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Just a thought I've been poking at. One of the challenges of putting together a narrative campaign intended to be played with a relatively large group (especially one in which players are only able to play inconsistently) is finding an excuse to work in all the factions played by those interested.

It's easy enough to explain why the imperium is clashing with the local necrons and chaos warbands, but by the time you've added hooks for some orks, the fifth sphere tau expansion next door, the craftworlders and their cousins, and a random hive fleet, your conflict tends to become kind of convoluted. Especially if those imperial forces involve three flavors of space marines from different quadrants of the galaxy.

So with that in mind, what do you think of...

* Simply disallowing certain factions from the campaign. If the main conflict isn't located near the tau empire or a hive fleet and doesn't lend itself to the involvement of tau or tyranids, then perhaps tau and tyranids simply aren't allowed for campaign games.

* Requiring certain broad factions to utilize a specific subfaction. For instance, if you want to run a campaign depicting the struggle between the Nova Marines and the anti-imperial forces striving to disrupt the area of space they patrol, you might require all marine factions to be treated as Nova Marines for the purpose of the narrative regardless of what rules they use. If you have rules for the marine chapter involved, you might even require players to use that chapter's rules. Similarly, you might require any aeldari (be they craftworlder, drukhari, or otherwise) to use the Ynnari rules if your campaign states that the Ynnari are the reason for aeldari involvement in this particular area of space.

* Using homebrewed faction or unit rules. Using the example above, a campaign using Nova Marines might utilize homebrewed Nova Marine chapter traits, relics, characters, etc.

I can see potential concerns and benefits for each of the above. Potentially excluding players by banning their army or their preferred subfaction stinks. On the other hand, stories that are allowed to focus on fewer factions can be more coherent and strongly themed. Homebrewed rules always risk being broken, but they can also freshen up the game and provide novel experiences. What do you think? Is there a right way to utilize some of the above concepts?

Tyranids could be found anywhere in the galaxy I'd say, hardly a reason to exclude them. You could also easily say they're not actually Tyranids but some native predator Xenos species like the one in The Beast arises series. With Tau it's a little less credible and you should probably find out if your Tau players have other armies they can use, excluding players doesn't sound like a good idea, especially if the campaign is thought to last a while.
As for your Marine/ subfaction thoughts I think it's fine, just bear in mind to not restrict CSM to Word Bearers while Eldar are Alaitoc or something like that .

Wyldhunt wrote:

If the main conflict isn't located near the tau empire or a hive fleet and doesn't lend itself to the involvement of tau or tyranids, then perhaps tau and tyranids simply aren't allowed for campaign games.

I'm not certain, but didn't Gathering Storm solve this issue already? I thought there was some fluff about the Fall of Cadia causing warp storms throughout the galaxy, and flinging unsuspecting fleets, including T'au, all across the galaxy at random locations. And even if such fluff doesn't exist in canon, I don't see why you couldn't just handwavium as such to excuse your campaign.

* Requiring certain broad factions to utilize a specific subfaction. For instance, if you want to run a campaign depicting the struggle between the Nova Marines and the anti-imperial forces striving to disrupt the area of space they patrol, you might require all marine factions to be treated as Nova Marines for the purpose of the narrative regardless of what rules they use. If you have rules for the marine chapter involved, you might even require players to use that chapter's rules. Similarly, you might require any aeldari (be they craftworlder, drukhari, or otherwise) to use the Ynnari rules if your campaign states that the Ynnari are the reason for aeldari involvement in this particular area of space.

Couldn't you just use superfaction keywords like Imperium and Aeldari, instead?

Wyldhunt wrote:
Just a thought I've been poking at. One of the challenges of putting together a narrative campaign intended to be played with a relatively large group (especially one in which players are only able to play inconsistently) is finding an excuse to work in all the factions played by those interested.

It's easy enough to explain why the imperium is clashing with the local necrons and chaos warbands, but by the time you've added hooks for some orks, the fifth sphere tau expansion next door, the craftworlders and their cousins, and a random hive fleet, your conflict tends to become kind of convoluted. Especially if those imperial forces involve three flavors of space marines from different quadrants of the galaxy.

Or more accurately, why one side is salamanders, white scars, ultramarines, and ultramarines, and the other side is Dark Angels, Space Wolves, Blood Angels, and the one Orks guy.

 Ginjitzu wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:

If the main conflict isn't located near the tau empire or a hive fleet and doesn't lend itself to the involvement of tau or tyranids, then perhaps tau and tyranids simply aren't allowed for campaign games.

I'm not certain, but didn't Gathering Storm solve this issue already? I thought there was some fluff about the Fall of Cadia causing warp storms throughout the galaxy, and flinging unsuspecting fleets, including T'au, all across the galaxy at random locations. And even if such fluff doesn't exist in canon, I don't see why you couldn't just handwavium as such to excuse your campaign.

Warp storms blowing tau and 'nids all over the place is a thing, sure. I was really just using them as an example of factions that are frequently less easy to explain without bloating the setup for a campaign's story. It's entirely possible to explain why every codex under the sun happens to be fighting over a single chunk of space, but the more factions you add, the more convoluted your narrative becomes. Especially if you have to set up situations like that for multiple campaigns.

