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Just a passing thought that occurred to me as I continue to really like the Crusade rules and to become increasingly daunted by the competitive play rules. I like Crusade. I liked Konor. My Crusade armies tend to hit that awkward point where they have a few too many upgrades for good taste. Fluffy missions tend to be more fun than especially well-balanced missions as long as you're not stuck with them for too long.

So with all that in mind, what if GW...
* Released a new world-wide campaign every six-ish months.
* The story(ies?) of each would be relatively limited in scope. So we're not killing the emperor or breaking Cadia each time, but the campaign might determine whether or not Kabal X got a leg up on Kabal Y or whether Biel-Tan managed to obtain a relic that let them get back on their feet or slide further into a slump. Really lean into the setting being both huge and alive so we can feel like story is happening without having to overhaul the setting the way the ynnari/Guilliman's return did.
* The campaigns would use the Crusade rules and include campaign-specific upgrade options that tie into whatever the current campaign is about. So if the campaign is about necrons setting up a pariah nexus (or whatever it's called) in a region while half the factions are trying to prevent a hivefleet from supersizing itself, you might have crusade relics, battle traits, etc. that reflect things like your squad looting necron tech or learning how to hold out against hordes.
* The missions could be fluffy, quirky affairs that tie into the plot of the campaign.
* People with Warhammer+ accounts could submit their game results online to effectively vote on how the events of the campaign progress. Based on who's winning/losing, GW could declare that various twists are in effect for certain missions or for games played during a certain month. Each Warhammer+ account would get a limited number of submissions each week. This would allow voting without creating extra work for game stores, would help cut down on how severely someone could spam the ballot box with fake results, and would make GW money by selling subscriptions.
* I'd probably pitch that GW sell physical books that contain the content related to all factions and cheap digital books that contain faction-specific content.

If you wanted to get complicated with it, you could even have faction-specific content remain available into the following campaign. So if your orks got some ork-specific Crusade agendas and upgrades during the Spring campaign, you could continue to use them in the Fall campaign, but they'd be phased out during the following Spring campaign. This might also be a good way to give people a clear point at which to restart their Crusade force so that it doesn't just power up indefinitely.

Just a half-baked idea, but I think I could really get into something like this. It would let GW bring back some of the good vibes and excitement that came with everyone feeling invested in a shared, developing narrative, give them an excuse to experiment with new mechanics, and give them an excuse to phase out those problematic mechanics every now and then. Plus, GW could count on a chunk of the playerbase purchasing new rules every few months that presumably wouldn't cost them much to have their writers produce. Not to diminish the difficulty of designing good Crusade mechanics, but I feel like it's probably less work to create something like the drukhari or tau crusade rules than to balance a codex worth of datasheets, strats, etc.

The potential for it is already there: they are running six month seasons with campaign books and specific content, and the scope of these is typically tied to a specific sector, so it can't upset the entire galaxy.

All that's missing is the data collection and collating of the information. I wouldn't be surprised if they attempt this for at least one of the seasons before we get to the end of the edition.

Probably the last one... Which will act as the transition into the next edition. I don't particularly want that, because I hate edition churn... But it feels like the type of thing GW would do.

What I'd pitch is an in-store "league" - the store runs a Crusade charges people $X per week for a Y week long crusade for running it, you come in play your game, do your stuff, etc. etc.

We already have tournaments - but say like bowling alleys - the league players paid to keep the lights on and so forth while the tournaments and open play were pure profit. Would you pay $20 a week for a guaranteed game, and GW doing the overhead + Crusade campaign management?

Breton wrote:
What I'd pitch is an in-store "league" - the store runs a Crusade charges people $X per week for a Y week long crusade for running it, you come in play your game, do your stuff, etc. etc.

We already have tournaments - but say like bowling alleys - the league players paid to keep the lights on and so forth while the tournaments and open play were pure profit. Would you pay $20 a week for a guaranteed game, and GW doing the overhead + Crusade campaign management?

£20 just so I can take part in a poorly managed marketing scheme that the Imperium will always win? Absolutely not. People would be more likely to just say "screw it", pay £5 for another local venue for like 3 hours and do the rest themselves. You pay to take part in a tournament because you have a chance at winning a prize, be it hard cash, store credit, or models. You're betting on your skill against others. What's anyone getting out of dropping £20 a week on a global campaign that they couldn't just do themselves for way less cost or even for free?

