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 Ketara wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

IOW, "the organizers decide who wins each game, and there's no point in playing". If that's what a narrative event means then narrative events need to die.

That wasn't even remotely what I said. Try reading it again.

No, that's exactly what you said. You advocated the TO imposing arbitrary penalties on a specific player to weaken their army. That's a textbook example of the organizer deciding who wins the game.

To be fair though arbitrary penalties on a specific player to weaken their army is usually a great way to add balance things back; now yeah if you're playing a "tournament" where everyone is bringing power list it's an anathema, but if they go in knowing that there's a "Game Master" who can decide to add things in, that's kinda cool to me. I mean, that's how these games were originally balanced way back when, that's how many historical games are still often balanced (even when the rules allow for more modern balancing).

It's all about mentality and expectations.

Ideal "narrative tournament"?

Pre-designed army lists and organizer-supplied models, scenario-specific terrain and armies setup and every player gets to play each mission twice, as the attacker and as the defender. Overall ranking is derived from both performances over a series of narratively connected missions that have nothing to do with "matched play" symmetry.

IMHO this is the only way to have a "narrative tournament" that has both interesting story behind it, awesome, asymmetric scenarios AND tests real playing skill, not just OP listbuilding and loopholes finding... Basically every player experiences something akin to DOW single-player campaign mode, with players being both participants and NPCs for each other at the same time.

But we all know it won't happen, as both time and effort investment for such event is massive and we can be perfectly sure, that there will still be complaints from TFGs that do not understand the goal of such event and ruin it for everybody with constant complaints about how those lists supplied are crap and they would win if they just had their usual stuff on the table...

 Peregrine wrote:

 Ketara wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

IOW, "the organizers decide who wins each game, and there's no point in playing". If that's what a narrative event means then narrative events need to die.

That wasn't even remotely what I said. Try reading it again.

No, that's exactly what you said. You advocated the TO imposing arbitrary penalties on a specific player to weaken their army. That's a textbook example of the organizer deciding who wins the game.

I don't think you understand the basic definition of the word 'handicap' in this context, let alone a textbook definition of it (namely, to act an impediment to something). Let me make it obvious as to how imposing a 'handicap' differs from 'arranging a wargame to decide who wins'.

If you put me and David Beckham on a football pitch and say 'The game is to see who can score more goals' against a famous keeper, David Beckham will win. He is better than me at football. If you 'handicap' him to getting one go for every two of mine, the odds are made slightly less in his favour. He will still most likely win, but it will be harder. If you restricted him to one for every three of mine (increasing the handicap), the odds would be further refined in my direction. The game itself would not be 'decided' or the winner predetermined until the handicap has reached a certain degree (probably twenty shots of mine for every one of his knowing me at football )

Likewise, if I bring a ridiculous cheese heavy min/maxed tournament list designed to synergise invulnerable saves with rerollables and put it against a guy who just puts a really uncompetitive Chaos Cultist army on the table, the game is likely predetermined already (and not by the organiser). The game itself being inherently unbalanced causes this. If I give Mr Cheese (tm) a minor handicap in line with the story (for example, by saying that his HQ ran into an assassin unit and is therefore coming in from reserve this game), that evens out the odds slightly. If the game is still unbalanced in the favour of Mr Cheese, I can set more handicaps (giving a handful of rerollables to the opponent, for example) in order to further balance out the game, make it fun for both of them, and give both an equal chance of winning.

Handicaps by their very nature are usually applied in most settings to balance an unbalanced game or scenario. This is a very separate thing to deciding who wins a game, unless the intent is very specifically to apply handicaps until the game is rigged. Which is very much not what I said, and not what would be done in any narrative play setting.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

nou wrote:

IMHO this is the only way to have a "narrative tournament" that has both interesting story behind it, awesome, asymmetric scenarios AND tests real playing skill, not just OP listbuilding and loopholes finding... Basically every player experiences something akin to DOW single-player campaign mode, with players being both participants and NPCs for each other at the same time.

Often you find the scenarios are geared to things other than simple 'Kill the other side' missions, and you don't get the mission pack until you've submitted your army list and the scenarios until just before the game.

For example, in one phase of one campaign weekend I attended, half of the Ork factions were trying to take out Imperial supply lines. So your SM/IG/INQ factions started off in the middle of one side, convoy style, and their job was to get a certain number of points off the other side of the tables. The Orks could deploy on both adjacent sides from reserve meanwhile, and their task was to kill a certain number of points worth.

