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Hi everyone, apologies if this isn't in the right spot. I'm looking for advice to run a narrative campaign. We have 4 players. Likely the armies are Orks (Goffs), Space Marines (Imperial Fists), Chaos (Khorne), and Tyranids or possibly Necrons.

I'm well aware of the Crusade system and I've used it before. To be honest, it didn't really provide what I was looking for. I guess I felt like the crusade system was just a roster of unit upgrades, but I need help in formulating the campaign itself. What I want is for things to feel connected. I guess in previous campaigns they have felt like a bunch of random 40k games strung together with no strong narrative arc.

I'm completely willing to introduce new rules for the campaigns and such that fall outside of the normal 40k rulesset.

I hope I'm being clear enough but I feel like I'm struggling. Just, say for example... Lore-wise Imperial Forces are trying to attack and hold an agri-world in order provide enough food and supplies for a nearby hive planet. I want to string several missions together to represent this. What would be a good way to do this?

thanks for any advice you can give.

There are many ways to run a campaign, so it can be a bit overwhelming. An easy format would be to present a puzzle of sorts where victory in a battle provides clues to the final objective. Maybe give the players the option to spend points for some intelligence before each battle. Or reward victorious sides with some aid in a future battle. Doing that is fine but you must use caution; a side getting too many advantages can run away with the overall victory given too many edges.

As the referee you might also consider running another competing faction if you have the models. You can play smaller side battles that can help your story along and give each player a chance to build up their strength or slow down the faction getting too strong.

You can also require the players to have a set force pool size to draw from, and if players lose units completely those units may cost 5-10% the next battle if used, forcing players to think long term about mishandling their resources. We once did a campaign with a hex map and included costs for moving forces around the map. We roleplayed each faction through emails and intercepted communiques. Great fun and worth the effort, but whatever you do don't stress about it. Some players won't appreciate all the details and just want to fight - and that's ok too.

Thanks for the comment. Another thing I feel like I ought to mention is that our group is pretty varied in terms of competitiveness. Some of the players are very in to refining their army lists and taking great and efficient units, but we also have players on the opposite side of that spectrum who steadfastily refuse to take strong choices from their codex because they dont represent the kind of army they are playing narratively.

As you can imagine, sometimes this leads to some imbalanced games. Its been a problem in the past, where certain players just dont feel like they can run the army that they want to and still stand any kind of a fighting chance in the campaign. I'd like to be able to help them out somehow.

Merely asking the competitive block to tone it down isn't really a feasible option. They'll dial it back with the best of intentions, but it will still end up being far too strong compared to the more story-focused players.

Anyway, I was wondering if rewarding the losing side would be an idea? Instead of giving victory bonuses, you do the opposite; give the toys to the defeated players to represent their factions pouring more resources into the area. That would try to compensate for the gap between armies. Or would that be too feels-bad? I understand the desire to get something shiny as a reward for winning, but it seems better for campaign balance to do it the other way around.

If I dont do that, is there a better way to address the power-gap situation?

thanks again.

That is a tricky predicament, but not impossible. Having the referee join some battles as a smaller, neutral NPC is one way to alter the fortunes of the combatants but you must be careful not to overdo it.

A scenario where a third party holds an objective can thwart overly aggressive players since they can find themselves fighting both forces. You can also make awards based more on participating in the battle than necessarily winning it, such as both sides discover some artifact. maybe neither has time to retrieve it due to the presence of other factions.

You can also intervene without actual ground forces simply by stating there is a strong and hostile orbital force that sets time/turn limits on players or restricts them in other ways.

Objective markers with hidden value can also change the tide of battle. If numerous objectives are scattered around the board it can be a disadvantage to reach them first if the odds of one being important are low; a set number of useful objectives mixed in with a high number of decoys can reward the slower force in certain situations. Terrain can also be used to give a side even a slight advantage. Much of it depends on the story you want to tell and how engaging it is to each faction.

You could also do a narrative where one side, like Tyranids is the endless horde and the rest of the players have to make a temporary alliance to survive and escape or accomplish their objectives.

