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Hello all,

With the coming refocus on narrative play in 9th, I thought it would be cool to share a few ideas.

Here's some things I've been thinking about;

Scope Creep: Narrative games/ campaigns tend to suffer from scope creep, I'm going to start out with series of say 3 linked games against the same opponent rather than going crazy off the bat! I'm initially thinking of 'A Bridge Too Far' style campaign between Imperial Guard and Orks.
Scale of Victories: I like the idea of having major and minor victories. Say if the Orks are defending a bridge and the Imperials capture it by turn 2 that's a stunning victory, turn 3 would be a major victory etc. This could then have a effect on campaign scoring and the following battles.
Strategic Reserves: I like the idea of having a reserve that the player has to choose when to deploy. Maybe the Guard player has a reserve of Space Marines or Stormtroopers available to deepstrike in, but once they are deployed they are unavailable for the rest of the campaign. Orks could have a Speed Freaks armoured column chomping at the bit to counter attack!
Anti-snowball: We don't want the winner to snowball, so some sort of anti snowball mechanic to make each successive win harder would be cool.
It can be easily themed, for example maybe a rival in the Imperial bureaucracy arranges for forces to be transferred away from a commanders command or for vital supplies to go missing. Orks are even easier, an easy victory causes some of the boyz to wonder off looking for a better fight!
I think it's important that both players still have an interesting tactical challenge though. I'm happy to go into a scenario knowing that winning will be very difficult, so my goal should be to slow down and frustrate the enemy to limit them to a minor victory. However I'll need to get my opponent on board with this.

Anyway, I'd be interested to hear what sort of narrative games/ ideas other are eager to try out in the new edition

You could increase the bar for the level of victory for the winner. That would show that the higher ups are expecting more from the force as it succeeds for the IG. I think this works for the orks as well, because the warboss needs to keep escalating to keep the Boyz engaged.

Before quarantine, I was working on a "Warzone campaign" where I took the huge amount of terrain we have where we play and organized it into a dozen themed sets. My plan was then to have different battlefields corresponding to the spaces on the campaign map with different advantages. There was also a different eternal war style mission set to each map that would go along with the kinds of engagement you would expect to see in that kind of battlefield.

For example, the desert map was a fairly spare terrain board, but all shooting attacks made from over 12" away were at -1 to hit and all aura abilities ranges were halved. The missions in the desert either revolved around using the low visibility to strike enemy supply lines, or two forces accidentally stumbling into one another and then calling for reinforcement.

I'm hoping that the new terrain rules make replicating that campaign easy in 9th.

Why not link the anti snowball to what units can be accessed by specific armies. If army X wins the game for control of an airfield it can deploy its own fliers, or more fliers. If it doesn't then maybe it can only have one or even zero.

Battles could also be linked, if in game 1 army 1 managed to take control of some narrative objective, then in game 3 it can deploy some specific unit, or it can outflank or have some sort of unit buffed in some way. Like lets say they took and held an ammo dump objective, and won the battle. Then the unit that held it becomes grenadiers or gets access to -1AP on their guns.

Of course all armies should have access to such objectives, and they could even impact multiple armies. For example if an IG and Orc army play an ambush scenario, where the IG are trying to destroy a transport of parts for ork workshops, which would open some units for ork in next or final battle, and somehow the IG manage to kill off all characters in the ork army, then an ork vs DE army where the orks try to rescue one of their meks doesn't happen, because they are dead and some other narrative scenario is played.

Some cool ideas thanks guys!

Yea true Ork-en Man, the sliding victory scale is easily adjustable whilst keeping the scenario the same. Superiors always expect more no matter how well we perform, 40k should be no different

That sounds really fun the_scotsman! It would really give your campaign a sense of geography. Hellfire pass isn't just a name on a map, you can see it on the board over there!
I think a map is a really cool thing to have for a campaign even if just for visual context. There are plenty of DnD map making websites that makes this easy to do.


I like the ideas of bonus objectives unlocking some extra forces Karol. It wouldn't have to be more troops even, destroying an anti-aircraft gun in one scenario could enable your forces to have a bigger deployment zone in the next mission as they were resupplied by air for example.
I think theming the forces to match the story in a campaign makes a huge difference. Like a garrison force shouldn't include fast attack and elite choices imo as they wouldn't be wasted on garrison duty. A relief column or rapid reaction force shouldn't include slow moving foot sloggers as they are supposed to be in a hurry.

