can tell you that campaign was a bomb. Even with prize support from GW and knowing that people had Warhammer Fantasy armies to work from, people couldn't be arsed to show up.

I know it wasn't my management of the campaign, because when I did it for Medusa V---they couldn't get enough of it.

By having the games take place in store, you could organize bigger games and have more control over the legitimacy of your results.

Organizing bigger games assumes that the store has the room for the bigger games. That's a fallacy. I know, I know. It could easily work better that way--but it relies upon actually knowing how many people will show up.

With the "bigger" games, you inevitably have stragglers coming out of the woodwork and you get instances where your carefully crafted background for the campaign gets shot to pieces because someone who had never shown up for the rest of the campaign.

It's a minor thing, but it's irksome when you've spent months organizing up your campaign and then actually playing through it.

And for GW, people would have another reason to actually go to their stores (in all honesty, for all the reasons that I can find to not go to their stores, I can't think of a single reason to actually go to them), meaning people would be in their stores, playing plenty of games, and be much more likely to actually buy something rather than just relying on people to buy things based on a temporary codex.

I don't think this would happen, frankly.

But hey. It might.

Armageddon 3 was a great one, with results that are now well known background story. Other campaigns, nope.

I wonder who had the bright idea to let a Summer campaign decide the fate of a very important world.

Results are in: Cadia should fall by all accounts.

Hang on, in a few months there's a new Guard codex coming and it's going to be about Cadians.

Or how about that façade ending of Storm of Chaos. An important Dwarf character crushed by a dragon, a massive Vampire army scared away by a threat and the so-called champion of Chaos getting headbutt into the ground by the best Orc ever, who then said "I win" and walks off just like that.

Happygrunt wrote:Problem is, it wasn't official, and wouldn't really effect the story line. (I am guessing, never played one)

The official ones were pretty obviously meant to have little impact, too.

insaniak wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:Summer campaigns were scrapped because people would manipulate the mechanics for their self-reporting system.

I very much doubt that the outcome and/or how it was achieved played any part at all in the decision to stop doing them.

Just like any other event that GW (or pretty much any other company, for that matter) sets up, the 'summer' campaigns were first and foremost sales tools. I would suspect (and have heard rumours to the effect from various people over the years) that the sales boost returned from running these events simply wasnt sufficient to justify the expense and effort involved in setting them up and running them.

This doesn't surprise me in the slightest. Everything now for GW is cost vs. profit, and so despite the fact that tens of thousands of people took part in the campaigns (and enjoyed them, for the most part) they have been yet another part of the admired components of the company to go into the trash.

The Eye of Terror campaign was absolutely awesome, although it became obvious towards the end (despite Andy Chambers promises) that the result would not change the setting. So, despite the forces of order getting a drubbing (for the most part), and Cadia being firmly in Abaddon's cross-hairs, the Black Legion warlord decided to .... erm... . steal some pylon thing.. so he could.. do something really sinister in the future, like This, despite the objective of the assault being clearly descriped as Cadia at the start of the campaign.

I thought the way the forces of disorder discovered the game mechanic, organised the disorder battles and at the same time helped sew confusion amongst order, was one of the coolest things I have ever seen in the history of wargaming. Then the Order side running about like a bunch of headless chickens with everyone wanting to be SUPREME LEADER this or WARLORD that (I can't remember their names, but two groups giving themselves the same anagram-abbreviation, had me in absolute stitches). All except for the Eldar IIRC, who managed to create some semblance of organised resistance.

@BrookM: That was the point to Garagrim. He took the slayer oath for the whole Karak on himself to go absolve them (Dwarf Jesus FTW). The slowed part of that story was when the Slayer king renewed the vow to go avenge him.

Kanluwen wrote:What the hell are you talking about?

The only way GW would be setting up "legal challenges" is if you're trying to sell your campaign setup.
Which is, in any case, is a jerk move.

I seem to recall there were quite a few fansites that were issued quite...unpleasant letters to remove any GW trade marks and images from there sites. While I very much doubt GW would stop a large scale campaign myself, I personally wouldn't run one because I'd be quite frankly afraid of getting the same treatment as the fansites did. I wouldn't want to create something that I'd then have to shut down because GW is afraid it's intellectual property may be adversely affected.

Jon Garrett wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:What the hell are you talking about?

The only way GW would be setting up "legal challenges" is if you're trying to sell your campaign setup.
Which is, in any case, is a jerk move.

I seem to recall there were quite a few fansites that were issued quite...unpleasant letters to remove any GW trade marks and images from there sites. While I very much doubt GW would stop a large scale campaign myself, I personally wouldn't run one because I'd be quite frankly afraid of getting the same treatment as the fansites did. I wouldn't want to create something that I'd then have to shut down because GW is afraid it's intellectual property may be adversely affected.

They weren't running campaigns as fans.
They were, in some cases, maintaining archives of scanned GW material and asking for 'donations' to access those archives.

In some cases, but not all. Some sites, at least to my admittedly not perfect memory, simply had Games Workshop images present on there sites. And while, at the end of the day, it is completely Games Workshop's right to stop this stuff, seeing things like this in the past would make me, personally, very nervous about doing anything more Games Workshop than Dakka Dakka is.

Jon Garrett wrote:In some cases, but not all. Some sites, at least to my admittedly not perfect memory, simply had Games Workshop images present on there sites. And while, at the end of the day, it is completely Games Workshop's right to stop this stuff, seeing things like this in the past would make me, personally, very nervous about doing anything more Games Workshop than Dakka Dakka is.

I just don't see GW shutting down fans trying to organize a campaign.

Now, if those fans were trying to charge people money to participate in that campaign? Oh yeah, they'd shut that down faster than a dog haulin' after a squirrel.

Kanluwen wrote:
I just don't see GW shutting down fans trying to organize a campaign.

But then again no-one could see them shutting down and attacking fans who were helping them keep Blood Bowl alive (see the LRB debacle) but there you go...

filbert wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:
I just don't see GW shutting down fans trying to organize a campaign.

But then again no-one could see them shutting down and attacking fans who were helping them keep Blood Bowl alive (see the LRB debacle) but there you go...

That was far more complicated than just an unprovoked attack, and you damn well know it.

Several Blood Bowl sites were advertising themselves as "the official home" to Blood Bowl and trying to commission companies to produce Blood Bowl miniatures. Some of those same sites were requiring you to register/pay to access the content that GW themselves had available for free.

Kanluwen wrote:

filbert wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:
I just don't see GW shutting down fans trying to organize a campaign.

But then again no-one could see them shutting down and attacking fans who were helping them keep Blood Bowl alive (see the LRB debacle) but there you go...

That was far more complicated than just an unprovoked attack, and you damn well know it.

Several Blood Bowl sites were advertising themselves as "the official home" to Blood Bowl and trying to commission companies to produce Blood Bowl miniatures. Some of those same sites were requiring you to register/pay to access the content that GW themselves had available for free.

Regardless of the reasons, GW have form for clamping down on people and sites like a ton of lawyers.

filbert wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:

filbert wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:
I just don't see GW shutting down fans trying to organize a campaign.

But then again no-one could see them shutting down and attacking fans who were helping them keep Blood Bowl alive (see the LRB debacle) but there you go...

That was far more complicated than just an unprovoked attack, and you damn well know it.

Several Blood Bowl sites were advertising themselves as "the official home" to Blood Bowl and trying to commission companies to produce Blood Bowl miniatures. Some of those same sites were requiring you to register/pay to access the content that GW themselves had available for free.

Regardless of the reasons, GW have form for clamping down on people and sites like a ton of lawyers.

Except the reasons are exactly why they "clamped down on people and sites".

Was it the best idea? No. But then again, neither was trying to push another company's models for the LRB and still calling it "Blood Bowl".

Kanluwen wrote:

filbert wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:

filbert wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:
I just don't see GW shutting down fans trying to organize a campaign.

But then again no-one could see them shutting down and attacking fans who were helping them keep Blood Bowl alive (see the LRB debacle) but there you go...

That was far more complicated than just an unprovoked attack, and you damn well know it.

Several Blood Bowl sites were advertising themselves as "the official home" to Blood Bowl and trying to commission companies to produce Blood Bowl miniatures. Some of those same sites were requiring you to register/pay to access the content that GW themselves had available for free.

Regardless of the reasons, GW have form for clamping down on people and sites like a ton of lawyers.

Except the reasons are exactly why they "clamped down on people and sites".

Was it the best idea? No. But then again, neither was trying to push another company's models for the LRB and still calling it "Blood Bowl".

I can't be bothered to track down every thread from the whole episode but here is a link presenting one site owner's response to GW's intimidation:

http://www.heresy-online.net/forums/showthread.php?t=49821

Now you tell me that this isn't anything other than heavy-handed and is rational? I'm sure some sites may well have been charging people to register and that provoked GW's ire. But just as many other fan sites didn't and haven't and still got hammered.

filbert wrote:

I can't be bothered to track down every thread from the whole episode but here is a link presenting one site owner's response to GW's intimidation:

http://www.heresy-online.net/forums/showthread.php?t=49821

Now you tell me that this isn't anything other than heavy-handed and is rational? I'm sure some sites may well have been charging people to register and that provoked GW's ire. But just as many other fan sites didn't and haven't and still got hammered.

I didn't say it's not heavy-handed.

But when it came about it was somewhat rational. "Talkbloodbowl" had flagged itself as 'the home of Blood Bowl', and that was right as the Blood Bowl video game was coming out.
Add to it that we were seeing a new head of GW Legal who likely knew nothing about Blood Bowl other than it being a registered GW IP, and you had the makings of a gakstorm in a teapot.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Just bear in mind:

Nothing in that whole situation is anything like running a campaign. At best, a well-run campaign will be a narrative story with multiple outcomes ala the kinds of fiction published on this very site.

At worst--it will be "fanwank" and worth having around just so we can point at it and say "This is what you don't do."

I'd imagine the reasons individuals (or groups) don't run major world wide campaigns is the same reason GW doesn't: too much time and effort for the benefit.

GW does paint itself in a bit of a corner regarding this situation, however. By aggressively enforcing it's rights to be the only source of 40k material, GW sets up the expectation that it will supply 40k material. Between people that simply accept GW's claims, and those too gunshy to commit, telling people to create fan based content for anything GW related is not going to find fertile ground.

Pacific wrote:

insaniak wrote:

Kanluen wrote:Summer campaigns were scrapped because people would manipulate the mechanics for their self-reporting system.

I very much doubt that the outcome and/or how it was achieved played any part at all in the decision to stop doing them.

Just like any other event that GW (or pretty much any other company, for that matter) sets up, the 'summer' campaigns were first and foremost sales tools. I would suspect (and have heard rumours to the effect from various people over the years) that the sales boost returned from running these events simply wasn't sufficient to justify the expense and effort involved in setting them up and running them.

This doesn't surprise me in the slightest. Everything now for GW is cost vs. profit, and so despite the fact that tens of thousands of people took part in the campaigns (and enjoyed them, for the most part) they have been yet another part of the admired components of the company to go into the trash.

