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Well, in DND and in some forms of RPG, you don't have to roll dice to kill orcs. You can talk your way out of it (which has rules), or you can sneak your way past (which has rules), or you can change the story arc through your actions that the orcs don't show up entirely (which is helped by the rules and the DM - Crusade gives you no tools to do this, DND has a whole section for the DM on narrative arcs and narrative consequences).

In Crusade, you can ... well, do none of those things really, except refuse the game.

Somebody is extremely confused here and I'm not 100% sure it's me. You are aware of what 40k is, right? and what DND is? They're two very different types of games with very different mechanics. Has any edition of Warhammer ever had rules for arbitrating non-combat scenarios? Did I miss a moment in 5th edition where you could roll diplomacy against those Eldar guardians instead of roll shooting attacks? Maybe 2nd edition had the rules for using stealth to completely avoid playing the game you showed up to play?
I'm imagining showing up to the game store for your weekly campaign game, making a stealth roll and saying "well, guess I don't have to play this week. I was able to sneak past you!". It truly is too bad that Crusade fails to capture such narrative rules as this.
edit: I propose that you spend a moment thinking about why DND has rules for diplomacy and stealth, and 40k doesn't.
And again, you're describing the DMG when all we've gotten for Crusade so far is PHB, player option expansions, and Mass Campaign setting guides.

"If an Imperium player fights another Imperium player, he replaces his Imperium Keyword in all cases with the Chaos keyword." Voila, a good rule. And that's important, because if your foe wants to bring an Ordo Hereticus inquisitor to deal with the new traitors? Well, his rules work now, whereas they wouldn't've before (since they only care about the Chaos keyword). That means the decision to attack a friendly target has a narrative impact. There is nothing like this whatsoever in Crusade, and there never will be, because fundamentally it's more concerned with progression than with actual narrative.

What narrative is this telling? Why does attacking a friendly target turn one from Imperial to Chaos? The fundamental motivation here seems to be giving the Inquisitor bonuses, which is mechanical in nature. The fluff has Imperial vs Imperial forces all the time. Iron Hands and Imperial Fists had a big clash over some artifact until the Raven Guard - er, I mean, mysterious forces - swooped in and blew up the artifact.
The Space Wolves waged open war on the Inquisition and the Grey Knights.
None of those forces are Chaos.

Well, his rules work now, whereas they wouldn't've before (since they only care about the Chaos keyword). That means the decision to attack a friendly target has a narrative impact.

Ah, I see now. You've confused the term "narrative" with "mechanical". That decision has a mechanical impact under this proposed rule.
With or without this rule, the decision has a narrative impact. An Imperial force attacked another Imperial force - but why? That's up for the players to decide, using Agendas (!!! oh! Wait! That's Crusade rules!? Ah, dear). Not some rule that says if an Imperial player attacks another Imperial player they suddenly fall to Chaos.

Here's an example of Crusade forging a narrative better than some rule about falling to Chaos.
Deathwatch player and Dark Angels player decide to play a game against one another.
Deathwatch player chooses Secure Xenotech as an Agenda, and Dark Angels choose Angels of Death.
We immediately can build a narrative off of this - Deathwatch have found a Xenotech artefact that they need to recover at all costs. Dark Angels can't leave any survivors in their hunt for the Fallen.
Since you can pick multiple agendas, the Dark Angels player may pick one of their Fallen hunty ones (I don't have the book so I don't know what these look like), and then the narrative is more fully built. The Fallen have told the Deathwatch about the Xenotech artefact! That is why these specific Deathwatch need to be eradicated!
Wow! And neither party needed to fall to Chaos for this!


edit: and before anybody mentions, I'm aware that not every combination of agendas puts together so neat of a narrative. There's sometimes a little bit of flubbing of exactly why two forces are exactly fighting but for that, thankfully, GW has done all the work for you and you need only to look at the tagline:
“IN THE GRIM DARKNESS OF THE FAR FUTURE THERE IS ONLY WAR.”

I think Crusade is an alright attempt for what it is - adding narrative to pick up games.
What I would like is for them to release more structured missions or even entire campaign rules to expand upon this.

Similar to the old Imperial Armour books likes Taros or Ansphelion, the book could cover the story of the campaign, perhaps introduce a few units unique to the campaign, and have a sequence of missions players can work through to recreate the campaign.

I know a lot of people prefer to homebrew their own campaigns, but there's not a lot more that GW can give you if you're just going to write it all yourself.

Bringing it back to the topic at hand - this stuff would have been really cool to include in the codexes themselves.
It'd only take a few pages to give players a few scenarios to recreate significant engagements from the army's past.
I play Blood Angels, their codex could have included a mission to recreate a significant event in the Devastation of Baal campaign, another mission from the 3rd war of Armaggedon, etc. This would even double up as soft advertising their novels!

Rihgu wrote:
Here's an example of Crusade forging a narrative better than some rule about falling to Chaos.
Deathwatch player and Dark Angels player decide to play a game against one another.
Deathwatch player chooses Secure Xenotech as an Agenda, and Dark Angels choose Angels of Death.
We immediately can build a narrative off of this - Deathwatch have found a Xenotech artefact that they need to recover at all costs. Dark Angels can't leave any survivors in their hunt for the Fallen.
Since you can pick multiple agendas, the Dark Angels player may pick one of their Fallen hunty ones (I don't have the book so I don't know what these look like), and then the narrative is more fully built. The Fallen have told the Deathwatch about the Xenotech artefact! That is why these specific Deathwatch need to be eradicated!
Wow! And neither party needed to fall to Chaos for this!

Maybe D&D should just ditch the Dungeon Master's Guide entirely. Ditch all those rules for what characters can do outside of combat, how to interact with NPCs, how they travel around the world, how to string together disconnected battles into a campaign. Who needs anything besides combat and progression? Why let players make choices about how to progress through the campaign, or where they go, or what their goals are?

Just randomly generate a dungeon, dump the players in it, let players pick their objectives, and then tell them to come up with a justification for why they're in that dungeon and why they have those objectives. As long as the players can invent their backstory after the fact to explain what they're doing in the dungeon, it's the perfect campaign system, and there's no need for anything further.

The Fighter picks 'Rescue' as their secondary objective for the dungeon. The Barbarian picks 'Revenge' as their secondary objective. You might think a narrative would leverage prior events, and who the Fighter is rescuing and who the Barbarian wants revenge on would have been established earlier in the campaign, which would explain why they're in the dungeon. But we're doing this the other way around; you've picked these objectives, now justify them. They don't have to be connected to anything that's happened before, and they'll never affect any subsequent encounter.

This isn't a campaign. It's just creating a narrative justification for a one-off game.

Here's a thought: instead of being able to just pick 'Secure Xenotech' and conjure newly found xenos technology out of thin air for the sake of an objective, wouldn't it be interesting if xenotech being discovered was something that could happen as part of the campaign, and then the Deathwatch player could decide whether it's worth the risk (engaging a friendly) to retrieve it? You could even go a step further and have some repercussions for Imperial forces turning on one another, so that there's some kind of consequence.