The crusade rules will profoundly impact campaign play, and I would very much advise waiting until you see them before you put too much effort into campaign play. I've been preparing a campaign for about a year and a half, and I've put further development on hold in order to see what Crusade has to offer.

My campaign tracks the growth of both a Genestealer Cult and a Slaanesh Cult among the noble houses of an agri-world that has emerged from a 3k year warpstorm in the redistribution of warp activity brought about by the cicatrix maledictum.

Both cults start as 5 man Kill teams and grow as the capture/ coerce/ implant imperial citizens. Combat patrols of IG an SoB can investigate cult activity, but clever cults can use campaign events to grow their armies without raising the alarm.

I suspect that Crusade won't go quite far enough to accommodate what I was planning for the GSC- their army grows strictly according to the breeding cycle, so some units don't show up for a very long time- Aberrants, for example, only show up in the second cycle and metamorphs in the third; each cycle has 5 stages.

Crusade might work for all the other factions.

There are also auxiliary forces in system whose appearance can be triggered by campaign events; the Inquisition and their Chambers Militant, the Navigator families of House Locarno, Sisters of Silence, Chaos Space Marines, Daemons, Daemon Engines and Tyranids.

I designed this campaign as an experiment; I want to see just how hard it is for a cult to grow from nothing in Imperial Space. It is crazy complex, more than it needs to be. This is because I'm not using it as merely a game. The theory is that it should generate enough material to form the basis of a novel. Players don't have to track EVERYTHING- that's my job, since I'm the one who wants the data.

I've recorded bits and pieces on another forum because it has army specific channels. Like I said, I've put all development on hold because of the Crusade rules. Once the rules are in my hands, I can get moving again, and I will probably cross post here occasionally.

A while back I ordered some Baneblade parts, namely a turret, upper hull and sponson turrets as I wanted to build a turret emplacement as a fortification/terrain piece. An idea that came up and that I'm playing around a bit for the far future:

The battlefield is filled with heavy terrain, preferably LOS blocking, but with long firing lanes in between. The turret emplacement (which at that army size is quite a piece of firepower and has T/W/Sv like a Baneblade) is set in one of the free corners as a neutral fortification, surrounded by lets say 12'' of coverless no mans land.
Both players (preferably with an army around 1000 points, maybe even lower) start at diagonal corners of the battlefield. As it is automated each of the emplacements guns targets the closest "optimal" target of any player. If multiple targets are equally close the target is decided randomly.
"optimal" meaning:
- The Baneblade Cannon targets the closest vehicle or monster
- the Autocannon targets the closest 2+ wound model
- the lighter guns (heavy Bolters, Multilasers) target the closest infantry models

Note that I mention "targets", as it still has to have LOS and be in range to actually shoot. The neutral shooting phase is after the turns of both players.
=> I think (!) this opens up some interesting tactical choices regarding movement as you have to decide if getting closer to the turret than your enemy is really worth it or not. Furthermore one could decide to just destroy the turret emplacement, but then one has to dedicate firepower towards it, that might be better spend on the enemy. You might also move an "optimal target" close, but out of line of sight to "block" one of the turrets weapons.


As an additional tactical layer:
One objective marker is placed immediatly in the coverless no-mans land in front of the fortification representing an access hatch or a terminal to hack it. If a player can control this objective marker for 2 turns, the fortification stops targeting his faction. If he controls it for 3 turns, he gets full control of the fortification.
=> as said unit will most definitly be the closest, that might be pretty hard, especially at a limited army size. On the other hand getting access to a ~ 400 point worth of additional guns is obviously a rather juicy price in a game of 1000 points or less.

I'd been working on a sort of mini-campaign game idea. Of three linked games using parts of the same army throughout.

You'd start with say, a 2000 point list, and divide it up into 3 parts, each being no more then 50% and no less than 20% of your total force. Then allocate each force to one of the 3 games, in secret, like on paper or something.
You'd then fight 2 games, each using one of those forces (so yes this could result in mis-matched games for the start) - at the end of each of the first 2 battles roll for casualties to see if any are still available and make a note of the unit strength of each unit.
For battle 3, each player may bring on as reserves the forces that survived the previous missions. Winner of battle 1, gets to bring those surviving forces on as reserves turn 1, loser turn 2. Winner of battle 2 brings those on turn 2, loser turn 3.

 Kcalehc wrote:
I'd been working on a sort of mini-campaign game idea. Of three linked games using parts of the same army throughout.

