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Looking for advice on starting a massive campaign of games with several different people. Hoping to make this as casual as possible. One time I was involved in a campaign which involved different worlds where you would attack or defend, the worlds themselves having different buffs/nerfs. We tried to add in a resource/reserve system of the whole army/faction based on several factors but honestly it died fairly quickly.

Any good advice of something similar where a group of people can meet weekly/bi-weekly to run many tabled games together?

I don't know if it helps but we have Eldar, Necron, Imperium, Nid, G. Knights, GSC, and Ork players.

For a first time, I'd recommend simply ripping off DoW: Dark Crusade almost entirely.

Be prepared for drop-outs. You're gonna get drop-outs.

Keramory wrote:
Looking for advice on starting a massive campaign of games with several different people. Hoping to make this as casual as possible. One time I was involved in a campaign which involved different worlds where you would attack or defend, the worlds themselves having different buffs/nerfs. We tried to add in a resource/reserve system of the whole army/faction based on several factors but honestly it died fairly quickly.

Any good advice of something similar where a group of people can meet weekly/bi-weekly to run many tabled games together?

I don't know if it helps but we have Eldar, Necron, Imperium, Nid, G. Knights, GSC, and Ork players.

I've always wanted to write a large scale narrative campaign like that. It can be a lot of fun and depending on what you want to get out of campaigns determines how it will play out. However, I would suggest one of 2 methods, and it entirely depends on the size of your collections.

If you have over 10k pts each, you could try what I refer to as a "Death is Final" campaign. By this I mean, you write up your a full roster prior to campaign beginning, and each unit that is fully destroyed is gone for the rest of the campaign. You can modify this as needed - characters can return next battle on a 5+, or the winning team can revive D3 units per victory point they have over their opponent, symbolising the winning team recovering the wounded.

That only works with huge collections as 2000pt armies will quickly find themselves run down to nothing in a few games. For most collections you can do an escalation league, getting larger and larger each battle.



However, any method you choose will require an overall "Games-Master" to determine the direction of the campaign, the special missions or rules in effect, and the effects of each round of the campaign. THe GM must be either a neutral or trustworthy participant who will write things fairly for everyone.


If you want ideas for particular missions, look at the Cities of Death and Planetstrike game modes for options, and consider the enviroment as an important facet. For example, an Ice World, where non-FLY models reduce movement by 1" and cannot advance. Or a Cities environment with attackers and defenders. You can even tailor these to your armies. For example, when fighting in the city, GSC player gets certain benefits symbolising home-turf, while say, Space Wolf units are unaffected by Ice World rules. I would suggest coming up with 6 unique rules and either selecting or D6ing a location for each battle.

I would also suggest something of a "Veterans" system, where each player can nominate an MVP unit at the end of the game to receive a stat bonus for the next round, such as +1Ld, or +1T, showing their hardened experience in the war. Other examples could be widening of Aura abilities for Warlords, or even balancing mechanics. For example, maybe Tyranids could gain additional CP when they LOSE, showcasing their adaptive tactics and use of additional, more complex strategems. Eldar and GK could gain additional benefits for completing secretive objectives assigned by the GM, hinting at their predictive style of warfare and targeting certain targets to prevent a particular outcome.

You could also introduce a "buddy" system based on narrative. Allow your players to dictate this, rather than just Imperial Soup. For example, the GK and Eldar player could both be working to prevent a Daemonic Incursion, caused by the Nids' shadow in the warp damaging necron spires. Therefore, both GK player and Eldar player get bonus points for the campaign round if either of them kill, say, a Hive Tyrant, in one of their games.





My eternal suggestion is always, always, always for casual or narrative campaigns - let the story drive the gameplay, and adapt to balance it.

Remember map campaigns never get finished.

 Deadshot wrote:

I've always wanted to write a large scale narrative campaign like that. It can be a lot of fun and depending on what you want to get out of campaigns determines how it will play out. However, I would suggest one of 2 methods, and it entirely depends on the size of your collections.

If you have over 10k pts each, you could try what I refer to as a "Death is Final" campaign. By this I mean, you write up your a full roster prior to campaign beginning, and each unit that is fully destroyed is gone for the rest of the campaign. You can modify this as needed - characters can return next battle on a 5+, or the winning team can revive D3 units per victory point they have over their opponent, symbolising the winning team recovering the wounded.

That only works with huge collections as 2000pt armies will quickly find themselves run down to nothing in a few games. For most collections you can do an escalation league, getting larger and larger each battle.



However, any method you choose will require an overall "Games-Master" to determine the direction of the campaign, the special missions or rules in effect, and the effects of each round of the campaign. THe GM must be either a neutral or trustworthy participant who will write things fairly for everyone.