Meanwhile, the other half of the Imperial faction was fighting against half the Chaos faction, who had had markers placed on the tables to represent shrines. Their job was to capture more shrines than the enemy player could 'activate' with their HQ units.

The other half of the Chaos faction was deployed from all four table sides to assault half the Eldar faction, who were trying to defend their primary incursion point into the sector (the webway gate) which was stuck in the middle of the battlefields. It had three shield generators around it, and all had armour values.

And so on. Each faction team would meet in between games, and the faction captain would determine which players would fight which missions (to represent the strategic choices made by the commander). They also had a limited number of 'advantage cards' that they could issue to players over the course of the campaign, for early deployment, fearlessness, etc.

Meanwhile, there were two blokes in the back who'd devised a story that could develop several ways, took in the results, and announced the next development in the campaign for everyone after each game.

It was great fun, and the nature of the different scenarios meant that even a tough list would have trouble due to the many different scenarios it could be placed in. For example, having a close combat heavy list is pretty useless when you have to defend a point after all. Sometimes you'd end up doing a game which was harder on you then the opponent, but that was fun in and of itself. It challenged you as a commander, and represented real life more, where sometimes you don't get to pick your mission. You go where the general needs you.

 Ketara wrote:

nou wrote:

IMHO this is the only way to have a "narrative tournament" that has both interesting story behind it, awesome, asymmetric scenarios AND tests real playing skill, not just OP listbuilding and loopholes finding... Basically every player experiences something akin to DOW single-player campaign mode, with players being both participants and NPCs for each other at the same time.

Often you find the scenarios are geared to things other than simple 'Kill the other side' missions, and you don't get the mission pack until you've submitted your army list and the scenarios until just before the game.

For example, in one phase of one campaign weekend I attended, half of the Ork factions were trying to take out Imperial supply lines. So your SM/IG/INQ factions started off in the middle of one side, convoy style, and their job was to get a certain number of points off the other side of the tables. The Orks could deploy on both adjacent sides from reserve meanwhile, and their task was to kill a certain number of points worth.

Meanwhile, the other half of the Imperial faction was fighting against half the Chaos faction, who had had markers placed on the tables to represent shrines. Their job was to capture more shrines than the enemy player could 'activate' with their HQ units.

The other half of the Chaos faction was deployed from all four table sides to assault half the Eldar faction, who were trying to defend their primary incursion point into the sector (the webway gate) which was stuck in the middle of the battlefields. It had three shield generators around it, and all had armour values.

And so on. Each faction team would meet in between games, and the faction captain would determine which players would fight which missions (to represent the strategic choices made by the commander). They also had a limited number of 'advantage cards' that they could issue to players over the course of the campaign, for early deployment, fearlessness, etc.

Meanwhile, there were two blokes in the back who'd devised a story that could develop several ways, took in the results, and announced the next development in the campaign for everyone after each game.

It was great fun, and the nature of the different scenarios meant that even a tough list would have trouble due to the many different scenarios it could be placed in. For example, having a close combat heavy list is pretty useless when you have to defend a point after all. Sometimes you'd end up doing a game which was harder on you then the opponent, but that was fun in and of itself. It challenged you as a commander, and represented real life more, where sometimes you don't get to pick your mission. You go where the general needs you.

What you described here is a "classic" approach at narrative EVENT, and I wholeheartedly agree, that those work great that way and in fact are my prefered way of "doing 40K". What I tried to picture, was narrative TOURNAMENT, which would as neutrally as possible test the skill of individual players at being good at playing 40K "to win". Just for the sake of intelectual excercise for likes like Peregrine here, who already complaints at doing anything other than Matched Play at any kind of "event with a term 'tournament' in it's description". What you described has no valild "metric" to measure individual players against, as each and every is starting on a different power level, play different scenarios with different goals and there is simply no way to separate list strenght from player skill in such seting and to ensure, that individual scenarios are "fair enough" to measure anything.

A tournament is about the end.

A narrative campaign/tournament is about the journey.

Holy cow. Have an exalt, good sir.

Yep thats a pretty on-point statement sir.

