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As the subject states. If I said there was a two day event coming that was NARRATIVE, what does that mean to you and what would you expect and enjoy from this?

I hear many events being called *NARRATIVE* events but when I read the details they just seem like another tournament to me with some hand made scenarios or non GHB scenarios. I think narrative is a bit beyond that, but I'm interested to know the public thoughts on this subject.

Possibly effects of Game 1, 2, 3... impacting later games through the event.

Summoning would have to be addressed ala GHB or some other rein-in.

Maybe a team-up later in the games to give a challenge to the player(s) who are doing really well. For example, my army beat Joe and Tim's in two separate battles. At some point I now have to face Joe and Tim who have combined their forces----potentially even tailoring their combined list to deal with my 15 Nagash army.

A good story that flows better than a simple "X army beat Y army game one...go to game 2B" the whole time. Added items or power ups for players, either through winning or pick ups in game, would be sweet. A final battle that is more than one table big and having it carry over to the next event would also be a plus.

Focusing on a unique or specific piece of fluff as a backdrop for the event.
Scenarios representing a story that will evolve throughout the event. Games affect (to some degree) the following games or end results
At the end of the event the narrative (even a paragraph or so) is easy and exciting to deliver. AoS can do this just as easily as Horus Heresy. So can other games, but anyway...)
Better than normal terrain, tables and/or special characters from narrative/scenario fluff are involved, like a messenger, ambassador, damsel to be rescued or put down, etc.)
Things like Time of War or some equivalent make the games that much more unique.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
@privateer some of the best narrative games I've played in any system involve one table/field affecting another, either during or usually after. Switching to a team match is also a good call. Our Heresy events do this sometimes to mix up the play over a weekend.

1) An actual story that reflects the armies involved, not just the usual random assortment of tournament armies playing randomly-paired games (whatever the AoS equivalent of ultramarines vs. ultramarines is). Most narrative events seem to be little more than a token story thrown over poorly-designed missions as an excuse to complain about "WAAC TFGs" and demand that everyone "play casually". Don't be that event.

2) Balance, including both balanced missions and a point system (whether GW or third-party). This is especially important with AoS where the ridiculous idea of playing without points exists. The event should be about the story, not about which person brought the auto-win army and massacred everyone.

I would expect there to be campaign elements such as the early games having influence on later games, units or characters earning skills or suffering injuries. And an overall narrative that is told at the event through the games and the outcomes of them.

How do we handle broken things in a narrative event?

There are certain items in AOS, as in 40k, that are simply too good for their points and seem to be taken a lot. How do we accommodate for that? Or are narrative events noithing more than tournaments with battles that affect each other?

 auticus wrote:
There are certain items in AOS, as in 40k, that are simply too good for their points and seem to be taken a lot. How do we accommodate for that?

You take responsibility as the event organizer and either ban the problem unit/upgrade, or you change its rules so that it is no longer overpowered.

-50% or less of the prize support based on winning games.

-Some sort of time of war thing that modifies how the board works.

-Little to no army restrictions, but mechanics that impose severe penalties on people trying to game the system.

The idea I had was to go through my formula and anything that is listed as too powerful for its point cost I was going to adjust the points to reflect the power.

ie: storm fiends for example.

I'm not sure how to impose penalties on bringing an OP list that would be palatable.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
-50% or less of the prize support based on winning games.

Why even have prize support at all? Just play a well-run event and use the entry fee money to pay for lunch or extra terrain or whatever. Awarding prizes at all for winning means people are going to play to win those prizes, and prizes for painting/sportsmanship/etc often leave people unhappy with the results.

-Little to no army restrictions, but mechanics that impose severe penalties on people trying to game the system.

How exactly is that possible? You can't have severe penalties for "gaming the system" without a complex system for determining what is "gaming" and what is "reasonable". Unless of course you use the "the event organizer judges your list and decides how to punish you" approach to comp, which virtually guarantees that people will hate you.

 Peregrine wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
-50% or less of the prize support based on winning games.

Why even have prize support at all? Just play a well-run event and use the entry fee money to pay for lunch or extra terrain or whatever. Awarding prizes at all for winning means people are going to play to win those prizes, and prizes for painting/sportsmanship/etc often leave people unhappy with the results.

-Little to no army restrictions, but mechanics that impose severe penalties on people trying to game the system.

How exactly is that possible? You can't have severe penalties for "gaming the system" without a complex system for determining what is "gaming" and what is "reasonable". Unless of course you use the "the event organizer judges your list and decides how to punish you" approach to comp, which virtually guarantees that people will hate you.