The Eye of Terror campaign was absolutely awesome, although it became obvious towards the end (despite Andy Chambers promises) that the result would not change the setting. So, despite the forces of order getting a drubbing (for the most part), and Cadia being firmly in Abaddon's cross-hairs, the Black Legion warlord decided to .... erm... . steal some pylon thing.. so he could.. do something really sinister in the future, like This, despite the objective of the assault being clearly described as Cadia at the start of the campaign.

I thought the way the forces of disorder discovered the game mechanic, organised the disorder battles and at the same time helped sew confusion amongst order, was one of the coolest things I have ever seen in the history of wargaming. Then the Order side running about like a bunch of headless chickens with everyone wanting to be SUPREME LEADER this or WARLORD that (I can't remember their names, but two groups giving themselves the same anagram-abbreviation, had me in absolute stitches). All except for the Eldar IIRC, who managed to create some semblance of organised resistance.

Yes,as I recall their were some "fail safes" built into the campaign so that GW retained a level of "control" over the final outcome.
Still,as you stated,the company itself was awesome,I don't recall the names of the Forces of Order "Command groups" (such as they were) ATM,but I do recall a group amongst the forces of Disorder that went by the Tittle of "The Triad"...I wasn't part of their collective,but IIRC they were quite instrumental in organizing a great many Chaos players and dealing some serious damage to the Forces of Order.

FITZZ wrote:

Pacific wrote:

insaniak wrote:

Kanluen wrote:Summer campaigns were scrapped because people would manipulate the mechanics for their self-reporting system.

I very much doubt that the outcome and/or how it was achieved played any part at all in the decision to stop doing them.

Just like any other event that GW (or pretty much any other company, for that matter) sets up, the 'summer' campaigns were first and foremost sales tools. I would suspect (and have heard rumours to the effect from various people over the years) that the sales boost returned from running these events simply wasn't sufficient to justify the expense and effort involved in setting them up and running them.

This doesn't surprise me in the slightest. Everything now for GW is cost vs. profit, and so despite the fact that tens of thousands of people took part in the campaigns (and enjoyed them, for the most part) they have been yet another part of the admired components of the company to go into the trash.

The Eye of Terror campaign was absolutely awesome, although it became obvious towards the end (despite Andy Chambers promises) that the result would not change the setting. So, despite the forces of order getting a drubbing (for the most part), and Cadia being firmly in Abaddon's cross-hairs, the Black Legion warlord decided to .... erm... . steal some pylon thing.. so he could.. do something really sinister in the future, like This, despite the objective of the assault being clearly described as Cadia at the start of the campaign.

I thought the way the forces of disorder discovered the game mechanic, organised the disorder battles and at the same time helped sew confusion amongst order, was one of the coolest things I have ever seen in the history of wargaming. Then the Order side running about like a bunch of headless chickens with everyone wanting to be SUPREME LEADER this or WARLORD that (I can't remember their names, but two groups giving themselves the same anagram-abbreviation, had me in absolute stitches). All except for the Eldar IIRC, who managed to create some semblance of organised resistance.

Yes,as I recall their were some "fail safes" built into the campaign so that GW retained a level of "control" over the final outcome.
Still,as you stated,the company itself was awesome,I don't recall the names of the Forces of Order "Command groups" (such as they were) ATM,but I do recall a group amongst the forces of Disorder that went by the Title of "The Triad"...I wasn't part of their collective,but IIRC they were quite instrumental in organizing a great many Chaos players and dealing some serious damage to the Forces of Order.

The Triad, quite frankly, ruined a large amount of my fun for the 13th Black Crusade.

They 'discovered' how the reporting mechanics worked, and purposefully exploited it while also creating dummy accounts to chime in with false information on the Order's side of the fence.

It was a dick move, and just plain unnecessary imo.

I presume you were a force of order player Kanluwen? You have to see how that was extremely entertaining from the other side of the fence.

The point was, not everyone followed what the Triad were doing, but it was made easier by the complete ineptitude of trying to make any kind of organisation on the side of Order. So many order players kept posting wins on worlds/systems which were practically impossible to capture, no matter how many wins were spammed at that location. It didn't take a genius to work out that there was some kind of system in place to that effect, even though the Triad eventually worked out such a system exactly I think many players were already on the right track with it.

The posting of inaccurate information by 'spies' from the forces of disorder I thought was hilarious (and a rare example of real life matching the game universe ) but to be honest, if I remember there's was just a few voices amongst dozens of people proclaiming themselves to be 'Lord Solar xxxxx ' or whatever, all spamming 'ATTACK SYSTEM x' (usually the incorrect one). Of course the disorder side had these as well, but a few voices managed to make themselves heard, and through getting results managed to obtain a kind of authority despite the chaos of the system. I liked the fact that that happened, and it made the campaign a hundred times better for me (although I can see how I would be pissed had I been an order player)

Kanluwen wrote:

Jon Garrett wrote:In some cases, but not all. Some sites, at least to my admittedly not perfect memory, simply had Games Workshop images present on there sites. And while, at the end of the day, it is completely Games Workshop's right to stop this stuff, seeing things like this in the past would make me, personally, very nervous about doing anything more Games Workshop than Dakka Dakka is.

I just don't see GW shutting down fans trying to organize a campaign.

Now, if those fans were trying to charge people money to participate in that campaign? Oh yeah, they'd shut that down faster than a dog haulin' after a squirrel.

So what you're saying is the organizers have no chance, whatsoever, of recouping their server and bandwidth costs without being sued into the ground by those for whom they are pimping?

Gee, I wonder why more people aren't jumping at that opportunity!

E: And even if I run it as a loss, GW won't assure me immunity, just that they *probably* won't sue? What a bargain!

@ Kan.

Hmm, I had no idea The Triad took part in any unsportsmanlike activities...of course as I said I wasn't part of their collective.
How certain are you that they created "dummy accounts"?
If it is true...yes,extreme dick move.

Pacific wrote:I presume you were a force of order player Kanluwen? You have to see how that was extremely entertaining from the other side of the fence.

The point was, not everyone followed what the Triad were doing, but it was made easier by the complete ineptitude of trying to make any kind of organisation on the side of Order. So many order players kept posting wins on worlds/systems which were practically impossible to capture, no matter how many wins were spammed at that location. It didn't take a genius to work out that there was some kind of system in place to that effect, even though the Triad eventually worked out such a system exactly I think many players were already on the right track with it.

And it still was bollocks, frankly. The Triad didn't "work out a system".
They exploited the game mechanics to their own end, and told their side exactly how to use those mechanics.

The posting of inaccurate information by 'spies' from the forces of disorder I thought was hilarious (and a rare example of real life matching the game universe ) but to be honest, if I remember there's was just a few voices amongst dozens of people proclaiming themselves to be 'Lord Solar xxxxx ' or whatever, all spamming 'ATTACK SYSTEM x' (usually the incorrect one). Of course the disorder side had these as well, but a few voices managed to make themselves heard, and through getting results managed to obtain a kind of authority despite the chaos of the system. I liked the fact that that happened, and it made the campaign a hundred times better for me (although I can see how I would be pissed had I been an order player)

Yeah, but at the same time the game universe has no real nature for 'spies' to function. This isn't the "real life" where everyone looks the same.

An Ork or Tyranid or even a Chaos Space Marine can't walk into an Imperial or Eldar strategic meeting without getting gunned down.

So yeah. I found the constant dummy account shenanigans BS. Not to mention

Doctor Optimal wrote:So what you're saying is the organizers have no chance, whatsoever, of recouping their server and bandwidth costs without being sued into the ground by those for whom they are pimping?

Gee, I wonder why more people aren't jumping at that opportunity!

Sorry, I guess you're not understanding this properly.

You don't need to make a site "devoted" to running just that campaign. I could feasibly organize and run an entire campaign here on Dakka--and it wouldn't impact Dakka at all. It would just require me to be a dedicated organizer for that campaign.

God forbid you have to do a little work getting things in order so players have an enjoyable time!

Online reporting statistics are easily exploited anyways, as Armageddon and 13th Black Crusade and Medusa V demonstrated.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

FITZZ wrote: @ Kan.

Hmm, I had no idea The Triad took part in any unsportsmanlike activities...of course as I said I wasn't part of their collective.
How certain are you that they created "dummy accounts"?
If it is true...yes,extreme dick move.

Pretty certain, as I recalled a few of them bragging about it on Portent/Warseer.

I see..

In general The Green Kroozade did their own thing,not relying on "Triad tactics" to formulate our attacks.
For us it was a simple matter of hammer a planet until it fell and move on to the next.
Seems most of the people on the Ork boards,at least those that were part of the Green Kroozade were more interested in having a good time than spying.

FITZZ wrote: I see..

In general The Green Kroozade did their own thing,not relying on "Triad tactics" to formulate our attacks.
For us it was a simple matter of hammer a planet until it fell and move on to the next.
Seems most of the people on the Ork boards,at least those that were part of the Green Kroozade were more interested in having a good time than spying.

Bear in mind: I'm sure it wasn't every single one of them. But the ones who found out the mechanics of the reporting system at least were exploiting it like crazy.

I remember Andy Chambers said at a Games Day discussion panel that during the process of the campaign, when they were getting ready for one of the Games Day events--they found a 'spike' where Disorder effectively went from losing across the board--to suddenly creaming Order everywhere.

That's when they decided to build in a few 'failsafes' in terms of lore and the like.

Now, a lot of this could have been avoided if GW had a players organization, where everybody has a registered number for tournament and campaign play, and a staff that works to organize play. In fact, that organization could also issue FAQs, coordinate tournaments, and even playtest and distribute new scenarios.

But that contradicts GW's philosophy that nobody buys their stuff because they want to play the game.

Polonius wrote:Now, a lot of this could have been avoided if GW had a players organization, where everybody has a registered number for tournament and campaign play, and a staff that works to organize play. In fact, that organization could also issue FAQs, coordinate tournaments, and even playtest and distribute new scenarios.

But that contradicts GW's philosophy that nobody buys their stuff because they want to play the game.

Are you kidding me?

People don't even want to register on the GW website to access their downloads section. I don't see them doing anything but whining about having to join a "players' organization".

Hah, i remember when the manchester store held a massive campaign day, they had a table shaped like a giant X setup. in the middle was a large industrial complex type building there was a road that ran from one end of one arm to another and the other arms were mixed terrain.

out of the building poured forth more Genestealers then i have ever seen in one room in my life, hybrids galore a magus a broodlord and allsorts of commandeered tanks and whatnot.
on each arm of the X there was a space marine force, Blood Angels, Dark Angels, Space Wolves and Ultramarines.

Quite possibly one of the most awesome games ever.

Kanluwen wrote:

Pacific wrote:I presume you were a force of order player Kanluwen? You have to see how that was extremely entertaining from the other side of the fence.

