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Was curious as to what peoples favorite campaign system for miniature games were? Anything from Infinity's Paradisio Campaign to something more generic like the ones in Full Thrust?

Is there anything about campaign rules that are a "must have" for you? Or a "must not have"?

Tony Bath's book on running a wargames campaign.

The General's Compendium.

Second Generals Compendium.

I also liked the Gothic campaign in the back of the rulebook, but it always seemed incomplete and needed more to really make it work.

Edit: I'll add the original Mighty Empires rules as well. Very flavorful back when GW was more 'fun'

I quite enjoyed reading the Hail Caesar: Britannia campaign supplement. Just the right level of input and nicely laid out.

Campaign: Paradiso is probably the most impressive if you are judging it on the aesthetic value of the book itself, although I'm hoping for something 'closer to home' for the next Infinity book.

I haven't played a lot of campaigns but Necromunda still stands out for me as the clear best of what I have tried.
Gaining xp, buying cooler, better guns then losing your trigger finger and having them become worthless just appeals to me in some odd way I guess

It's pretty specific to the BattleTech universe, but I like the the Chaos Campaign. The version presented in the Alpha Strike rules is even better, but here's a free PDF with a very basic version. It's missing the actual tracks that really make it work, but it gives a good overview of the idea:

http://bg.battletech.com/download/CAT35600_ChaosCampaign_Rulebook.pdf

With the major caveat that I haven't got much experience with campaign systems, I think Necromunda and Mordheim had excellent campaign rules. Wargods of Aegyptus appears to have a pretty solid system too.

I found Necromunda, Mordheim and Blood Bowl to be terrible campaigns--they're just way, way too random.

Mordheim....well, I spent all of my money desperately replacing casualties for my Dwarf crew without ever getting a chance to look at anything else you could buy, and fell into a noob trap of spending money on armour. The lowlight was a game of my Dwarves vs Skaven where I made maybe two or three attacks before the entire Skaven warband ran off of my table edge and won the scenario by staying out of LOS, and I could do virtually nothing to prevent it. Oh, and games where my heroes got ganked, so I couldn't even make an income roll.

It was the same with Blood Bowl--bad luck on the injury rolls meant that even when I was actually winning games, I was spending everything on replacing players, and having to field Blitzers with STR 2 and the like. It was negative fun; the matches themselves became something I just had to grind through without taking yet more casualties.

And in a recent Necromunda campaign, I became one of the top gangs despite missing two weeks of the first four. Why? Pure luck, in getting a good territory selection, no serious injuries, and a double-XP game early on. Other people dropped out because their gangs were in a death spiral, and by the final week, there were just three of the luckiest players left.

(It's rather telling that the original WD 190 battle report for Necromunda had the winning team get completely shafted on income compared to the losers because of unlucky injury and income rolls).

Cutlass. Pirates warbands.

Blackwater Gultch. Cowboys and Indians

Gutshot. Cowboys and Indians

Salvage Mogul. Scifi

All Things Zombie. Zombie survival

Supersystem. Superheros

Pulp City. Superheros/ Villians

Dungeon Delves, Super system with fantasy.

I also use an Old School D and D rpg with some conversion work for fantasy, as well. THAT coicided with an Old School WFB game from Hogshead that incorperated the old Warhammer RPG with skirmish level play with a combination RPG game.
back in the day did the same thing with 2d edition warhammer 40K, and the Necromunda rules set. 2d Edition worked well, based on the material almost being the same.


These days, I've also kicked around the USX line, and game from Ral Partha- For Cthuhlu stuff. Those figures work well in other game systems as well.

The new 40K rpg works well for skirmish level stuff, but the enemies are damn near lethal. Only War works well to put together a squad, then you can use the necromunda stuff for game mechanics.


Low level 40K stuff, you basicly use each figure as his own unit, and play with around 1-20 figures, and use a couple for extras, while you play with a couple of characters.

Mordhiem/ Warhammer fantasy was great when you have the Mighty Empires old school game. Then you can use a map based campaign, while you can use the rpg in conjunction with skirmish level stuff, as your army builds up off of a warband.