 Gert wrote:

£20 just so I can take part in a poorly managed marketing scheme that the Imperium will always win? Absolutely not. People would be more likely to just say "screw it", pay £5 for another local venue for like 3 hours and do the rest themselves. You pay to take part in a tournament because you have a chance at winning a prize, be it hard cash, store credit, or models. You're betting on your skill against others. What's anyone getting out of dropping £20 a week on a global campaign that they couldn't just do themselves for way less cost or even for free?

Not a global campaign, a local crusade. In a Warhammer League. And like in bowling leagues (which I shouldn't have assumed everyone knew about) part of your weekly fee feeds the prize fund So the store may pick up $10 for them, while ther other $10 goes to a prize fund.

Breton wrote:
Not a global campaign, a local crusade. In a Warhammer League. And like in bowling leagues (which I shouldn't have assumed everyone knew about) part of your weekly fee feeds the prize fund So the store may pick up $10 for them, while ther other $10 goes to a prize fund.

And I would argue that making a Crusade league a competitive event with a prize ruins the nature of having a Crusade league. It's supposed to be about crafting a narrative and building up "Your Dudes". Throw in a prize for "winning" and people aren't going to care about the narrative, they're going to go straight for the top tier choices and maximise their chance of winning. At best you do a certificate for being the "winner" at the end of the league and throw in stuff like a badge or pin for every participant. A Crusade league shouldn't be about trashing every opponent and grinding them into dust to win a pot of money, it should be about people having games, finding a nemesis (in good fun), crafting a story for their army, and having interconnected stories between all the other armies.

The Crusade league idea is like the old RPGA Living City events, and they were pretty cool. RPGA charged a reasonable annual fee. They maintained a record of your D&D character which was available anywhere RPGA events were played.

So if you lived in London, and you played in 2 conventions a year for five years, you've gained levels and gear, and skills etc.

So now you roll into a convention in Toronto and you say "Howdy, I'm Jake, I play Lathan Baleheart the fighter."

They look up your character, and bam- there it is with all it's levels and gear. Next year, you do the same in Montreal.

It was kinda cool, cuz you'd roll into a village, and one of the street urchins would come up to and say - "Whoa, nice axe."

And in game, you're thinking- yeah, I earned that by defeat Lothgar Shatterhand in the batttle of Strinnis-Mir... But at the same time you're thinking- yeah, I earned that after a legendary road trip to get to a convention in Vancouver.

So would I pay to play in a Crusade league?

Yes, but only under certain circumstances. If my record is uploaded and available wherever games within the setting are played, maybe. How many places are these games available. The other issue is price.

Well yeah but at that point, I would argue it's not a league but rather a club.
That being said I don't think a large-scale Crusade campaign/club would work if centered on a specific location/event when so much of it is very much down to "Your Dudes" and their story.
Take for example the GSC or T'au where you make up planets to take over with your Crusade roster. How would that work if GW sets out what the location of the Crusade Campaign was? Add in the factor of the armies who don't have an interactive system like that (I.E. Space Marines, Death Guard) or have systems that wouldn't be represented within the location (Drukhari), and then also add in the fact that the majority of players will be Imperial and nominally fight on the same side. The end game lore would be stuff like:
"The Imperium keeps all but one planet where the T'au and GSC keep fighting. The Death Guard also showed up and made some plagues."

 Gert wrote:
Well yeah but at that point, I would argue it's not a league but rather a club.
That being said I don't think a large-scale Crusade campaign/club would work if centered on a specific location/event when so much of it is very much down to "Your Dudes" and their story.
Take for example the GSC or T'au where you make up planets to take over with your Crusade roster. How would that work if GW sets out what the location of the Crusade Campaign was? Add in the factor of the armies who don't have an interactive system like that (I.E. Space Marines, Death Guard) or have systems that wouldn't be represented within the location (Drukhari), and then also add in the fact that the majority of players will be Imperial and nominally fight on the same side. The end game lore would be stuff like:
"The Imperium keeps all but one planet where the T'au and GSC keep fighting. The Death Guard also showed up and made some plagues."