Tomb World that Play on Tabletop did is an example of that. I thought that looked cool.

One thing I've done is to integrate multiple games into the story line. Your 40K army keeps winning? Doesn't matter, your fleet lost in BFG now your side will not be conquering that planet afterall and you have to re-define what a "victory" looks like to your side.

This should give you a structure to build on...

Most important rule: keep it simple. Remember that your biggest problem is keeping people engaged and active through all of the various real life disruptions you will encounter. Don't get bogged down in making a million rules for map grids, moving armies, etc, that will all get tossed in the trash when half your players drop after the first 1-2 games. Keep the narrative rules light and superficial and just tie the games together, don't try to simulate every possible aspect of the story events.

 SirDonlad wrote:
This should give you a structure to build on...

Spoiler:

Sure, if you want to write a formulaic fantasy novel. Pretty much none of that has any relevance to 40k.

If your biggest concern is linkages between games, you need to make three big choices:

1) Moderated or non-moderated
2) Earned Escalation, Regular Escalation, Attrition
3) Tree-based, Map-based, Ladder

So definitions:

Moderated: Has a GM that acts as a storyteller, arbitrator and designer. May or may not have a collection of NPC factions as narrative tools. Once your guard find out they're up against Xenos, a storyteller GM might, for example, lend you an Ordo Xenos Inquisitor if you fulfil a certain condition- ie maybe you have to perform actions to collect samples, and if you succeed, the Inquisitor joins you for the following battle.

Non-moderated: The parameters of the campaign are set in advance and agreed upon by the players. Simplicity is definitely your friend here.


Earned Escalation: Crusade incorporates an earned escation system, but if you don't like it you can use something simpler- like +50 points for playing a game with an extra +50 per win.

Regular Escalation: In this type of escalation system, every army advances at regular, real time intervals... So for example a 6 month campaign might be Combat Patrol for the first month, Incursion for two months, Strike Force for two months, and Onslaught for the finale.

Attrition: This is the OPPOSITE of escalation. You start with a huge roster- more points than you could field in a single battle. A decent formula is to think about how many rounds of games are likely to be played- so a weekly campaign for six months would be 26 rounds. Multiply by 500 points. Then add the value of the army size you want for the final battle. So if you want the final battle to be strike force, your roster would be 26 x 500 + 2000 = 15000. If you build a 15000 roster, you can loose 50 points per week and still fight at 2k for the final battle.

Note: You can just play a static value for the entire campaign too, or just come up with a series of particular battles, each of which would have an assigned size. Escalation/ attrition can be a meaningful driver of the narrative.

Tree: Basically, you're building a flow chart. Most battles in the chart will have two possible outcomes, usually based on win/loss. Flows can be keyed directly to specific objectives rather than win/loss, providing for battles with any number of possible paths.

Map: The map can scale in or out- so if your campaign is on a single planet, you might have multiple continents and multiple territories in each continent- think of a Risk board as a template. Players fight to win territories. You can rule that they have to occupy a territory to maintain control (in which case a player who wants to control multiple territories must physically divide their force) or you can rule that once captured control of a territory is maintained until another force lands in the territory. Territories confer special effects either at the campaign level or they can have in-game effects, or not. Keying scenery and / or game objectives to the territories on the map can be cool.

Territorial control doesn't have to be complicated either- it could be as simple as making conquering the most territories the measure of who wins the campaign.

Ladder: This is a series of games linked together, usually chronologically. Victory or loss in any given battle may still have an effect on the next, but it won't necessarily be as differentiated as in a tree campaign. So maybe you have one of the battlefield objectives be a relic that can be used by either force. The subsequent battle might end up with player A having the Relic, or player B, or neither... but it will still be the same battle.

All of these campaign systems can be used with or without Crusade, using either Crusade looser base rules (ie, no Ro3, no aircraft limit, no subfaction limitations, etc.) or the matched or even the open rules.

