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Any interest in using these forums to create a 40K narrative campaign? If so let me know

Concept:

Campaign will take place over 4 weeks. During each week you can report one game of 40K on these forums.

-Your faction will score victory points for winning. BUT you also will score victory points for writing fluff, posting pictures, or even creating youtube videos when you report. In short, the more content you create, the more points you score. (In this campaign winning the battle is literally, not everything).

The idea is to encourage people to play any type of 40K game they want, and get them creating content, while collectively telling a cool story.

Interested?

If you are interested, please reply here. Tell me what army you'd like to play (also include armies that you COULD play if you wanted to) and which army/armies you'll likely be squaring off against.

Also any input on the storyline would be great, Ideally the story should have two main factions (the main belligerents) and then a few additional factions that will be pursuing minor strategic objectives while the main war plays out.

Sure, my Grots will play.

Army I'm playing: Gretchin, mechanized, Evil Sunz.

Technically its "Orks", but only 6 things in the force lack the gretchin KW:
•a MA Warboss - because by Crusade rules i cannot lead the force with a named character. Wich rules out both gretchin HQ choices.
•a Wazbomb - because I need a Mek/Big Mek to use scrap points in Crusade. So it might as well be the most effective Mek I could take....
•a Grot Bomb Launcha
•3 trucks
The vast bulk of the fighting is done by squadrobs of Grot tanks, Grot Mega-Tanks, Mek & Big Gunz, and Kanz. Meanwhile the truck mounted Horrible Gitz size the objectives.

These guys are agressive scavengers. They want loot/bitz/tech. So if there's a fight they're always ready to roll in gunz blazing & grab as much salvage as they can.
They also aren't adverse to turning anyone they encounter into said salvage....

Forces I'm likely to fight:
Honestly it's pretty even odds for anything except Drukhari, Admech, & Orks.

Things I COULD run (but won't be)?:
Necrons, Drukhari, Imperial Knights, Imperial Guard.

Alright cool.

If this happens, I'll also be playing orks. Likely opponents will be Imperial Guard and Chaos. (Or could fight against Orks)

Hopefully we'll see a bit more interest though!

I might be interested in this, though I'd be playing very small forces.

Can Kill Team games contribute/ interact with the narrative?

Sure we could work kill team into it.

What forces did you want to use?

Meh. You're rewarding quantity over quality and providing no real structure besides "POINTS!", I don't see any appeal here. It looks like you're excited about being the cool person who gets credit for running a campaign and not paying enough attention to the hard (and boring) work of actually making a good campaign.

I think this is more in the vein of the old global 40k campaigns where the bulk game stats determined the fluff outcome (e.g., Armageddon)

Also, I might be up for it. I'd be playing guard against almost exclusively chaos...maybe some eldar/dark eldar on rare occasion (probably won't be getting any points for winning though )

I can run run sisters or DE.

Depending on when you want to start, I could have other units ready. GSC is another potential for me.

Alright, looks like we have got a healthy group.

Let's aim for September starting US Labor Day Weekend for the kickoff and going through the end of the month. Stay tuned for a new thread where I will detail the main factions, side factions, and the setting.


This is similar to the old Armageddon style, but instead of playing the most games, its what you do as far as reporting on the games that you report.

4 Rounds: One round per week. You can report on one game per round.

Here is my suggested VP Tracker. (I'm open to making some modifications if anyone has suggestions) Note winning is actually only a small part of the calculation. The idea is to get people to post cool content to these forums, not necessarily to win a bunch of games.


VP Tracker for Narrative Campaign

Open War: +1 VP

Crusade: +2 VP

Matched Play: +3 VP

Lonely Gamer: Played solo: +1 VP
Opponent was new/inexperienced player: +2 VP
Opponent was experienced player: +3 VP


Your Army was Battle Forged: +1 VP

Your army used all GW Models: +1 VP


All Models in your army painted (Not including bases): +1 VP
All Models Battle Ready: +2 VP


Battle was 25 PL or less: +1 VP
Battle was 25-50 PL: +2 VP
Battle was over 50 PL: +3 VP

Won the Battle: +5 VP
Overwhelming Victory: Total score more than twice that of opponent: +5 VP

Wrote narrative Fluff OR Battle Report: +3 VP
Posted Pictures: +3 VP
Posted Youtube Battle Report: +10 VP

When reporting, you would report a score for each army. Any content generated counts for both armies. However whether an army was battle forged or painted is

specific to each army.


