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So, I've recently been considering running a linked 40k campaign among my gaming group. I haven't thoroughly thought of the storyline yet, and I only have a rought draft of the rules done so far. However, what I have thought of, I'd really like your feedback on.

I should point out now, however, that this will not be using Planetary Empires rules, nor will there be a map. Instead, it will be a string of linked games, all tied together by narrative and player choices, as I shall explain momentarily.

PARTICIPANTS

I will be aiming for an even number of participants in this campaign, evenly distributed on two sides. If there is an uneven number of players, then I will improvise by allowing for some 2 vs 1 games at equal points value. Note that I myself will not be an active participant, unless absolutely necessary-- ie, if some participants can't make it, as explained below. For the most part, I will instead be fulffilling the role of "GM" for this campaign, delivering the narrative and giving the players choices to make. This will be explained further.

FORCES

I will be aiming for an even number of players where possible, and, furthermore, I will be trying to bunch players into at least two sides. Considering who I might be able to bring into this campaign, it might wind up being fought between the Imperium and Tau and Eldar, or between Orks and Tau+Eldar. I will be trying to go for matchups that "make sense"-- ie, I'd try to shy away from, say, Chaos and Eldar vs Tyranids and Necrons, though if I did wind up with such mismatched participants, I would try to turn the campaign into more of a free-for-all and include options for alliances.

On campaign weeks where some participants can't make it to their scheduled games, the GM (me) will play a game against their opponent so they at least can get a game in. This will represent a neutral faction (Dark Eldar) randomly attacking both sides of the conflict.

LENGTH

As this is my first time running a campaign, i don't want it to drag on for too long. For this reason, the campaign will last a maximum of five to six games, with the last one being a "final battle" using Apocalypse rules. Games will be held each week, with each week constituting a "campaign turn."


NARRATIVE STYLE

There will be no map for this campaign-- instead, the GM will be describing everything as possible. Actions by the campaigning armeis each week will be determined in a narrative matter-- at the start of each turn, the GM will roleplay a scene with each player, who will be acting the role of his/her army's general. The actions which the players decide to implement will then allow the GM to determine which scenarios are being played, and who will be battling who. For example, The Imperial Guard player decides to advance his forces through the jungle, while the allied Grey Knight player decides to go investigate the nearby temple. On the other side, the Eldar player decides to have forces hide in the jungle to harry any humans who come through, while the Tau decide to reinforce their positions by the hive city rather than send anything into the jungle. The end result is Eldar ambushing Imperial Guard, and Grey Knights fighting a small scale (500-750) Capture and Control mission against the Tau.

I should add, at this point, that most of the people who I am considering asking to join are regular players of DnD and other RPGs, so the roleplay aspect shouldn't be too awkward for them.


RULES:

Battles will be fought with scenarios from the main rulebook, and, if players are comfortable with them, Planetstrike, Battle Missions and Cities of Death as well.


Any thoughts on this campaign idea? Additionally, I am toying with the following options:

-Granting bonuses/rewards/stat changes each week to each army's primary HQ unit, depending on what they did/what happened to them in tht turn. Ie, the Space Marine commander who dies to Orks twice in a row gets Preferred Enemy against them, while a commander who survives against ridiculous odds gets something like +1 Toughness or Feel No Pain.
-Throwing in weather effects/local predators
-Having the points level escalate each week.

Constructive criticism would be greatly appreciated. Anything to help give me a clearer idea of how to run this.

Hmmmm.....


Sounds cool, do it.

Couple of things.

1. I played in something like this, and the armies were kinda "Paint and play, grow by the campaign" kinda things. We had an issue with a few too many playing Chaos/ Orks/ Nids, and they offset some of the other guys who got mad and left, then had to get a couple of others in faster, by bringing in grey goose armies- then that ended very badly.

2. Maps help. You can get some easy ones, or use some from WW2, or any other places you get your maps from to represent the fight. You can get planetry ones, and use those, ala DOW, and add in rudimentary pluses and minuses for each of the armies, depending on planets, conditions- or even use the stuff in the supplimentals to enhance your game.

Something of this nature NEEDS 3 times the amount of planning as a basic, no frills war on the table, so do your homework, or someone of your players is going to come to the table with thier moron suit.

Hope it goes well, you might ask the other players in your game to contribute to the chaos, so to speak. get thier and give your feedback, and get the thing up and running.

Make sure bonuses have an "expiration date" of sorts. That way, you prevent people from hoarding them until the very end of the campaign on the final battles. Make it so that any bonuses or benefits they get have to be used in the next 2 games or they are lost or somehow lose their edge.

Keep balance in mind, make sure that if a player is getting stomped they have some means to claw back into it with good play. Nothing is worse than being a campaign player who lost early and is just being bushwhacked by everyone else and their bonuses.

Grot 6 wrote:Hmmmm.....


Sounds cool, do it.

Couple of things.

1. I played in something like this, and the armies were kinda "Paint and play, grow by the campaign" kinda things. We had an issue with a few too many playing Chaos/ Orks/ Nids, and they offset some of the other guys who got mad and left, then had to get a couple of others in faster, by bringing in grey goose armies- then that ended very badly.

2. Maps help. You can get some easy ones, or use some from WW2, or any other places you get your maps from to represent the fight. You can get planetry ones, and use those, ala DOW, and add in rudimentary pluses and minuses for each of the armies, depending on planets, conditions- or even use the stuff in the supplimentals to enhance your game.