The point was, not everyone followed what the Triad were doing, but it was made easier by the complete ineptitude of trying to make any kind of organisation on the side of Order. So many order players kept posting wins on worlds/systems which were practically impossible to capture, no matter how many wins were spammed at that location. It didn't take a genius to work out that there was some kind of system in place to that effect, even though the Triad eventually worked out such a system exactly I think many players were already on the right track with it.

And it still was bollocks, frankly. The Triad didn't "work out a system".
They exploited the game mechanics to their own end, and told their side exactly how to use those mechanics.

Hey man no need to go on the defensive, it was years ago now, no one was killed :(

There was a 'system', some systems were vastly easier to capture than others. Essentially, some systems (such as Cadia) were impossible to capture directly.
By studying the effects of wins posted against different sectors, and the change of % ownership, they were able to work out which system would be most effective to post wins against.
Without getting into arguments of semantics, that sounds like 'working out a system' to me.
Something which the order side failed to do - the people who actually had made similar calculations themselves (I can't remember them exactly, but it wasn't something you worked out in 5 minutes over a bowl of cereal, there was some serious statistics involved) and were trying to preach reason to the direction of the attacks were drowned out by dozens of people all shouting that they knew best, and their voices were lost.
Like I said the exception to this was the Eldar, and I think they alone had significant success on the order side as they followed a more disciplined approach, and no doubt the same system as the forces of disorder.

I like the fact that someone actually worked it out, rather than just spam results against impossible targets. I can see your point about it seeming a little ridiculous, but I think if looked at from a certain perspective you can see the logic.
- The Imperium threw army after army towards an impossible victory (essentially an analogy of the 40k universe). The high lords of Terra bickering over who should go where and do what. Meanwhile, agents of chaos had infiltrated positions of power to effect those orders, or else intercepted and prevented transmissions. The enigmatic eldar were able to make gains, their farseers having ordained the future (perhaps you could argue Abaddon had used his sorcerors to similar effect?)

I think if GW had wanted to advance the storyline and destroyed Cadia, and not got cold feet once the result started to become clear, they could have done so with a sound basis in the results.

Pacific wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:

Pacific wrote:I presume you were a force of order player Kanluen? You have to see how that was extremely entertaining from the other side of the fence.

The point was, not everyone followed what the Triad were doing, but it was made easier by the complete ineptitude of trying to make any kind of organisation on the side of Order. So many order players kept posting wins on worlds/systems which were practically impossible to capture, no matter how many wins were spammed at that location. It didn't take a genius to work out that there was some kind of system in place to that effect, even though the Triad eventually worked out such a system exactly I think many players were already on the right track with it.

And it still was bollocks, frankly. The Triad didn't "work out a system".
They exploited the game mechanics to their own end, and told their side exactly how to use those mechanics.

Hey man no need to go on the defensive, it was years ago now, no one was killed :(

There was a 'system', some systems were vastly easier to capture than others. Essentially, some systems (such aCadia) were impossible to capture directly.
By studying the effects of wins posted against different sectors, and the change of % ownership, they were able to work out which system would be most effective to post wins against.
Without getting into arguments of semantics, that sounds like 'working out a system' to me.
Something which the order side failed to do - the people who actually had made similar calculations themselves (I can't remember them exactly, but it wasn't something you worked out in 5 minutes over a bowl of cereal, there was some serious statistics involved) and were trying to preach reason to the direction of the attacks were drowned out by dozens of people all shouting that they knew best, and their voices were lost.
Like I said the exception to this was the Elder, and I think they alone had significant success on the order side as they followed a more disciplined approach, and no doubt the same system as the forces of disorder.

I like the fact that someone actually worked it out, rather than just spam results against impossible targets. I can see your point about it seeming a little ridiculous, but I think if looked at from a certain perspective you can see the logic.
- The Imperium threw army after army towards an impossible victory (essentially an analogy of the 40k universe). The high lords of Terra bickering over who should go where and do what. Meanwhile, agents of chaos had infiltrated positions of power to effect those orders, or else intercepted and prevented transmissions. The enigmatic eldar were able to make gains, their farseers having ordained the future (perhaps you could argue Abaddon had used his sorcerer's to similar effect?)

I think if GW had wanted to advance the storyline and destroyed Cadia, and not got cold feet once the result started to become clear, they could have done so with a sound basis in the results.

I believe many people knew going into the campaign that GW wasn't even going to consider allowing major changes to occur in the Cadian sector and that attacks posted there would ultimately be a bit pointless.
That was the primary reason our group opted to post in Scarus and not throw in with the Forces of Disorder that were concentrating on Cadia.

Pacific wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:

Pacific wrote:I presume you were a force of order player Kanluwen? You have to see how that was extremely entertaining from the other side of the fence.

The point was, not everyone followed what the Triad were doing, but it was made easier by the complete ineptitude of trying to make any kind of organisation on the side of Order. So many order players kept posting wins on worlds/systems which were practically impossible to capture, no matter how many wins were spammed at that location. It didn't take a genius to work out that there was some kind of system in place to that effect, even though the Triad eventually worked out such a system exactly I think many players were already on the right track with it.

And it still was bollocks, frankly. The Triad didn't "work out a system".
They exploited the game mechanics to their own end, and told their side exactly how to use those mechanics.

Hey man no need to go on the defensive, it was years ago now, no one was killed :(

There was a 'system', some systems were vastly easier to capture than others. Essentially, some systems (such as Cadia) were impossible to capture directly.
By studying the effects of wins posted against different sectors, and the change of % ownership, they were able to work out which system would be most effective to post wins against.
Without getting into arguments of semantics, that sounds like 'working out a system' to me.
Something which the order side failed to do - the people who actually had made similar calculations themselves (I can't remember them exactly, but it wasn't something you worked out in 5 minutes over a bowl of cereal, there was some serious statistics involved) and were trying to preach reason to the direction of the attacks were drowned out by dozens of people all shouting that they knew best, and their voices were lost.
Like I said the exception to this was the Eldar, and I think they alone had significant success on the order side as they followed a more disciplined approach, and no doubt the same system as the forces of disorder.

And that's another problem to me, frankly.
Why the hell were people working out "serious statistics" for a bloody game?

I like the fact that someone actually worked it out, rather than just spam results against impossible targets. I can see your point about it seeming a little ridiculous, but I think if looked at from a certain perspective you can see the logic.
- The Imperium threw army after army towards an impossible victory (essentially an analogy of the 40k universe). The high lords of Terra bickering over who should go where and do what. Meanwhile, agents of chaos had infiltrated positions of power to effect those orders, or else intercepted and prevented transmissions. The enigmatic eldar were able to make gains, their farseers having ordained the future (perhaps you could argue Abaddon had used his sorcerors to similar effect?)

There's 12 High Lords of Terra, not 1500+ first off
And there's no feasible fluffy way "agents of Chaos" would have been highly placed enough to affect orders that are deemed as coming from the Emperor himself.

I think if GW had wanted to advance the storyline and destroyed Cadia, and not got cold feet once the result started to become clear, they could have done so with a sound basis in the results.

And again: Abaddon's goal was never to destroy Cadia. Doing that would have gained him nothing, and in fact would have damaged his ability to make an organized war effort against the Imperium as a whole.

You know how the sector's called "The Cadian Gate"? It doesn't specifically apply to Cadia. It was established in the Eisenhorn books previously that the whole thing that makes "The Cadian Gate" important is the artifacts on the surface of Cadia that effectively stabilizes the massive warpstorms surrounding the Eye of Terror and allows for Abaddon and the other forces of Chaos hiding within the Eye to transit to/from the Warp in large organized efforts to strike at the Imperium.

Kanluwen wrote:

Polonius wrote:Now, a lot of this could have been avoided if GW had a players organization, where everybody has a registered number for tournament and campaign play, and a staff that works to organize play. In fact, that organization could also issue FAQs, coordinate tournaments, and even playtest and distribute new scenarios.

But that contradicts GW's philosophy that nobody buys their stuff because they want to play the game.

Are you kidding me?

People don't even want to register on the GW website to access their downloads section. I don't see them doing anything but whining about having to join a "players' organization".

What Polonius has basically said is 'GW should adopt PP's structured campaign system'.

What Kanluwen basically replied is 'It'll never work'.

PP's structured campaign system does indeed work, and many are the threads organizing faction players and coordinating attacks against strategic assets/territories when the campaign is a-rolling.

Innovation requires a little optimism from the onset.

sourclams wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:

Polonius wrote:Now, a lot of this could have been avoided if GW had a players organization, where everybody has a registered number for tournament and campaign play, and a staff that works to organize play. In fact, that organization could also issue FAQs, coordinate tournaments, and even playtest and distribute new scenarios.

But that contradicts GW's philosophy that nobody buys their stuff because they want to play the game.

Are you kidding me?

People don't even want to register on the GW website to access their downloads section. I don't see them doing anything but whining about having to join a "players' organization".

What Polonius has basically said is 'GW should adopt PP's structured campaign system'.

What Kanluwen basically replied is 'It'll never work'.

PP's structured campaign system does indeed work, and many are the threads organizing faction players and coordinating attacks against strategic assets/territories when the campaign is a-rolling.

Innovation requires a little optimism from the onset.

Uh no actually, that's not what I replied.

What I "basically replied" is that, given how much crying comes from the GW playerbase to begin with--anything that they view as "mandatory" will be an exercise in futility.

I always thought the End Times and the 13th Crusade were dumb ideas for summer campaigns anyway. Both are the abyss that the game story teeters on the edge of. Any player controlled campaign is going to be a narratively unsatisfying anticlimax, because both events should have ended the status quo in the game world entirely.GW were never going to do that, and if they did, they definitely shouldn't do it through a player controlled mechanism. 3rd War for Armageddon was a good idea for a campaign, the weakpoint of it was that it didn't involve every faction equally. Likewise, Medusa had the opposite problem of seeming like a giant clusterfeth because every single race happened to meet for a fight on one planet. I still thought it was a pretty good campaign though.
The other problem with those two is, once you've done them and failed to follow through properly (which you pretty much have to do) the playerbase sort of lose faith in the idea of storyline effecting campaigns. Nothing is ever as big a deal as the Apocolypse.
The other issues (cost tp profit ratio, people whinging about books not being supported, limited dev time being devoted to getting books out rather than stuff like this) are probably the reasons why they don't do it anymore, but that end of it has always bugged me, anyhow.

Kanluwen wrote:

Polonius wrote:Now, a lot of this could have been avoided if GW had a players organization, where everybody has a registered number for tournament and campaign play, and a staff that works to organize play. In fact, that organization could also issue FAQs, coordinate tournaments, and even playtest and distribute new scenarios.

But that contradicts GW's philosophy that nobody buys their stuff because they want to play the game.

Are you kidding me?

People don't even want to register on the GW website to access their downloads section. I don't see them doing anything but whining about having to join a "players' organization".

yeah, but they'd still sign up. And given I just read two pages of whining about the lack of verification for the last campaign, at least some people will be happy. People on the internet would complain about having to go to the strip club to get a free lap dance. That doesn't limit how awesome it is for those that do.