Rather than the entire narrative content of your campaign being 'make up reasons for why the battle is happening, which will never affect anything in the future'. Because as far as narrative campaigns go, that kinda sucks.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
I think Crusade is an alright attempt for what it is - adding narrative to pick up games.
What I would like is for them to release more structured missions or even entire campaign rules to expand upon this.

I agree entirely. I like Crusade. It's a good system for adding a little bit of narrative flavor to a slow-grow tournament for a club, without being overly complicated or precluding new players from entering. But it's not much of a campaign system.

I disagree that there's not a lot GW can give you if you're going to write a campaign. They've done multiple campaign implementations with more substance than either a string of predetermined missions (as you describe) or randomly generated battles with progression (as Crusade provides). They did narrative campaigns with their own rules and player agency in White Dwarf. Seriously, I'll go scan some of the articles if people are convinced there's no other way to do a campaign.

Maybe D&D should just ditch the Dungeon Master's Guide entirely.

No, it absolutely shouldn't.
Now let's talk about 40k? Or must we continue to torture the comparison to DND for no reason?

Rihgu wrote:

Maybe D&D should just ditch the Dungeon Master's Guide entirely.

No, it absolutely shouldn't.
Now let's talk about 40k? Or must we continue to torture to comparison to DND for no reason?

I am talking about 40K. D&D is a good reference point because it's entirely based on narrative campaigns. I thought I gave a coherent argument for how D&D informs us that the 'forge the narrative' justification does not make a campaign. Hardly comparison 'for no reason'.

But I mean, if you don't want to have a good faith discussion, I can just say 'your argument sucks' and leave it at that?

Okay, I will engage in your good faith discussion with my own.

You either haven't read the DND books, haven't read Crusade, or have read both and don't remember half of them.

Following by the book, you just described how DND works. All those backgrounds you roll for? That's your "Revenge", that you then backfill. Sure you CAN pick if you have a character in mind but the character generation core rules are roll your backgrounds to find out your character's motivations.

DND is an RPG. THAT is why it has rules for stealth and exploration and diplomacy. 40k is a wargame. THAT is why it does not have rules for that.

You *CAN* pick agendas based on what happened before and after, just like you *CAN* pick backgrounds/ideals/flaws/bonds/whatever that make sense for your idea for your character. OR you can roll them and back-fill justification. Either way you get the same result in the end. Or are people who roll backgrounds playing DND wrong and not being narrative?

Can we please just stop with the DND "shorthand" because it's a completely different game and it's absolutely tortuous to try to fill in the comparisons where they make sense but have to throw out the 99% of the rest where it doesn't make sense. It's deeply flawed and I think muddies things up way more than it needs to. Crusade is not DND. 40k is not DND. Dungeon World is not DND. World of Darkness is not DND. Comparing Apples to Volkswagens this early in the morning is causing a headache.

It's not that your argument sucks, it's that your argument is using a nonsensical frame of reference. You've declared DND to be a narrative system, and because 40k doesn't have stealth rolls or diplomacy or a 300 page DMG giving tips and optional rules about how to randomly generate dungeons or how fast a boat moves, it fails as a narrative.
I keep pointing out that nothing Crusade has printed even TRIES to be a DMG but you and Unit keep bringing up "oh, but how about we throw away all the Persuasion rules from DND? Wouldn't that ruin DND?"
Yes. It would.
It wouldn't ruin 40k.

And to tie a little bow on this ranting tirade:

Here's a thought: instead of being able to just pick 'Secure Xenotech' and conjure newly found xenos technology out of thin air for the sake of an objective, wouldn't it be interesting if xenotech being discovered was something that could happen as part of the campaign, and then the Deathwatch player could decide whether it's worth the risk (engaging a friendly) to retrieve it?

Okay, cool, you've described how the Flashpoints and Beyond the Veil work. I guess that would be a cool idea! Glad it has already been implemented. I guess that makes Crusade a narrative system?

Karol wrote:
But imperials forces war on each other all the time, without there to be need of chaos intervention. There are marine chapters that hate each other. DA eliminate imperial forces that saw their secret on a regular basis. Ad Mecha war against each other and other faction, all the time. The conflicts are so common that the imperial law has rules regarding official duels and trails by combat, between members of the different adeptus.

And where are the rules for this? Where's the narrative structure surrounding a fight between Imperial factions? Would two Guard regiments be allowed to fight? Would Guard be allowed to wipe out a Marine company? The rules that permit combat between different adeptus exist in the lore, but on the tabletop it's a normal fight, complete with tanks exploding and battle-scars like blown off legs and whatnot. Are those within these rules?

This is exactly what I mean. Rules governing blue-on-blue (or forbidding them) seems like they'd be pretty important for a narrative campaign where two players should be on the same side. Who can get away with what? Is it fine for an Adepta Sororitas convent to annihilate a Primaris Space Marine chapter? Does the Imperium go "eh, at least they showed the same zeal they'd show fighting Xenos or Chaos". What if someone brings a Hereticus inquisitor? Can they declare someone a heretic? What about if they bring Coteaz? Can he declare Guilliman a heretic? Why would Coteaz fight Guilliman anyways?

Crusade does nothing to help any of this. It doesn't even stop guilliman on guilliman fights. Some narrative.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Rihgu wrote:
Okay, I will engage in your good faith discussion with my own.

You either haven't read the DND books, haven't read Crusade, or have read both and don't remember half of them.

Following by the book, you just described how DND works. All those backgrounds you roll for? That's your "Revenge", that you then backfill. Sure you CAN pick if you have a character in mind but the character generation core rules are roll your backgrounds to find out your character's motivations.

DND is an RPG. THAT is why it has rules for stealth and exploration and diplomacy. 40k is a wargame. THAT is why it does not have rules for that.

You *CAN* pick agendas based on what happened before and after, just like you *CAN* pick backgrounds/ideals/flaws/bonds/whatever that make sense for your idea for your character. OR you can roll them and back-fill justification. Either way you get the same result in the end. Or are people who roll backgrounds playing DND wrong and not being narrative?

Can we please just stop with the DND "shorthand" because it's a completely different game and it's absolutely tortuous to try to fill in the comparisons where they make sense but have to throw out the 99% of the rest where it doesn't make sense. It's deeply flawed and I think muddies things up way more than it needs to. Crusade is not DND. 40k is not DND. Dungeon World is not DND. World of Darkness is not DND. Comparing Apples to Volkswagens this early in the morning is causing a headache.

It's not that your argument sucks, it's that your argument is using a nonsensical frame of reference. You've declared DND to be a narrative system, and because 40k doesn't have stealth rolls or diplomacy or a 300 page DMG giving tips and optional rules about how to randomly generate dungeons or how fast a boat moves, it fails as a narrative.
I keep pointing out that nothing Crusade has printed even TRIES to be a DMG but you and Unit keep bringing up "oh, but how about we throw away all the Persuasion rules from DND? Wouldn't that ruin DND?"
Yes. It would.
It wouldn't ruin 40k.

I wasn't the one who brought up DND. I brought up skyrim and got yelled at for it not being DND. I can go back to skyrim comparisons if you want?

And yeah, 40k's narrative system will have to grow beyond being a Pickup WG. Obviously.

And where are the rules for this?

Check your core rulebook, the rules for engaging in battles should be in there.