You'd start with say, a 2000 point list, and divide it up into 3 parts, each being no more then 50% and no less than 20% of your total force. Then allocate each force to one of the 3 games, in secret, like on paper or something.
You'd then fight 2 games, each using one of those forces (so yes this could result in mis-matched games for the start) - at the end of each of the first 2 battles roll for casualties to see if any are still available and make a note of the unit strength of each unit.
For battle 3, each player may bring on as reserves the forces that survived the previous missions. Winner of battle 1, gets to bring those surviving forces on as reserves turn 1, loser turn 2. Winner of battle 2 brings those on turn 2, loser turn 3.

That's a concept I've liked in the past. I'd say consider having an even LARGER force (if you have the models for it - so, playing it at like 4000 points), and potentially, if you wanted to make the campaign factions more bespoke, you could feature things like Marines getting rerolls on their casualty rolls, Guardsmen might get extra "rookie" units that can show up as the final battle goes on, Eldar might get forewarning abilities on what armies they're fighting against, etc etc.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

 Kcalehc wrote:
I'd been working on a sort of mini-campaign game idea. Of three linked games using parts of the same army throughout.

You'd start with say, a 2000 point list, and divide it up into 3 parts, each being no more then 50% and no less than 20% of your total force. Then allocate each force to one of the 3 games, in secret, like on paper or something.
You'd then fight 2 games, each using one of those forces (so yes this could result in mis-matched games for the start) - at the end of each of the first 2 battles roll for casualties to see if any are still available and make a note of the unit strength of each unit.
For battle 3, each player may bring on as reserves the forces that survived the previous missions. Winner of battle 1, gets to bring those surviving forces on as reserves turn 1, loser turn 2. Winner of battle 2 brings those on turn 2, loser turn 3.

That's a concept I've liked in the past. I'd say consider having an even LARGER force (if you have the models for it - so, playing it at like 4000 points), and potentially, if you wanted to make the campaign factions more bespoke, you could feature things like Marines getting rerolls on their casualty rolls, Guardsmen might get extra "rookie" units that can show up as the final battle goes on, Eldar might get forewarning abilities on what armies they're fighting against, etc etc.

At one point I ran a branching battle campaign based around the silly contrived Dawn of War plotlines where they have to explain every single faction showing up on one increasingly sad planet. I had 7 potential missions that were themed around various forces in the 40k universe fighting battles against each other, and depending on who won, different factions would keep showing up to do more battles.

Game 1 was Orks vs Imperial Guard
Game 2 was "Space Marines show up to save the day" if team destruction won or "surprise the planet was a tomb world" if team order won
and Game 3 had 4 possibilities: Possibility 1, marines lost and CSM and daemons invade through a warp rift so the Inquisition shows up with sisters and custodes to exterminatus the planet, possibility 2 marines won so the Tau show up to annex the now weakened world, possibility 3 the necrons were defeated so the tyranid hive fleet that was ignoring the world shows up to nom it, possibility 4 the necrons won so the eldar and harlequins show up to kill them.

That sounds very ambitious PenitentJake. I think unless you keep a campaign very small it can quickly become unmanageable for the poor bloke who has to do all the admin!
I've got high hopes for the crusade rules, but I don't need to use them if they don't fit with my idea or maybe I can just take the good parts.

Nice idea for a mission Pyroalchi! It would certainly make people try to stay away from that area of the map. I assume you'd have to make the terrain such that it forces players to go near to the turret otherwise people would ignore it and play in the other half of the table.

My idea was, that you have to score objectives to win and that at least half of those objectives lie plainly in the firing lanes of the turrets. There would definitly be a lot of planing involved in the design of the table, but I think it could make for a rather interesting experience.

before lockdown we were playing around with similar rules to the strategic reserves and the anti snowballing.

for the reserves you picked your entire army at the start of the campaign and had to pick individual unit from that pool for each battle and once they were dead they were dead. Plus once a unit dropped from orbit ie drop pods they were stuck to walking to battles after that. you could use command points to bring in extra units to a battle that could deep strike as well but that got a bit unbalanced and we couldn't make it work properly

the campaign was also partially map based so unless a battle was in a linked sector you couldn't uses heavy support units in consecutive battles.

finally the more sectors you capture the more your starting points were reduced to represent garrisoning those areas, when attacking you got your full points

granted this only really works if your playing for objectives if you start fighting to the death all the time you run out of army

Deleted.

We had great fun a long time ago with mini games in the bigger games.

Kill Team rules, Attack and destroy X. The victor gets to place more terrain or go first or such the next battle. Nothing really going to make-or-break the bigger battles.