 Ketara wrote:
Likewise, if I bring a ridiculous cheese heavy min/maxed tournament list designed to synergise invulnerable saves with rerollables and put it against a guy who just puts a really uncompetitive Chaos Cultist army on the table, the game is likely predetermined already (and not by the organiser). The game itself being inherently unbalanced causes this. If I give Mr Cheese (tm) a minor handicap in line with the story (for example, by saying that his HQ ran into an assassin unit and is therefore coming in from reserve this game), that evens out the odds slightly. If the game is still unbalanced in the favour of Mr Cheese, I can set more handicaps (giving a handful of rerollables to the opponent, for example) in order to further balance out the game, make it fun for both of them, and give both an equal chance of winning.

Handicaps by their very nature are usually applied in most settings to balance an unbalanced game or scenario. This is a very separate thing to deciding who wins a game, unless the intent is very specifically to apply handicaps until the game is rigged. Which is very much not what I said, and not what would be done in any narrative play setting.

Like I said, the organizer determines the outcome of the game. Instead of a decisive win for Mr Cheese, as the decisions of the two players involved would have led to, the organizer removes units/gives re-rolls/etc until the outcome of the game is more in line with what they want it to be. That's blatant rigging of the game.

(And yes, list construction is part of the game.)

 Kriswall wrote:

 auticus wrote:
Well hopefully it can generate actual discussion that is worthwhile. I am a narrative event organizer and I like to hear others' input on what they think a narrative event is to them.

I'm not interested in having troll commentary nor will I respond to people that jump in discussing that kind of thing.

Fair. To me, a narrative event is pretty much any event with some sort of story element that impacts game play. Past that, the sky is the limit. I used to run a GW shop and here are a few non-"traditional tournament" events we ran.

1. Tanksgiving - Everyone brings as many Vehicles as they can field. Mega battle ensues. There is no real rhyme nor reason. It's just an excuse to field every tank you own. Tyranid players were allowed to bring anything big.
2. Tournament of Champions - Each player brings one unnamed character with a limit of 200 points. They square off in a standard bracket, starting 24" away from each other.
3. The Great Pumpkin Smash - Each player got to bring 250 points worth of models with no force org. Full units. We stuck a ton of candy corn pumpkins on the table. They were AV12 with 3HP each. If you killed one, you got to eat it. Whoever smashed the most pumpkins won a prize.
4. Death Race 40k - Each player gets to bring one bike (or equivalent, we had a list of options). You'd line up and the goal was to get to the finish line. Movement was limited to 12" per movement phase. The course was like an obstacle course with all sorts of bad things that would pop out including a Carnifex. Get too far ahead and everyone behind you targets you with shooting attacks. It was brutal, but quick and fun.
5. We also ran a couple of Cityfight/Planetstrike events where the outcome of Game 1 dictated the mission and attacker/defender status for Games 2+.
6. We played one "standard tournament" with a twist. You'd start with a legal, 6th edition style 2000 point single force org. Then, you could field up to 1500 points in any combination from that list for Games 1, 2 and 3. The twist was that if a unit fully died, you had to cross it off your list for the rest of the event. A lot of players had a lot less than 1500 points remaining by game 3. It was a lot of fun. One guy was down to a single Dreadnought for game 3. That thing wouldn't die.

Bold for effin awesome.
Italics for sounds narrative to me...

A narrative tournament or event:

The ones I have been to (or even hosted) have varied quite a bit:

So I went to several at the old HG of Mongoose Publishing for games of Babylon 5, Judge Dredd and Star Trek. All of them have some narrative element in the construction of fleets / gangs and scenarios that were played. I have also run the same and attended other groups torunaments.

They also ran a Babylon 5 Earth - Centauri War which was highly narrative to the extent of having Admirals choose players/fleets to attack or defend systems (tables) and the interactions of their discussions would influence the scenario played. events also occurred during the 2 day period that changed the course of the war - partly for fun - partly to balance things a bit.

They can be great fun and are a different experience to the more set tournament sequence of 3-4 games across a day with set scenarios / tables etc.

The mission design will be full of "story" rules that are really just badly-designed tournament scenarios. You'll get stuff like awarding extra VP for killing units in melee, because this is the designated melee mission regardless of the fact that the Tau army has zero interest in melee combat and the resulting attempt to win the game is blatantly against the fluff. These rules will usually be poorly balanced and awkward, and the winner of the game will often have more to do with the balance effects of the mission design than the decisions made by the players.