Where's the narrative structure surrounding a fight between Imperial factions?

In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war.

Crusade does nothing to help any of this. It doesn't even stop guilliman on guilliman fights. Some narrative.

Wow, DND doesn't even stop Orcus on Orcus battles! There's no rules against it! It doesn't even give special rules for inter-party conflict. What's the narrative consequence for a PC fighter throwing an axe at their fellow PC wizard? Can you believe it, the PC wizard actually has to decide how their wizard reacts? There's no rules to dictate it!

(side note, have I finally crossed the line? Will people finally see the comparison is ridiculous?)

I wasn't the one who brought up DND. I brought up skyrim and got yelled at for it not being DND. I can go back to skyrim comparisons if you want?

I'm not sure if I replied to the thread yet at that point but I remember reading those and feeling they were exactly as tortured as the dnd comparisons, if not more so. Although, it would be very funny if I flipped back through the thread and found out I was the one who brought DND to this by comparing Skyrim to DND after you compared 40k to Skyrim. I almost dread to look back...

Everyone needs to know that pretty much everything in the books that can be generated randomly can also be chosen if players prefer.

So wounds can be chosen to suit the weapon that inflicted them; honours can be chosen to reflect the completion of the agenda that provided the experience necessary to earn them, and players can battle for the right to choose the next mission rather than determine randomly. Players can also use their choices about theatres of war to affect the narrative as well- when multiple theatres on a planet, players can choose which ones to engage and which to ignore. There's no house ruling required for any of it- just choose instead of roll- the books even tell you that you're allowed.

The choices that the core rules provide are also part of the narrative- detachment selection, unit selection, use of allies and strategic reserves are all decisions that players make- usually in an attempt to win. But they could (and do) just as easily make those decisions based on the story, both in game and between games.

If in my first game, I take a patriarch and three broods of purestrains; during the game, I kill 10 guardsmen. Next game I add a ten man unit of brood brothers. Have I told a story?

You can't wait for orbital bombardment you say? Really? Because I could either choose to include an Inquisitor as an agent to use his orbital bombardment strat or not. In fact, even better if I have to play a mission where the Inquisitor is an objective first, and I can only choose to use him in subsequent battles if I manage to claim him as an objective.

The reason Crusade doesn't include the rules to do these things is because the rules for straight up 40k already includes them.

Look, I'm not arguing that Crusade couldn't benefit from more stuff. What I'm doing is objecting to the bold, oversimplified and frankly ridiculous statement "Crusade isn't narrative."

Do I want them to publish a how to create campaign systems for crusade book? Sure. Do I want them to keep making Flashpoints and story arc specific mission packs like Beyond the veil and the one that's coming for Charadon? Sure.

But I'm not gonna be a jackass and say it isn't narrative because it doesn't have all of those things yet when it clearly gives me the tools to create sequences of cause and effect over multiple games at the level of individual units, detachments or whole armies, and it interacts with other player choices provided by the core game.

It's like we were all having this discussion and making progress, and seeing each other's points of view and being reasonable, and then suddenly at the end of page six, unit quotes somebody, and then reverts to the original stance of "It's not a narrative game" like the past two pages of reasonable discussion didn't happen. That's what I object to.

I'm not saying it couldn't be better. I'm saying that insisting it isn't narrative because it could be better is not a valid argument. It would be like saying "A hybrid vehicle isn't a car" because it doesn't fit with my narrow, personal definition of what a car is. And if you want to say, "Well it is less a narrative game than a progression system," I may disagree, but the argument is reasonable enough that I could let it go, or say, "Yeah, I really like Crusade, but I can see your point." (In fact, I feel like I have said that. More than once.)

But if you insist on stomping your feet and saying "NO. Not a narrative system at all because it needs to do this better," well yeah, I'm gonna have to try and reset the dialogue back to the place where we can have reasonable discussions about the difference between the narrative of a single game and the narrative of an army's history, or about how elements in core 40k can be used to further support the narrative elements provided by Crusade, or about some of the older publications like the Streets of Death from Urban Conquest can still be used even in 9th.

I don't know, maybe I'm too invested in this discussion- it isn't reasonable to care so much about whether other people like Crusade or not.

Rihgu wrote:
You *CAN* pick agendas based on what happened before and after, just like you *CAN* pick backgrounds/ideals/flaws/bonds/whatever that make sense for your idea for your character. OR you can roll them and back-fill justification. Either way you get the same result in the end. Or are people who roll backgrounds playing DND wrong and not being narrative?

You're glossing over the biggest conceptual difference between the two systems, which is that D&D is framed around decisions having later consequences as part of an overarching narrative. Even backfilled fluff for randomly-generated backgrounds can be leveraged by a DM to affect the story. Success or failure within a specific encounter impacts the whole thing, not just your character progression. It is not intended to be a series of unrelated one-shots where you can, if you really want, make up reasons for how they relate to one another.

This is missing from Crusade. It does not matter if you choose Secure Xenotech or any other secondary objective. It has no narrative consequence within the framework of the Crusade system, and doesn't impact future decisions. It doesn't even matter whether you win or lose. These factors only affect post-battle progression. Even if you want to roleplay, you have virtually no decisions to make that might be impacted by prior scenarios. Oh, your Crimson Fists have been losing to Orks for five battles in a row? Maybe by the power of imagination you decide that this means you're surrounded by Orks and down to your glorious last stand, hold the line at all costs! Except... You're just going to play another normal scenario. With your choice of secondary objective. You'll never get overrun and wiped out, or lose vital territory, or have important characters die, or have to make a tough choice about where to focus your dwindling resources, or hit a Bad Ending, or reach the end of a preordained historical sequence. Nothing matters. Nothing changes, except that after five losses in a row your opponent probably has slightly more elite units than you.

Frankly, I think it is rather disingenuous for you to act like pointing out that Crusade lacks consequences to battles is tantamount to nitpicking that it doesn't have stealth rolls. A 'narrative campaign' where you are fighting over nothing with no results, and have no decisions to make besides tactical objectives and post-battle rewards... well, that just doesn't feel much like a narrative to me. It feels like a tournament, or just a series of pickup games. With a guy in the corner furiously writing his fanfic to explain it all retroactively.

I mean, heck, if you don't want to talk D&D anymore, I'm cool with that. I can bring up any of the myriad of campaign implementations from other wargames that implement the very basic concept of 'stuff you do matters in the long run', or give you a series of narrative scenarios to reflect a fixed and unchanging 'historical' progression, or otherwise in any way provide context for how battles relate to one another and the overall campaign.

Rihgu wrote:
Okay, cool, you've described how the Flashpoints and Beyond the Veil work. I guess that would be a cool idea! Glad it has already been implemented. I guess that makes Crusade a narrative system?

Yes, those are systems for making a narrative campaign structure out of the Crusade progression rules- now can people stop swearing up and down that playing Crusade as written without Flashpoints or campaign books constitutes a fully-fledged narrative campaign system on its own?

And again- because apparently I have to reiterate this every time- I like Crusade and I like its progression. Implementing meaningful progression is a tall order for any wargame, and it adds a lot of flavor to pick-up games between friends. It's a great baseline for building out a proper campaign system. But on its own it's just a baseline.

catbarf's point is mine. Well spoken, sir, especially about the other wargame campaign systems (including from GW!) that can incorporate long-term narrative impacts.