Back in the day- Lost and the Damned, and the 1st edition RPG was the best, you get a main character, add in the hirelings/ followers, and base the teams off of a boxed set.

30 figures at the time went a long way, then added in other units as your games continued.

Get about 5 guys to start, then build up the units, as you continue with Mordhiem in Empire in Flames...

Never played it, but the B5: ACTA campaign rules looked interesting. A Campaign was essentially a battle to control a single system in the setting, and the rules covered randomly generating a set of 'points of interest' for the setting ranging from planets to jump gates. Controlling a certain number of these objects was the victory condition, but each class of object provided certain benefits such as a Jumpgate made reinforcements easier to obtain, etc.

A good set of Campaign rules can be hard to find. I've tried many games that claim to have a campaign system but actually only have a minimal advancement system or (almsot worse in my view) have an overly-complex system that doesn't provide much advancement. In general I prefer systems that offer relatively quick advancement. Our club only games every other week anyway, and will likely play a given campaign no more than a few months, so slow advancing campaign systems are a no-go for me.

To that end, really like the extended campaign rules for Song of Blades and Heroes as laid out in the "Song of Deeds and Glory" supplement. It's nothing groundbreaking, but a nice combination of elements. A fairly random "exploratory" table contrasts with fairly predictable upgrades to character stats as well as the ability to buy (mostly) useful equipment and special abilities for your warband members.

After about 15 games or so the warbands can begin to become almost super-human especially in terms of a boosted "Quality" Statitic which changes the gameplay significantly. This is a real concern since SBH plays fast enough to often get 2 games in per gaming session, but who plays a campaign longer than 15 games anyway anyway? We've done 2 summer campaigns of SBH with this and will probably do another next summer.

The only thing that SBH lacks is a large number of scenarios. The 6 scenarios in the core rule book and those in the expansions are useful and fun, but we found the campaign benefited greatly from making our own scenarios or borrowing from fan-modified scenarios such as the 78 found here: http://hour11gaming.blogspot.com/p/song-of-blades-heroes-stuff.html

You can see how last summer's campaign went here:
http://chicagoskirmish.blogspot.com/p/dark-days-have-come-to-lands-of-qaarra.html

 Elemental wrote:
I found Necromunda, Mordheim and Blood Bowl to be terrible campaigns--they're just way, way too random.

Mordheim....well, I spent all of my money desperately replacing casualties for my Dwarf crew without ever getting a chance to look at anything else you could buy, and fell into a noob trap of spending money on armour. The lowlight was a game of my Dwarves vs Skaven where I made maybe two or three attacks before the entire Skaven warband ran off of my table edge and won the scenario by staying out of LOS, and I could do virtually nothing to prevent it. Oh, and games where my heroes got ganked, so I couldn't even make an income roll.

That was my experience as well (though with witchunters). Plus the forces weren't remotely equal, with Skaven at the top of the heap. Stupid slings letting you attack twice. We had fun, but like most GW rule sets, it was poorly balanced.

 Eilif wrote:
A good set of Campaign rules can be hard to find. I've tried many games that claim to have a campaign system but actually only have a minimal advancement system or (almsot worse in my view) have an overly-complex system that doesn't provide much advancement. In general I prefer systems that offer relatively quick advancement. Our club only games every other week anyway, and will likely play a given campaign no more than a few months, so slow advancing campaign systems are a no-go for me.

To that end, really like the extended campaign rules for Song of Blades and Heroes as laid out in the "Song of Deeds and Glory" supplement. It's nothing groundbreaking, but a nice combination of elements. A fairly random "exploratory" table contrasts with fairly predictable upgrades to character stats as well as the ability to buy (mostly) useful equipment and special abilities for your warband members.

After about 15 games or so the warbands can begin to become almost super-human especially in terms of a boosted "Quality" Statitic which changes the gameplay significantly. This is a real concern since SBH plays fast enough to often get 2 games in per gaming session, but who plays a campaign longer than 15 games anyway anyway? We've done 2 summer campaigns of SBH with this and will probably do another next summer.