It'll make campaigns better for those that want to be involved while those that don't won't need to register.


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Kanluwen wrote:

sourclams wrote:What Kanluwen basically replied is 'It'll never work'.

Uh no actually, that's not what I replied.

What I "basically replied" is that, given how much crying comes from the GW playerbase to begin with--anything that they view as "mandatory" will be an exercise in futility.

Some day you'll have to explain how "exercise in futility" is substantially different from "it'lll never work." Or even different enough to argue.

Regardless, neither is what you originally said, which is that people will whine about it. Success or failure wasn't part of the original quote.

I think if a company can raise prices 20% every other year and retain a player base, it can probably ask for an email, home address, and full name to fully participate in global campaigns.

I loved the old Third War for Armageddon campaign. The idea that there was this huge war going on and you were a small part of it really made the casual games quite a bit more fun.

GW should definitely go back to doing these, preferably keep them going almost constantly. They don't have to be for planets or sectors that significantly impact the fluff. They can be over previously-unheard of hunks of rock.

And, of course the results are going to be skewed by fake reports and stuff like that. But, so what? It's still a cool idea, and no different than anything else on the internet

Asuron wrote:Ahoy all
Recently I've been mulling over the experiences I had with GW when I was growing up and one of them was the instore campaigns they used to have.
Out of interest I was wondering if you could perhaps share you experiences with them and the reason as to why they stopped.

They haven't.

Our store pulls one out every now and then. It usualy coinsides with something like a boxed set launch, or a new version of the game. Ours was last with a giant Apocalypse game that was a bunch of 8X8 tables across the room. It looked similer to the guys with the pictures, but the tables were bigger, but didn't drag out across the whole room.

My experience with GW's instore games has always been positive. In one, the hunt for the Fallen, I picked up a fallen guy that they made from parts from fantasy, and chaos marine parts. In another, I saved an inquisitor, and ended up getting him in a blister pack, in still another, We all ended up getting plastic Terminators. That was at the time when they started making termies in plastic.
In the Fantasy game, I played a few week long ones with one being in Lustria, where we played for three or four weeks evolving different armies playing in the jungles, and in another game, we played on an Island with a bunch of Giants, and some kinda King Arthur theme. My last one I played was in the deserts, when they came out with the Tomb Kings as a bonified army. That was an evolution game where you bought a box a week, and evolved your army, where the winner got something, and they had a few other catagories with prizes and some other stuff. I got a scorpion model, or something from that one.

All in all, These local stores need to get themselves up and institute thier own. I miss that kinda stuff. It was fun and when they were having them really gave you something to look forward to every week.

Grot 6 wrote:

Asuron wrote:Ahoy all
Recently I've been mulling over the experiences I had with GW when I was growing up and one of them was the instore campaigns they used to have.
Out of interest I was wondering if you could perhaps share you experiences with them and the reason as to why they stopped.

They haven't.

Our store pulls one out every now and then. It usualy coinsides with something like a boxed set launch, or a new version of the game. Ours was last with a giant Apocalypse game that was a bunch of 8X8 tables across the room. It looked similer to the guys with the pictures, but the tables were bigger, but didn't drag out across the whole room.

My experience with GW's instore games has always been positive. In one, the hunt for the Fallen, I picked up a fallen guy that they made from parts from fantasy, and chaos marine parts. In another, I saved an inquisitor, and ended up getting him in a blister pack, in still another, We all ended up getting plastic Terminators. That was at the time when they started making termies in plastic.
In the Fantasy game, I played a few week long ones with one being in Lustria, where we played for three or four weeks evolving different armies playing in the jungles, and in another game, we played on an Island with a bunch of Giants, and some kinda King Arthur theme. My last one I played was in the deserts, when they came out with the Tomb Kings as a bonified army. That was an evolution game where you bought a box a week, and evolved your army, where the winner got something, and they had a few other catagories with prizes and some other stuff. I got a scorpion model, or something from that one.

All in all, These local stores need to get themselves up and institute thier own. I miss that kinda stuff. It was fun and when they were having them really gave you something to look forward to every week.

Was referring to the worldwide campaigns that the others have been alking about for three pages.
That sounds cool though and while I agree they do need to institue events like that by themselves, theres nothing quite like playing in part of a campaign that has people all over the world participating in it.
Although your local store sounds like it would be a blast to play in

more money in new release then making a campaign

I miss them. Alot. I use to be involved with at least 12 until GW CANCELED THEM. Then I got pissed and left my store due to them doing that.
I miss Medusa V and Eye of Terror Campaign.

I miss those campaigns as well. But I know that the reason why they are no longer do those campaigns is a purely financial one.

The Company is too cheap to do those kinds of campaigns again.

I don't know if it has been mentioned here or not, I did a very quick skim through and then jumped strait to a reply.

Why don't we, as in all Dakkaites, create a Campaign online.

have a group work on a setting for it and then some basic rules.

like each player can only report once a week, A battle report must be filed with the report.

this way even if they didn't actually play they are still putting effort into it.

I think it could be of great success.

Toeko wrote:I don't know if it has been mentioned here or not, I did a very quick skim through and then jumped strait to a reply.

Why don't we, as in all Dakkaites, create a Campaign online.

have a group work on a setting for it and then some basic rules.

like each player can only report once a week, A battle report must be filed with the report.

this way even if they didn't actually play they are still putting effort into it.

I think it could be of great success.

That could be a very cool project to attempt.

That'd be pretty cool, actually.

Although it would probably be best to register gaming groups prior to the campaign, and have one person in each group actually write up the battle reports and results, just to make it easier to manage.

And I'd suggest it be a summer thing. I just know more people in my Calgary (ie, Summer and holiday gaming group) group than my Lethbridge (school days group) group are actually active on Dakka.

I'm just thinking, we have all the resources we would need here.

the rule lawyers who could come up with a system that is solid.

Fluff Fanatics who would tie it all in together and actually make it good.

have it run all summer, and then at the end their are enough of us who live close enough to each other we could arrange it with random hobby shops to play some "final out" scenario.

we play miniature games, we are definitely crazy enough to pull something like this off


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Fafnir wrote:That'd be pretty cool, actually.

Although it would probably be best to register gaming groups prior to the campaign, and have one person in each group actually write up the battle reports and results, just to make it easier to manage.

And I'd suggest it be a summer thing. I just know more people in my Calgary (ie, Summer and holiday gaming group) group than my Lethbridge (school days group) group are actually active on Dakka.

I agree, the summer is always better. that would give us a few months to prepare for it.

Toeko wrote:I'm just thinking, we have all the resources we would need here.

the rule lawyers who could come up with a system that is solid.

Fluff Fanatics who would tie it all in together and actually make it good.

have it run all summer, and then at the end their are enough of us who live close enough to each other we could arrange it with random hobby shops to play some "final out" scenario.

we play miniature games, we are definitely crazy enough to pull something like this off


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Fafnir wrote:That'd be pretty cool, actually.

Although it would probably be best to register gaming groups prior to the campaign, and have one person in each group actually write up the battle reports and results, just to make it easier to manage.

And I'd suggest it be a summer thing. I just know more people in my Calgary (ie, Summer and holiday gaming group) group than my Lethbridge (school days group) group are actually active on Dakka.

I agree, the summer is always better. that would give us a few months to prepare for it.

How about multiple locations for larger games, as some of some of us travel would be an issue.

I also like the DIY feel of that sort of "Fan Made Campaign" ..shows some initiative over bemoaning what GW will and won't "Do for us."

And your definitely correct..we certainly have a great deal of the resources/talent we would need right here on Dakka.

The Nemesis Crown - did that end, because i didn't here anything about it, who got it, grimgor??

kevlar'o wrote:The Nemesis Crown - did that end, because i didn't here anything about it, who got it, grimgor??

I'm not too sure as fantasy isn't my strong suit right now. but I belive he did

FITZZ wrote: I also like the DIY feel of that sort of "Fan Made Campaign" ..shows some initiative over bemoaning what GW will and won't "Do for us."

And your definitely correct..we certainly have a great deal of the resources/talent we would need right here on Dakka.

Exactly, instead of blaming GW for not doing something lets get motivated and do it ourselves. I'd say start a committee for design and theory and then get a basic outline before we open it up to more people. that way it would be more controlled then all of dakka throwing out their .02$ but at the same time ever one would still have some say.

Happygrunt wrote:

Toeko wrote:I'm just thinking, we have all the resources we would need here.

the rule lawyers who could come up with a system that is solid.

Fluff Fanatics who would tie it all in together and actually make it good.

have it run all summer, and then at the end their are enough of us who live close enough to each other we could arrange it with random hobby shops to play some "final out" scenario.

we play miniature games, we are definitely crazy enough to pull something like this off


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Fafnir wrote:That'd be pretty cool, actually.

Although it would probably be best to register gaming groups prior to the campaign, and have one person in each group actually write up the battle reports and results, just to make it easier to manage.

And I'd suggest it be a summer thing. I just know more people in my Calgary (ie, Summer and holiday gaming group) group than my Lethbridge (school days group) group are actually active on Dakka.

I agree, the summer is always better. that would give us a few months to prepare for it.

How about multiple locations for larger games, as some of some of us travel would be an issue.

that was just a random idea. if it caught on it could be decided any way. I mean you play in your basement with 5 friends, you could run the "final out" scenario with just them.

The Utmost goal of this should be to capture the essence of the game. . .having fun with friends

Creating an initial concept for the campaign along with the various mechanics would be the first steps.

wow. . . It double posted. . . I edited the second post as to annotate that it could be deleted and then it was gone so I edited the first one. . .sigh

either way question I asked was

would we have a fantasy and 40k one?

Ideally, it would take place in a smaller, less documented system (perhaps even a DIY one). Not only would that have less problems conflicting with current canon, but it would also encourage more DIY characters and fluff.

Frankly:
Doing any kind of lengthy, story-driven campaign with tallied results, etc is going to burn out even the most dedicated fans quickly. It will burn out damned near everyone quickly working on it to catch and iron out any snafus that crop up.

The best bet for any kind of fan driven campaign isn't to do anything remotely like the GW campaigns.
The best way to do it is, quite simply, a 'campaign pack'. Design the scenarios, a flow chart showing how X win by Y faction equals Z result. Things like that.

Fafnir wrote:Ideally, it would take place in a smaller, less documented system (perhaps even a DIY one). Not only would that have less problems conflicting with current canon, but it would also encourage more DIY characters and fluff.

Agreed, a war fought in some obscure system over an objective (or several objectives) large enough to justify the interest of multiple factions/armies,but not something "HUGE" would be my line of thought as well.

Fafnir wrote:Ideally, it would take place in a smaller, less documented system (perhaps even a DIY one). Not only would that have less problems conflicting with current canon, but it would also encourage more DIY characters and fluff.

that is what I had in mind.