There's no narrative impact for a given action except what the players assign to it - which is to say, there's no narrative impact at all, unless they were already narrative players.

I was tabled in our local crusade by Grey Knights. I played Eldar. His leader crushed mine in close combat. I asked him what the narrative should be for my force to get away - why would his Grey Knights release me unharmed? (I didn't roll any 1s for post-battle battle scars).

He said he'd think about it, and we never really decided on an appropriate conclusion.

I basically fell out of the campaign at that point. I had been writing a narrative for every battle, and I couldn't rationalize why the Grey Knights would just magically let everyone go unharmed after a brutal battle that saw lots of the Emperor's Finest and lots of Eldar die. I mean an entire main battle tank (Fire Prism) exploded, and yet somehow after the battle it was all fine.

How do I write a narrative that ends with "and then everyone was fine so we left to go fight... oh my opponent this week is More Eldar? Oh, why would my craftworld fight them? Ah, what a pain."

But I would've had to fight him, if I'd wanted to continue. Because progression is what's important in Crusade, and I've seen what happens to armies who fall behind (R.I.P. our Militarum Tempestus player, you will be missed).

This total lack of narrative essentially killed my interest in the local crusade (and the campaign itself has largely stalled). I have a few opponents who I'd be interested in playing, but that's just the same as it was before Crusade, because if you thought narrative then, you think narrative now, and if you didn't think narrative then, Crusade doesn't ask that you think narrative now.

It does not matter if you choose Secure Xenotech or any other secondary objective. It has no narrative consequence within the framework of the Crusade system, and doesn't impact future decisions

If you succeed at the agenda to Secure Xenotech, the unit who secured it gets the Xenotech (which is a Relic that unit permanently has for the future until they lose it by any mechanism within Crusade to lose a Relic).

Oh, your Crimson Fists have been losing to Orks for five battles in a row? Maybe by the power of imagination you decide that this means you're surrounded by Orks and down to your glorious last stand, hold the line at all costs! Except... You're just going to play another normal scenario. With your choice of secondary objective. You'll never get overrun and wiped out, or lose vital territory, or have important characters die, or have to make a tough choice about where to focus your dwindling resources, or hit a Bad Ending, or reach the end of a preordained historical sequence.

If the Ork player keeps winning then they're getting more and more RP and XP which means they've got bigger and badder units and can take bigger and badder, and your forces are accumulating battle scars. Nothing in the rules say you need to have the same power rating in the battle.
Also, as new codexes (codices? whichever you prefer) come out, more of these meta-narrative processes are coming out. Death Guard manufacture and evolve new plagues using plague points or whatever, Blood Angels have to manage their Black Rage, and Dark Angels get ever closer to their Fallen culminating in actually finding a Fallen and being able to select an agenda to make the battle about retrieving said Fallen for interrogation. There may be some book or codex for Rynn's World one day that models this exact scenario, or maybe Orks Crusade rules allow them to get more WAAAGH points to allow them to, by explicitly defined rules, take a larger and larger force.
We're still very early on, but we see the hints of what you're describing formulating already.

pointing out that Crusade lacks consequences to battles

Battle scars, XP, requisition, black rage points, plague points, fallen points, xenotech points, etc... all of those aren't consequences for battles? you've fought a battle, now your forces are injured, some are more experienced, you've requisitioned more forces, and you're closer than ever to tracking down that Fallen Angel! You've also gathered Xenotech points to solve the mystery of the Pariah Nexus, too! Not consequential?

I can bring up any of the myriad of campaign implementations from other wargames that implement the very basic concept of 'stuff you do matters in the long run'

Oh! I've got one! The Crusade system! But actually yes, I'd be interested in hearing some of these for the sake of comparison.

now can people stop swearing up and down that playing Crusade as written without Flashpoints or campaign books constitutes a fully-fledged narrative campaign system on its own?

Who has said that? I'll make them stop myself, if I have to.
Well, maybe I won't, because Crusade on it's own with just the Core book and a codex works fine for what it's trying to be, a narrative campaign system for a "personal campaign", which is for me a new concept that I think GW invented for this.
There are long term consequences, there are progressions... only thing it really lacks is Flashpoint Argovon's system for declaring a victor (based on accumulating Xenotech points and then converting those to Victory points), which is for a Mass Campaign, not the Personal Campaign core Crusade embodies anyways and the different battlefield rules to add a bit of flavor to where you're fighting.
I'm personally of the opinion that a narrative can be forged, that say you're fighting on a volcano, without special rules telling you how the lava is causing mortal wounds as it seeps down the volcano.
I can just as well assume that either we're not fighting directly in a lava flow or our space armor is adequate protection against the lava flow making it viable to fight directly on top of it.

I guess this is where we diverge - battlefield rules don't make something inherently more narrative (or perhaps more honestly reaching your point, lack of battlefield rules don't make something inherently non-narrative).

Hey! DND doesn't explicitly tell you when a campaign ends either, so I guess we're actually fine on that front!

I basically fell out of the campaign at that point. I had been writing a narrative for every battle, and I couldn't rationalize why the Grey Knights would just magically let everyone go unharmed after a brutal battle that saw lots of the Emperor's Finest and lots of Eldar die. I mean an entire main battle tank (Fire Prism) exploded, and yet somehow after the battle it was all fine.

Oh, this one is easy, and used in basically every single battle report/story/novel in every GW book every (End Times was full of them!)
Before the final blow was struck, the Eldar warrior, seeing their opponent had the upper hand and that to continue this duel would certainly mean death, used their uncanny Aeldari agility and speed to escape the duel, and indeed the battlefield. They were never taken prisoner, that was your own narrative that you decided on for some reason. I'm sorry you ruined your own narrative by ascribing a specific narrative when nobody told you to do that. Seems easily resolvable without a special rule like, PERFIDIOUS ELDAR: When this model would be reduced to 0W remaining, reduce it to 1W remaining instead, and remove it from play. This model counts as slain for all rules purposes, but does not count as slain for narrative purposes.

As for the explosion, huh. You got me. Argument shattered. Crusade is non-narrative.

There's no narrative impact for a given action except what the players assign to it - which is to say, there's no narrative impact at all, unless they were already narrative players.

This remains true for literally everything.

It's somehow irritating that the same people shouting me down for claiming that 40k has never been a proper narrative game are now shouting in the same manner about how crusade is not a narrative game.

And where are the rules for this?

you take a dice, check your BS roll to hit, to wound then opponent rolls to save. This represent the rules of one side shoting the other.

Would two Guard regiments be allowed to fight?

You mean ordered to? of course.

Would Guard be allowed to wipe out a Marine company?

That would have to be a lot of IG for it to actually happen. But of course, you are ordered stuff, you follow it. you don't you get shot on the spot

Where's the narrative structure surrounding a fight between Imperial factions? The rules that permit combat between different adeptus exist in the lore, but on the tabletop it's a normal fight, complete with tanks exploding and battle-scars like blown off legs and whatnot. Are those within these rules?

If you are talking about crusade rules, then I think, as I don't play crusade, there is a an option for battle scared in the crusade rule set.