The only thing that SBH lacks is a large number of scenarios. The 6 scenarios in the core rule book and those in the expansions are useful and fun, but we found the campaign benefited greatly from making our own scenarios or borrowing from fan-modified scenarios such as the 78 found here: http://hour11gaming.blogspot.com/p/song-of-blades-heroes-stuff.html

You can see how last summer's campaign went here:
http://chicagoskirmish.blogspot.com/p/dark-days-have-come-to-lands-of-qaarra.html

Agreed on a lot of things here. One thing that I think is very important in campaigns is minimizing the "snowball" effect that may occur after a string of games. I.e, the army/warband that wins it's first few games can end up quickly dominating as early victories fuel continuous advancement. I saw this in games like Mordheim and Necromunda, where the player who won the first game(s) easily took the lead, and forced the others to play constant catch up. I think advancements and "previous battles having an effect on future battles" is great but should be implemented in a way that prevents one player gaining too strong of a lead purely due to one or two early victories. It's a tough balancing act but IMO important.

 chochky wrote:

 Eilif wrote:
A good set of Campaign rules can be hard to find. I've tried many games that claim to have a campaign system but actually only have a minimal advancement system or (almsot worse in my view) have an overly-complex system that doesn't provide much advancement. In general I prefer systems that offer relatively quick advancement. Our club only games every other week anyway, and will likely play a given campaign no more than a few months, so slow advancing campaign systems are a no-go for me.

To that end, really like the extended campaign rules for Song of Blades and Heroes as laid out in the "Song of Deeds and Glory" supplement. It's nothing groundbreaking, but a nice combination of elements. A fairly random "exploratory" table contrasts with fairly predictable upgrades to character stats as well as the ability to buy (mostly) useful equipment and special abilities for your warband members.

After about 15 games or so the warbands can begin to become almost super-human especially in terms of a boosted "Quality" Statitic which changes the gameplay significantly. This is a real concern since SBH plays fast enough to often get 2 games in per gaming session, but who plays a campaign longer than 15 games anyway anyway? We've done 2 summer campaigns of SBH with this and will probably do another next summer.

The only thing that SBH lacks is a large number of scenarios. The 6 scenarios in the core rule book and those in the expansions are useful and fun, but we found the campaign benefited greatly from making our own scenarios or borrowing from fan-modified scenarios such as the 78 found here: http://hour11gaming.blogspot.com/p/song-of-blades-heroes-stuff.html

You can see how last summer's campaign went here:
http://chicagoskirmish.blogspot.com/p/dark-days-have-come-to-lands-of-qaarra.html

Agreed on a lot of things here. One thing that I think is very important in campaigns is minimizing the "snowball" effect that may occur after a string of games. I.e, the army/warband that wins it's first few games can end up quickly dominating as early victories fuel continuous advancement. I saw this in games like Mordheim and Necromunda, where the player who won the first game(s) easily took the lead, and forced the others to play constant catch up. I think advancements and "previous battles having an effect on future battles" is great but should be implemented in a way that prevents one player gaining too strong of a lead purely due to one or two early victories. It's a tough balancing act but IMO important.

Best solution for this, in my opinion, is to produce a system which allows weaker players to gang up on the leader. It could be as simple as forcing players to split their warband up to face challengers.

 Crazy_Carnifex wrote:

 chochky wrote:

 Eilif wrote:
A good set of Campaign rules can be hard to find. I've tried many games that claim to have a campaign system but actually only have a minimal advancement system or (almsot worse in my view) have an overly-complex system that doesn't provide much advancement. In general I prefer systems that offer relatively quick advancement. Our club only games every other week anyway, and will likely play a given campaign no more than a few months, so slow advancing campaign systems are a no-go for me.

To that end, really like the extended campaign rules for Song of Blades and Heroes as laid out in the "Song of Deeds and Glory" supplement. It's nothing groundbreaking, but a nice combination of elements. A fairly random "exploratory" table contrasts with fairly predictable upgrades to character stats as well as the ability to buy (mostly) useful equipment and special abilities for your warband members.

