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So, as anyone who stopped by my Ku'Gath thread may (or, looking more closely at it, may not) know, I'm hoping to be in/running a narrative campaign with some friends. Currently, we've settled on it taking place on a Dark Mechanicum world, one that features Ku'Gath Plaguefather as the main head honcho of the Chaos side of things. He's arrived on the planet (or been summoned, more accurately) to hopefully finalize his plagues and make it up to Papa Nurgle.

Currently, the other players we have so far are a Dark Eldar player, who wants to bring Vect back (reason for being there is good sporting) and a Tyranid player. I've got some GSC models that we're thinking of using as an NPC bridge between the main things and the Nids themselves.

But I've never run a narrative campaign before, and any help would be GREATLY appreciated.

Start with a planet/continent map, mark areas of interest, places for contention and write about potential reasons for wanting to take it, what you gain, what your opponent loses.

What points level do you want to play? Do you want an escalating campaign with reinforcements over time or do you want to play a standard size game every time? Do you want to play Kill Team for some games and scale up to Apoc later on?

Making a campaign is a lot of work but it's really rewarding!

Ayy, also flesh out the terrain rules.

Seriously: A lot hinges and falls on the specific environment.
You fight in a forgeworld movable passways (cranes and civilian vehicles) make for interesting shenanigans.

Machineplague ( scrapcode) lakes that damage your vehicle the closer and longer you stand in range.

neutral party that behaves wierdly (see nutty servitors with a basic behaviour nailed down)

Varying sizes of engagement, a DE hunting party meets a patrol, full blown battle, etc.

 JNAProductions wrote:
So, as anyone who stopped by my Ku'Gath thread may (or, looking more closely at it, may not) know, I'm hoping to be in/running a narrative campaign with some friends. Currently, we've settled on it taking place on a Dark Mechanicum world, one that features Ku'Gath Plaguefather as the main head honcho of the Chaos side of things. He's arrived on the planet (or been summoned, more accurately) to hopefully finalize his plagues and make it up to Papa Nurgle.

Currently, the other players we have so far are a Dark Eldar player, who wants to bring Vect back (reason for being there is good sporting) and a Tyranid player. I've got some GSC models that we're thinking of using as an NPC bridge between the main things and the Nids themselves.

But I've never run a narrative campaign before, and any help would be GREATLY appreciated.

Congratulations. This could be great fun. A Narrative campaign means you can agree with your friends how the story will evolve. Before the campaign start, each faction needs to have a clear goal and win condition.

Example:

The Tyranids want to weaken the chaos defences so the world can be absorbed.
The Dark Eldar need to capture enough prisoners/sufficient quality of prisoners so that they can do whatever
The Chaos guys need to last long enough and keep control of the plague labs so that the plague can be completed.

In this example, the real contest is between Nids and Chaos- if chaos win the plague will kill all the nids, if nids win the planet gets nommed. Dark Eldar interests aren't mutually exclusive to either of the other factions- they could get enough prisoners and chaos/nids could still win.

You'll want to nail down how these goals will translate in game- particularly the time limit. Will the plague research take 10 rounds? How many games will the Tyranids need to win against the chaos forces in those 10 rounds?

Mapping out the territory can be useful to give you narrative ideas for games. Perimeter walls that must be breached, adjacent areas that must be crossed or taken, that kind of thing.

There are different styles of Narrative Campaign.

The most basic, and probably easiest to begin with, is a Narrative Tree Campaign.

Here, you start with an opening battle. The result of that leads to one of say, two or three 'next scenario' results.

So long as you have a decided starting point, and defined end scenarios (Good guys win, Draw, Bad Guys Win) you just have the scenarios in between lead to one of those outcomes.

At the opposite end is a truly open ended campaign, where the person running the campaign (who I recommend does not actively partake, in case of bias) changes it up week by week, depending on the results of the preceding games. Those can be a lot of fun, but require extra work!