You can only explain that warp storms happened to blow tau and 'nids into a section of space that also happens to be important to a chaos warband as well as a passing Waagh that also happens to be a central hub for major webway arteries that also happens to contain a tomb world that also happens to be infested by genestealer cultists that also happens to have caught the eye of the Death Watch, Grey Knights, Custodes, and five other marine chapters all at the same time... so many times before your suspension of disbelief is stretched thin enough to drag along the ground.

Plus, there's a certain thematic flavor you get from things like a purely Tzeentch VS Aeldari campaign (Independent Characters reference) that gets lost under the pile of factions.

* Requiring certain broad factions to utilize a specific subfaction. For instance, if you want to run a campaign depicting the struggle between the Nova Marines and the anti-imperial forces striving to disrupt the area of space they patrol, you might require all marine factions to be treated as Nova Marines for the purpose of the narrative regardless of what rules they use. If you have rules for the marine chapter involved, you might even require players to use that chapter's rules. Similarly, you might require any aeldari (be they craftworlder, drukhari, or otherwise) to use the Ynnari rules if your campaign states that the Ynnari are the reason for aeldari involvement in this particular area of space.

Couldn't you just use superfaction keywords like Imperium and Aeldari, instead?

I may have explained poorly. The goal of such a change isn't to keep a shorter list of factions in mind. It's to simplify the story. So instead of explaining why every chapter with its own codex is present, you just say, "the only marine presence in this sector is the Nova Marines," and write the story with that presumption regardless of what rules actually get used to represent those five flavors of marines.

And if you happen to have rules for the chapter the story focuses on, you might want to require people to use the rules for that chapter. If you were doing a campaign set during the events of the Shield of Baal, for instance, you might want to require everyone to use Blood Angels rules for the sake of thematics. Or you might not. Maybe you decide there's a Blood Angels successor chapter with a thing for psykers so the guy with a GK codex can use those rules without forcing you write actual Grey Knights into the narrative.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

the_scotsman wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:
Just a thought I've been poking at. One of the challenges of putting together a narrative campaign intended to be played with a relatively large group (especially one in which players are only able to play inconsistently) is finding an excuse to work in all the factions played by those interested.

It's easy enough to explain why the imperium is clashing with the local necrons and chaos warbands, but by the time you've added hooks for some orks, the fifth sphere tau expansion next door, the craftworlders and their cousins, and a random hive fleet, your conflict tends to become kind of convoluted. Especially if those imperial forces involve three flavors of space marines from different quadrants of the galaxy.

Or more accurately, why one side is salamanders, white scars, ultramarines, and ultramarines, and the other side is Dark Angels, Space Wolves, Blood Angels, and the one Orks guy.

Very much this.You can always hand wave it as, "Oh, our guys are under the impression that you're heretics for some reason. Again." But you're generally weakening the story and thematics of the campaign by doing so. (Unless your story is actually about that, of course.)

So here's an idea, make your campaigns focus on a sector. it's a LOT easier to belive that the various races have a presence in a entire sector then on one WORLD.

BrianDavion wrote:
So here's an idea, make your campaigns focus on a sector. it's a LOT easier to belive that the various races have a presence in a entire sector then on one WORLD.

Absolutely. Solid advice, but that's already my base assumption. Using a sector instead of a planet helps a lot and gives you a lot of breathing room, but you still have some of the same problems as before as well as some new ones.

It still feels like a bit of a stretch to say that every faction with a codex happens to have a presence in a given sector large enough to impact the major events within that sector. And then you have to make it so that the necrons to the galactic north care about the tau to the galactic south despite being separated by a lot of real-estate and some potentially more concerning enemies. And if you're putting the players onto teams of some sort, you have to also write in a reason for them to get along with their teammates. And that's true even if you're not using some sort of map mechanic that puts rules in place limiting who you can fight against.

I've kicked around ideas for combating this by abstracting the nature of the campaign. For instance, one side might be composed of forces that want to more or less maintain imperial control and infastructure in a sector while the other forces (who aren't directly working together) want to pick away at it piece by piece. So the drukhari and the necrons aren't working together OR with the imperium, but their objectives still undermine the health of imperial presence putting them broadly on the same team for purposes of the campaign. But if you go too abstract and don't create direct connections between the various armies in the sector, then it feels more like a series of incidental pickup games set to the backdrop of a vague lump of space rather than connected set of events contributing to the same narrative.

But I'm sure people brighter than myself have figured out solutions to a lot of this, and I'd enjoy hearing them.The suggestions in my opening post were meant to let you avoid some of these narrative complications rather than having to tackle them head on. If every marine in the sector belongs to the same chapter, then the campaign can be about one chapter's sacrifices as they fight to defend the territory they've been tasked with protecting. And to me, a story like that is generally a lot more interesting than some whacky scenario that puts DA, BA, SW, GK, DW, White Scars, and Iron Hands in the same sector all at once.