So I think the Streets of Death system from Urban Conquest is still going to be viable with 9th, and even with Crusade style play. The campaign I mentioned earlier uses Streets of death extensively, but I vastly expanded on their territory rules. I've created 15 individual territory types and distributed them among the core city and radial settlements- now they're just waiting to be occupied.

The hab blocks, noble houses and criminal safehouses have been populated, the IG and Sisters rosters are completed. I don't have rules for the individual Noble Houses yet, but they should be relatively easy to deal with.

My "citizens" are 22 old metal necromunda minis, and I plan to augment them with new plastics. As citizens get taken by the cult, they are replaced with cult models, at which point they are freed up to represent the next wave of citizens.

Once Cults turn enough sleepers within a Noble House, they can target the leaders directly and flip the whole house. The trick for cults is deciding how many converts they pull into their force vs. how many are left as sleeper agents.

A lot of things will have to be tweaked with 9th, but the goal is to have enough terrain, tracking infrastructure and preliminary missions ready when the edition drops. The first few games are Kill Team matches, and they're for very small matchups, meant to be played three to a session.

Hopefully Crusade gives me some new tools without trapping me so much that I can't innovate my way back to the original concept.

It seems like mixing in Kill Team games with a larger campaign is very popular, I guess given the short amount of time needed to hold a Kill Team game makes it a good way to progress without a planning huge game!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Some great points Elbows! I think the idea of having a game master is great and seems to be quite popular in historical gaming but I haven't seen it done in a 40K campaign before.
2p coin objective markers are an abstraction so I'm not entirely against them, however agreed that having a good explanation for why that location is important is a must!

 Kroem wrote:
It seems like mixing in Kill Team games with a larger campaign is very popular, I guess given the short amount of time needed to hold a Kill Team game makes it a good way to progress without a planning huge game!

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Some great points Elbows! I think the idea of having a game master is great and seems to be quite popular in historical gaming but I haven't seen it done in a 40K campaign before.
2p coin objective markers are an abstraction so I'm not entirely against them, however agreed that having a good explanation for why that location is important is a must!

Going with the good explanation of the strategic point's importance may also lead onto additional missions, such as securing a key road junction/bridgehead. May lead to the next mission of saving allied units that are in trouble down said road etc. You could then add said units to the campaign's 'pool of available forces.

Also surviving units on the field, if you've lost all your platoon's transports in a mad chimera charge through a minefield, well perhaps the next mission is a defense(with said vehicles counting as immobile) waiting for the mechanics to get them running again. That's if you don't roll a catastrophic damage.

I think guard vs cultists is a really cool idea for a campaign, could have everything from PDF doing raids searching for weapons caches and cult idols to full on enemy regulars(someone like bloodpact or tyrant's legion/tyrannid hive fleet) making planetary invasion.

You could work intelligence into this system, so that based on objectives secured etc either faction gets some hints from the GM(this is ideal if you have a pretty comprehensive map and the players don't know the enemy objectives/location on map/strength (allocated points) etc,and then they could choose to make campaign moves. Such as committing to attacking a region or settlement.

GM could take some dark turns with that. "Your men comb the ruins, the smell of burnt flesh and promethium mixes heavily in the air, among the ashes and the bodies your men find no trace of chaos idols. Your psycher and priest report no trace of chaos taint. They do recover a simple Aquila, the flames have burnt away most of the golden paint and it is charred black."

Yea I like that idea Old Mate, organically spinning off what happens in a battle, like multiple transports being damaged, into another scenario certainly makes it feel like there are consequences to what happens.

I think campaigns work best when both sides are sentient beings as then internal tensions, clashing motivations and miscommunications etc. can come into play.
When one side is a horde of mindless automatons like the Necrons or Tyranids (even Tau to an extent), I find it harder to come up with interesting ideas.

Well nids can be smart, they just need to be limited in their campgain strength, by external factors.

Although I agree, they are sort of a 2D threat, but you know, that is not necessarily a bad thing. But it does kill something in story play, unless they're a backdrop faction under control by GM. Which well, that'd shake things up.

New necrons retcon, they are now more interesting and have their own motivations etc. So you could make a dynasty with interesting motivations and campgain goals.

Yea appreciate that the dynasts have some personality now, but the actual warriors themselves still do not. That means that the more personal stories can't be told for these factions.
That's why I mentioned the Tau, they have an overwhelming drive to serve the greater good rather than own personal goals.

The pride, selfishness, backstabbing and self aggrandisement you get amongst Humans, Space Orks or Eldar are all great narrative devices to use in a campaign story!