These are good questions but I'd say in case of an event like this you'd have a rule that said: Instead of the crusade from your codex, do this. So Tau instead conquer some continents (or even just cities) on the planet the campaign is about, DG creates a campaign-specific plague, DE fight over control of the same planet and so on.
The crusade books right now actually do something similar to this, you get specific scenarios and relics that are part of the pariah nexus and so on. It's just a little shallow so far and handled badly by GW in that they split the content on two books instead of one. Honestly, the crusade books should be incorporated in the campaign books (instead of being an 80 pages booklet with 40pages of the basic rules - for the price of a Codex no less!) and be sold for about 30€, then I'd get them. But 75€ for a warzone is far too much.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
These are good questions but I'd say in case of an event like this you'd have a rule that said: Instead of the crusade from your codex, do this. So Tau instead conquer some continents (or even just cities) on the planet the campaign is about, DG creates a campaign-specific plague, DE fight over control of the same planet and so on.
The crusade books right now actually do something similar to this, you get specific scenarios and relics that are part of the pariah nexus and so on. It's just a little shallow so far and handled badly by GW in that they split the content on two books instead of one. Honestly, the crusade books should be incorporated in the campaign books (instead of being an 80 pages booklet with 40pages of the basic rules - for the price of a Codex no less!) and be sold for about 30€, then I'd get them. But 75€ for a warzone is far too much.

The problem with that for me is then is it your Crusade, or is it GW's Crusade that you're just playing with? If everyone's objectives are exactly the same then it's not really the same thing.

My point with regards to the lore additions to a large-scale Crusade campaign is that individual players' stories don't actually matter, which then for me kind of defeats the purpose of Crusade. What does it matter if your Drukhari Ascendant Lord ends the campaign with 20 territories in Commoragh, there are 50 other Drukhari players and 100 Space Marine players who are all getting their own stuff. The only influence you have is on the wider story of "What happens to System/Planet/City X?" and the only things that are going to stand out is if a group of factions/armies does something to get noticed. Even then the way these kind of campaigns work means that the endgame result will be a victory for the Imperium purely down to the fact that the majority of armies and players are Imperial aligned.

Small-scale (i.e. store or gaming group) campaigns can work better because you can set limits to what is going on. For example, a local store could limit the sign-up to 20 players and set the story as one of Defenders vs Despoilers with random allocation to each side. Games must be played in-store with the result, as well as important "lore" advancements (i.e. Battlescars, Honours, Territory gains), given to staff to record. With hundreds, if not thousands, of players you can't really exercise that much control and you lose the more personal aspect to a Crusade campaign.

PenitentJake wrote:
So would I pay to play in a Crusade league?

Yes, but only under certain circumstances. If my record is uploaded and available wherever games within the setting are played, maybe. How many places are these games available. The other issue is price.

At that point you'd start to see the same issues these RPG leagues had - people played sessions with friendly GMs to feed their PCs lots of XP and loot. Wanna bet WAAAC types would set up Crusade games at home to have min-maxed munchkin armies available on the go elsewhere?

 Irbis wrote:

PenitentJake wrote:
So would I pay to play in a Crusade league?

Yes, but only under certain circumstances. If my record is uploaded and available wherever games within the setting are played, maybe. How many places are these games available. The other issue is price.

At that point you'd start to see the same issues these RPG leagues had - people played sessions with friendly GMs to feed their PCs lots of XP and loot. Wanna bet WAAAC types would set up Crusade games at home to have min-maxed munchkin armies available on the go elsewhere?

Yeah the idea was just some one-and-done campaigns only at the local store - say it has 5 tables. 10 people sign up for 10 weeks(or whatever a good time period is). $10 each goes to the prize fund, top winner gets a $200 army box or equivalent, 10th place gets a $50 box or equivalent (this could also be subject to change by the players if everyone wants an equal prize draw everyone gets a $100 Start Collecting Box or whatever). And those numbers are just pulled from thin air as an example not something I've mathematically worked out for each placing. Every Thursday those 10 people come in, do their campaign work, have a game (either a campaign game or a "fun" game if they didn't have campaign conflict event come up)

This can feed into whatever overarching Nachmund/Vigilus/Baal/whatever season/summer campaign/etc event going on, but its also seperate and just 10 people playing 40K Crusade with each other where the store provides the tables, the terrain, and the book work.

Everyone is correct- an RPGA style Crusade really wouldn't work.

I do think you could do Crusade week-enders at stores though. It would take some work from the organizers though; the more factions there are taking part, the harder it gets.