Something of this nature NEEDS 3 times the amount of planning as a basic, no frills war on the table, so do your homework, or someone of your players is going to come to the table with thier moron suit.

Hope it goes well, you might ask the other players in your game to contribute to the chaos, so to speak. get thier and give your feedback, and get the thing up and running.

1. The people who I am planning to ask all have fully-painted armies, or are at the very least committed to getting their armies done. Hopefully, it won't be an issue.

2. I wanted to avoid a map if at all possible, but if it does help clarify where everything is, then yeah, maybe a map would be a worthwhile thing to make.

curran12 wrote:Make sure bonuses have an "expiration date" of sorts. That way, you prevent people from hoarding them until the very end of the campaign on the final battles. Make it so that any bonuses or benefits they get have to be used in the next 2 games or they are lost or somehow lose their edge.

Keep balance in mind, make sure that if a player is getting stomped they have some means to claw back into it with good play. Nothing is worse than being a campaign player who lost early and is just being bushwhacked by everyone else and their bonuses.

I will be limiting the campaign to 5-6 weeks. If I do decide to go through with the bonuses idea, then I'll probably make them fairly low-key, or will allow them to only come into play for the Apocalypse game (depends on the bonus in question). However, you have a very good point about giving players chances to turn things around.

If anyone else has any ideas/criticisms, then I would be happy to hear them.

I don't know about your group, but where I play we all enjoy multiple systems so our gaming time is very... strained. We might want to play Mordheim one night and Flames of War the next, so asking players to commit to only playing ONE system for the next 6 weeks can be a bit too demanding. I woud suggest giving players two weeks to get any relevant games out of the way.

Having a single final battle can be great, but it also raises problems. An apocalypse battle is very boring if it is too one-sided, so you want it to be largely fair. But at the same time, if one side has categorically out-played the other during the campaign, they need to be rewarded. It's very easy to end up with a situation where either one side is going into the battle knowing they can't win, or one side is going into the battle feeling like all their previous wins have been for nothing.

Also, maps are great. It may have no bearing on the actual game-play mechanics, but as a visual aide they are great.

I love the campaign system in Imperial Armor 9, the Badab War Part 1 of 2.

It's easy to follow, does not require a map, allows you to have teams, and provides bonuses to either team for winning various rounds.

It's easy enough to customize to fit your narative campaign and our group prefers this to the Planetary Empire campaign. We're wrapping up our first one next Friday and Saturday with an Apocalypse game. We're already talking about teams for the next campaign.

Each of our rounds were 4-6 weeks. We had 4 rounds, with the 5th round being the single apocalypse game that I mentioned above.

The Loyalists won rounds 1 and 3. The Xenos/Chaos won round 2. We tied for round 4.

Loyalists had +1 to reserves (round 1 bonus) and 1 Orbital Bombardment per game (round 3). The OB was forgotten in 4 of the 8 round 4 games played...

Chaos/Xenos had non-vehicle heavy support choises as scoring (round 2 bonus). Stupid Tyranids with their big-ass scoring bugs and Chaos with thier scoring Obliterators...

We have had an absolute blast with it.

kronk wrote:I love the campaign system in Imperial Armor 9, the Badab War Part 1 of 2.

It's easy to follow, does not require a map, allows you to have teams, and provides bonuses to either team for winning various rounds.

It's easy enough to customize to fit your narative campaign and our group prefers this to the Planetary Empire campaign. We're wrapping up our first one next Friday and Saturday with an Apocalypse game. We're already talking about teams for the next campaign.

Each of our rounds were 4-6 weeks. We had 4 rounds, with the 5th round being the single apocalypse game that I mentioned above.

The Loyalists won rounds 1 and 3. The Xenos/Chaos won round 2. We tied for round 4.

Loyalists had +1 to reserves (round 1 bonus) and 1 Orbital Bombardment per game (round 3). The OB was forgotten in 4 of the 8 round 4 games played...

Chaos/Xenos had non-vehicle heavy support choises as scoring (round 2 bonus). Stupid Tyranids with their big-ass scoring bugs and Chaos with thier scoring Obliterators...

We have had an absolute blast with it.

Really? In that case, it sounds like something I'll want to look at for inspiration. Curse you, Forge World, for having such expensive rules books...

The Independent Characters Podcast do an excellent review of it here. In case you want to learn more about it before purchasing it. The part in bold (below) will have the campaign rules summary and the boarding action rules summary. They jump around a bit though. Carl interupts a lot.

Show Timestamps

Show Overview – 00:00:00
Huge Adepticon Announcement! – 00:01:00
Imperial Armour 9: The Badab War Part 1 (Fluff discussion) – 00:15:00
Imperial Armour 9: The Badab War Part 1 (Mechanics discussion) – 55:00:00
Show Announcements and Closure – 02:02:00

Edit: They also did a recent podcast on narative campaigns. More of a general idea type thing than detailing exactly how to run one. But still good. Not sure of the number, but you can find it on itunes or the IC website.

Well at the same time we aren't trying to tell you the rules in their entirity - but give you an approximation of how boarding actions are played out.

The new Zone Mortalis stuff that FW has released is also fantastic. You may want to look at that.

Glad you liked the episode