In the first covid quarentine I made a narrative map-based campaing with 6-7 friends using TTS. I used the custom character creator for chapter approved to make a progresion ruleset for our warlords (each one chose a character with equipement from legends, they gained exp after battles, could buy traits and upgrades to weapons, be wounded, etc....)

I made a map, wrote the fluff of the planet we were fighting (Artel V), and put points of interests in the map (xeno ruins with loot tables, savage orks/Technobarbarians camps with encounter tables, etc...) and then made rules for when the Tyranid Invasion subplot started, how hostile 3rd party tyranid forces could appear mid battle between two players (First it was only lictors, the next week was small bioforms, and then we had a couple full blown invasion narrative games mastered by me)

I played the grot revolution in that campaing (Basically because I was the most experience player, all my friends were noobs to 40k so I went easy on them... and still won every game to hilarous effect).

I suppose what Catbarf and Unit are saying is that what Crusade lacks are those rules I invented for stuff like how to represent in your game the progresion of a planetary xenos invasion, how to make more DM-like narrative scenaros, etc... but I seriously believe a narrative campaing CANNOT work without someone acting as a DM. Theres no ruleset that can make a narrative campaing work with only rules. At best, it will end up as a risk-like tournament with army progression.

In my campaing there were a ton of stuff that had no rules but players wanted to make (we are all roleplayers), like when the Ravenguard player dropped in the north pole of the planet (I put X points for players to start, each one with a little fluff about the zone) and used a bit of fluff I wrote about human rebels (descended from a catachan regiment stranted on the planet after the cicatriz maledictum broke the galaxy in two) to basically start a couple of narrative missions we made on the fly for him to contact them and gain their help (And the alpha legion player that started the campaing as black templar tried to sabotage).

At the end of the day a narrative system will put examples, rules, and scenarios, but those are just tools one has to use to make a proper narrative scenario. Crusade offers some rules. They are pretty good and cool. If you use them as written with 0 input from the players they are gonna suck. Just as if you play D&D with 0 input from the players.

Nice rebuttal Rihgu- you took the words right out of my keyboarding fingers.

 Galas wrote:
I suppose what Catbarf and Unit are saying is that what Crusade lacks are those rules I invented for stuff like how to represent in your game the progresion of a planetary xenos invasion, how to make more DM-like narrative scenaros, etc... but I seriously believe a narrative campaing CANNOT work without someone acting as a DM. Theres no ruleset that can make a narrative campaing work with only rules. At best, it will end up as a risk-like tournament with army progression.

I agree, especially if you want to leave some agency to players in regard to what's happening. A campaign written in a book can't improvise when the SW and Orks decide to gang up on some Grey Knights halfway through the campaign.

Rihgu wrote:
If you succeed at the agenda to Secure Xenotech, the unit who secured it gets the Xenotech (which is a Relic that unit permanently has for the future until they lose it by any mechanism within Crusade to lose a Relic).

Right. Progression for your army. No consequence to the campaign in terms of overall objectives, or force disposition, or territory control, or strategic assets, or any of the things that really matter in a war and drive the narrative of the conflict.

Rihgu wrote:
If the Ork player keeps winning then they're getting more and more RP and XP which means they've got bigger and badder units and can take bigger and badder, and your forces are accumulating battle scars. Nothing in the rules say you need to have the same power rating in the battle.

So, army progression.

Rihgu wrote:
Battle scars, XP, requisition, black rage points, plague points, fallen points, xenotech points, etc...

Progression, progression, progression, progression, progression, progression, progression.

I mean, this is exactly my point. Crusade gives you great rules for progression for your army. I really enjoy them and I think they're well-done. But that's all that you get.

'What were the consequences of the Allies successfully storming the beaches of Normandy on D-Day?'
'MacArthur got more experience and received a couple extra Shermans.'
'What would have happened if the Allies failed to secure a beachhead and the Germans won instead?'
'Well, MacArthur would get fewer Shermans.'

Kind of missing all the important bits, isn't it?

Rihgu wrote:
Oh! I've got one! The Crusade system! But actually yes, I'd be interested in hearing some of these for the sake of comparison.

Sure.

White Dwarf featured a simple campaign system for 40K, in which a map was drawn up and divided into territories. Players were allowed to make one attack per turn, picking a territory adjacent to one their own and fighting a battle against the player who owns that territory. If they won the battle, they captured the territory. Some territories were particularly relevant to specific factions' overall objectives, some conferred bonuses to the player who owned them. The objective was generally to control the most territory by the end of a preset time limit.

White Dwarf featured a more narrative-focused campaign system for WHFB and 40K constructed as a branching tree of scenarios. The intent was to play the starting scenario, then who won or lost would determine the next scenario. Eventually, the flowchart terminated at a victory (Major or Minor) for one player or a stalemate.

White Dwarf also featured an escalation league system for WHFB where players started at 500pts and did a slow-grow tournament. Characters who died or won would roll on injury or advancement tables to receive permanent boosts. Winning battles awarded victory points based on the degree of victory, and the ultimate goal was to accumulate the most VPs.

Necromunda, as mentioned before, has a campaign system in which players draw territory cards to determine the locale for a battle. Whoever wins controls that territory, and receives buffs or debuffs from it. The overall objective is to hold the most territory at the end of a time limit.

Bolt Action has a core campaign system that is extremely similar to Crusade (primarily progression-focused), which is coupled with campaign sourcebooks that provide campaign-specific scenarios, progression, and victory conditions.

Getting real grognard, Advanced Squad Leader was designed around small one-off scenarios, but a campaign system was introduced in Historical Advanced Squad Leader. This was designed around combining multiple maps to create very large battlespaces, breaking the game into days of varying numbers of turns, and allowing redeployment, unit progression, and reinforcement between days. The objective was to control the entire battlespace or reach scenario-specific objectives.

Getting into videogames, Dawn of War (a 40K strategy game) has featured both scripted campaigns (so defined scenarios with defined participants) and freeform campaigns where you pick a territory on a global map to attack. Holding territory confers various advantages.

Rising Storm 2, a multiplayer Vietnam War first-person shooter, has a simple campaign system where Vietnam is divided into a series of territories. Each territory is associated with a particular game map. The winner of the last match picks a territory to attack, and a match is fought on that territory's map, with the winner holding that territory. The campaign ends when either the real-world date of the end of the war is reached (with the team holding more territory winning), or one team controls the entirety of Vietnam.

All of these systems track some kind of permanent progress to determine relative position in a campaign, as complex as a campaign map or as simple as a victory point tracker.

 Galas wrote:
I suppose what Catbarf and Unit are saying is that what Crusade lacks are those rules I invented for stuff like how to represent in your game the progresion of a planetary xenos invasion

That is literally all I have been saying.

And no, you don't strictly need a DM; you only need one if you aren't happy with just an overarching metagame and really want bespoke scenarios. Lots of games make it work without a DM. Please, folks, just look at what already exists out there.

