Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Curious to see how many folks play narrative games of 40k. If so, which missions from the rule book do you like, do you make your own, and what point/power level do you play at?

I play narrative games sometimes. I usually just randomly roll for whatever mission from the book. It honestly doesn't matter in a narrative game.

I sometimes like to create my own mission on the spot.

The other day I created a rescue mission where we deep struck a drop pod randomly on the table by dividing the table in 6, then using the old deep strike rules and a scatter die, determined where the pod would land. Then half of our armies were held in reserve and could only come in on a die roll of 3+ from the second turn on. whoever controlled the drop pod landing area by the end of the game won.

Personally, I love bigger games. The bigger the better. Unfortunately my friend like smaller games. So, I'm having a hard time trying to push him to even get to 2000 points, which I feel starts to at least resemble and army.

You can also just create random events happening in the game too. Like if somebody shoots their weapon and misses spectacularly with all his shots, you could say it randomly hit some building structure behind the intended target and caused a massive explosion where the building collapses killing whomever happens to be inside. I always liked gak like that.

 Brutus_Apex wrote:
I play narrative games sometimes. I usually just randomly roll for whatever mission from the book. It honestly doesn't matter in a narrative game.

I sometimes like to create my own mission on the spot.

The other day I created a rescue mission where we deep struck a drop pod randomly on the table by dividing the table in 6, then using the old deep strike rules and a scatter die, determined where the pod would land. Then half of our armies were held in reserve and could only come in on a die roll of 3+ from the second turn on. whoever controlled the drop pod landing area by the end of the game won.

Personally, I love bigger games. The bigger the better. Unfortunately my friend like smaller games. So, I'm having a hard time trying to push him to even get to 2000 points, which I feel starts to at least resemble and army.

You can also just create random events happening in the game too. Like if somebody shoots their weapon and misses spectacularly with all his shots, you could say it randomly hit some building structure behind the intended target and caused a massive explosion where the building collapses killing whomever happens to be inside. I always liked gak like that.

The drop pod game sounds pretty neat. How many points did you play and how long did the game go?

Narrative is all I play.

I used Urban Conquest and City Fight to create a blue print for a custom campaign. It incorporates both Kill Team and 40K rules, and I expect it will go to Apocalypse scale once the escalations create large enough armies.

Urban Conquest was useful to me, but it didn't go quite far enough; I always wanted a Necromunda style campaign/ strategy phase with trading post and political actions, etc.

I had to invent 16 unique territories. Some were auto include- all cities and settlements had to have a power generator, a water still or cistern, etc. The rest were rolled randomly using 3d6. I have 8 settlements of 25 territories each, and a central metropolis of 45 territories.

Each territory has rules that you can use if you control it, rules that you can use if you are lurking, and in some few territories, story triggers.

There's a genestealer cult and a Slaanesh Cult, both of which are recruiting civilians in the campaign rounds and also taking prisoners during the battles. As such, their Kill Teams grow by small groups of models, all while trying to evade notice by the Imperial Guard, Ministorum and Adepta Sororitas.

The genestealers actually go through the brood cycles; brood brothers and hybrids who skip both the campaign phase and the battle phase can beget progeny. They begin as a kill team of 1-8 purestrains- there's actually a custom Space Hulk scenario to determine how many purestrains end up in the kill team.

The Slaanesh Cult coalesces around an emergent Rogue Psyker and a charismatic criminal with some chemistry skill for brewing knock off combat drugs. They have a Sniper and Combat Specialist to back them up, and a handfull of relatively green recruits. They use Narcoject/ Needle weapons to create corrupting addictions in civilians. These victims are driven to further acts of hedonism until their deeds tear a hole in reality through which, the Daemons emerge. There are also story triggers that can lead the cultists to discover a long dormant Daemon forge, complete with a Noctilith Crown and Daemonkin guardians.

I created different types of civillians. It's an agriworld, so my nobles are organized into Thresher Houses. Picture Necromunda, but with Mad Max style tractors and dirtbikes [you guessed it; this is how the cult recruits jackals]. The Thresher Gangs are really just NPC kill Teams- they are intended to be growth fodder for cults.