Kanluwen wrote:Frankly:
Doing any kind of lengthy, story-driven campaign with tallied results, etc is going to burn out even the most dedicated fans quickly. It will burn out damned near everyone quickly working on it to catch and iron out any snafus that crop up.

The best bet for any kind of fan driven campaign isn't to do anything remotely like the GW campaigns.
The best way to do it is, quite simply, a 'campaign pack'. Design the scenarios, a flow chart showing how X win by Y faction equals Z result. Things like that.

I agree with you but I feel it can be more involved. GW had a decent concept but I just feel it was done wrong


If we created our own "system" we would be able to progress a story line in thus said system and more or less have creative control of it.


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FITZZ wrote:

Fafnir wrote:Ideally, it would take place in a smaller, less documented system (perhaps even a DIY one). Not only would that have less problems conflicting with current canon, but it would also encourage more DIY characters and fluff.

Agreed, a war fought in some obscure system over an objective (or several objectives) large enough to justify the interest of multiple factions/armies,but not something "HUGE" would be my line of thought as well.

quoted for truth.

this statement is my sentiment exactly.

Toeko wrote:I don't know if it has been mentioned here or not, I did a very quick skim through and then jumped strait to a reply.

Why don't we, as in all Dakkaites, create a Campaign online.

have a group work on a setting for it and then some basic rules.

like each player can only report once a week, A battle report must be filed with the report.

this way even if they didn't actually play they are still putting effort into it.

I think it could be of great success.

Sounds like a cool idea
Perhaps each campaign could run for a diffrent game system each summer?
Possibly chalk it up to a vote on which system will be used this summer so we know what to start with?




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Kanluwen wrote:Frankly:
Doing any kind of lengthy, story-driven campaign with tallied results, etc is going to burn out even the most dedicated fans quickly. It will burn out damned near everyone quickly working on it to catch and iron out any snafus that crop up.

The best bet for any kind of fan driven campaign isn't to do anything remotely like the GW campaigns.
The best way to do it is, quite simply, a 'campaign pack'. Design the scenarios, a flow chart showing how X win by Y faction equals Z result. Things like that.

The issue though would be that, there would be no point and no interest if its just "kill group A to get planet Z", you might as well just play a normal game
Without some kind of context that makes you want to bother to get involved in the first place, the entire concept falls apart

FITZZ wrote:

Fafnir wrote:Ideally, it would take place in a smaller, less documented system (perhaps even a DIY one). Not only would that have less problems conflicting with current canon, but it would also encourage more DIY characters and fluff.

Agreed, a war fought in some obscure system over an objective (or several objectives) large enough to justify the interest of multiple factions/armies,but not something "HUGE" would be my line of thought as well.

Such as a chapter of loyalist marines known for their disturbing depravities in a system known to be rife with alien life being disgraced by the Inquisition and being delcared excommunicate, causing a massive destabilization of the system that starts a multi-faceted war between Xenos vying for control of a system, the Imperium fighting to destroy the now-renegade chapter, and the chapter themselves fighting to survive and show that they are still loyal to the Emperor...

...But maybe I'm just reciting what I intend for my Chapter's fluff a bit too loudly...

Still, a small, isolated event of similar scope would work wonders.

@ Kan.

When GW did the EoT campaign,they were compiling data on a daily basis and having to update it constantly as well...over dozens of systems,involving hundreds if not thousands of players.
If the proposed campaign involves a smaller scale and alters some of the mechanics GW utilized it's possible to eleviate some of the possible snags.

Toeko wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:Frankly:
Doing any kind of lengthy, story-driven campaign with tallied results, etc is going to burn out even the most dedicated fans quickly. It will burn out damned near everyone quickly working on it to catch and iron out any snafus that crop up.

The best bet for any kind of fan driven campaign isn't to do anything remotely like the GW campaigns.
The best way to do it is, quite simply, a 'campaign pack'. Design the scenarios, a flow chart showing how X win by Y faction equals Z result. Things like that.

I agree with you but I feel it can be more involved. GW had a decent concept but I just feel it was done wrong


If we created our own "system" we would be able to progress a story line in thus said system and more or less have creative control of it.

That's...pretty much what I'm advocating, just with less emphasis on the people designing the campaigns needing to constantly tweak things every month.

Have months A-D=people play campaign set 1 and report their overall, endgame results over that timeframe.
It gives the people who are doing the heavy lifting, collating results, etc, time to look at how it's proceeding and see what needs to be tweaked and set up for month G's release of
campaign set 2: campaign strikes harder.
A three month lead-in for the behind the scenes crew isn't, in my opinion, too much to ask especially if they can make it work for 4 months of enjoyment for everyone else don't you think?

FITZZ wrote:

Fafnir wrote:Ideally, it would take place in a smaller, less documented system (perhaps even a DIY one). Not only would that have less problems conflicting with current canon, but it would also encourage more DIY characters and fluff.

Agreed, a war fought in some obscure system over an objective (or several objectives) large enough to justify the interest of multiple factions/armies,but not something "HUGE" would be my line of thought as well.

quoted for truth.

this statement is my sentiment exactly.

Yeah...I don't think it's really necessary for every army to be involved in the actual storyline.

Can forces be substituted and rewritten based upon your local make-up? Sure. But otherwise, it just kind of feels like shoehorning.


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Asuron wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:Frankly:
Doing any kind of lengthy, story-driven campaign with tallied results, etc is going to burn out even the most dedicated fans quickly. It will burn out damned near everyone quickly working on it to catch and iron out any snafus that crop up.

The best bet for any kind of fan driven campaign isn't to do anything remotely like the GW campaigns.
The best way to do it is, quite simply, a 'campaign pack'. Design the scenarios, a flow chart showing how X win by Y faction equals Z result. Things like that.

The issue though would be that, there would be no point and no interest if its just "kill group A to get planet Z", you might as well just play a normal game
Without some kind of context that makes you want to bother to get involved in the first place, the entire concept falls apart

You do realize that even a normal game can be adapted to a campaign game if you actually spend more than 5 minutes and write up a backstory, yeah?

The flow chart wouldn't be something the average player sees. It'd be something the people designing and managing the campaign would see.

Best thing is we can make the Campaign centered around space marines and say Eldar. . . but because of 40k every race could jump in, Chaos warbands, small ork waaghs etc.

not every faction in this campaign has to have the potential to break the galaxy.

i also like Kanluwen's idea.

it keeps it simple but still allows enough room for creativity


either way I'll check back on the thread tomorrow. This weekend we can start to officiate this and see if we can get Dakka support.

FITZZ
Kanluwen
Fafnir
I take it us 4 can start putting something together, like a small "test" and run it in a controlled setting and see how it goes.

Although I would say, if a flow chart system was used, don't actually reveal the chart to the populace. That way, things feel less predetermined.

Honestly, the way I'd do it, at least in terms of what armies are involved, is the same way that Forge World has described how you can do their campaigns.

It's designed to be an "in-depth account of a specific campaign, detailing specific forces that were used during the course of that campaign". But, there's nothing to stop you from adjusting minor details like the planets and armies involved.

Kanluwen wrote:Honestly, the way I'd do it, at least in terms of what armies are involved, is the same way that Forge World has described how you can do their campaigns.

It's designed to be an "in-depth account of a specific campaign, detailing specific forces that were used during the course of that campaign". But, there's nothing to stop you from adjusting minor details like the planets and armies involved.

The thing is it would be unfair to exclude people simply due to the fact that they don't have access to an army that is involved in a specific campaign.
If a "Fan Campaign" were to begin,I would hope provisions would be made to make it inclusive to everyone interested...
...I realize that may be difficult in terms of "story",but it would seem to me the "fair" thing to do.

FITZZ wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:Honestly, the way I'd do it, at least in terms of what armies are involved, is the same way that Forge World has described how you can do their campaigns.

It's designed to be an "in-depth account of a specific campaign, detailing specific forces that were used during the course of that campaign". But, there's nothing to stop you from adjusting minor details like the planets and armies involved.

The thing is it would be unfair to exclude people simply due to the fact that they don't have access to an army that is involved in a specific campaign.
If a "Fan Campaign" were to begin,I would hope provisions would be made to make it inclusive to everyone interested...
...I realize that may be difficult in terms of "story",but it would seem to me the "fair" thing to do.

Yeah, but when you get down to the nitty-gritty of it?

There's not much that can be done with certain armies.

Tau, for example, are found nowhere outside of the Eastern Fringe. They just haven't spread out that far.
By that same measure, Chaos forces aren't found within the Eastern Fringe. There's no real way for them to sustain their forces or operate the way they do elsewhere, like around the Maelstrom and the Eye of Terror.
Necrons aren't going to be found anywhere there's no Tomb Worlds, because they're almost exclusively involved in defensive operations with that part in mind--or in snatches for operations that are so far beyond the pale that it's impossible to really build a storyline for.

As Medusa V, in my opinion proved, you can either have story or fairness.
Eye of Terror worked well because it was a multi-fronted campaign, but it also suffered from a lack of specific narrative because of the wide scope it encompassed.

You could always set it on a world that has just fallen to chaos rebellion, summoned a giant daemon and thus creating a warp portal for CSM to come through.

Then plonk the planet in the Eastern Fringe nice and close to some Tau colonies, a Tomb planet, a 'Nid splinter fleet and a few Imperial worlds (possibly also a shrine world if you want to get some SoB action ).

Then the Eldar and Emo-er Eldar can show up because they are mysterious and like to spoil the party.

The Imperials want to close down the daemon and stop the rebellion, the 'Nids want to eat everything, the Tau want to stop things spreading to their colonies, the CSM want to cement a foothold so they can push outwards, the Necrons get annoyed at all this life going on near their tomb planet and the Eldar just want to screw with the path of destiny.

Edit: And of course the planet is in the path of an Ork Waaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrgggghhh!

Kanluwen wrote:

FITZZ wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:Honestly, the way I'd do it, at least in terms of what armies are involved, is the same way that Forge World has described how you can do their campaigns.

It's designed to be an "in-depth account of a specific campaign, detailing specific forces that were used during the course of that campaign". But, there's nothing to stop you from adjusting minor details like the planets and armies involved.

The thing is it would be unfair to exclude people simply due to the fact that they don't have access to an army that is involved in a specific campaign.
If a "Fan Campaign" were to begin,I would hope provisions would be made to make it inclusive to everyone interested...
...I realize that may be difficult in terms of "story",but it would seem to me the "fair" thing to do.

Yeah, but when you get down to the nitty-gritty of it?

There's not much that can be done with certain armies.

Tau, for example, are found nowhere outside of the Eastern Fringe. They just haven't spread out that far.
By that same measure, Chaos forces aren't found within the Eastern Fringe. There's no real way for them to sustain their forces or operate the way they do elsewhere, like around the Maelstrom and the Eye of Terror.
Necrons aren't going to be found anywhere there's no Tomb Worlds, because they're almost exclusively involved in defensive operations with that part in mind--or in snatches for operations that are so far beyond the pale that it's impossible to really build a storyline for.