If you want ideas for particular missions, look at the Cities of Death and Planetstrike game modes for options, and consider the enviroment as an important facet. For example, an Ice World, where non-FLY models reduce movement by 1" and cannot advance. Or a Cities environment with attackers and defenders. You can even tailor these to your armies. For example, when fighting in the city, GSC player gets certain benefits symbolising home-turf, while say, Space Wolf units are unaffected by Ice World rules. I would suggest coming up with 6 unique rules and either selecting or D6ing a location for each battle.

I would also suggest something of a "Veterans" system, where each player can nominate an MVP unit at the end of the game to receive a stat bonus for the next round, such as +1Ld, or +1T, showing their hardened experience in the war. Other examples could be widening of Aura abilities for Warlords, or even balancing mechanics. For example, maybe Tyranids could gain additional CP when they LOSE, showcasing their adaptive tactics and use of additional, more complex strategems. Eldar and GK could gain additional benefits for completing secretive objectives assigned by the GM, hinting at their predictive style of warfare and targeting certain targets to prevent a particular outcome.

You could also introduce a "buddy" system based on narrative. Allow your players to dictate this, rather than just Imperial Soup. For example, the GK and Eldar player could both be working to prevent a Daemonic Incursion, caused by the Nids' shadow in the warp damaging necron spires. Therefore, both GK player and Eldar player get bonus points for the campaign round if either of them kill, say, a Hive Tyrant, in one of their games.





My eternal suggestion is always, always, always for casual or narrative campaigns - let the story drive the gameplay, and adapt to balance it.

Thank you! Sadly some do not have that level of collection. I would assume that people could reliably get 2-3k of a total army of any given faction. Maybe multiply it on a sheet?

As for a GM... likely will be me. I was planning on having myself as Orks and my Fiancee as nids more or less NPCs made to die (me more so then her). For example I have enough orks to have a complete dread waugh, speed freaks and boys army. I was going to play as already occupied races or annoyances. Fiancee being maybe more scary with some gsc incursions on imperium worlds. Really anything that we don't mind dying. Out of everyone I trust me to take losing better. Really don't care and I can't say the same for all.

My only issue with being a GM is I never got into DnD or done something like this... so I'll be a total scrub at trying to figure it out. I was hoping there was some kind of written campaign guide around online similar to what we're talking about.

This is absolutely my gig. I've been designing a campaign and the themed terrain for almost a year, and I'm hoping to play the first games before the end of the month.

So the way mine works, is that I've got three populated planets in the system. The catch is that only one of those planets has been designed in any detail... and damn do I mean detail.

All of the action begins on the planet with the detail [ Orison's Wake ]; all of the factions have a presence on this planet when the game begins. We have rough ideas about faction reinforcements that exist on the other planets, but it will be a while before we can access those reinforcements, so we haven't bothered to micromanage... Yet.

We're using the Streets of Death system from the Urban Conquest box, but we've create our own territories because we wanted more detail. I devised 16 different territory types- I chose 1 so that I could randomly roll to see which territory occupied each spot on the map using 3d6.

Each territory grants the ability to perform an action during the campaign turn; some actions can be performed by any factions that visit or lurk, while others can only be performed by the faction that controls the territory.

So then I had to think about the planet; it is a semi-feudal agriworld, so the population is low enough to harvest the crops and process the food into kibble for transport to the hive worlds.

This required a central city for off-world shipping and receiving. Smaller settlements would exist wherever four fields meet. These fields are state-sized, and they are owned by noble houses, referred to as Thresher Houses.

I figured 8 settlements was a good start- cover the cardinal and secondary points of the compass, with the large city at the center. Each settlement is a 5 x 5 grid of territories. Every settlement required a minimum number of certain territories- I mean, if the die roll didn't see fit to put a power generation facility or a cistern in a given settlement, it would be inhospitable. So once the mandatory territories were placed, we randomly determined the remaining territories.

The city had to be larger than the settlements, so I added an extra strip of 5 territories to each of the array's 4 sides, making it look like a fat, square cross, consisting of 45 individual territories.

Territory can be held and controlled by a Kill Team or a Detachment. Characters can also individually deploy to territory, but cannot control it unless they also have a kill team or detachment in that territory.

Reinforcements can arrive on turn 2 if they are coming from another territory in the same settlement or city. Reinforcements can only arrive from other cities or settlements if there air airfields in both, or if each are connected by rail. This can only happen at the discretion of the factions who control the relevant airfields or rail yards.

Now our campaign has a genestealer cult and a slaanesh cult. These cults start as small kill teams. The prologue to the campaign is actually a game of Spacehulk, in which the marines try to prevent stealers from reaching the escape pods and making planetfall; I used the escape pods from kill team rogue trader, so each can only be occupied by a single stealer. There are four launch bays, and each holds two pods, which means a maximum of 8 stealers will land on Orison's Wake. The game doesn't use blips. Instead, 1d3 stealers can emerge from any and or all entry points each turn, but the stealer player only has the 22 stealers that came in the box- once they escape or die, they're gone.

On Orison's Wake, the stealers split up and go to different settlements to maximize the chances that the cult will take firm root.