There's plenty of ways to do both options, no prizes at all is certainly a valid option among those. But anyways, the question was what one would expect at a narrative event and that's what I would expect.

 Peregrine wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
-50% or less of the prize support based on winning games.

Why even have prize support at all? Just play a well-run event and use the entry fee money to pay for lunch or extra terrain or whatever. Awarding prizes at all for winning means people are going to play to win those prizes, and prizes for painting/sportsmanship/etc often leave people unhappy with the results.

-Little to no army restrictions, but mechanics that impose severe penalties on people trying to game the system.

How exactly is that possible? You can't have severe penalties for "gaming the system" without a complex system for determining what is "gaming" and what is "reasonable". Unless of course you use the "the event organizer judges your list and decides how to punish you" approach to comp, which virtually guarantees that people will hate you.

I can't remember where I heard it (some podcast) but a way to deal with #1 was that they basically had after the first round or two, each "bracket" was essentially its own final grouping and the winner still got a prize. So it wasn't just the overall winner, and it helped lessen the blow if the cheeseweasels came out of the woodwork because the "top" table might be two OP min/maxed armies, but the winner of that game will get the same prize that the winner of the "losers" table with two fluffy armies would get. Sounded like a good way to not really hamper things but also not reward bringing a high end "tournament" level army, because while yes the powergamer is likely going to win, they aren't the only one getting the prize, each table after the first round or so is also competing for an identical prize.

I'm used to events in the US where it's a hobby or narrative focus and the scoring reflects that when registration and rules open. Furthermore, regardless of tone just about all the events require list submission head of time and they can score or reject lists to better fit the event. Quite simple.

Where I am, I have been an event coordinator for going on twenty years for GW games. I will say that coordinator based judging on lists will get you thrown out of the community on the fast-train here.

People get very nasty very quickly with subjective scoring.

You might need to apply a comp to prevent over powered lists then, for example you could take cues from Path to Glory or another campaign structure. If the narrative event is about your general growing into a powerful warlord, why not have a selection of Generals that players have to choose from.

You could apply some simple 0-1 limits on units you think are too good spammed as well.

Not to say that isn't one way of doing it, but I wouldn't of necessity 'expect' points or matched play army orgs as part of a narrative type of event. There is no reason that a narrative type event couldn't accomodate both those with small amounts of semi random models, who have maybe only started to get into the game as well as the OMG I need points type of players.

I'd personally prefer some force building guidelines coming from the organiser, that preferably ditched points in favour of some sort of guidelines that more clearly married with the supposed narrative. That is not an easy thing of course, as too strict will mean few can match it, but too lax and I wonder where the narrative went.

Asymmetric games. Stronger force vs weaker force etc, but with Victory conditions adjusted to match. Lots of 'even' matches is far less interesting, and the game about whether the few held the fort against the many for 4 turns etc fits very well into narrative type stuff.

Trying to run an event where I am without points would be the same as me standing in my garage by myself lol. No one would want to play in it.

Asymmetrical matches, as I found out this last summer trying to run a campaign with those, is also a recipe for people to not be interested.

Sometimes I feel like you are setting yourself up to lose from the get go with your doom and gloom. What about just giving some of the ideas a shot? Look at Holy Hammer and Realms at War and see what they are doing to make the events so successful.

It seems that if you can give the event a level of prestige - maybe start small and make it an invitational. Go all out on the terrain and plug the progress on social media. I follow the guys for both events and always on my Twitter do I see the awesome terrain projects they are doing in prep. It makes the event special, it encourages narrative play (where the "spectacle" of the game is more important than any other game mode) and more importantly it builds hype.

As an aside, I know a recent doubles tournament "brothers of Sigmar" ran asymmetrical battleplans - people will play them at events.

Because I've been through these scenarios a dozen times with the same results. The people where I am here largely hate that kind of thing. And then the peer pressure generates gamer-politics and it becomes more a hassle than its worth running it. I just attempted asymmetrical over the summer. I had a guy screaming at me (not exaggerating) storming out the store that I had ****** him out of a day of playing because the game was uneven and he didn't like that and then he went on a fb tirade about how awful that is and how he (in all caps) was never playing in anything that I ran ever again.

That was an extreme reaction but a lot of our players didn't like it for the same reason (asymmetrical is not fair even if you have victory conditions where you can win) and if its not even point match up then its considered bad.

Its not "doom and gloom". Its having tried it many times and watching it fail because the community rejected the idea of anything other than fair matched GHB scenarios only in an event.