Example: I played my friend. I played Orks he played Imperial Guard open war, less than 25 PL. My army was painted so orks got +1 VP, his army was not so no bonus for him. I wrote some fluff and posted a picture. Orks won but it was not an overwhelming victory.

Ork Score: 17
Imperial Guard Score: 11

Seems like a solid scoring system. My buddy and I play via TTS, so I suppose neither of us use any GW models

Side note we're actually in the middle of a match (a side benefit of TTS is being able to save heh) that I've been keeping notes for so I can write up a batrep

Having never being married to the concept that WH (40k or otherwise) needs be played with GW pieces, i object to VP being awarded for using all GW models.

 Dekskull wrote:
Note winning is actually only a small part of the calculation. The idea is to get people to post cool content to these forums, not necessarily to win a bunch of games.

Uhm, your scoring system does not reflect that. Winning a non-narrative tournament game rewards almost twice as many points (23 VP) as someone playing a custom made mission and writing a story about the last stand of his DKOK squad defending bastion 4711 against a never ending tide of orks (10VP).

You can find a rather decent campaign system for these occasions in GW's recent campaign books. I suggest giving that a read. I've found it to be working well enough as long as you put a limit on the games people can play per campaign round.

 Dekskull wrote:

Let's aim for September starting US Labor Day Weekend for the kickoff and going through the end of the month. Stay tuned for a new thread where I will detail the main factions, side factions, and the setting.

Not sure if you were thinking of putting the new thread in the batrep section or not, but that might be an interesting place for it. Not sure if that would go against the forum rules or not though

 Jidmah wrote:

 Dekskull wrote:
Note winning is actually only a small part of the calculation. The idea is to get people to post cool content to these forums, not necessarily to win a bunch of games.

Uhm, your scoring system does not reflect that. Winning a non-narrative tournament game rewards almost twice as many points (23 VP) as someone playing a custom made mission and writing a story about the last stand of his DKOK squad defending bastion 4711 against a never ending tide of orks (10VP).

Agree. The op started off talking about a narrative campaign, but the scoring system definitely discourages that type of play.

 Dekskull wrote:
Alright, looks like we have got a healthy group.

Three people, one of them only a maybe, is a "healthy group"? Between this and the weird scoring system thanks for confirming my initial impression that you care more about the ego fluffing of being recognized as the owner of a campaign than about actually running a quality campaign.

Aecus Decimus wrote:

 Dekskull wrote:
Alright, looks like we have got a healthy group.

Three people, one of them only a maybe, is a "healthy group"? Between this and the weird scoring system thanks for confirming my initial impression that you care more about the ego fluffing of being recognized as the owner of a campaign than about actually running a quality campaign.

I'm counting 6, two of which are maybes (you can put me down as a yes, although I probably won't be able to get a game in every week).

Not sure why you're so opposed to this and feel the need to get personal (although it does seem to be the dakkadakka way). If you're not interested, just unsubscribe from the thread...

DeadliestIdiot wrote:
I'm counting 6, two of which are maybes (you can put me down as a yes, although I probably won't be able to get a game in every week).

Here are the positive responses:

ccs wrote:
Sure, my Grots will play.

PenitentJake wrote:
I might be interested in this, though I'd be playing very small forces.

DeadliestIdiot wrote:
Also, I might be up for it.

There have been a couple "yes" people posting more than once, so maybe that's how you're counting six total? In any case it's very obvious that OP jumped immediately to starting the game ASAP because they want that hit of ego fluffing and don't have the patience to wait to do it right.

Not sure why you're so opposed to this and feel the need to get personal (although it does seem to be the dakkadakka way). If you're not interested, just unsubscribe from the thread...

It's a public discussion forum and that includes negative discussion.

It's not that your points are off topic or anything... I'm just not sure why you're bothering. Like, so what if other people are up for doing this? Why lob personal attacks on some random stranger on the internet?