Rihgu wrote:

pointing out that Crusade lacks consequences to battles

Battle scars, XP, requisition, black rage points, plague points, fallen points, xenotech points, etc... all of those aren't consequences for battles? you've fought a battle, now your forces are injured, some are more experienced, you've requisitioned more forces,

So fall, all of this is progression. Saying these are consequences is like saying that the consequence for slaying General Tullius in Skyrim is 896XP. Like sure, technically true, but not at all what we mean.

Rihgu wrote:
and you're closer than ever to tracking down that Fallen Angel! You've also gathered Xenotech points to solve the mystery of the Pariah Nexus, too! Not consequential?

Not in the Crusade core rules, no.

Rihgu wrote:
I'm personally of the opinion that a narrative can be forged, that say you're fighting on a volcano, without special rules telling you how the lava is causing mortal wounds as it seeps down the volcano.
I can just as well assume that either we're not fighting directly in a lava flow or our space armor is adequate protection against the lava flow making it viable to fight directly on top of it.

And in your narrative that might be the case, and in your opponent's narrative it might not be. What do you do then? Roll a dice? It'd be nice if the rules either appointed someone who was In Charge (we'll call them a CM, Crusade Master, perhaps) to make this call or just gave you enough rules architecture in the first place to handle it.

Rihgu wrote:
Oh, this one is easy, and used in basically every single battle report/story/novel in every GW book every (End Times was full of them!)
Before the final blow was struck, the Eldar warrior, seeing their opponent had the upper hand and that to continue this duel would certainly mean death, used their uncanny Aeldari agility and speed to escape the duel, and indeed the battlefield. They were never taken prisoner, that was your own narrative that you decided on for some reason. I'm sorry you ruined your own narrative by ascribing a specific narrative when nobody told you to do that. Seems easily resolvable without a special rule like, PERFIDIOUS ELDAR: When this model would be reduced to 0W remaining, reduce it to 1W remaining instead, and remove it from play. This model counts as slain for all rules purposes, but does not count as slain for narrative purposes.

And that happened the time she was killed by a Black Templar, and that time she was killed by an Archon, and that time she was killed by a Dreadnought, and that time she was killed by a Thousand Sons psyker? And that time she died to Perils of the Warp? Or that time she died from a tank exploding with her inside? And it happened in this battle to every single eldar on the field?

A book that had the main character escaping from death by plot fiat every chapter would be rightly criticized for having no real narrative consequences or risks. Why is Crusade more narrative because this sort of plot fiat becomes necessary? To me, that isn't narrative at all - and books that do this get rightly criticized for doing so. It's not okay just because it's GW's crusade.

Rihgu wrote:
As for the explosion, huh. You got me. Argument shattered. Crusade is non-narrative.

Concession accepted.

Rihgu wrote:

There's no narrative impact for a given action except what the players assign to it - which is to say, there's no narrative impact at all, unless they were already narrative players.

This remains true for literally everything.

No, it isn't. Rules can govern narrative impact - or, perhaps more appropriately, rules can empower someone to generate narrative impact. For example, the FFG RPGs had a Corruption and Malignancies system which gave in-game bonuses and maluses to characters in exchange for flirting with Chaos. The DM had to decide any story ramifications (e.g. if you let the fact that you have a snake tail instead of legs be known you will be hunted down and killed) but the rules helped them by providing an architecture for Acolytes who were outcast/banned from the Inquisition/declared heretics, etc. It also provided ingame rules for what happens when your legs are replaced with a snake tail, for better or worse.

In Crusade, if you fall to chaos, you don't even get a chaos keyword (which means anti-chaos stuff doesn't work on you). Not that there's any consequences for falling to Chaos at all, or that it even has any meaning. It doesn't change your opponents, doesn't change your roster... hell, it has no meaning whatsoever. Narrative!

Some of the best moments of my last narrative campaign (I gmed, late 8th, over TTS due to pandemic) was when the Ork player tried to be "diplomatic".

Instance 1: Ork player tried looting an abandoned fortress-monastery at the same time as some Renegade Knights and admech, and kept convincing the other two parties why they should attack each other instead of him. Ultimately the Knight player ONLY listened the exact one time the Ork player miscalculated and the Admech made off with the loot.

Instance 2: The sun revealed itself to be a Necron tomb world, and the Ultramarines player was like "Wellp, guess I gotta protect the Imperium" and started flying their fleet to the sun to try to take on the Necron capitol ship + majority of their defensive fleet. What then happens? The orks cease ALL their operations in the system and every ship they've got crashes into the necron fleet, leaving a wide opening for the Ultramarines to act basically unopposed. This was again foiled by the Renegade Knights, who intercepted the Ultramarines in the middle of the Necron fleet because they wanted to steal some Repulsors. Which also frustrated the Ork player because their own goal was to fight the Ultramarines after!

edit: oh no, two other replies spawned while typing that up.

Rihgu wrote:
Some of the best moments of my last narrative campaign (I gmed, late 8th, over TTS due to pandemic) was when the Ork player tried to be "diplomatic".

Instance 1: Ork player tried looting an abandoned fortress-monastery at the same time as some Renegade Knights and admech, and kept convincing the other two parties why they should attack each other instead of him. Ultimately the Knight player ONLY listened the exact one time the Ork player miscalculated and the Admech made off with the loot.

Instance 2: The sun revealed itself to be a Necron tomb world, and the Ultramarines player was like "Wellp, guess I gotta protect the Imperium" and started flying their fleet to the sun to try to take on the Necron capitol ship + majority of their defensive fleet. What then happens? The orks cease ALL their operations in the system and every ship they've got crashes into the necron fleet, leaving a wide opening for the Ultramarines to act basically unopposed. This was again foiled by the Renegade Knights, who intercepted the Ultramarines in the middle of the Necron fleet because they wanted to steal some Repulsors. Which also frustrated the Ork player because their own goal was to fight the Ultramarines after!

edit: oh no, two other replies spawned while typing that up.

Crusade didn't help you with any of this. And that's my point. Narrative players have always been doing what they do with their own toolbox of rules. Crusade is not required.

Since another post has occured since my last post I won't just edit it with all my replies, which are as follows.

Crusade didn't help you with any of this. And that's my point. Narrative players have always been doing what they do with their own toolbox of rules. Crusade is not required.

And thank goodness for that, because I did this a few months before Crusade came out! Don't believe I ever said Crusade was required.

No, it isn't. Rules can govern narrative impact - or, perhaps more appropriately, rules can empower someone to generate narrative impact. For example, the FFG RPGs had a Corruption and Malignancies system which gave in-game bonuses and maluses to characters in exchange for flirting with Chaos. The DM had to decide any story ramifications (e.g. if you let the fact that you have a snake tail instead of legs be known you will be hunted down and killed) but the rules helped them by providing an architecture for Acolytes who were outcast/banned from the Inquisition/declared heretics, etc. It also provided ingame rules for what happens when your legs are replaced with a snake tail, for better or worse.

Sounds like a battlescar.

But more importantly:

Rules can govern narrative impact - or, perhaps more appropriately, rules can empower someone to generate narrative impact.

Is exactly what I'm saying. There is nothing dictating that there *MUST* be a narrative impact for your character growing a snake tail. NOTHING. It's a narrative the DM decides! It can never come up again, narratively, except for whatever mechanical bonuses or maluses. Wait that's not narrative, that's mechanics.

Not in the Crusade core rules, no.