It helps if the players are aware of the amended rules and scenarios and they want to play the narrative. Simply throwing at players when they arrive is a recipe for disaster. I have experienced variations of both and it can go badly wrong.

On the other hand I have attended friendly tournaments where players want to win but also want to enjoy the game. And I have attended tournaments where players are focussed on one thing and will bend, twist and break the rules to do so.

Trigger warning...

 oni wrote:
OK... You've been warned and you're still reading. Here is how I view it.

Narrative Event / Tournament = Warhammer 40,000 (proper, out of the book Warhammer 40,000)

Tournament = A mutated and molested Warhammer 40,000 for those who find the rules and missions as written by GW to be unacceptable (e.g. the ITC, Nova, etc.)

Your view is wrong. Out of the book 40k is not even remotely "narrative". If I see someone advertising a narrative event I'd expect them to have done significant work to add story elements beyond just running the RAW scenarios with RAW army construction.

 Peregrine wrote:

 oni wrote:
OK... You've been warned and you're still reading. Here is how I view it.

Narrative Event / Tournament = Warhammer 40,000 (proper, out of the book Warhammer 40,000)

Tournament = A mutated and molested Warhammer 40,000 for those who find the rules and missions as written by GW to be unacceptable (e.g. the ITC, Nova, etc.)

Your view is wrong. Out of the book 40k is not even remotely "narrative". If I see someone advertising a narrative event I'd expect them to have done significant work to add story elements beyond just running the RAW scenarios with RAW army construction.

TRIGGERED!!! Haha.

Check it out... I'm Peregrine... "RAAAHHH! You don't have the same viewpoint as me therefore you're "WRONG!"

Calm down precious little snowflake. It's OK for people to have different view points than your own. You will be just fine if someone disagrees with you.

 oni wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 oni wrote:
OK... You've been warned and you're still reading. Here is how I view it.

Narrative Event / Tournament = Warhammer 40,000 (proper, out of the book Warhammer 40,000)

Tournament = A mutated and molested Warhammer 40,000 for those who find the rules and missions as written by GW to be unacceptable (e.g. the ITC, Nova, etc.)

Your view is wrong. Out of the book 40k is not even remotely "narrative". If I see someone advertising a narrative event I'd expect them to have done significant work to add story elements beyond just running the RAW scenarios with RAW army construction.

TRIGGERED!!! Haha.

Check it out... I'm Peregrine... "RAAAHHH! You don't have the same viewpoint as me therefore you're "WRONG!"

Calm down precious little snowflake. It's OK for people to have different view points than your own. You will be just fine if someone disagrees with you.

Yeah... I also argue that some of the stuff straight out of the current BRB is absolutely narrative. You know... like the whole NARRATIVE PLAY section?

 Kriswall wrote:
Yeah... I also argue that some of the stuff straight out of the current BRB is absolutely narrative. You know... like the whole NARRATIVE PLAY section?

The word "narrative" may be involved, but it's a bare-minimum effort. I'd expect much more from a narrative event that I have to pay to attend.

 Peregrine wrote:

Like I said, the organizer determines the outcome of the game. Instead of a decisive win for Mr Cheese, as the decisions of the two players involved would have led to, the organizer removes units/gives re-rolls/etc until the outcome of the game is more in line with what they want it to be. That's blatant rigging of the game.

(And yes, list construction is part of the game.)

Let's clarify the meaning of the words we're using here, yes? Because I can only speculate that you have some interpretation or understanding of them separate to that of most dictionaries, thus causing the confusion.

To determine the outcome is to decide who wins, right? It's to pick (for whatever reason) the result of the match. It is, to reword in other ways, to settle, to predetermine, to decide upon the winner before the game is played. It is to reduce the chance of the game turning out other than how you intend it to 0%.

The meanings of these words are necessarily however, not the meaning of the words 'handicap'. A handicap is an impediment, a restraint, a disadvantage. In any game terminology, it is a different thing to the meaning described by the words 'Rigged' or 'determines'. The former retains the element of chance, and indeed, can even be a balancing action, making it so neither player in a game (any game) has an advantage. To rig, or determine a game, means that the outcome is settled before the game is played.

That is a generally very different thing altogether to a handicap. Whilst it is possible for a handicap to become so extreme as to virtually determine a game (me running a race against a person with one leg, for example), that is very clearly and explicitly, in every form I have been able to communicate here, not what is being discussed in this scenario.