And yes it looks like I double counted some folks who said yes multiple times. That said, I assume Dekskull will probably participate considering they're going through the trouble to set it up, but even if they don't it hardly matters. I always thought the old Armageddon campaign was a cool idea, hence why I'm interested in this...even if it's just a small group.

DeadliestIdiot wrote:
It's not that your points are off topic or anything... I'm just not sure why you're bothering. Like, so what if other people are up for doing this? Why lob personal attacks on some random stranger on the internet?

Why do you care enough to meta post about it? At least, unlike yours, my comments are on-topic.

That said, I assume Dekskull will probably participate

They really shouldn't. Aside from the potential favoritism issue of having the DM also playing in the campaign running a quality campaign is a full-time job. Not many people can keep up with both the DM work and playing a full set of games.

Perhaps I just tire of every thread devolving into a string of name calling and personal attacks

I suspect you're not understanding what this is. Back in 2000 (well before I started playing 40k), GW ran a world-wide campaign to determine the outcome of the Third War for Armageddon. Here's a link to an archived version of the site explaining how it worked:
http://web.archive.org/web/20030921094410/http://www.armageddon3.com/English/Campaign/campaign.html

DeadliestIdiot wrote:
I suspect you're not understanding what this is. Back in 2000 (well before I started playing 40k), GW ran a world-wide campaign to determine the outcome of the Third War for Armageddon. Here's a link to an archived version of the site explaining how it worked:
http://web.archive.org/web/20030921094410/http://www.armageddon3.com/English/Campaign/campaign.html

I understand what it is a reference to. It's a reference to a badly designed GW system, except done by someone who doesn't have the patience to execute the concept well and posted the entire scoring system in public so people don't even have to spend any effort figuring out the best way to game the system.

So here is a proposal:

You've suggested narrative, which implies more than just the point tally to determine a winner. What I would suggest is to extend the campaign over four MONTHS rather than weeks. It's one thing to get a game in ever week, but to write fluff, take pics, and batrep it? That's a bit much for a one week turnover.

I'd still say that there are only four campaign rounds, with each round being a month. Each month should have a narrative event associated with the campaign progress during the round- nothing that confers a crazy bonus, but something that acts as a narrative focus. For example, if a system consisted of four key planets, each round could be a battle for control of one of those four planets.

This leads to a more nuanced campaign than win/ loss. What happens if at the end, you've get a different faction that has seized control of each of the four planets? There's no clear "winner" - though there could be four "winners."

I don't think that the point calculation should differentiate between play modes: a Crusade game advances the storyline every bit as much as a Matched Play game, and neither do more to advance a story than an open game.

Game size, on the other hand, makes perfect sense as a variable impact. I'd go with a base of 1 VP for a Kill Team game, 2 VP for Combat Patrol, 3 VP for Incursion, 4 VP for Strike Force and 5 VP for Onslaught. This is multiplied by 1 for a loss, 2 for a draw, 3 for a victory. So a Kill Team loss nets only 1 VP, while an Onslaught victory yields 15 VP.

+ 1 VP for all units in battle painted
+ 1 VP for fluff piece accompanying battle
+ 1 VP for batrep
+ 1 VP for photos
+ 1 VP for new unit with before/after photo painted this round's battle.

Each player could get the bonus points only once per month. They could log only one Onslaught game per month, up to 4 Strikeforce games / month and any number of Incursion/ Combat Patrol and Kill Team games. I suggest this because Onslaught games, if a player has access to a game per week, can really warp the outcome. The capacity for small game players to be able to contribute in volume what they lack in single-battle-impact allows the playing field to somewhat level out.

That's a workable skeleton. We can add more narrative if you want.

A nice touch would be to name our planets, put them in a particular system; the setting for the current campaign season is the best option, because it allows players to work in the content for upcoming supplements if they choose to do so.

You could go even further and roll these planets up as per the Tau Crusade rules. I've run correspondences between Tau, GSC and Tyranid planet types and I could generate four planets that had all the information you'd need to use the planet as a Crusade objective for any of those armies. The cool thing about this is that it only impacts those who choose to engage with it. Rather than satisfying the conditions in the Crusade sections of these dexes, they'd get the planet if their faction wins the campaign round.

