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2017/02/20 02:15:06
Subject: Advice for Our Gaming Group's First Campaign?
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Battlewagon Driver with Charged Engine
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Hey Dakka, as above, we're looking at a small escalation campaign. Four players, Kill Teams escalating to 1500. Any ideas for mission design, character upgrades, resource capture/hex based campaigns, narrative, etc?
I'd love to hear some of your thoughts on what works, what's fun and what would function with just 4 players. Kind of an awkward spot between a 2 player campaign and a game store style one.
Thanks!
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Rule #1 is Look Cool. |
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2017/02/20 02:38:50
Subject: Re:Advice for Our Gaming Group's First Campaign?
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Longtime Dakkanaut
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1) Keep it simple. If you stack too many upgrades or special rules on top of the game, things will get forgotten, and the campaign will lose its luster.
2) Don't reinvent the wheel. Find something you like, and steal it. Everyone that has ever written a campaign would be happy if you took their ideas and adapted them to your own purposes.
3) Develop a narrative and missions around an NPC or force of NPCs. For instance, the Imperial guard have been mining for a valuable resource on a planet. Now you can attack or defend an imperial facility. You can do a convoy mission transporting the valuable minerals. Escort a Commissar to organize the imperial defense, etc, etc.
4) Keep things even or close to it. Don't let one player get too far out ahead, and make sure you don't have 2 players play over and over with the same results.
The biggest challenge is limiting your imagination. Start with something simple and easy. You can always add to it later, but taking away stuff is akin to admitting failure.
Also, when we do campaigns we like to award points for gameplay, fluff writing, and hobby achievements. For instance, week 1 we may have 3 points for whoever writes the best story of the discovery of the mcguffin. 5 points to whoever wins the most games, and 3 points to whoever paints the best troop.
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2017/02/20 02:48:53
Subject: Advice for Our Gaming Group's First Campaign?
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Committed Chaos Cult Marine
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Some general advice I offer is to keep the campaign short and simple your first time around. I wouldn't go over 9-10 games and think about half a dozen is pretty good. If you only play weekly, that is about a month and a half. It doesn't sound like this is going to be an issue, but many players have grand designs for their campaign which usually torpedo them as they bite off more than they can chew. I know I did, the first I tried.
Typically, I shy away from rpg style campaigns (ones where units/character get better as the game goes on) as they are really hard to stop the strong keep getting stronger and the weak keep getting weaker. That is a recipe for a failed campaign as a player takes a loss or two and they'll never recover.
With 40K in particular, you could place special objectives which don't allow the player to win, in fact they divert units away from the mission objective (make sure they are well out of the way where the army doesn't really want to go), but provide them the ability to unlock special issue wargear or artefacts already allowed by their codex. They still have to spend the points for it but otherwise it theirs. I think artefacts work better as they are less likely to be taken as standard and are usually never modeled on the miniature either. You could also give the winner non-game mechanic narrative control to influence the story of the campaign. As they gain more wins their army sort of becomes the protagonist of the story. Some players will really like that, some won't care though.
For the losing player, I like to give them control on the next battle. It could be choice of mission, terrain setup, choice of table side, or even automatically getting first turn. This gives the player a leg up and stay competitive in the overall campaign. It is rubberbanding a bit, but the top seeded player should never be able to rest on their laurels and coast to victory. If anything, I think campaigns should always have a sort of Mario Cart blue turtle shell (well maybe not that bad) waiting for #1.
I hope that helps a little bit.
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2017/02/20 03:17:10
Subject: Advice for Our Gaming Group's First Campaign?
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Fresh-Faced New User
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My group will be ending their first stage of an escalation to 2000 points at the end of the month. The posts above have some great info, Ill try to cover a few topics I've run into.
First off, set a timeline/duration for the event. Try to get an idea of the amount of building/painting/gaming each player will need to do to set round limits. We have 6 in our group, and are doing 500 points every 2 months. It ended up being just enough so no one feels rushed or swamped with their workload.
Set the rules to play and win the event. I'd recommend each round being a round robin. So with 4 players, each round you get to play each player once. You can increase the games played based on your group.
To keep the score close we have the following, playing a game is 1 point, winning 1 more point. You can also score at the end of the round for having all units painted 3 colors 1 point, painted crazy and decals 1 more point. All based 1 point, based crazy with water effect 1 more point. Kitbashing, greenstuff etc... At the end of the escalation, we are doing secret ballot voting for most fun opponent(guy that lost it all and still laughed and had a good time), fluffiest/coolest story, favorite army/paint job, and most improved. Each of these are worth a full round of winning so with 4 players +3 points.
Only restrictions were 1 persistent HQ(which made everyone choose carefully) and if you use the model in a game it has to be painted at the end for full painting score(to prevent heavy list tailoring). So far its cool to see the controlled meta change and grow based on what each player brings.
Lastly, you need to keep everyone's interest. Make them feel like they have some skin in the game. I had everyone chip in $5, so the winner gets a blister pack model, and gets to choose one of the other participants to paint it for him. Good Luck! I hope this helps!
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2017/02/20 11:32:26
Subject: Advice for Our Gaming Group's First Campaign?
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Battlewagon Driver with Charged Engine
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Thanks guys. This is all great; taking it to heart as we craft the Campaign brief.
Any cool mission design thoughts?
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Rule #1 is Look Cool. |
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