Just in case though, I'll reiterate here that in none of the examples above, or mentioned within this thread, is a handicap anywhere near so extreme as to possibly make a conflation of 'handicap' and 'rigging/determining' being discussed, alluded to, or otherwise mentioned as a feasible possibility. But very explicitly a handicap that would at worst, reduce the odds of a game to roughly 50% in either direction (or a level playing field)

Does that help?

 Peregrine wrote:

 Kriswall wrote:
Yeah... I also argue that some of the stuff straight out of the current BRB is absolutely narrative. You know... like the whole NARRATIVE PLAY section?

The word "narrative" may be involved, but it's a bare-minimum effort. I'd expect much more from a narrative event that I have to pay to attend.

So... to clarify, the BRB has narrative options, but they're not narrative enough? Just trying to understand. It feels like the goal posts are moving here. It feels like you're acknowledging that the BRB has narrative options, but then moving the goal posts by saying that those options aren't narrative enough to warrant being used in an event that charges money. Would they be sufficient for a free event in a local store? Not every event charges money to attend. Given that there are A LOT more stores and clubs than gaming conventions, I'd hazard a guess that the majority of events don't come with an entry fee.

 Kriswall wrote:
So... to clarify, the BRB has narrative options, but they're not narrative enough? Just trying to understand. It feels like the goal posts are moving here. It feels like you're acknowledging that the BRB has narrative options, but then moving the goal posts by saying that those options aren't narrative enough to warrant being used in an event that charges money.

Simply putting the word "narrative" on something doesn't make it a compelling narrative event. GW's "narrative" rules are just standard tournament-style missions. They're designed to be played with any random pair of armies composed of any units, not custom-made for a particular pair of armies or story element or anything that would really set them apart from standard tournament missions. Sure, they tend to have asymmetrical objectives or whatever, but most serious tournaments have also missions that are deeper than the same old "5 objectives, 12" deployment zones along the long edges" or "let's just play kill points". And once you get past the generic missions and into actual story-based scenario design you get half a page of general "hey guys, playing with a story is fun, you should kind of do it and stuff" word count padding and a single poorly designed mission where the IG player should have a 100% win rate on the first turn.

Contrast this with previous core rulebooks where narrative play got entire chapters, complete with multiple detailed story-based scenarios as examples, suggestions on scratch building terrain to represent story elements, etc. That was legitimate narrative gaming, even if GW could have improved significantly on it if they really cared enough. What we got in 8th is a joke.

Would they be sufficient for a free event in a local store? Not every event charges money to attend. Given that there are A LOT more stores and clubs than gaming conventions, I'd hazard a guess that the majority of events don't come with an entry fee.

I'm operating under the assumption that "event" means "pay to attend", because even local store events charge money to cover their expenses. It might not be a major entry fee, but every time I've seen an event that was more than just some random person posting "hey, let's play a narrative game" on a local store's facebook page it has had at least a small fee. And even if we're talking about the rare event where the store decides to eat a loss on it for some strange reason and run it for free it's still not sufficient. If you're just using the standard rulebook missions and not adding your own rules to support the story then you aren't running a narrative event, you're running a normal tournament and calling it "narrative" to try to bait people into attending.

Is this an academic discussion? Are the people in this thread actually playing in narrative events or is this arm chair posturing from interwebs? Serious question. Raise your hand if you have played in narrative events.

*Raises Hand* There, my opinion counts as much as 3.5 people that have not played in a narrative event.*

I have played in excellently run narrative events.

Event 1: Star Wars CCG. When the first expansion came out, the game had rules for blowing up the Death Star and blowing up Yavin. The TO's rules were basically, if you win the game without blowing up Yavin IV (Dark Side) or without blowing up the Death Star (Light Side), your game is a draw. Had to start with Yavin IV location with your Light Side Deck and Death Star for Dark Side Deck. Everything else was fair game. Most fun I ever had in any gaming event ever. "Is that Yoda and Obi Won in a Y-Wing making an attack run on the Death Star?" "You bet your fething ass it is!"