Edit: I'm obviously willing to discuss how the campaign could work- my suggestions above are merely that- suggestions. I'm not overly invested in this, so I'm down to hack it out.

Thanks for all your feedback. I'll post the opening fluff this weekend.

I plan on posting a few tweaks to the scoring system, but the fundamentals will probably not change. Trying to balance a lot of interests here! Obviously no one will be 100% happy with it, but I'm hoping that the concept works on some level so that in the future others in our community will try the same format.

The scoring system is posted because this comes down to an honor system. There may be some people that try to game the system, but if they do then they've missed the point. (Also with one game per round, each player's influence is limited). (Only exception being the youtubers, but hey if you put the effort into making a full vid bat rep for this, then you deserve to have that extra VP).

I'm open to extending the time frame. Maybe two to three weeks for each round vs one week. I also may have a prelude part of the campaign where you can score an extra VP for your side by writing some fluff before the campaign begins.

Also heads up: Based on what I am seeing as far as available armies, I'm planning to have the story revolve around the Imperium trying to retake a planet that is partly controlled by Orks and Chaos.

So our main factions will be Imperium on one side while Chaos and Orks will fight on the other side. (The alliance is only temporary rest assured!)

Meanwhile Eldar, and Dark Eldar will be our minor factions, pursuing their own agendas while attacking both of the main sides at will.

So a classic factions match up. Looking forward to it!

 Dekskull wrote:

I plan on posting a few tweaks to the scoring system, but the fundamentals will probably not change. Trying to balance a lot of interests here! Obviously no one will be 100% happy with it, but I'm hoping that the concept works on some level so that in the future others in our community will try the same format.

Again, I strongly encourage you to reconsider offering different points for different modes of play.

I'm not sure why you think a Matched player's campaign games are more significant than a Crusader's campaign games, or an Open player's games.

The tweaks I proposed above perhaps added a degree of complexity you're uncomfortable with, and that's okay- book keeping is a pain, and I do take your point about the honour system. I really liked differentiating VP value based on game size, and allowing many small games to balance bigger ones (a 150 PL battle SHOULD have more impact on the campaign than a 25 PL battle). Still, limiting it to a single game per campaign round regardless of size isn't a bad idea to simplify things, and I can get behind that if that's what you want to do.

 Dekskull wrote:

So our main factions will be Imperium on one side while Chaos and Orks will fight on the other side. (The alliance is only temporary rest assured!)

Meanwhile Eldar, and Dark Eldar will be our minor factions, pursuing their own agendas while attacking both of the main sides at will.

So a classic factions match up. Looking forward to it!

My first game will be a KT Sisters vs. DE game.

The Sisters team will be from the Order of Our Martyred Lady, because that's what I've got painted. They'll also be classic metal minis, because again,,, that's what I've got painted. I figure they're likely part of a Crusade fleet... But I'll adjust that to match the campaign fluff. I have a full roster in mind, but the first battle will use a Repentia Superior, four Repentia and five bolter sisters.

The DE force is going to be two fireteams of basic wyches without any upgrades. These guys have never been fielded, but they are part of an existing Crusade, so there's a bunch of background material ready to go. I also have an existing painting project schedule that dovetails nicely with this campaign, so you might even get painting projects from me.

I will post more detailed rosters, Kill Teams and fluff once you get the campaign fluff up and pull the trigger. As others have mentioned, you may want to start a thread in the battle report section... But it's your thing, so your call.

Alright registration and prelude posted to battle reports.

I changed a fair amount of the VP system, prioritizing content creation but also prioritizing video since thats the only real way we can verify a game's integrity.

In any case, I hope this ends up being something fun for the community. Prepare to game on!

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/806665.page#11423418

Alright just decided to give this thread a boost since we wrapped up now.

Just me and Deadliest Idiot carried it through but we got through it! So the old Armageddon Style VP campaign format worked out ok. I'll be looking to tweak it going forward but the concept worked out fine.

So I'm hopeful that this can be replicated in the future.

For my next project, I am looking at doing a BFG/40K combo campaign (or maybe just BFG) based on whatever crazy stuff is in the Ark of Omen Lore.

No rush though. I need a well deserved break!