Now, I'm not sure how much you like GW resources, but if tree campaigns from the description above interest you, and your group has Guard, Orks and Nids... Octarius is a good fit for a setting. There's lots of stuff in the campaign books that might appeal to you.

They've been rotated out, so they're hard to find, and you also want to read the Goonhammer reviews first- I'm not trying to sell you anything here, but the books have a lot of content for 3/4 of the armies in your campaign and some details about tree campaigns. I don't have the mission packs, but they are essentially Planet Strike and Multi-player rules for 9th.

I think regardless of what system you use, having the mission objectives actually be something tangible is the key to forming a story. This gives you modelling opportunities for terrain or equipment, and knowing what the objectives are can help you flesh out the story of a particular battle. Sometimes it'll go the other way too- you'll know the story and the circumstances of the battle, and that will help you figure out what the objectives should be.

PenitentJake wrote:
Earned Escalation: Crusade incorporates an earned escation system, but if you don't like it you can use something simpler- like +50 points for playing a game with an extra +50 per win.

...

Attrition: This is the OPPOSITE of escalation. You start with a huge roster- more points than you could field in a single battle. A decent formula is to think about how many rounds of games are likely to be played- so a weekly campaign for six months would be 26 rounds. Multiply by 500 points. Then add the value of the army size you want for the final battle. So if you want the final battle to be strike force, your roster would be 26 x 500 + 2000 = 15000. If you build a 15000 roster, you can loose 50 points per week and still fight at 2k for the final battle.

Please don't ever use these in a real campaign. They sound nice in theory but they have massive problems with snowball effects. The winner gets buffs to make it easier to win their next game and thereby gain even more buffs to continue winning, the loser gets the opposite. You can very quickly reach a point where one side pulls ahead by a decisive margin and the outcome is obvious but the campaign isn't technically over yet. At that point interest in the campaign dies off and the lasting memory people are left with is "that wasn't fun". IOW, they aren't going to come back for a second attempt.

The one exception is if you're doing a very short campaign, preferably one in a single weekend or less. You'll still have the snowball problem but at least it's all over quickly. Taking a bad loss in an attrition game and being effectively eliminated is a lot easier to accept if it means you just grab a beer and spend the rest of the evening hanging out and watching the last game. If you're eliminated with three months left in the campaign before the next one starts that sucks and you're probably not coming back.

Map: The map can scale in or out- so if your campaign is on a single planet, you might have multiple continents and multiple territories in each continent- think of a Risk board as a template. Players fight to win territories. You can rule that they have to occupy a territory to maintain control (in which case a player who wants to control multiple territories must physically divide their force) or you can rule that once captured control of a territory is maintained until another force lands in the territory. Territories confer special effects either at the campaign level or they can have in-game effects, or not. Keying scenery and / or game objectives to the territories on the map can be cool.

Just note the trap to be aware of here: map campaigns take a lot of rounds to complete. You can't play a map campaign in a week or two, you need to keep a steady schedule and player commitments for months at a time to finish one. And when someone inevitably has to drop out in the middle of the campaign (or just loses interest) the whole thing stalls and your fancy map gets balled up and tossed in the trash. I would strongly advise not playing a map campaign unless you have an established narrative group with a solid record of consistent availability and commitment to a long term game.

Just to elaborate a little more with the narrative campaign ideas that I've implemented here is a formula I've found to be successful.

1. Pick two sides that are the narrative main enemies in a war. (In your case, Tyranids vs. Imperium would make the most sense).

2. Fight a non 40K strategic level game between these two sides. (Aeronautica, Titannica, BFG). The winner of this game has "won" the war at a strategic level.

3. Now the 40K players decide what their army's objectives will be since they know the overall strategic picture and will be unable to alter the eventual winner of the war.

I.E. Orks are there to loot and plunder in a series of raids. Chaos is there to acquire a strange relic. The Imperial goal is to evacuate civilians or buy time for the next system to prepare for the tyranid onslaught, etc.

4. Now play your narrative 40K games. Make it fun, and make it possible for each player to achieve their objectives.