Now I *could* do another asymmetrical event and I know out of say a pool of 24 players I wil lhave 4 that show up. Thats not worth running to me.

What I'm trying to do is see what the community thinks of is a narrative event.

I posted this in our fb group as well and only a couple people responded so its not a thing that I think will fly here.

You have my sympathies, because it sounds like your community is full of the same kind of people mine is; wannabe tryhards who feel that matched play is fair and balanced and anything else is unbalanced all the while trying to game matched play to be as competitive as possible and slandering anything else in the hopes of essentially boycotting it.

I handed our 40k events off to a guy who is an excellent storyteller and great organizer and our 40k campaign coming up next year seems to have a lot of interest even though its narrative, but the one thing that is of course coming up is the over powered combos and some want to keep them as well.

I hate that GW cannot for the life of them balance their game or make it tighter. I know perfect balance wont happen but please make some things more viable.

I felt that the community AOS efforts were strong. I don't like the GHB points at all because while the middle of the curve seems to be more varied, the spike in power with a few builds is just so gregarious as to turn me off to the whole game because I know that I will run across them and I don't want to feel compelled to have to build one of those lists to enjoy myself.

I can sympathise with having a group who are super set in their ways. But is that just a case of you might need to try and get other players (rather than the ones you already know) into what you are doing, new players/youngsters who are more malleable for example.

asymmetrical is not fair even if you have victory conditions where you can win

Must be some definition of fair I don't follow. Fair in a game is surely just that each side can have a fair chance of winning, so if the Victory conditions allow that how is that not fair?


On the points thing I just wish they had never done points at all and left it to those who want that to design what they wanted. But hey ho.

I think his group suffer from the old "unbalanced points means it can't be fair" even if you have a specific scenario conditions to allow the smaller force to win over the larger one.

Case in point: I payed a game (no points) versus the Stormcast starter set this weekend. I use the contents of King Vlagorescu's Ghoulish Host (minus the battalion), so I had like 1200 points to his maybe 800. Because of the imbalance and it was a fun game, we decided he was defending a castle at the edge of the board, and I had to get to it by Turn 6 or he won. Even with that unbalance and the fact I had my big King on Terorrgheist, I barely eked out a win because I rolled lucky and my Terrorgheist ate his Lord Celestant on Dracoth (rolled a 6 on my wound roll after damaging him already). Otherwise, he would have held me up enough to claim victory, and that was a weird not-quite-demo game.

I love asymmetric games so long as there's a story and scenario behind it to make things interesting.

WayneTheGame wrote:
I think his group suffer from the old "unbalanced points means it can't be fair" even if you have a specific scenario conditions to allow the smaller force to win over the larger one.

Case in point: I payed a game (no points) versus the Stormcast starter set this weekend. I use the contents of King Vlagorescu's Ghoulish Host (minus the battalion), so I had like 1200 points to his maybe 800. Because of the imbalance and it was a fun game, we decided he was defending a castle at the edge of the board, and I had to get to it by Turn 6 or he won. Even with that unbalance and the fact I had my big King on Terorrgheist, I barely eked out a win because I rolled lucky and my Terrorgheist ate his Lord Celestant on Dracoth (rolled a 6 on my wound roll after damaging him already). Otherwise, he would have held me up enough to claim victory, and that was a weird not-quite-demo game.

I love asymmetric games so long as there's a story and scenario behind it to make things interesting.

That's great for a specific game against a specific opponent. It's much more challenging to "set the narrative" when you have no idea who will be playing and what army they'll be bringing. For an organized event, players generally need to know exactly what they need to bring. You can't just have random people show up with random armies and then have them change the mission after starting.

True. Another reason why IMHO "balanced" armies work better than skews/gimmick lists, since you have a more reasonable chance of not running into that issue.

People largely won't play if they don't know the scenario and will build for that scenario. Many guys I know never build "balanced" armies. They build armies to hard counter what they believe they will face and what scenario they will be playing in.

 auticus wrote:
People largely won't play if they don't know the scenario and will build for that scenario. Many guys I know never build "balanced" armies. They build armies to hard counter what they believe they will face and what scenario they will be playing in.

I hear this; it's part of the reason I largely stopped playing Warmachine. I liked to build balanced armies (although I freely admit I don't care about the fluff there) but everything is spam/skew lists designed to "ask questions" and basically be hard-countered by anything teched to beat it or stomp anything that isn't. I hate hate hate that army building approach in any game.

Right, I am the same way. Its just not what I want out of a wargame. But its been how things have been since the mid 2000s I feel.

I'm starting to think I lucked out in getting a community of reasonable people...