Thresher youth are rebellious, and sometimes act without the knowledge of adults or elders to try and advance through the ranks. Youth frequently meet in cross-house groups, much to the chagrin of their parents and elders who view other houses as enemies.

These small kill teams of inexperienced civilians are a perfect match for a single lurking stealer, and every kid the stealer takes out becomes a brood brother. In subsequent turns, brood brothers can fight or breed.

The stealer who creates the most brood brothers in a single battle begins to evolve into a patriarch. I actually have every patriarch model ever made- 4 in total; two plastic and two metal; the plastic models are identical except for the bases; the old metals are cooler- one is a large stealer with a thicker carapace, a larger head and more wrinkled features, and it is charging/ fighting. The other is fat, bloated and sitting on a throne. At some point, the patriarch will be represented by all of them, assuming he survives long enough to grow old. You swap the patriarch model out every time the cult begins another cycle.

Also, civilian territories can be lurked, and a stealer can attempt to infect a single citizen during the campaign turn.

The slaanesh cult is equally small- a leader, a rogue psyker, a heavy and two standard gangers. The leader and heavy have needle weapons with addictive drugs which corrupt anyone they take out. The psyker has a power that does the same. Cultists don't breed like stealers, but once they recruit enough members, the can summon daemons, and a large enough daemonic presence will attract chaos space marines.

The Imperial factions, on the other hand, start as full blown armies, though as previously mentioned, they are spread out in individual kill teams or detachments. They are unaware that the cults exist when the campaign begins. We have Sisters, Admech and Imperial Guard, and none of them are fighting each other.

So in our campaign, the first battles are ultra small kill team games between nascent cults and NPC Thresher Houses, civilian and crime syndicates controlled by the Imperial players. At the end of each of these games, there are discovery rolls that can arouse Imperial suspicion; these rolls are modified based on the battle, the size of the cult, and the number of territories it occupies.

Once triggered, Imperial Factions can begin to actively seek Cult activity, and if they move into a territory controlled by the cult, they will automatically become aware of it during the campaign turn and engage it during the battle phase. If they move into a territory where a cult is lurking, they can use their campaign turn to make a detection roll.

Writing rules is a lot harder than some folks think. The campaign guide is massive- somewhere in the neighbourhood of 22 pages.

For tracking, I've set it up as a series of nested folders; a folder for every planet; every planet folder contains a folder for each continent, each continent folder contains a folder for every city, town or settlement, and each of these folders contains a folder for every row of territories, each of those contains a folder for each territory in the row.

Every territory folder contains, at a minimum, the digital card that describes the territory and its special rules and the digital roster for any detachments, kill teams or characters that are controlling, lurking at or visiting the territory.

Additionally, some folders contain battle reports, maps, photos, art work, special missions that can be fought at the territory, etc.

The cool thing is that those roster cards can just be moved from folder to folder and updated to reflect experience, injuries and deaths after every battle and new recruitment every campaign turn.

Now I'm a mad freak, and this level of micromanagement doesn't interest many players. I wanted to take it to this level of minutia becase the story has been in my head for more than a decade, and I've played some battles from the story arc as stand alone games, but never been able to complete the story. I've also never had enough tools to do it... but we're almost there.

The ultimate plan is to write the novel based on the campaign, which is why I need this insane level of detail. Every time I've read a BL book [and to confess, I've only read 5 BL books] I've always been somewhat astonished about how little they reflect what would actually happen on a gaming table. I always said if I was going to write a novel, it would be based on actual game play, and nothing happens in the book unless it is possible on the table.

No more stories about 5 marines killing 200 enemies with mere bolters. Sorry for the long, long ramble. If you have other specific questions, or you just want to know more, just shoot me a message or whatever. The full rules for growing the GSC are outrageous and awesome; I've created KT rules for Threshers, and our kill team cards have tracks for aging, gestation, corruption,

I plan on on putting up a bucketload of videos and battle reports, as well as some scenery tutorials.

One of the big issues with Map campaigns, is they can be long and very difficult to keep fun for everyone. You rarely want one player playing to many games, and one player left out of playing any.

So that is the first place you need a tackle when building a campaign. Personally i like a simple system here.

Something simple could be, You have 100 zones. Each player can place 5 flags down to claim a zone.
Each player plays 1 game.
At the end of the week a player can place a flag down if they won a game, or chooses a zone they hold to lose.
It keeps it simple, and gets each player a game each week. The winner is the player that holds 40% of the zones, or who holds the most by the end of the year/month/ 80 days.

Only the first 5 flags can be placed anywhere, and from there each flag must be placed next toa claimed zone.

After then you can put nearly anything you want on top of a system like that. Bonuses, Special powers.
Can give say 10 points for each zone held, or extra flags for less zones or more zones.

Players can drop in and out easy enough, and even a new player could drop right into the middle and give it a go and see how they do.

Could even use Kill team as a sort of wildcard, Players can attack a zone, play a killteam and maybe steal it once every 2 weeks maybe.