Breton wrote:

Yeah the idea was just some one-and-done campaigns only at the local store - say it has 5 tables. 10 people sign up for 10 weeks(or whatever a good time period is). $10 each goes to the prize fund, top winner gets a $200 army box or equivalent, 10th place gets a $50 box or equivalent (this could also be subject to change by the players if everyone wants an equal prize draw everyone gets a $100 Start Collecting Box or whatever). And those numbers are just pulled from thin air as an example not something I've mathematically worked out for each placing. Every Thursday those 10 people come in, do their campaign work, have a game (either a campaign game or a "fun" game if they didn't have campaign conflict event come up)

This can feed into whatever overarching Nachmund/Vigilus/Baal/whatever season/summer campaign/etc event going on, but its also seperate and just 10 people playing 40K Crusade with each other where the store provides the tables, the terrain, and the book work.

But why do people need to pay to do that when GW/Warhammer stores do it for free anyway? Why do you need to add the competitive trigger of a prize to get people to play Crusade? It just doesn't make any sense.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

PenitentJake wrote:
Everyone is correct- an RPGA style Crusade really wouldn't work.

I do think you could do Crusade week-enders at stores though. It would take some work from the organizers though; the more factions there are taking part, the harder it gets.

For sure. GW has hosted Crusade events at WHW already and it wouldn't surprise me if other stores started doing similar things if/when things get back under control RE Covid.

I'd prefer them to be non-competitive; I like the idea of playing through a weekender that then gets written up as a short story for White Dwarf, or becomes an episode of Hammer and Bolter.

Heck, do one Crusade weekend per season and release a compilation BL book after 3-4 seasons.

I don't like the idea of Crusade being made competitive. When I write campaigns, I leave every faction an exit strategy from the theatre of war. There's never an all or nothing moment.

Jake, if you take a look for Steve Wren (he leads the event's team at WHW) on Twitter and go back to around November, you'll see a glimpse into how he and the team ran the "Escape from Pankallis" event. I couldn't go myself as I had a Heresy event but honestly, I was so bummed to have missed it. Just as a little teaser, this is how the team were dressed:

I run our local store's Crusade league, which has about 20 active players and a larger community. Our league costs $20 to join and has 3 store-credit prizes and a pizza party. You have to pay for the shop space, shop terrain, managers' time, etc.. Beyond that, we give a prize for most wins (or rather, points Warzone points scored). However, we also award equal prizes for best painted and best narrative, which are earned by votes in our community Discord. Power gaming is explicitly disincentivized in our league rules and that is socially enforced. In 9 months and scores of players, we've never had an issue with competitive armies. Granted, we also have a separate competitive league for those players.

Here's another important point to prevent munchkins: our Crusade armies reset at the start of each league (2 months) AND we implemented an escalating limit on the Crusade Point value of your army. Strong players can't run away with the league by stacking upgrades early. Besides, carrying over a fully built Crusade army isn't actually that fun in practice. There's no sufficient catch-up mechanism for newer players. The rewards dry up anyway, and your army really stagnates. It's more fun to chase those first couple early upgrades on each unit, and you can try out more things.

Regarding narratives, early on we tried to follow the Warzone campaign books, but the games felt disjointed. It often just felt like pick-up games with extra book-keeping. It's a credit to the Crusade system in general that it was compelling in-spite of that.

The problem with grand over-arching stories is that they're impossible to manage with dozens of people. The way our narrative-minded writers solve this is to basically ignore other player's perspectives and context. For example, two players will write stories that agree on the highlights of the battle, but not on the context of why the armies are there. I build up my own story based on the games without having to keep track of how they intersect with other people's stories.

I wrote custom rules so each player can form their own story and have choices carry over through each mission independently of each other. I post weekly mission packets, which include special rules and a selection of available missions for that week. The league is divided into narrative arcs that last 3 weeks (3 games). I give you a narrative prompt and a choice with corresponding special rules. The prompts are intentionally vague, but everyone has the same choices, so there's always some cohesion between stories. You choose a path, the story builds to a climax, then it resets and you have a new choice.

@Gert- Yeah, sometimes I wish I was a Brit. I think I would live at WHW if it wasn't an expensive plan ticket to get there.

@Darkhound- This sounds awesome. Gonna check you links- cool stuff!

 Gert wrote:

But why do people need to pay to do that when GW/Warhammer stores do it for free anyway? Why do you need to add the competitive trigger of a prize to get people to play Crusade? It just doesn't make any sense.