Threshers, because they have the capacity to get caught up in the Genestealer breeding cycle, also procreate, age and die.

Then there are regular civilians. They don't fight; if a cult attacks their territory, they exit their buildings and try to flee to the nearest board edge before they get picked off. This is very dangerous for a cult though; it has a really high probability of attracting the attention of Imperial Factions, and until the cults are big enough to be armies in their own right, it is almost guaranteed to go badly.

Imperial Factions are stationed in specific territories and organized into formal detachments. These can be broken down into Kill Teams, or individual units in order to spread out and occupy more territories.

Imperial Forces in any settlement or city can also summon reinforcements from other cities or settlements. This can leave some cities and settlements dangerously undefended, and wise cults can use this to their advantage. Civilian travel is monitored and restricted, so cults have to rely on Thresher recruits to move between settlements.

Anyway, it is an insane level of detail and micromanagement. I could write literally pages more- tell you about all the specialized scenarios, territory rules and story triggers.

I've always been an escalation campaign player/ GM, but I've never had as much to work with in any other editions. Everything about 8th that the competitve players hate makes it absolutely awesome for people like me. What they call bloat, I call the biggest sandbox we've ever had.

Narrative games with my groups are usually modified rules to some degree, with a story-driven narrative given by the opponent- almost like a GM/DM.

Often we will have several players run a Deathwatch Kill-Team or an individual Deathwatch Marine, with fewer restrictions than the Codex. We've recently adapted N17 to this, which works quite well with some interesting results (I will share our modifications on this site soon, and encourage others to test my work, provide feedback, modify it, and enjoy it as they see fit).

Most games in our group are linked as a campaign and their results Show on a planetary Empires map. Sometimes we still just do unmodified games if we don't have much time, but usually we take a look and the map and take Inspiration or special rules from that.

One of the coolest things about the old Rogue Trader era- despite how goofy it was, it had some creative ideas that I would love to see come back to 40k. I don't mean the weird fluff, I mean some of the crazier things like random monsters, weather effects, and just overall cool ideas.

As it stands, most of 40k boils down to "kill the other guy's dudes, move your guys to these spots, have more of your dudes on that spot than the other guy, do the math and figure out who wins".

As far as a narrative goes, that's kind of goofy.

"BATTLE BROTHER, WE MUST STAND NEAR THIS AREA THAT IS ROUGHLY THE SIZE OF A FAMILY DINNER TABLE, DESPITE IT OFFERING LITTLE TO NO STRATEGIC VALUE AT ALL. WE MUST KEEP THOSE OTHER GUYS THAT ARE 300 METERS AWAY FROM US OVER THERE FROM HAVING MORE PEOPLE ON THIS SPOT. ALSO WE SHOULD PROBABLY BRING OVER A BUNCH OF TANKS AND AIRCRAFT TO FIGHT OVER THIS BATTLEFIELD THAT IS ROUGHLY THE SIZE OF A MALL PARKING LOT BECAUSE THE FATE OF THIS WHOLE PLANET DEPENDS ON THESE SPOTS. FOR THE EMPEROR!"

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:
One of the coolest things about the old Rogue Trader era- despite how goofy it was, it had some creative ideas that I would love to see come back to 40k. I don't mean the weird fluff, I mean some of the crazier things like random monsters, weather effects, and just overall cool ideas.

As it stands, most of 40k boils down to "kill the other guy's dudes, move your guys to these spots, have more of your dudes on that spot than the other guy, do the math and figure out who wins".

As far as a narrative goes, that's kind of goofy.

"BATTLE BROTHER, WE MUST STAND NEAR THIS AREA THAT IS ROUGHLY THE SIZE OF A FAMILY DINNER TABLE, DESPITE IT OFFERING LITTLE TO NO STRATEGIC VALUE AT ALL. WE MUST KEEP THOSE OTHER GUYS THAT ARE 300 METERS AWAY FROM US OVER THERE FROM HAVING MORE PEOPLE ON THIS SPOT. ALSO WE SHOULD PROBABLY BRING OVER A BUNCH OF TANKS AND AIRCRAFT TO FIGHT OVER THIS BATTLEFIELD THAT IS ROUGHLY THE SIZE OF A MALL PARKING LOT BECAUSE THE FATE OF THIS WHOLE PLANET DEPENDS ON THESE SPOTS. FOR THE EMPEROR!"

