planetary empires campaign help

[starweaver]

Hey folks,

Me and some friends are thinking of setting up a campaign for 40k in our local game store. We picked up a box of planetary empires and the tiles are great. The rules though, are (i think) crap.
Is anyone out there using modified/their own rules they are willing to share? I'd love to see some different systems that are being used to make up my own rules or just copy/paste the interesting parts.

[dagonis]

My biggest suggestion is to limit the number of players. My FLGS campaign that I helped put together has 16 players and it is a mess.

My other suggestion is to have whoever is running the campaign assemble the map before hand. It was a clusterfudge trying to get all 16 players to make a coherent map.

The flags are crap and break easily so be careful.

The rules are ok, but I would personally not allow players to take units from other factions. It has led to some highly imbalanced situations at times during out campaign.

[Herald of Nurgle]

http://www.2shared.com/file/7229672/18d3711/Campaign_Rules.html (http://www.2shared.com/file/7229672/18d3711/Campaign_Rules.html)

A REALLY old edition of the rules i'm currently developing.

[Lerra]

My FLGS is running a Planetary Empires campaign with 20 people, and so far the biggest problem is that some people are treating it like a tournament, and some are playing for fun and get annoyed at the cheese of the tournament players. We are on week 6 of 12.

We haven't had any problems with the rules so far. I was skeptical going into it, but things have worked out better than expected.

What issues do you think need fixing with the rules?

[starweaver]

What i dont like about the current rule set (i havent played it yet so i could be wrong) is that it seems that a strong player who plays a number of battles fast can end the campaign fast if he is lucky with his rolls to claim areas.

Other then that, compared to the fantasy version there seems to be little variance and choices you make. The events that either give you bonuses or can screw up ' the big guy' had a lot of influence in the game and could make the game a lot more interesting. Aside that, we liked the idea of getting gold to buy aditional points, which meant you would have to spend campaign points to build the correct buildings to get the gold and when you had it you would have to decide on how to use it the best. We also had an additional use for gold as it could be used to hire a mercenary to fight battles for you if you were not able to attend.

[jeffersonian000]

I'm in a Planetary Empires campaign at my FLGS, and its going well. The big issue I see is that a loss streak can totally kill off a player before the game really gets going, and a win streak can be virtually impossible to stop early in the game. My suggest to add to the above advice is start everyone with no hexes, forcing each player to earn their way on to the board by playing games. Also, I'd advise setting a time limit on the campaign (6-8 weeks, over the summer, 1 fiscal year, etc.) rather than an amount of hexes for a win, as this will keep early luck from derailing the campaign.

SJ

[AdamHarry]

We ran a modified verison of it, and we ran into some similar problems, and thankfully some suggestions to fix them:

1)Limit the number of players per board (or box of PE tiles). over 8 players per box of tiles is too many. I think 6 is about right.

2)Change the way you take tiles. Instead of rolling 2d6 with modifiers, just go on who wins or loses, other wise a smart guard player is impossible to knock out of squares. Or come up with some other Home-brew modifier for winning a game adding to your roll

3) No Draws! Use scenarios with odd number objectives, etc. and if you have to, use Victory Points (they are in the back of the Rulebook. Yes they are still in 5th!) The attacker has to WIN the game to get the above modifier (from #2). In case of any other result, the attack just gets pushed back.

4) Players need to SHOW. if they dont the campaign falls aparty really quick.

5) No allies. Secret or otherwise. Every player for themselves! Alliances in PE can wreck your game really quick.

6) Decide the 'type' of campaign you want to play. is it going to be for fun with whacky armies or more tourney style with tough, serious lists. Having all players on the same page will help out the "fun" factor. it's nice to know if you're going to a knife fight or a gun fight so you can bring the right equipment.

We used Banners to represent our forces. Banners could only fight other banners and 'home' tiles had a garrison instead of the territories attacking, it worked for a few weeks then fell apart. The goal is to find a solution between not playing any games (ie, banners not moving toward each other) and too many games to play (theorectically someone could get swamped with 5+ games to play in one week if you used the rules in the book. and not everyone can play that many games).

Also, the points values seem to be best run at the 1500-1750 starting range, then using the modifiers to add 50 points here or there...When we ran it, we just played 2000 pt games and ignored this section, i recommend not doing that :)

Ah well, hope this helps! and Have fun with the campaign!

[starweaver]

After discussing it with the other organizers (and taking the tips here into account) we decided to go with a modified version of the fantasy rules. Basis for this was a version created by someone (forgot who, ill edit it when i get home to add the credits).

The rules can be found here if anyone is interested (the site is in dutch but we set up the campaign in english as the game rules are in english as well and it prevents us from using a weird english/dutch mix):
Bitz and Pieces 40k campaign rules (http://www.bitzandpieces.nl/bestanden/40k%20campaign.pdf)