After about 15 games or so the warbands can begin to become almost super-human especially in terms of a boosted "Quality" Statitic which changes the gameplay significantly. This is a real concern since SBH plays fast enough to often get 2 games in per gaming session, but who plays a campaign longer than 15 games anyway anyway? We've done 2 summer campaigns of SBH with this and will probably do another next summer.

The only thing that SBH lacks is a large number of scenarios. The 6 scenarios in the core rule book and those in the expansions are useful and fun, but we found the campaign benefited greatly from making our own scenarios or borrowing from fan-modified scenarios such as the 78 found here: http://hour11gaming.blogspot.com/p/song-of-blades-heroes-stuff.html

You can see how last summer's campaign went here:
http://chicagoskirmish.blogspot.com/p/dark-days-have-come-to-lands-of-qaarra.html

Agreed on a lot of things here. One thing that I think is very important in campaigns is minimizing the "snowball" effect that may occur after a string of games. I.e, the army/warband that wins it's first few games can end up quickly dominating as early victories fuel continuous advancement. I saw this in games like Mordheim and Necromunda, where the player who won the first game(s) easily took the lead, and forced the others to play constant catch up. I think advancements and "previous battles having an effect on future battles" is great but should be implemented in a way that prevents one player gaining too strong of a lead purely due to one or two early victories. It's a tough balancing act but IMO important.

Best solution for this, in my opinion, is to produce a system which allows weaker players to gang up on the leader. It could be as simple as forcing players to split their warband up to face challengers.

That is indeed a useful solution, but what about in a campaign between two players? In this regard I always liked the Blood Bowl-esque approach of "Inducements" (basically bonuses/upgrades given to a lagging player). So depending on how far behind a warband/army is, it could get free access to more points, or some special advantage depending on the game mechanics (e.g. increased amount of a particular in-game 'resource' like sousltones in Malifaux or re-roll tokens in Blood Bowl). The problem with this system though is that it could be, maybe, abusable somehow? Like if a player deliberately kicks out some members of his warband in order to get some specific bonus which his list is tailored around... idk. I admit that I don't have a ton of personal experience with this sort of a "balancing" system, and while I think this "inducement/bonus" method is good it could be possibly detrimental due to its organic nature. But it seems to work for some games if implemented correctly (Blood Bowl again).

Edited for spelling.

I don't have the rulebook in front of me, but I think that SoBH does have a mechanic that allocates a certain amount of resources to a player who has lost a certain number of games in a row.

However, I think the best way to combat this type of thing is having a good GM/crew running the campaign. If you have someone that the group trusts to guide things and a group of players who are as interested in a great campaign as "winning" then the leader can make decisions during the campaign to keep everyone involved and the story moving.

Is one player getting too far ahead?
-Make them the attackers in a fortified castle scenario.
-Maybe give them a scenario where they are only allowed a certain amount of points.
-Make them take on 2 players at once.

Is one player getting too far behind?
-Pit them against a not-so-tough opponent.
-Pair them with the leading party in a 2v2 scenario.
-Run a scenario against a fixed NPC force.
-I modfied the classic caravan raid scenario with some good loot and a fixed defensive force just to give parties a chance for some quick XP and gold.

As for a 1 v 1 campaign. I'm sure it can be done, but having more players really is ideal for the GM and the players.

Yeah, the key to a great campaign is a great organizer. Rules are secondary as the organizer is there to balance thing sout with scenarios and such.

IA9: the Badab War Part 1 has the best Campaign rules for 40k that I've used.

For specifically GW related games, my favorite campaign was the Vogen Campaign for the original City Fight book back in 3rd ed 40K. I think I played through that on at least three different occassions.

My favorite champagin has to be the Thamurkan Throne Of Chaos and the Badbab War series, very much enjoyment have been had with those rules. A honorable mention also goes to the FoW campagin in North Africa

Badab War for me.

 snurl wrote:
The General's Compendium.

Seconded, or thirded... or whatevereded.