Pretty sure they don't do "prizes" on that level for everyone. I'm basing the idea off of a bowling league, specifically one called a Viva Las Vegas league. Everyone (mostly beginners) paid $X a week, and at the end they got their own bowling ball, shoes, and a bag, plus a weekend trip to Vegas for a tournament just for the league members from the various cities. I just skipped the tournament part and instead of a ball etc, you got a box for your current/next army. I give the stores part of the weekly fee to both offset them doing the bookkeeping, and to incentivize them doing it and putting the tables out there. Stores don't make money on tables directly so it can be a significant profit drain.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

PenitentJake wrote:
Everyone is correct- an RPGA style Crusade really wouldn't work.

I do think you could do Crusade week-enders at stores though. It would take some work from the organizers though; the more factions there are taking part, the harder it gets.

For sure. GW has hosted Crusade events at WHW already and it wouldn't surprise me if other stores started doing similar things if/when things get back under control RE Covid.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 DarkHound wrote:


I wrote custom rules so each player can form their own story and have choices carry over through each mission independently of each other. I post weekly mission packets, which include special rules and a selection of available missions for that week. The league is divided into narrative arcs that last 3 weeks (3 games). I give you a narrative prompt and a choice with corresponding special rules. The prompts are intentionally vague, but everyone has the same choices, so there's always some cohesion between stories. You choose a path, the story builds to a climax, then it resets, and you have a new choice.

I'd take a page from the Summer Campaign books. Tell the players why they're there. You can even flip some of the cliches. Instead of guard there defending the planet, they're there to liberate it from the Tau. Chaos is there because they're miffed Tau took a planet from the Imperium that they wanted to. From there I would absolutely let them write their own narrative over what the battle was over - it's even more realistic when they disagree.

Breton wrote:
Pretty sure they don't do "prizes" on that level for everyone. I'm basing the idea off of a bowling league, specifically one called a Viva Las Vegas league. Everyone (mostly beginners) paid $X a week, and at the end they got their own bowling ball, shoes, and a bag, plus a weekend trip to Vegas for a tournament just for the league members from the various cities. I just skipped the tournament part and instead of a ball etc, you got a box for your current/next army. I give the stores part of the weekly fee to both offset them doing the bookkeeping, and to incentivize them doing it and putting the tables out there. Stores don't make money on tables directly so it can be a significant profit drain.

Ok, let's break this down:

1 - If this event is targeted at beginners, they're already buying their armies. Adding a cost to play in a store is more likely to turn them away from using the store. My local store added a free booking system to its gaming days and nobody booked in because it was no longer casual drop-in gaming, there had to be an effort made at which point it was just easier and cheaper to arrange to go to someone's house.

2 - Where are you getting this idea that a gaming table is a significant profit drain? If a store manager sells 10 starter sets, that's the tables covered if they take the terrain off the shelves.

3 - Adding a competitive element to a narratively driven system will ruin the narrative aspect. That isn't an opinion, it is a fact. You cannot have a narrative campaign/league/whatever if there is a cash/model prize at the end.

4 - Store campaigns don't do prizes. The idea is to get people playing so they buy more models and that's IF the store even has tables for gaming. Many don't have the space or don't want to encroach on the business of FLGS that charges for table space.

Breton wrote:

 DarkHound wrote:
I wrote custom rules so each player can form their own story and have choices carry over through each mission independently of each other. I post weekly mission packets, which include special rules and a selection of available missions for that week.

I'd take a page from the Summer Campaign books. Tell the players why they're there. You can even flip some of the cliches. Instead of guard there defending the planet, they're there to liberate it from the Tau. Chaos is there because they're miffed Tau took a planet from the Imperium that they wanted to. From there I would absolutely let them write their own narrative over what the battle was over - it's even more realistic when they disagree.

It's not a bad idea necessarily, but it's a lot of work to do that for every faction with any amount of quality. Plus, most players have really unique origins for their custom armies. If you look at the battle report storybook I posted, the first army I played against was Mariachi Band Necrons. No pre-fabricated context is going to fit that, so I just don't think it's a good use of energy to try. Players will flip the cliches on their own, given the opportunity. One of the Tyranid players went with the narrative arcs to be opportunistic raiders, then decided to study (devour) uncovered artefacts rather than wantonly destroy them. He's playing the narrative of a more cunning, scouting Tyranid fleet.

