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A guy from my Warhammer shop was talking about wanting to start a narrative campaign with custom characters. He alluded to the campaigns that Miniwargaming does on their channel, and how the characters have missions and gain levels and perks.

Does anyone know if there is a rulebook or a fanmade google document for games like these? I couldn't find anything.

There are character and unit levelling rules in Chapter Approved 2018 that my group uses for our two ongoing narrative campaigns, with some houseruled modifications.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
There are character and unit levelling rules in Chapter Approved 2018 that my group uses for our two ongoing narrative campaigns, with some houseruled modifications.

Thanks. I actually have that book, didn't even know.

Chapter Approved is a good resource. I *think* MIniwargaming also posts up the rules they use for their campaigns so that other people can use them. Although I'm not sure whether that's a vault members only thing.

It's expensive, but there's also Urban Conquest. It reprints the CA2108 Cityfight rules, but it also has a map/ territory based system called Streets of Death, which is encouraged for use at both the Kill Team and 40k Scales.

The most recent CA provides linked missions that scale up from KT to 40k to Apocalypse- not exactly support for campaign play, but a good example of cross platform integration.

Theatres of war from the PA books aren't a bad source for ideas, but unless you want the other stuff in the book, it isn't really worth the investment. The idea being that if your campaign is map based, having rules for different environments can help you figure out the story and provide a few special rules for a specific battle.

The real key is bringing it all together- you can incorporate certain elements but not others, because all the systems are modular add-ons to the core game.

The Chapter Approved list...is...questionable. There are some shockingly strong traits you could roll which would immensely transform certain characters over others.

After looking through it and theorizing how it would impact heroes in our ongoing campaigns, I chose not to use it - we ended up with a simple D6 table for each "discipline" with alternate rules for Knights and such.

I wrote it all up at one point, but haven't bothered looking at it in a year.

Essentially the crux was that - following each game you chose a single character as a stand-out performer in the game...and this character must have survived. A character would be a couple of different classes - including a simple squad leader.

The chosen individual would select a table, roll a D6 and gain that trait. Depending on the type of character they were limited to a certain number of traits. Once you acquired four traits you became a "named character" and could no longer progress. You would also then be treated as a named character (which had to roll on a table if killed in combat so they couldn't be spammed every single game).

It worked out pretty nicely.

For the CA list, we decided to have people roll twice and pick one every time they generate something from there. It protects people from crappy rolls and thus makes the difference between different people's heros smaller.

 Jidmah wrote:
For the CA list, we decided to have people roll twice and pick one every time they generate something from there. It protects people from crappy rolls and thus makes the difference between different people's heros smaller.

Indeed.

As with anything narrative, houserule to your heart's content; it's important to have an open discussion among the players about the rules and be willing to deviate (heavily!) from GW's published material.

That said, I know what it is like to try to build something from scratch and that's a lot of time and effort, so I think the published GW materials are a good support structure to start from. When I suggested CA2018, I was trying to show how GW handled it in a base structure as a launch-pad for your own rules, which it sounds like you were asking for.

 Jidmah wrote:
For the CA list, we decided to have people roll twice and pick one every time they generate something from there. It protects people from crappy rolls and thus makes the difference between different people's heros smaller.

My group used a roll one, choose one approach

The problem we picked out was the opposite. Having Imperial Knight (warlords/character versions), and stuff like Hive Tyrants rolling on the CA chart could result in a stupidly powerful upgrade which would be game-breaking. +1 Ballistic Skill isn't a big deal when added to a Space Marine Lieutenant but becomes disastrous when rolled for an Imperial Knight, etc.

Again it's been a year or more since I looked at the chart...but it was definitely not balanced or thought of for all units/models. More of a "build from scratch" kind of thing. I don't think it was suitable to rewarding campaign advancements. The same thing went for the unit upgrades for campaign activity - some of them were obnoxioulsy imbalanced depending on the unit they applied to.

We ruled that you can't use it for things that are not characters on their datasheets. So no dreads, knights or stuff like that.
A tyrant, tank commander or similar don't really get more tough from those rolls, so they just get blown up first thing each game.

Isn’t there a half damage one?

cjmate8 wrote:


Does anyone know if there is a rulebook or a fanmade google document for games like these? I couldn't find anything.

Not really... typically in my experience, the narrative and campaign rules tend to be very bespoke - every group has their own little take, tweak or homebrew. Though I doubt I speak for everyone, For those,of us who like 'game building', which is often a very important aspect of both narrative and campaign play, the diy approach is one of the attractions of this approach.

An typically, people just work it themselves. In my experience, The internet is probsbly the worst place for groups to bring this kind of thing. You'll find unless it has an 'official' stamp on it, people for the most part won't always be willing to discuss it.

 Jidmah wrote:
We ruled that you can't use it for things that are not characters on their datasheets. So no dreads, knights or stuff like that.
A tyrant, tank commander or similar don't really get more tough from those rolls, so they just get blown up first thing each game.

That's the issue - some large things can become <CHARACTER> or already are. Hive Tyrants etc. are characters, correct? You can unfairly punish someone who wants a cool commander for their force, but applying the same table to a <CHARACTER> dreadnought, Knight, Hive Tyrant etc. just produces an entirely different result from putting those upgrades on a simple Imperial Guard captain, etc.

Just a couple which can be really damn strong on the wrong unit:

-Ignore cover when all sub-faction units within 6" shoot at enemies (including the user)
-Each wound roll of '6' inflicts a mortal wound from this unit's ranged weapons....
-This model can target enemy <CHARACTER> models even if they're not the closest model
-5+ feel no pain
-All damage is halved
-Enemies may not overwatch against this model
-Model may infiltrate

Now, again these aren't game breaking when applied to a simple Space Marine lieutenant etc. Adding any of those to a Knight character, essentially for free? As the result of campaign advancement....that could snowball into nonsens extraordinarily quickly. I'm sure plenty of people will disagree, but it's definitely not suitable unless you apply a heap of limitations - which often hinders some peoples armies/etc. I decided it was better not to use it at all.

What is amusing though, is that the list reads like a GW rulebook instruction. They just kinda scroll around on that list and pick those for rules for their book units.

I guess in our local campaign we didn't notice that sort of thing.

Keepers of Secrets, Daemon Princes, Tank Commanders, etc. do indeed benefit loads, but there seemed to be loads of them spread across all the armies present, so it was a case if "everything is OP, nothing is" basically.