As Medusa V, in my opinion proved, you can either have story or fairness.
Eye of Terror worked well because it was a multi-fronted campaign, but it also suffered from a lack of specific narrative because of the wide scope it encompassed.

See the beauty of creating your own campaign, is that anyone can be there for whatever reason you want
It could be that necrons were already on a world in the system and were awoken
It could be near the Eastern fringe so Tau can participate
You could have Chaos forces summoned to a planet by stranded Chaos cultists
The list is endless my friend=)

Naturally plot coherency will have to be taken into account, but I'm sure that bridge will be crossed when we get there

Asuron wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:

FITZZ wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:Honestly, the way I'd do it, at least in terms of what armies are involved, is the same way that Forge World has described how you can do their campaigns.

It's designed to be an "in-depth account of a specific campaign, detailing specific forces that were used during the course of that campaign". But, there's nothing to stop you from adjusting minor details like the planets and armies involved.

The thing is it would be unfair to exclude people simply due to the fact that they don't have access to an army that is involved in a specific campaign.
If a "Fan Campaign" were to begin,I would hope provisions would be made to make it inclusive to everyone interested...
...I realize that may be difficult in terms of "story",but it would seem to me the "fair" thing to do.

Yeah, but when you get down to the nitty-gritty of it?

There's not much that can be done with certain armies.

Tau, for example, are found nowhere outside of the Eastern Fringe. They just haven't spread out that far.
By that same measure, Chaos forces aren't found within the Eastern Fringe. There's no real way for them to sustain their forces or operate the way they do elsewhere, like around the Maelstrom and the Eye of Terror.
Necrons aren't going to be found anywhere there's no Tomb Worlds, because they're almost exclusively involved in defensive operations with that part in mind--or in snatches for operations that are so far beyond the pale that it's impossible to really build a storyline for.

As Medusa V, in my opinion proved, you can either have story or fairness.
Eye of Terror worked well because it was a multi-fronted campaign, but it also suffered from a lack of specific narrative because of the wide scope it encompassed.

See the beauty of creating your own campaign, is that anyone can be there for whatever reason you want
It could be that necrons were already on a world in the system and were awoken
It could be near the Eastern fringe so Tau can participate
You could have Chaos forces summoned to a planet by stranded Chaos cultists
The list is endless my friend=)

Naturally plot coherency will have to be taken into account, but I'm sure that bridge will be crossed when we get there

What "plot coherency" is there in the scenarios you just mentioned?

That's a perfect example of just trying to shoehorn everything in under the guise of 'fairness'.

The only armies that are restriceted by geography are the Tau and the Tyranids. Pretty much anything else can be wherever they want to be.

The problem you run into when limiting armies is that you limit who can play. I'd rather shoehorn in every army, or at least allow them to participate, rather than just not allow people to play.

The other way to to do it would be to make the objective of the campaign controlling multiple Macguffins across the galaxy. So you can fight in multiple theaters, but still have a unified goal.

And let's change it up, instead of it being bad guys attacking hte imperium, let's flip it.

let's say that the Ordo malleus has discovered a series of five warp amplifiers, that if simultaneously controlled will increase the power of astronomicon, making warp travel safer, faster, and extending the reach of the Imperium ino the halo stars. Obviously this is a threat to all of the other factions, and either by design or accident (hey, the grey knights are attacking our planet) they fight to prevent the aquisition of those shards.

We can then create five different theaters, each of which allows different armies to participate, and have different starting and ending states. Maybe have an imperial world near the eye of terror have one of them. And a tau world. And an Eldar Maiden world. A dead world in deep space. And a world that recently fell to chaos cultists.

One advantage is that you can create situations where you can justify all kinds of things, like IG fighting for disorder (chaos guard or just rebels).

Ideally, we'd also write up "Expeditionary forces" army lists for every army book that's theater limited. So while Wolves might only be able to fight in their theaters, they can send campaign armies to fight elsewhere using the new rules. Same with Tau, Nids, Chaos, etc.




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I mean, if we're going to create a campaign, let's go nuts. New lists, new special characters, new units. Come up with Legion rules, Craftworld rules.

We've got some serious tournament players, so we can get a feel for what codices need added power in their lists, which can just be fun, and which might just need some new options.

In addition, new Grey Knights are coming by the summer, so they'll make neat protaganists.

In my view, we can take a midlevel book like eldar, and come up with either EoT style lists, or just modern army changing SCs that add some new abilities to old concepts.

So, create a Biel Tan exarch that allows a unit of aspects as troops, gives all aspects a LD re-roll while he's on the table, and gives all aspects preferred enemy. Suddenly aspect waves become hard hitting, nasty forces full of elite troops.

Or create an IW Warsmith that gives dreadnoughts the "venerable" rule, gives all CSM Tankhunters, and can take a unit of Oblits as an elite choice. Give him a cool long range gun and decent HtH, and that's fun list.

Or a new Tau Shas'O that gives Fire Warriors a free networked markerlight hit per turn, and gives all Tau the ability re-roll all morale, pass or fail.

I suppose the other option would be to do what FW have done with the latest IA books - find a really old, obscure reference that was never expanded upon (so, something that has already happened in the history of 40k) and then make our own conclusion.

There are loads of quite cool sounding old quotes in some of the older 40k rule books which are really enigmatic, one of those could have been used for example.

If you want to run a campaign, I would suggest several loosely linked campaigns involving different groups of factions.

For example, I think most people will agree that the Tyranid, Necron and Tau codexes are far from top tier compared with SMs and IG, so it wouldn't be fair to lump them in together. Make one campaign involving IG, SMs (including variants) Orks and both flavours of Eldar.

The other campaign involves SoBs, Tyranids, Necrons and Tau with a limited number of SM and IG allowed.

This arrangement also justifies spatial division between the two campaigns.

Polonius wrote:The only armies that are restriceted by geography are the Tau and the Tyranids. Pretty much anything else can be wherever they want to be.

Tyranids aren't limited, actually. Chaos is, however, at least when it comes to the forces of the Traitor Astartes and Daemons.

So pretty much, Chaos is.

The problem you run into when limiting armies is that you limit who can play. I'd rather shoehorn in every army, or at least allow them to participate, rather than just not allow people to play.

Which is why it's far easier to just have a framework in place for a "counts-as" campaign for those forces that aren't directly involved in the main storyline.

The other way to to do it would be to make the objective of the campaign controlling multiple Macguffins across the galaxy. So you can fight in multiple theaters, but still have a unified goal.

You'd need objectives for each individual faction to work from in that case, because there's only one force that can effectively, fluffily fight in multiple theaters and have any semblance of a unified goal.

The Imperium.

And let's change it up, instead of it being bad guys attacking the Imperium, let's flip it.

And get the Xenos players crying that "Why does everything have to focus on the Imperium!"

let's say that the Ordo malleus has discovered a series of five warp amplifiers, that if simultaneously controlled will increase the power of astronomicon, making warp travel safer, faster, and extending the reach of the Imperium into the Halo Stars. Obviously this is a threat to all of the other factions, and either by design or accident (hey, the grey knights are attacking our planet) they fight to prevent the acquisition of those shards.

We can then create five different theaters, each of which allows different armies to participate, and have different starting and ending states. Maybe have an imperial world near the eye of terror have one of them. And a tau world. And an Eldar Maiden world. A dead world in deep space. And a world that recently fell to chaos cultists.

So basically, it's just a conveniently never beforeseen amazing artifact that will improve the Imperium? It feels shoehorned in. It really does.

One advantage is that you can create situations where you can justify all kinds of things, like IG fighting for disorder (chaos guard or just rebels).

You don't need a "world recently fell to Chaos Cultists" in order to have Chaos Guard or Rebels.
There's two main areas that have huge amounts of traitor guard activity--The Maelstrom(a hiding place for the Red Corsairs and the scum they attract) and the Eye of Terror(self-evident as to why that one works). And that's discounting the Tau Gue'vasa.

Ideally, we'd also write up "Expeditionary forces" army lists for every army book that's theater limited. So while Wolves might only be able to fight in their theaters, they can send campaign armies to fight elsewhere using the new rules. Same with Tau, Nids, Chaos, etc.

Tau, Chaos, and Necrons are really the only forces that would effectively be 'limited'.
Tau aren't limited just "because". They have willingly halted their progression since the Third Sphere Expansion. Why? We don't know, but it might have something to do with the fact that they effectively lack intergalactic travel capabilities. Their ships utilize the Warp, to an extent, but only as "short hops" rather than extended trips that actually would allow them to fully expand. Add to it that they're seemingly wary of things they don't comprehend and experimenting with it bit by bit, it's a rather effective explanation as to why they're confined to the Tau Empire within the Eastern Fringe.
Necrons are, like Tau, limited by their own choice. They occasionally launch raids/assaults, but usually with some kind of reasoning behind it(reclaiming stolen artifacts, culling Blanks, etc).
Chaos is effectively limited by how well they can maintain a stable connection to the Warp. Even the best enacted rituals lose their focus and power on the Eastern Fringe.

Why would you have the Loyalist Astartes limited to one particular area? Those buggers get everywhere, they effectively pick and choose where to deploy their forces.
They don't need an "expeditionary force". Nor do the Tau really have the capability to have an "expeditionary force" that would travel beyond the Eastern Fringe, etc.

I mean, if we're going to create a campaign, let's go nuts. New lists, new special characters, new units. Come up with Legion rules, Craftworld rules.

We've got some serious tournament players, so we can get a feel for what codices need added power in their lists, which can just be fun, and which might just need some new options.

I mean this as nicely as possible, but...
Screw the tournament players. I don't want them within a mile of any campaign system I'm working on. Too many of them are powergamers, and campaigns are about fun not just winning and tabling your opponents.

It's the storyline and the fun that you can have while playing through that storyline.

In addition, new Grey Knights are coming by the summer, so they'll make neat protagonists.

In my view, we can take a midlevel book like eldar, and come up with either EoT style lists, or just modern army changing SCs that add some new abilities to old concepts.

So, create a Biel Tan exarch that allows a unit of aspects as troops, gives all aspects a LD re-roll while he's on the table, and gives all aspects preferred enemy. Suddenly aspect waves become hard hitting, nasty forces full of elite troops.

Or create an IW Warsmith that gives dreadnoughts the "venerable" rule, gives all CSM Tankhunters, and can take a unit of Oblits as an elite choice. Give him a cool long range gun and decent HtH, and that's fun list.

Or a new Tau Shas'O that gives Fire Warriors a free networked markerlight hit per turn, and gives all Tau the ability re-roll all morale, pass or fail.

I'm hesitant to really delve into special characters, just because you'll get the inevitable slew of people here asking "Is this guy legal to put into my army?"--even if we explicitly make it clear from the outset that no, he's not legal to put into an army outside of this campaign setup.

I see your point about shoehorning in as many factions as possible, but having as many people playing is what makes global campaigns fun.