Can you elaborate on the first part about the things from RT? Those sound intriguing!

(I'm not super interested in discussing what's wrong with 40k currently. I think that particular drum is beat enough elsewhere in this forum.)

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:
One of the coolest things about the old Rogue Trader era- despite how goofy it was, it had some creative ideas that I would love to see come back to 40k. I don't mean the weird fluff, I mean some of the crazier things like random monsters, weather effects, and just overall cool ideas.

As it stands, most of 40k boils down to "kill the other guy's dudes, move your guys to these spots, have more of your dudes on that spot than the other guy, do the math and figure out who wins".

As far as a narrative goes, that's kind of goofy.

"BATTLE BROTHER, WE MUST STAND NEAR THIS AREA THAT IS ROUGHLY THE SIZE OF A FAMILY DINNER TABLE, DESPITE IT OFFERING LITTLE TO NO STRATEGIC VALUE AT ALL. WE MUST KEEP THOSE OTHER GUYS THAT ARE 300 METERS AWAY FROM US OVER THERE FROM HAVING MORE PEOPLE ON THIS SPOT. ALSO WE SHOULD PROBABLY BRING OVER A BUNCH OF TANKS AND AIRCRAFT TO FIGHT OVER THIS BATTLEFIELD THAT IS ROUGHLY THE SIZE OF A MALL PARKING LOT BECAUSE THE FATE OF THIS WHOLE PLANET DEPENDS ON THESE SPOTS. FOR THE EMPEROR!"

And then Maelstrom turns it up to 11.

BROTHER MARINES, CAPTURE THAT RANDOM AREA IN 2 MINUTES TIME. NO, NOT NOW. IT DOESN'T MATTER NOW. NO, NOT IN 4 MINUTES TIME, IT WON'T MATTER THEN EITHER.

I play narrative games exclusively, either custom one-offs or using my custom generative mission format if I want a quickie. Recently I've been working on additional "scouting pre-game" for my generator as I'm not really into elaborate campaigns in the like of what PenitentJake is describing (however, kudos to you PJ for all this work!, I simply hop from one idea for a game to another too frequently to form a campaign), but I like 3-5 linked game stories.

But mission is just one part of the equation, setting up terrain is a huge part of narrative to be played and the mood of playing in general, so I invest quite heavily in my home table - "random collection of assorted LOS blockers" nonsense is a great immersion destroyer for me.

Adeptus Doritos wrote:One of the coolest things about the old Rogue Trader era- despite how goofy it was, it had some creative ideas that I would love to see come back to 40k. I don't mean the weird fluff, I mean some of the crazier things like random monsters, weather effects, and just overall cool ideas.

As it stands, most of 40k boils down to "kill the other guy's dudes, move your guys to these spots, have more of your dudes on that spot than the other guy, do the math and figure out who wins".

As far as a narrative goes, that's kind of goofy.

"BATTLE BROTHER, WE MUST STAND NEAR THIS AREA THAT IS ROUGHLY THE SIZE OF A FAMILY DINNER TABLE, DESPITE IT OFFERING LITTLE TO NO STRATEGIC VALUE AT ALL. WE MUST KEEP THOSE OTHER GUYS THAT ARE 300 METERS AWAY FROM US OVER THERE FROM HAVING MORE PEOPLE ON THIS SPOT. ALSO WE SHOULD PROBABLY BRING OVER A BUNCH OF TANKS AND AIRCRAFT TO FIGHT OVER THIS BATTLEFIELD THAT IS ROUGHLY THE SIZE OF A MALL PARKING LOT BECAUSE THE FATE OF THIS WHOLE PLANET DEPENDS ON THESE SPOTS. FOR THE EMPEROR!"

Current 40k could use a little more RT.

Vortex Grenades coming back around to bite you in the ass.
Tanglefoot boobytraps, genestealers kiss, and more RANDOM stuff.
I think that if there was a GM having an effect on the game it might be even better.