Really wish somebody had told me from the start that we were talking Core Crusade rules only! Weird that it suddenly just came up that that's what we were talking about. Would've saved me a lot of time sorting through other sources.

And in your narrative that might be the case, and in your opponent's narrative it might not be. What do you do then? Roll a dice? It'd be nice if the rules either appointed someone who was In Charge (we'll call them a CM, Crusade Master, perhaps) to make this call or just gave you enough rules architecture in the first place to handle it.

Well, since we're playing Crusade Core Rules Only, it doesn't matter? It's a personal campaign, the story of *my* forces. The opponent can come up with whatever narrative for their own personal campaign. It won't affect mine. Crusade Core Rules only! And when Crusade eventually comes out with an Arbitrator's Toolbox book, that also won't matter, because it's not in the Crusade Core Rules either. Too bad.

In Crusade, if you fall to chaos, you don't even get a chaos keyword (which means anti-chaos stuff doesn't work on you). Not that there's any consequences for falling to Chaos at all, or that it even has any meaning. It doesn't change your opponents, doesn't change your roster... hell, it has no meaning whatsoever. Narrative!

actually you'll find that if you play any Chaos force it will have the Chaos keyword. This is true of Chaos Daemons, Chaos Space Marines, Thousand Sons, and Death Guard, which are the Chaos forces in 40k. Oh wait, there's also the Gellerpox Infected and Servants of the Abyss.
Oh, you're talking about a player deciding that their non-Chaos forces fall to Chaos? Well, it's right that there's nothing like that in the Core Crusade Rules. Something might come up in an expansion, but that won't matter.
I am equally upset that me arbitrarily deciding that my Space Marine chapter works for the Tau does not give them the Tau keyword. I even converted the models and everything! Clearly a flaw with the Crusade Core rules.

Right. Progression for your army. No consequence to the campaign in terms of overall objectives, or force disposition, or territory control, or strategic assets, or any of the things that really matter in a war and drive the narrative of the conflict.

Is a xenotech relic not a strategic asset? Anyways, Crusade, especially by core rules, doesn't really address a conflict or war. It's more like the trials and tribulations of a specific force, which may or may not engage in a protracted campaign. A protracted campaign is represented by say, Argovon, where you gain Argovon specific Xenotech points which eventually convert into Victory points, abstractly representing the overall objectives, force disposition, territory control, and strategic assets of your side in the Argovon campaign. And if you win, you get a battle honour showing that you won the Argovon campaign.

White Dwarf also featured an escalation league system for WHFB where players started at 500pts and did a slow-grow tournament. Characters who died or won would roll on injury or advancement tables to receive permanent boosts. Winning battles awarded victory points based on the degree of victory, and the ultimate goal was to accumulate the most VPs.

This is literally Crusade + Argovon, based on your description of it.

White Dwarf featured a more narrative-focused campaign system for WHFB and 40K constructed as a branching tree of scenarios. The intent was to play the starting scenario, then who won or lost would determine the next scenario. Eventually, the flowchart terminated at a victory (Major or Minor) for one player or a stalemate.

This is also what they put into Vigilis.. Defiant? or Ablaze? This is neither here nor there but I did run a campaign in 8e following that paradigm. It worked well besides some unbalanced scenarios but my players like the system I used in a later campaign (the one with the Orks!) better. That one was basically me asking each player what they wanted to do and writing a scenario for it, though, so I can see why the freedom was preferred.
The rest all seem like map campaigns or variations on map campaigns. Which I agree are cool, but not particularly more or less narrative than non-map campaigns.

At this point most of your replies are either agreeing with me or mocking me rather than rebuttals.

Rihgu wrote:
And thank goodness for that, because I did this a few months before Crusade came out! Don't believe I ever said Crusade was required.

If Crusade doesn't help/isn't required for narrative at all, why is it important? What does it do that we couldn't do without it? That's my point.

Rihgu wrote:
Sounds like a battlescar.

Sure, if you equate "a character falling to chaos" with "a character getting hit by an artillery shell". If you think those have the same narrative consequences, then yea, I guess I get why you'd think Crusade is a narrative system.

Rihgu wrote:
But more importantly:

Rules can govern narrative impact - or, perhaps more appropriately, rules can empower someone to generate narrative impact.

Is exactly what I'm saying. There is nothing dictating that there *MUST* be a narrative impact for your character growing a snake tail. NOTHING. It's a narrative the DM decides! It can never come up again, narratively, except for whatever mechanical bonuses or maluses. Wait that's not narrative, that's mechanics.

Yes, the DM decided. That's the crucial difference. The default setting is that something should matter and it is a choice when it doesn't. In Crusade, nothing matters unless you choose to make it matter - which means nothing matters, unless you were already a narrative player in the first place.

Rihgu wrote:

Not in the Crusade core rules, no.

Really wish somebody had told me from the start that we were talking Core Crusade rules only! Weird that it suddenly just came up that that's what we were talking about. Would've saved me a lot of time sorting through other sources.

I mean, campaign supplements have always been narrative aids for 40k, before Crusade. "A campaign supplement helped me be narrative!" isn't the Crusade system helping, it's just the campaign supplement helping. Crusade, again, not required.

Rihgu wrote:

And in your narrative that might be the case, and in your opponent's narrative it might not be. What do you do then? Roll a dice? It'd be nice if the rules either appointed someone who was In Charge (we'll call them a CM, Crusade Master, perhaps) to make this call or just gave you enough rules architecture in the first place to handle it.

Well, since we're playing Crusade Core Rules Only, it doesn't matter? It's a personal campaign, the story of *my* forces. The opponent can come up with whatever narrative for their own personal campaign. It won't affect mine.

You don't see the problem here, in a narrative context? This is basically saying that narrative 40k is a single-player game (or that Crusade turns it into one) which is patently ridiculous.

Rihgu wrote:
Crusade Core Rules only! And when Crusade eventually comes out with an Arbitrator's Toolbox book, that also won't matter, because it's not in the Crusade Core Rules either. Too bad.

I'm glad you agree with me that the DMG should've been part of the Crusade core rather than the latter only including a bunch of irrelevant progression mechanics.

Rihgu wrote:

In Crusade, if you fall to chaos, you don't even get a chaos keyword (which means anti-chaos stuff doesn't work on you). Not that there's any consequences for falling to Chaos at all, or that it even has any meaning. It doesn't change your opponents, doesn't change your roster... hell, it has no meaning whatsoever. Narrative!

Oh, you're talking about a player deciding that their non-Chaos forces fall to Chaos? Well, it's right that there's nothing like that in the Core Crusade Rules. Something might come up in an expansion, but that won't matter.
I am equally upset that me arbitrarily deciding that my Space Marine chapter works for the Tau does not give them the Tau keyword. I even converted the models and everything! Clearly a flaw with the Crusade Core rules.

Yes, actually. The inability to have the narrative you've built for your force (and even built your force around!) matter is exactly the problem. Thank you for illustrating it for me! I'm glad you understand.

Rihgu wrote:
Is a xenotech relic not a strategic asset?

Depends, what does it do?

Rihgu wrote:
Anyways, Crusade, especially by core rules, doesn't really address a conflict or war.

