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Hi guys, I was hearing the Independent Characters podcast show about Multi-system campaigns and how much they liked map campaign systems that I wanted to share something I've been pushing with my (small) group.



It's a universal map campaign system aimed at being simple enough not to bog down the group. My goal was to simply add a layer of overall strategy and create, forcibly, uneven matches to explore the open-deck ruse and sudden death rules.

My main goals are:

The map matters, but battles are the real stars.

Scalable: You can play this with 2 or 20 players.

Self-contained with minimal book keeping: The map and the map only.

Self-manageable: players can keep it running and are responsible for it without a campaign master.

Create uneven games that drive narrative and tension by putting players in special missions designed to create epic moments that will live longer than the game table.

A solid base: My plan is to make attachments to it: Regional buffs, unit veterancy, region upgrades and orbital warfare, but the base must be lean and solid.

Right now the system is ready for some playtesting and I've been successfully running a campaign at my local group with 9 players, but it's still very much an alpha version.


If you have interest in it, I've linked all the source material on my blog.

If you do play, or just have some general comments on the ruleset, get in touch! I'd love to hear your thoughts on it!

Its the sort of thing I've always wanted to try, but can never get anyone actually interested in, it always seems to fall apart when one or two start to pull ahead.

Mighty Empires was fun, if you used its system for most battles and just said each player got to pick one to fight on the table - allowed the less interesting battles to be a few dice rolls but fight the ones where a players skill mattered.

Key seems to be to set a victory condition such that the campaign os "won" about the time the players think there is little point continuing.

Did wonder if something akin to "diplomacy" could work for this.


Liking the idea though, *misty eyes at the very idea*

You make a good point about the time for "winning" the campaign.

I tried to make it so that its very hard for players to really fall behind or race ahead, becasue in my experience people generally lose interest in this sort of campaign after they lose a battle or two (sadly).

Awesome! It's great to see someone put so much time and passion into something like this!

As has been mentioned, it's important to have a clear ending that everyone is working towards. In a game where a player can gain advantages for doing well, the longer the game goes on, the more significant such advantages become, though your "rubber band" mechanic looks fine at a glance. Also, campaign players tend to drop out over time. Life happens, they feel like they're losing, etc. So a campaign that can be resolved in a smaller amount of real-world time is probably better than a long one. Remember, you can always start up a "sequel" with those who are interested, but you're less likely to have dropouts over the course of 2 months than 6.

So I half-read-half-skimmed the document. In the past, I've found that points differences in games can become a problem Especially if the army with more points is good at alpha striking. Have you had any issues with players feeling like a difference in points made the game too one-sided?

Wyldhunt wrote:
Awesome! It's great to see someone put so much time and passion into something like this!

I'm glad you like it!

Wyldhunt wrote:
Also, campaign players tend to drop out over time. Life happens, they feel like they're losing, etc. So a campaign that can be resolved in a smaller amount of real-world time is probably better than a long one. Remember, you can always start up a "sequel" with those who are interested, but you're less likely to have dropouts over the course of 2 months than 6.

I've done a couple things to keep the campaign going on my club. The first one is to acknowledge that people's interest comes and goes, so what I did was use facebook as a base for the campaign. I post updated maps there and we have a facebook group for it. Whenever people's interests pick up again, all is there, not taking any space in the club and all ready to be used again.

Wyldhunt wrote:
As has been mentioned, it's important to have a clear ending that everyone is working towards. In a game where a player can gain advantages for doing well, the longer the game goes on, the more significant such advantages become, though your "rubber band" mechanic looks fine at a glance.

So I half-read-half-skimmed the document. In the past, I've found that points differences in games can become a problem Especially if the army with more points is good at alpha striking. Have you had any issues with players feeling like a difference in points made the game too one-sided?

We've started playing with this system (in its previous incarnations) in 7th edition. At first people did complain a lot about the points differences then and what I did was come up with a mission/scoring system that allowed under-strength forces to cope with it to some degree. Then in came 8th edition and, what a surprise, some of the missions on the book are so asymmetrical that it can work. The simplified missions on the open play part of the book, specifically, usually put the under-strength army in a strong strategical position (you only lose in a wipe, as an example). Add to that the Ruse and Sudden Death rules that came in the open war deck and it all made sense, that's one way GW planned us to play 40k, with uneven forces.

I'll be open with you, people still complain a lot about it, but when they pull ou an under-strength win its just pure gold. I've revised the Power Rating -> Army Points calculations a dozen times to find out just how much is too much of an advantage. It's currently capped at 300pts (multiplayer games with alliances can throw that system off) and we've found that its not only very hard to pull out such a major difference (because of the way the map/tokens work) but that still allows an under-strength army to pull a win with the special missions. If you look closely, you'll see that there are specific missions to play with uneven forces, as that system already helps alleviating some that.

But people will always complain =P

There is a wonderful system for blind missions in GDWs old "Battle Rider" game, basically you have three levels of victory - one for if you are significantly smaller, one if you are significantly larger and one in-between.

So say a small force with a scout mission may only have to draw LoD to a few units and survive say two turns