Event 2: Horus Heresy 3 day campaign at AdeptiCon 2016. I played in Day 1 with my IF. The only rules were your army had to be fully painted. How was it narrative? The Loyalist and Traitor sides were paired off each round with random team mates in a 2x2 game. There was a huge map where each game would determine which side controlled resources. The event lasted 3 days with the # of resources determining the winning side. Throughout the weekend, there were huge 2500 point tournaments that gained your side points and there were 500 point Zone Mortalis tournament games, too. There was a table that represented a space platform. If you controlled a super special objective at the end of your turn, you could drop a huge fething bomb on someone else's battle field. A random table was determined and you placed a large template down that always scattered 3d6 and did something like a S8 AP2 to anything under it. There was no individual prize for best general. Only Best Painted and Not a Dick got prize support. It was fun as feth.

Event 3: HH Zone Mortalis AdeptiCon Day 2, 2017. Another narrative event where the games affected the outcome for the whole weekend (traitor vs loyalists). Why was it memorable? My opponent had a really gakky turn 1 and 2, and I was mopping up. Good Guy Dave sort of guy. The TO was walking around, saw the situation, plopped an owlbear down with stats and gak, and now I had that a-hole in my backfield. The game instantly went from a lop-sided snore-fest to an 'Oh, gak! I really needed that objective!' Tons of fun for both of us as it attacked randomly, fething up a squad of my tacticals and his incoming rhino. We both agreed it was the most fun game we had all day.


Worst Narrative Event: Horus Heresy Friendly at the 2017 Adpeticon. This is not run by the primary HH event guys. This 3-round tournament was billed as a narrative event where "friendly lists are strongly encouraged." It was run by two of the worst players I have had to play against at AdeptiCon (Yes, I'll call those fethers out). At least, they were the main guys in charge of it. The good news is that they weren't playing. The bad news is that the informational packet had no narrative gak in it at all. The narrative in how the games were tied together was non-existant. Un-Painted armies were allowed to play (a huge no-no to me for a narrative event). This was billed as a "Friendly", yet it had no list limitations, so one list had 9x quad-whatever guns with phosphex shells and defended his choice with 'Hey, I could have brought 12!". (dick) I was fortunately to at least play 2 guys that were pretty cool, but felt the whole thing was a complete waste of time, otherwise. I won't play another tournament they run or have any part of running.

*Actual weight of Kronk's opinion may vary. Subject to over-ruling by wife. YMMV, IMHO, STFU>FO, OMG BBQ*

Personally,

A Narrative events are usually more lad back gaming with you working with more than 1 players toward a common goal in a story arch. Most events do not have prizes. For example, an Apocalypse event with a story arch I would be something I would call a "Narrative event."

A Narrative tournament, is more like a fun tournament using custom missions or non-standard missions. Example, planet strike missions. This still using a tournament format like swiss for parings, and players may or may not, most likely not, be working together toward a common goal. Because it is a tournament there is more than likely prizes for players that did well in the tournament.

I ran a "Narrative Event" a few years back using the Fellowship of the Ring Journey book over I think it was about a 1-2 month period. Basically everyone played through all the scenarios in the book as both good and evil forces recording the scores as we went. When everyone was finished, we tallied up the scores and the highest was obviously the winner. That's narrative to me as you're following a story through from start to finish, but there's still a bit of strategy and competition in there to keep everybody keen.

Is this an academic discussion? Are the people in this thread actually playing in narrative events or is this arm chair posturing from interwebs? Serious question. Raise your hand if you have played in narrative events.

I'm a narrative event organizer. The problem I've run into is that what constitutes a "narrative event" seems to differ from person to person, so I like to discuss with the general community what a narrative event means to see where all the opinions and ideas are.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Kriswall wrote:
So... to clarify, the BRB has narrative options, but they're not narrative enough? Just trying to understand. It feels like the goal posts are moving here. It feels like you're acknowledging that the BRB has narrative options, but then moving the goal posts by saying that those options aren't narrative enough to warrant being used in an event that charges money.

Simply putting the word "narrative" on something doesn't make it a compelling narrative event. GW's "narrative" rules are just standard tournament-style missions. They're designed to be played with any random pair of armies composed of any units, not custom-made for a particular pair of armies or story element or anything that would really set them apart from standard tournament missions. Sure, they tend to have asymmetrical objectives or whatever, but most serious tournaments have also missions that are deeper than the same old "5 objectives, 12" deployment zones along the long edges" or "let's just play kill points". And once you get past the generic missions and into actual story-based scenario design you get half a page of general "hey guys, playing with a story is fun, you should kind of do it and stuff" word count padding and a single poorly designed mission where the IG player should have a 100% win rate on the first turn.