Then for those of us who want to play a wargame as the narrative for a war, it's and inadequate system don't you think?

Rihgu wrote:
This is literally Crusade + Argovon, based on your description of it.

So a campaign supplement, nice. Glad GW is still publishing those. They're at least useful.

Rihgu wrote:
Which I agree are cool, but not particularly more or less narrative than non-map campaigns.

The main issue is they have long-term narrative consequences for short-term decisions.

The World War II example is fitting; consider the following:
"My aircraft at Malta successfully interdicted your convoy!"
"Drat, that means your aircraft at Malta gained an XP and enough RP for another squadron! And my convoy escorts got a battle scar and move slower now! Grrr."

Actually, it means that the Germans are losing the entire war for North Africa. But sure, yeah, progression = narrative.

Yes, actually. The inability to have the narrative you've built for your force (and even built your force around!) matter is exactly the problem. Thank you for illustrating it for me! I'm glad you understand.

It's actually a problem with 40k's rules rather than Crusade specifically. If Crusade was completely out of the picture I'd still be unable to have my Tau Marines.

You don't see the problem here, in a narrative context? This is basically saying that narrative 40k is a single-player game (or that Crusade turns it into one) which is patently ridiculous.

No, the game is still two-or-more players. The narrative is by default single-player.

Yes, the DM decided. That's the crucial difference. The default setting is that something should matter and it is a choice when it doesn't. In Crusade, nothing matters unless you choose to make it matter - which means nothing matters, unless you were already a narrative player in the first place

I'm sorry, I really cannot understand this. It seems like an arbitrary delineation where you've decided Black Crusade is narrative and 40k is not. Thus, when you play Black Crusade un-narratively you're making a choice, and when playing 40k un-narratively, well, that's just the default.

If Crusade doesn't help/isn't required for narrative at all, why is it important? What does it do that we couldn't do without it? That's my point.

It doesn't do anything we couldn't do without it. It gives a baseline for somebody to do some stuff they could do without it, but without homebrewing or homebrewing as much.

Then for those of us who want to play a wargame as the narrative for a war, it's and inadequate system don't you think?

Yup, I'll completely agree with that. If you're looking for a specific type of narrative not covered/currently covered by the Crusade system, then the Crusade system is inadequate for that. I will completely agree with that. I will not agree that the Crusade system is inherently or objectively non-narrative, pointless, or useless, just because it doesn't model map campaigns or specific types of narratives.

The World War II example is fitting; consider the following:
"My aircraft at Malta successfully interdicted your convoy!"
"Drat, that means your aircraft at Malta gained an XP and enough RP for another squadron! And my convoy escorts got a battle scar and move slower now! Grrr."

Actually, it means that the Germans are losing the entire war for North Africa. But sure, yeah, progression = narrative.

Without being a war historian or looking up this specific battle... The convoys are the Allies?

Okay, so the convoy side won their agenda to give them North Africa points, but the aircraft passed their primary objective. So for the battle, the Germans won, but hey, the Allies now have more North Africa points! They're actually winning the war.

 Jidmah wrote:

 Galas wrote:
I suppose what Catbarf and Unit are saying is that what Crusade lacks are those rules I invented for stuff like how to represent in your game the progresion of a planetary xenos invasion, how to make more DM-like narrative scenaros, etc... but I seriously believe a narrative campaing CANNOT work without someone acting as a DM. Theres no ruleset that can make a narrative campaing work with only rules. At best, it will end up as a risk-like tournament with army progression.

I agree, especially if you want to leave some agency to players in regard to what's happening. A campaign written in a book can't improvise when the SW and Orks decide to gang up on some Grey Knights halfway through the campaign.

I agree with them when they say it like this too.

But every now and then they insist on saying it like this: "Crusade =/= Narrative".

And when they say it like that, I have to disagree.

Rihgu wrote:
This is literally Crusade + Argovon, based on your description of it.

Yeah pretty much. Not 'This is literally Crusade out of the box, with no additions or alterations'.

Crusade provides a good progression system as a framework, but an actual campaign system- be it narrative, strategic, or just competitive- has to come from elsewhere. And for that you have a ton of options:
-As simple as 'track your VPs and whoever has the most at the end of the month wins',
-As complex as modeling out a map and terrain and bunch of contextual rules,
-As focused as taking a conflict from an IA book and building out a bespoke set of scenarios based on it,
-As creative as having a DM narrate and generate battles, or
-As easy as buying GW's pre-made products like Flashpoints.

But those aren't in the base Crusade rules. The base Crusade rules are just progression.

For, like, the fifth time, that's my sole argument here.

Rihgu wrote:
Okay, so the convoy side won their agenda to give them North Africa points, but the aircraft passed their primary objective. So for the battle, the Germans won, but hey, the Allies now have more North Africa points! They're actually winning the war.

See I'd be completely fine with that as a really simple WW2 campaign. Integrate the campaign objectives into the individual battles as a victory point tracker, that may not actually align with the individual scenario objectives.

But that's not in the base Crusade system. If you want 'North Africa points', to make any effort to represent how the battle matters to the conflict, you have to homebrew it or bring it in from a supplement. That's all I'm saying.

 Jidmah wrote:
Books like Beyond the Veil are the story telling part part of crusade and people like them, so why does the main criticism seem to be that crusade is not telling a story?

I'm confused.

I'd wager most people don't own it - myself included, but I'm keen to snag it to use with the kids and find out what it is all about. Has anyone here read through it?

It's really cool.

They create a mechanic called Investigation Points; certain agendas give you Investigation points, as do some of the missions.

There are various things you can do with investigation points.

The relics are all Necron technology, because you're fighting on tomb worlds. But these relics have special powers that you have to study to unlock; Necrons, naturally figure this stuff out more easily than non-Crons, so the native target they have to hit to unload the secret is lower. But you can burn investigation points to lower the target number.

There are also a lot of new actions to take on objectives- things lock "Lock it Down" or "Deactivate" really change how an objective feels/ functions.

There are 6 missions for each game size, which is nice since the BRB only gives you 3 for combat patrol and 3 for onslaught.

The mission pack is designed to work with the Pariah PA and the Argovon Flashpoint series. I wouldn't go as far as saying you need them, but they do put more tools in the toolbox if you have them.

The book doesn't include a campaign system, so it still isn't going to satisfy everyone. But I liked it, though I haven't played any of the missions yet.

So basically what I have understand here is that something only is narrative if theres a system to conect the games between them be it a map or some style of ladder campaing. And that theres a end or winner condition.

The fact that theres any narrative is secondary. Only the structure is needed. I understand the reasoning but I think people is falling in a No True Narrative system here to discredit Crusade.

 Galas wrote:
I suppose what Catbarf and Unit are saying is that what Crusade lacks are those rules I invented for stuff like how to represent in your game the progresion of a planetary xenos invasion, how to make more DM-like narrative scenaros, etc... but I seriously believe a narrative campaing CANNOT work without someone acting as a DM. Theres no ruleset that can make a narrative campaing work with only rules. At best, it will end up as a risk-like tournament with army progression.

Which, to me at least, sounds like them attempting to blame an orange for not being an apple.

In other words, criticising something for not being something it never intended to be.