The fact of the matter is that most players still aren't there to actually write any fluff. They're more interested in the mechanics of growing an experienced army. Even the aforementioned Tyranid player isn't writing lore, but I consider it a big success of my custom rules that he's playing out a specific narrative. In our league, only of a quarter of players try for the Best Narrative award, and about another quarter try for Best Painted.

Gert wrote:1 - If this event is targeted at beginners, they're already buying their armies. Adding a cost to play in a store is more likely to turn them away from using the store. My local store added a free booking system to its gaming days and nobody booked in because it was no longer casual drop-in gaming, there had to be an effort made at which point it was just easier and cheaper to arrange to go to someone's house.

2 - Where are you getting this idea that a gaming table is a significant profit drain? If a store manager sells 10 starter sets, that's the tables covered if they take the terrain off the shelves.

3 - Adding a competitive element to a narratively driven system will ruin the narrative aspect. That isn't an opinion, it is a fact. You cannot have a narrative campaign/league/whatever if there is a cash/model prize at the end.

4 - Store campaigns don't do prizes. The idea is to get people playing so they buy more models and that's IF the store even has tables for gaming. Many don't have the space or don't want to encroach on the business of FLGS that charges for table space.

Hi, I've actually been doing this for 9 months and I disagree with everything you wrote. I can't speak to what happened at your store, but I think a local shop should prioritize having a superior gaming space to a normal hobbyist. If they have better tables, players will want to play on them. Beginners don't balk at a small fee to play, especially since they don't have the social structure to arrange games otherwise (let alone going to weirdos houses is a gamble itself). Gaming tables are not a drain, but the gaming space is. It just makes sense to chip in if you're using them.

Having a competitive element with a cash prize has done absolutely nothing negative to the narrative of our leagues. You just have to be explicit and enforce the community standards. No one is obligated to play against an unfun, try-harding opponent. It's hard to get a winning record when you can't get any games. The winner's prize functions more as an incentive to engage with all the systems, and as a participation award for showing up each week. On that note, I should also point out that with our $20 entry fee, you get $10 in store credit back for completing half the league (and make-up games are allowed). Between that and the two other prizes, the winner's prize is like $50 and not at all worth 9 weeks of pissing off your friends.

 DarkHound wrote:
Hi, I've actually been doing this for 9 months and I disagree with everything you wrote. I can't speak to what happened at your store, but I think a local shop should prioritize having a superior gaming space to a normal hobbyist. If they have better tables, players will want to play on them. Beginners don't balk at a small fee to play, especially since they don't have the social structure to arrange games otherwise (let alone going to weirdos houses is a gamble itself). Gaming tables are not a drain, but the gaming space is. It just makes sense to chip in if you're using them.

Having a competitive element with a cash prize has done absolutely nothing negative to the narrative of our leagues. You just have to be explicit and enforce the community standards. No one is obligated to play against an unfun, try-harding opponent. It's hard to get a winning record when you can't get any games. The winner's prize functions more as an incentive to engage with all the systems, and as a participation award for showing up each week. On that note, I should also point out that with our $20 entry fee, you get $10 in store credit back for completing half the league (and make-up games are allowed). Between that and the two other prizes, the winner's prize is like $50 and not at all worth 9 weeks of pissing off your friends.

Would I be correct in guessing that what you're describing is an FLGS, not a GW/Warhammer store? I'd be very surprised to see a GW/Warhammer store charging beginners for gaming space purely as I've never seen it happen, even WHW is a free booking system for its casual gaming. Just seems counterproductive to go "Hey cool you've spent all this money getting those models, now you have to pay £5 a week to use this space we already have to learn the game".

As for my store specifically, the manager researched FLGS in the city and decided that his store would be based around introducing people to the hobby and wouldn't undercut other stores by providing a free gaming space. It annoyed the regulars at the time but then the store profits also doubled in the time that he had taken over and this was pre-Covid. We lost a free gaming place but then just went to each other's houses or found somewhere else and in the long run, it meant we tried out different wargames since we had that freedom to try them out.

I find the social contract stuff quite interesting because you mention that these people wouldn't want to go to each other's homes to play Warhammer, yet they are comfortable enough with each other to establish a social contract to determine what exactly they want from their gaming experience.

With regard to the cash prize incentives, maybe it's just an American thing. Any casual or narrative events I've seen here only take payment for venue rent and lunches.