Contrast this with previous core rulebooks where narrative play got entire chapters, complete with multiple detailed story-based scenarios as examples, suggestions on scratch building terrain to represent story elements, etc. That was legitimate narrative gaming, even if GW could have improved significantly on it if they really cared enough. What we got in 8th is a joke.

Would they be sufficient for a free event in a local store? Not every event charges money to attend. Given that there are A LOT more stores and clubs than gaming conventions, I'd hazard a guess that the majority of events don't come with an entry fee.

I'm operating under the assumption that "event" means "pay to attend", because even local store events charge money to cover their expenses. It might not be a major entry fee, but every time I've seen an event that was more than just some random person posting "hey, let's play a narrative game" on a local store's facebook page it has had at least a small fee. And even if we're talking about the rare event where the store decides to eat a loss on it for some strange reason and run it for free it's still not sufficient. If you're just using the standard rulebook missions and not adding your own rules to support the story then you aren't running a narrative event, you're running a normal tournament and calling it "narrative" to try to bait people into attending.

Gotcha. Sounds like a core issue with this debate is that there are multiple definitions of "narrative" and "event" in play, colored largely by personal experience. I don't see very many store events in my area having an entry fee, so my experience dictates that only larger, con based events tend to have entry fees. Your mileage may vary, etc, etc. I also ran a GW store for a bit. ANY event that caters only to a handful of armies is typically bad for community growth. "Hey, little Timmy... we're having a big, fun event this Saturday, but you can't play... the narrative doesn't support Tyranids on this planet. Sorry. Maybe you can play next month."

For many, narrative just means that the mission has some sort of story element and that it's not a straight, balanced competition. For you, it sounds like there needs to be a firm story, preferably with a custom board layout designed to support the story and only catering to a handful of very specific armies. For me, that definition is WAY too restrictive. It's possible to run a narrative event for any army and using any table. Why are 10 factions fighting in one event? To quote GW, "Forge the Narrative".


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 auticus wrote:

Is this an academic discussion? Are the people in this thread actually playing in narrative events or is this arm chair posturing from interwebs? Serious question. Raise your hand if you have played in narrative events.

I'm a narrative event organizer. The problem I've run into is that what constitutes a "narrative event" seems to differ from person to person, so I like to discuss with the general community what a narrative event means to see where all the opinions and ideas are.

Seems to vary WILDLY from person to person. My advice is to just cater to the largest possible group of people. Avoid any event that excludes specific armies. A beautiful custom board and scenario detailing the siege of an Imperial Fists stronghold by Iron Warriors attackers might be amazingly thematic, with great narrative elements, but it also flat out excludes anyone without Imperial Fists or Iron Warriors.

 auticus wrote:

Is this an academic discussion? Are the people in this thread actually playing in narrative events or is this arm chair posturing from interwebs? Serious question. Raise your hand if you have played in narrative events.

I'm a narrative event organizer. The problem I've run into is that what constitutes a "narrative event" seems to differ from person to person, so I like to discuss with the general community what a narrative event means to see where all the opinions and ideas are.

Sweet! Thanks for running events like that!

Be more like my good examples and less like my bad example!

Narrative, to me at least, implies something like WARMACHINE: Escalation's Kings, Nations and Gods-campaign.

It's a series of missions, played in order, each with their own special rules, some with randomized rules attached.

Missions played during the Icy Grip of Winter, for instance. Roll for weather-conditions; a 2 means all shooting from more than 5" away misses automatically, a 12 has all non-Khador models suffer -1 movement, and so on.

A narrative event, to me, should be something that tells a narrative, and not just Army A defeats Army B; Army A will face the winner of Army C VS Army D.

That's a really good example. ^^

Event 3: HH Zone Mortalis AdeptiCon Day 2, 2017. Another narrative event where the games affected the outcome for the whole weekend (traitor vs loyalists). Why was it memorable? My opponent had a really gakky turn 1 and 2, and I was mopping up. Good Guy Dave sort of guy. The TO was walking around, saw the situation, plopped an owlbear down with stats and gak, and now I had that a-hole in my backfield. The game instantly went from a lop-sided snore-fest to an 'Oh, gak! I really needed that objective!' Tons of fun for both of us as it attacked randomly, fething up a squad of my tacticals and his incoming rhino. We both agreed it was the most fun game we had all day.