If we wanted to be really story driven and fluffy, we'd have IG players fight ork players for six months, and then announce that the Space marines arrived and the Imperium won.

Just like 40k is more about abstract combat than it is about simulating combat, so too should a 40k campaign be looser and more ridiculous than a rigorous recreation of the North African campaign.

As for most of your comments, most seem to boil down to "Here's a reason some people might not like your ideas, so we shouldn't do it." I mean, some ideas are good and some are bad, but IMO a good global campaign should prevent as few people as possible from participating (by allowing more armies and styles of play), even if that means a smaller percentage choose to participate (because they don't like the story line or special characters).

In other words, I'd rather have 70% of all gamers than 100% of Ork and Nid players.

Another possiblity, that might be simpler, is to pair off codices (or create small groups) and run several campaigns simultaneously.

One of the cool parts of doing a full service campaign is that it could allow people to really field some fun stuff in games that have some meaing. 13th company, Legions, genestealer cults... we can go nuts.

You're fixated on this idea of a "global campaign" so that every race at once can be done with minimalistic effort on the part of the players working on their background can get involved, much like how GW's were ran.

That's not necessarily the 'best' way to do it. A well-run campaign is like a well-run D&D campaign.

With a good group of minds running it and the players actively participating in their own background material, etc--it can be a gorgeous and glorious thing.

As for the IG/Orks example--a story driven and fluffy campaign doesn't need to be a "recreation of the North African campaign".

I'm not saying a global campaign is better than an intimate campaign. I'm saying I want to run a global campaign, so I dont' care which is better.

This is a thread about GW global campaigns, so when we starting talking about running a campaign, I just sort of assumed that's what we'd do.

I'm also mostly brainstorming at this point. Maybe nobody wants to recreate those days. Personally, I like the idea of building a world, creating new army types, new heroes and villians, and giving the campaing some heft and stakes without altering the current background.

No reason you can't do that for an intimate campaign, don't you think?

I'm really not sure what you're trying to do here. I get that you don't like the idea of a community run global campaign. I guess you won't be helping out, but if other people are interested in trying it, I'd like to give it a shot.

That said, would there be any interest in trying to run something similar? Could we use dakka for reporting and the like?

You could run the campaign in the Campaigns forum, that's what it's there for.

Polonius wrote:I'm really not sure what you're trying to do here. I get that you don't like the idea of a community run global campaign. I guess you won't be helping out, but if other people are interested in trying it, I'd like to give it a shot.

No, that's not it at all.
I don't like global campaigns when they're done in such a way as to try to shoehorn in every army all at once.
As I said:
A good campaign is going to end up like a good D&D game. You're not going to feasibly have every single monster in a single sitting.

If you do have that, what you end up with almost every time is a poorly structured, poorly ran mess that goes off on every conceivable tangent.

For a first-time all volunteer, community ran project? I think it's far too ambitious to do that right from the starting gate.
GW did a piss-poor job of the exact kind of setup you're espousing with the Medusa V campaign, and they have far more experience(arguably ) in organizing and planning these kinds of things than the community most likely has.

Polonius wrote:That said, would there be any interest in trying to run something similar?

I'm about ten steps ahead of you, and have about a paragraph worth of introductory material saved on my flashdrive

Jumping ahead a page to get in here,

I'd love to help run a camapain, I've got hardly any players nere me so I could help with fluff/ settings and coralating results

I ultimately had to kill a long (over a year) project to develop and run an online campaign website for DP9. It was a tough decision, but ultimately there just wasn't enough 'value' to either the players or the company to justify working on it. Plus I went through a lot that year... Moving, renovations, some personal stuff, etc.

Anyway, one of the first things learned was that we wanted to favor 'stories' over 'data.' Collecting data has some issues, as it lets the designers look at trends and see who plays what, what armies are more reliable winners, etc.

We decided to favor 'stories' as we didn't want to treat our player base like children. No matter how it's sold ("The galaxy will live or die at your hands!") no one really expects big changes based off the whim of the player base. We wouldn't expect the CEF to be completely wiped out and have to rewrite future books with this gap, and tell CEF players to find another army. It's just not a fun way to go for anyone.

So based on this, I decided to focus on 'stories'. Had a couple good conversations with John Buckmaster, who sued to post here, that definitely made me feel this was a good decision. It's an idea I'll keep around in case it makes sense in the future.

I wasn't happy about ending this project, although it was the right decision. I've got some ideas saved that I'd like to reuse for other future projects, but that's another story.

@Polonius: If you do plan to run a campain and need help with it just give me a heads up and I'll do what I can to help. Running a campain is something I'd like to do, but just don't have the players in my local area to do one. So helping with an online one sounds like the perfect chance here

A good way to do a campaign is to use a system. Then each country or region would fight on different planets. I/E I live in the US, my planet would be x, I live in Canada, my planet would be y, I live in Australia, my planet would be z. etc.etc.) There are some great system maps over at the FF sight, pertaining to Rogue Trader, and the other RPG books.

Use the system your given, then continue to embellish the particulars, depending on your country. The central location for each region would have to develop the scenarios, the setting, then people in individual stores added to it with thier contribution, from just fighting a basic one on one game of A vs B, to a multiplayer fight of a game of BFG, over the region in question, then to fight games of planet strike to fight over the different regions of space, to get you to different planets, sort of how they do it in DOW.

Just a variation of a theme, but it works if everyone wants in. You can use a small contribution from the players for a goal prize. such as a special character, or a unit box, from when you place objective markers out there, and you get to win something, from either points of units, or from a special character, to something as small as an objective piece, that gives you a special ability through out the campaign, from the City of Death book, or the Planetstrike stuff. ( A 40mm base with a radio or a box on it for a one free off post orbital bombardment, or a weapons upgrade, from the unit options in the armies codex.

Basic thing to do is to get players in your area on board with the setting, then play a few games, map base it, and continue to embellish the campaign setting, with things like special units, to special characters, to particular objectives in your area. ( maybe a holy relic, or a chaos alter, or something like a warp gate.) The thing of it is that those in the campaign call the shots, and the area and setting is loose enough for stores to involve players in a reason to fight it out over thier planet or system.

You start the game with a couple of basic squads and a HQ. then continue to ladder the armies up and continue to fight with your units over the course of the campaign over the objectives on the worlds or planet areas in question.

( I'm fighting on X world, it's a jungle world with a ruined city, a small settlement of humans, eldar, tau, etc. And they have a couple of terraign objectives, such as a swamp area, a desert, or a mountain chain that has X Y and Z on it.) Then run with it withg a map, give everyone a copy of the map, and fill it in as the battles continue.
If you want to use the Mighty empires tiles, or a grid square on a real map, thats on you, but that you are all fighting over the same stuff, and everyone's on board, thats the thing.

Kanluwen wrote:[No, that's not it at all.
I don't like global campaigns when they're done in such a way as to try to shoehorn in every army all at once.
As I said:
A good campaign is going to end up like a good D&D game. You're not going to feasibly have every single monster in a single sitting.

If you do have that, what you end up with almost every time is a poorly structured, poorly ran mess that goes off on every conceivable tangent.

For a first-time all volunteer, community ran project? I think it's far too ambitious to do that right from the starting gate.
GW did a piss-poor job of the exact kind of setup you're espousing with the Medusa V campaign, and they have far more experience(arguably ) in organizing and planning these kinds of things than the community most likely has.

I'm going to address a few concerns, and then step away, because it seems that you have very different expectations for a global campaign than I do. As I've stated, I'm willing to tolerate a little more shoehorning to allow for more players. in addiiton, when you restrict the armies, you not only reduce who can play in the campaign, but against whom they can play. So if you have a club with 6 guys, and our campaign uses four armies, only players of those four armies can really participate.

In addition, nearly every imperial player can participate in nearly every campaign. It seems awkward to not allow any space marines at all, for example.

I think that a long running campaign between, say, black templars and tyranids would be awesome.... for those people that play one of the two armies and have an opponent to play against.

As for Medusa V, that was ridiculous in that it put every faction on a single planet. Would I described would have multiple theaters scattered through the galaxy for a united purpose. It's not an epic, earth shattering event, but it's big enough that nearly all enemies of the Imperium would be interested in preventing it from occuring. Like it or not, the IoM is the prime mover of the 40k universe.

So, what I'd like to do would be to create multiple "theaters" for players to chose from. If both armies can be played in that theater, than you can post the results to that theater. If the two armies never share a theater, or the players can't agree to one, than they can just play a "support" game, to represent the actions that go on other fronts. The idea being, if the IoM is taking a beating outside of the set theaters, than they're less likely to succeed, and vice versa.

As for being ambitious, yeah, it sure is. And it probably won't get off the ground. But it would be neat to see we could come up with.


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Balance wrote:We decided to favor 'stories' as we didn't want to treat our player base like children. No matter how it's sold ("The galaxy will live or die at your hands!") no one really expects big changes based off the whim of the player base. We wouldn't expect the CEF to be completely wiped out and have to rewrite future books with this gap, and tell CEF players to find another army. It's just not a fun way to go for anyone.

So based on this, I decided to focus on 'stories'. Had a couple good conversations with John Buckmaster, who sued to post here, that definitely made me feel this was a good decision. It's an idea I'll keep around in case it makes sense in the future.

that's a cool idea, and one that might be overlooked: using a global online campaign to foster long running linked games within clubs.

If you've got a regular opponent, or a small group, you could play a ton of games in theater, and report the results in a report of an offense. So, maybe a Space Marine and IG player regularly play againt Chaos and Orks, and play a dozen games using some simple linked campaign rules. They then submit the results, and a narrative. It'd be kind of cool.

I figured that we'd get some interesting stuff, so one option for reports was to hide all the 'Batrep' numbers and such (what army did each side play, how many points, etc.) and just go the text entry. Of course, to do it right I'd need robust text entry with images, rich text, etc. However, the idea was that some people would use this for either standard fiction, fiction in the form of 'reports form war reporters', letters home, etc.

The basic realization were that numbers were fundamentally dishonest. Players had no incentive not to fake them (since we couldn't expect to not catch them, in quantity) and the company wasn't going to use them to shape the world... But stories could be used, at least a bit. if John Doe wrote some neat point-of-view fiction,t hen immortalizing his character in official canon was a reward for everyone.

I'ms till looking at these. If I could get some solid dev time I think i might be able to set up Drupal (and some mods) to allow a lot of the features I wanted in a form that is a bit more useful. I think there might also be a way to easily provide a tool for clubs to do bracket-style tourneys easily... If only I had time to mess witht hat stuff instead of my day job. :(

Oh, another idea I was using was that the campaign was split into 'stages' (representing time periods... A stage could be a day, a week... whatever) and each stage had a list of 'interesting' matchups for the stage. You could get a list of the matchups, or it would suggest them (To use GW, if you put in 'Space Marines' it might point otu that there's neat stuff for fights against Chaos and Tau int his 'stage.') The interesting amtchups would have atatched abckground, scenarios, trial unit rules ("For this scenario, this special character/unit is available"), etc.