The way you prevent "Imperium always wins due to sheer number of players" is to make campaign mechanics that allow the less numerous side to outmaneuver or win, like the old Eye of Terror campaign. You can also break up the monolithic Imperium by splitting them up into separate factions.

There are several ways to do that. In Imperium Nihilus, the disruption to travel and communication can lead to pocket empires and different groups all claiming to represent the Imperium, and then these could clash as they each struggle to assert their authority or gain resources. The Adeptus Mechanicus is a parallel empire to the Imperium and can have goals that are at odds with the others. The different Inquisitorial factions can also be a means of pitting Imperial forces against each other, such as between the Amalatheans and the more reformist Recongregationists (who Guilliman might support), and Istvaanists (who believe the conflict itself would strengthen the survivors so delibrately foment or prolong conflicts).

 Gert wrote:


2 - Where are you getting this idea that a gaming table is a significant profit drain? If a store manager sells 10 starter sets, that's the tables covered if they take the terrain off the shelves.

Just about every hobby news article on the subject? I get it, you hate the idea, and you’re willing to be obtuse and dishonest to get yourself some followers, but you should have picked a better point. https://spikeybits.com/2018/10/game-store-fails-hidden-cost-of-gaming-tables.html

3 - Adding a competitive element to a narratively driven system will ruin the narrative aspect. That isn't an opinion, it is a fact. You cannot have a narrative campaign/league/whatever if there is a cash/model prize at the end.

Your opinion isn’t opinion, its fact!!! We can just ignore the fact that people can win and lose those crusade games which means there’s already a competitive element to a narratively driven system. It’s fact!!!!

@Darkhound,

At the heart of thriving gaming communities we tend to find people who are leading their groups with a deft touch and a sense for what is practical yet fun. Responsive to their players yet able to keep things cohesive and smooth out the bumps. Congratulations on a great campaign! I think the key is having a "loose" narrative. We make our own armies with their stories, so you are wise to leave the narrative mostly open. The players in your area are also fortunate to have both narrative and tournament options.

We've tried a few narrative campaigns here over the years, but they tend to fall flat after a week. I am intrigued by your concept and might just float it by the fellow that has been trying to get a narrative campaign going.

Cheers

T2B

Our flg has ran three leagues and never charged a fee. It would be idiotic. As for the narrative, we left that entirely to the players. On the stores discord we had a room for posts after the game. My last league turned into a saga of the most inept librarian ever to serve, a very overworked apothocary, and a kill stealing dreadnought. It was awesome.

Let the players do their own narrative. In the end it will work better and be a lot less work. Otherwise you get a giant overarching mess as to why every single faction is fighting over the same planet, and in the end no one cares.

If everyone is having fun then there is zero need for prizes.

TangoTwoBravo wrote:
@Darkhound, At the heart of thriving gaming communities we tend to find people who are leading their groups with a deft touch and a sense for what is practical yet fun. Responsive to their players yet able to keep things cohesive and smooth out the bumps. Congratulations on a great campaign! I think the key is having a "loose" narrative. We make our own armies with their stories, so you are wise to leave the narrative mostly open. The players in your area are also fortunate to have both narrative and tournament options.

We've tried a few narrative campaigns here over the years, but they tend to fall flat after a week. I am intrigued by your concept and might just float it by the fellow that has been trying to get a narrative campaign going.

Thank you for the kind words. For those interested, here's the link to the folder for the league mission packets. You can see how I tried to grow the rules over the 6 weeks so far. You're more than welcome to take them wholesale. If you do, I wouldn't stress the "defender/attacker" roles in the first game. It ended up being more confusing than I intended.

Simplicity is the key: make one impactful rule that players will remember and use. I tried to escalate the power of that one rule each week, but I think it's not worth the effort after all. Slight variations on the same rule are confusing in a different way.

Frankly, people have been more interested in the narrative blurbs included with the choices, so definitely don't skimp on those.

 Gert wrote:

I find the social contract stuff quite interesting because you mention that these people wouldn't want to go to each other's homes to play Warhammer, yet they are comfortable enough with each other to establish a social contract to determine what exactly they want from their gaming experience.

Just because I'm willing to come to an agreement on how to play a game with you at the local shop doesn't mean I'm at all OK with you coming over to my house.
And there's a few people, having been to their places a time or two, I'll just politely pass on future visits.