I love this!

 Kriswall wrote:
For many, narrative just means that the mission has some sort of story element and that it's not a straight, balanced competition. For you, it sounds like there needs to be a firm story, preferably with a custom board layout designed to support the story and only catering to a handful of very specific armies. For me, that definition is WAY too restrictive. It's possible to run a narrative event for any army and using any table.

I wouldn't go to that extreme of all of that being necessary, but let's take the Patrol mission from the "narrative" section in 8th edition as an example of what I'm talking about. This is literally the old Dawn of War mission from 5th edition with slightly different deployment zones and a roll for reserves instead of an automatic turn-2 arrival. There's no story element at all here, beyond what is found in pretty much any mission. It's just a standard 1v1 scenario that can be, and has been, used in competitive tournaments. Same thing with the other missions. Yeah, the asymmetrical objectives probably rule them out of actual tournaments (since 40k takes way too long per game to play both sides in a two-game match), but they're the same sort of stock historical warfare concepts that are often used in random pickup games without any story elements at all.

So, I wouldn't reject an event just because they don't have custom terrain or whatever, but I'd expect to see more than just playing Patrol and Ambush instead of The Relic before I give someone credit for running a legitimate narrative event.

Why are 10 factions fighting in one event? To quote GW, "Forge the Narrative".

The problem is that such a narrative is inherently stupid. There's just no plausible reason for all of the factions, including factions that are extremely rare and/or limited to certain parts of the galaxy, to be in the same place at the same time. I have never seen one that was even remotely interesting or well-written, and there's rarely even more detail then "it's a planet guys, go fight over the magical artifact thingy".

 Peregrine wrote:

 Kriswall wrote:
For many, narrative just means that the mission has some sort of story element and that it's not a straight, balanced competition. For you, it sounds like there needs to be a firm story, preferably with a custom board layout designed to support the story and only catering to a handful of very specific armies. For me, that definition is WAY too restrictive. It's possible to run a narrative event for any army and using any table.

I wouldn't go to that extreme of all of that being necessary, but let's take the Patrol mission from the "narrative" section in 8th edition as an example of what I'm talking about. This is literally the old Dawn of War mission from 5th edition with slightly different deployment zones and a roll for reserves instead of an automatic turn-2 arrival. There's no story element at all here, beyond what is found in pretty much any mission. It's just a standard 1v1 scenario that can be, and has been, used in competitive tournaments. Same thing with the other missions. Yeah, the asymmetrical objectives probably rule them out of actual tournaments (since 40k takes way too long per game to play both sides in a two-game match), but they're the same sort of stock historical warfare concepts that are often used in random pickup games without any story elements at all.

So, I wouldn't reject an event just because they don't have custom terrain or whatever, but I'd expect to see more than just playing Patrol and Ambush instead of The Relic before I give someone credit for running a legitimate narrative event.

Why are 10 factions fighting in one event? To quote GW, "Forge the Narrative".

The problem is that such a narrative is inherently stupid. There's just no plausible reason for all of the factions, including factions that are extremely rare and/or limited to certain parts of the galaxy, to be in the same place at the same time. I have never seen one that was even remotely interesting or well-written, and there's rarely even more detail then "it's a planet guys, go fight over the magical artifact thingy".

I think your last few sentences point out why a lot of people don't like narrative events. A truly wonderful narrative event inherently excludes a ton of players. As a store operator, my narrative events almost had to be "You've just landed on Planet Everyoneismad and notice the evil [insert army here] have gotten here first. Fight!". As you point out, that's the only real way to cater to everyone. In a casual, non-store setting where you're perfectly happy to exclude a lot of potential players, a richer narrative is possible.

 Kriswall wrote:
I think your last few sentences point out why a lot of people don't like narrative events. A truly wonderful narrative event inherently excludes a ton of players. As a store operator, my narrative events almost had to be "You've just landed on Planet Everyoneismad and notice the evil [insert army here] have gotten here first. Fight!". As you point out, that's the only real way to cater to everyone. In a casual, non-store setting where you're perfectly happy to exclude a lot of potential players, a richer narrative is possible.

But at that point why even pretend that you're having a narrative event? Just be honest about the fact that you're running a competitive tournament and do it right.