Polonius, what I'm advocating isn't just "Here are the rules, sorry Tau player YOU CAN'T PLAY!".

I'm also not saying "Screw you global campaigns, I'm only gonna play with my local guys and the rest can go to hell!".

I'm saying that by far, the best idea I can come up with, is simply a vaguely generic historical campaign.
We come up with an overall background for why/who was involved for the 'canon' timeline of the campaign.
We gradually build up results from players who are using those 'canon' forces and advance our timeline of the campaign and how it played from there.

Are we precluding some folks who aren't using those canon folks? Not really. There's nothing to stop them from using this as the basis for their own campaigns later on.

I'm not saying we need to have this thing so incredibly in-depth that it reads like a history book. It needs to be more like a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book, with the decisions available and where your forces are fighting being slightly affected by what army you're using.

Kanluwen you have won me over to your line of thinking, but I still think as many races as possible should be involved, even if that meant running two seperate campaigns and dividing the races up into which on they fit best.

Just because we can justify them all being their doesn't mean they should all be their.

maybe as I mentioned before we run a controlled test group, keep it small with like 3 factions, and then go from their.

if the system works well and the response from the community is positive we can then branch.

after we get this figured out I see no problem with running multple summer campaigns allowing us to discriminate against certain races in certain campaigns.

Set it in the Macharian Crusade. Two sides: The Imperium Vs. Everyone Else.

The overall score will effect the outcome of how successful/failed the crusade was. But you can add up individual scores for each race/army to see who contributed most in progressing/halting the crusade and name an individual winner for each side.

Inter race wars outside of the imperium can be explained through Armys fleeing/advancing towards the imperium coming into contact with others etc. Results of these battles will increase the winning races individual score and deplete the losers but have no effect on the overall score.

What's wrong with something like that to include all races?

There was no Tau in the Macharian Crusade

Kanluwen wrote:There was no Tau in the Macharian Crusade

What about Gypsy Tau?

No, as in the Tau(and Tyranids for that matter) didn't exist during the Macharian Crusade.

And for the sake of a campaign we'll just ignore that.

Can't ignore it, not if you're wanting to do the Macharian Crusade.

Kanluwen wrote:Can't ignore it, not if you're wanting to do the Macharian Crusade.

Why? Who gives a crap. It's a game.

whatwhat wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:Can't ignore it, not if you're wanting to do the Macharian Crusade.

Why? Who gives a crap. It's a game.

Lots of people do because the Fluff has already been written for it

If you really want to get picky about it we'll say a few systems have been infiltrated by gene stealer cults and sprung nid outbreaks. And the Tau can be waging their own expansion war at home.

Toeko wrote:Lots of people do because the Fluff has already been written for it

If someone can't ignore a few strains in the fluff in order to allow all payers to participate then it wouldn't matter because we'd lose less people than we would gain.

If the overall objective of the campaign is to create something that is enjoyable for the community as a whole then provisions must be made to include all races.
If a two theatre campaign is whats needed,then by all means that would be the way to go,even if the campaign backstory requires a bit of "tweaking"
IMO our goals should be to create an interesting campaign with various objectives/victory conditions that the entire community can participate in.

whatwhat wrote:If you really want to get picky about it we'll say a few systems have been infiltrated by gene stealer cults and sprung nid outbreaks. And the Tau can be waging their own expansion war at home.

Toeko wrote:Lots of people do because the Fluff has already been written for it

If someone can't ignore a few strains in the fluff in order to allow all payers to participate then it wouldn't matter because we'd lose less people than we would gain.

why tweek when we can create our own.

Toeko wrote:

whatwhat wrote:If you really want to get picky about it we'll say a few systems have been infiltrated by gene stealer cults and sprung nid outbreaks. And the Tau can be waging their own expansion war at home.

Toeko wrote:Lots of people do because the Fluff has already been written for it

If someone can't ignore a few strains in the fluff in order to allow all payers to participate then it wouldn't matter because we'd lose less people than we would gain.

why tweek when we can create our own.

?

It's barely a "tweak" anyway what I suggested there. Contrary to what Kanluwen just said nids and tau did exist in the time of the Macharian crusade (it's m41) . The only problem is the Tau who would be quite far away from home. But the Tau are expanding their empire in this period so they can occupy a sub theatre. Sorted.

whatwhat wrote:

Toeko wrote:

whatwhat wrote:If you really want to get picky about it we'll say a few systems have been infiltrated by gene stealer cults and sprung nid outbreaks. And the Tau can be waging their own expansion war at home.

Toeko wrote:Lots of people do because the Fluff has already been written for it

If someone can't ignore a few strains in the fluff in order to allow all payers to participate then it wouldn't matter because we'd lose less people than we would gain.

why tweek when we can create our own.

?

It's barely a "tweak" anyway what I suggested there. Contrary to what Kanluwen just said nids and tau did exist in the time of the Macharian crusade (it's m41) . The only problem is the Tau who would be quite far away from home. But the Tau are expanding their empire in this period so they can occupy a sub theatre. Sorted.

I'm not opposed to your Idea, I like to "tweak" things alot because it makes it easier than building it all from the ground up. I'm just thinking we could create our own "theatre" so to speak for the setting.

Overall,would it not simply be a matter of creating an " catalyst/situation and/or crisis occurs affecting sectors A-1 and A-2,..Races A,B,C,D may fight in sector A-1,Races A,B,E,F and G may fight in sector A-2" scenario?

Toeko wrote:

whatwhat wrote:

Toeko wrote:

whatwhat wrote:If you really want to get picky about it we'll say a few systems have been infiltrated by gene stealer cults and sprung nid outbreaks. And the Tau can be waging their own expansion war at home.

Toeko wrote:Lots of people do because the Fluff has already been written for it

If someone can't ignore a few strains in the fluff in order to allow all payers to participate then it wouldn't matter because we'd lose less people than we would gain.

why tweek when we can create our own.

?

It's barely a "tweak" anyway what I suggested there. Contrary to what Kanluwen just said nids and tau did exist in the time of the Macharian crusade (it's m41) . The only problem is the Tau who would be quite far away from home. But the Tau are expanding their empire in this period so they can occupy a sub theatre. Sorted.

I'm not opposed to your Idea, I like to "tweak" things alot because it makes it easier than building it all from the ground up. I'm just thinking we could create our own "theatre" so to speak for the setting.

Sure you could, in fact i thought through a few ideas before I gave that one. I couldn't think of anything though more feasable than an expansionist crusade for including everybody. Feel free to suggest one if you can though.

FITZZ wrote: Overall,would it not simply be a matter of creating an " catalyst/situation and/or crisis occurs affecting sectors A-1 and A-2,..Races A,B,C,D may fight in sector A-1,Races A,B,E,F and G may fight in sector A-2" scenario?

And what about if C wants to Play F? The problem is not just including everybody but warranting any battle between any race/army.

I have been wanting to try to do an online campaign through dakka for quite some time now, and have some ideas of how it would be done. If anyone else is interested, I would be down to help out.

my concept was to have three forces, Force Imperial, Force Chaos, and a Neutral force. then a campaign map would be set up and number of victories for each fraction would dictate who controlled that region on the campaign map, each region would give a plot thing, as well as maybe some sort of extra game mechanic. This way all races can be used in some way. My concept was a prison planet which has had an uprising and it has taken several years for the imperial forces to respond. This way we have the imperial trying to retake the planet, as well as whatever government has attempted to command the planet maybe it is a chaos one due to some imprisioned cults. Then there is still a large section of the planet controlled by various gangs, warbands, pirates, maybe orks and tyranids which were being experimented on within the planet's hidden labs. This way any army can really be a part of it, but it can also be divided into various fractions since the game gets much more complex plotwise and gamewise when you have every race competing for its own goals!


I also liked Polonius' idea of having multiple battlefronts, all part of the same war, but each allowing different groups of races to battle it out. Maybe a certain artifact is needed to kill a great demon, but this artifact is in Tau space, etc.

I also agree when Kanluwen says that a good campaign is like a good D&D game. the game falls apart once you attempt to include everything, but rather youhave to focus on something, but by focusing it does not mean excluding anything from the game. All we need to do is find some sort of foundation story and then from there find a way for races to fit in, if we just try to focus on getting all the races in we end up with an unusual plot flawed story that is trying to be too much. I do think there is a way to include all the races but it has to be done in a way which makes the fact that we are having all the races in the game not a focus point, if that makes any sense? Thats why i like the idea of having fractions and then each fraction can be composed of any races as long as it fits the storyline of the fraction. Only issue here is Necrons and Tyranids, which is why i was thinking of a neutral/warband/raiders fraction which would allow any race to join from rebellious guard platoons, to eldar pirates, to ork infestations, etc.


sorry if thats long, that is just what came into my head now.

Kanluwen wrote:

Asuron wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:

FITZZ wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:Honestly, the way I'd do it, at least in terms of what armies are involved, is the same way that Forge World has described how you can do their campaigns.

It's designed to be an "in-depth account of a specific campaign, detailing specific forces that were used during the course of that campaign". But, there's nothing to stop you from adjusting minor details like the planets and armies involved.

The thing is it would be unfair to exclude people simply due to the fact that they don't have access to an army that is involved in a specific campaign.
If a "Fan Campaign" were to begin,I would hope provisions would be made to make it inclusive to everyone interested...
...I realize that may be difficult in terms of "story",but it would seem to me the "fair" thing to do.

Yeah, but when you get down to the nitty-gritty of it?

There's not much that can be done with certain armies.

Tau, for example, are found nowhere outside of the Eastern Fringe. They just haven't spread out that far.
By that same measure, Chaos forces aren't found within the Eastern Fringe. There's no real way for them to sustain their forces or operate the way they do elsewhere, like around the Maelstrom and the Eye of Terror.
Necrons aren't going to be found anywhere there's no Tomb Worlds, because they're almost exclusively involved in defensive operations with that part in mind--or in snatches for operations that are so far beyond the pale that it's impossible to really build a storyline for.

As Medusa V, in my opinion proved, you can either have story or fairness.
Eye of Terror worked well because it was a multi-fronted campaign, but it also suffered from a lack of specific narrative because of the wide scope it encompassed.

See the beauty of creating your own campaign, is that anyone can be there for whatever reason you want
It could be that necrons were already on a world in the system and were awoken
It could be near the Eastern fringe so Tau can participate
You could have Chaos forces summoned to a planet by stranded Chaos cultists
The list is endless my friend=)

Naturally plot coherency will have to be taken into account, but I'm sure that bridge will be crossed when we get there

What "plot coherency" is there in the scenarios you just mentioned?

That's a perfect example of just trying to shoehorn everything in under the guise of 'fairness'.

They were examples....
Not actual ideas I was going to pitch, because I can see problems with them myself

But honestly, if its a global campaign that we want everyone to participate in, why, why would you suggest keeping people with certain armies out
If you want this to be as big as possible and as fun for as many people as possible, you have to let everyone join
Thats just the way it is