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Investinlithium
10-16-2013, 04:25 AM
The idea of a special campaign has been bouncing around in my head for quite a while now, and I figured I post up what I have for it and see what comments/ suggestions/ critiques/ ect. everyone on BOLS had. I'll go over each major portion separately. This is going to be a fairly long post, so lets jump right in to it!

First off, every player would have a persistent army (or multiple, if they wanted to). Depending on how long you want the campaign to last, this could be anywhere from 10k to 20k worth of points. Basically, in every game you play, whatever units either side lost would be gone from their list, and players armies would be whittled down over time. There would be ways to get some of your forces back though or give what you have left more upgrades. My main idea for this is taking 'slaves' (obviously some races wouldn't take slaves, but perhaps Tyranids are waiting to absorb the biomass, Space Marines are trying to get information out of them, ect). My basic idea for this is for every model you have that gets killed, you'd roll a die . On a one, the model is just dead and gone. On a two, they would be captured by the enemy. on a three - five, they are injured and you can't use them for a few games (haven't come up with exact numbers for this, but something based on their points cost might work, something like under 100 points they are unusable for two games, 100-200 points 3 games, 200-300 points 4 games and so on.) If your units get captured, you can try to capture them back in a special mission, but if you fail the enemy army gets a certain amount of points for each one (something perhaps like 10% of the cost of units they've captured?), which they can use for upgrades or new equipment. This system would certainly require some note-taking, but I've tried to make it streamlined enough to not be confusing.

The next major component of the campaign would be controlling planets. I've actually drawn up my own map for a solar system with descriptions of each planet, and I can post those and a picture of the drawing later on if anyone is interested. Each player would start out with a certain amount of planets they control, and each planet would have 4 sectors with their own special rules. (I was thinking in order to get a foothold on a new planet you'd have to do a planetstrike match, but I'm not sure if that book is really even used anymore? Maybe someone can let me know). The special rules could range anywhere from if it's an incredibley foggy place, it'd be night fighting rules for the game or every unit would have their BS reduced by one. Or maybe if it's an incredibly cold planet, everyone's armor is one point worse because the cold is making it more brittle. I was thinking maybe even certain armies could have advantages on certain battlefields, like if it's a warp-influenced area chaos marines/daemons would get some kind of advantage, like a leadership boost or something of the sort.

Along the lines of sector bonuses, I was thinking certain sectors could have manufactorums or barracks and that would be the main way you'd replenish your forces. Say you hold a manufactorum, you could spend the points you've gathered with slaves on a new tank and it would take X amount of games to be built. This could probably again be based on points cost. Under 100 points 2 games, 100-200 points 3 games, 200-300 points 4 games and so on. So you could either use your points to upgrade your existing stuff, or save them up to buy new units.
I was also thinking that each army could have a special rule based on the fluff you make up for them, but all players would have to agree on those to make sure they aren't too overpowered.

One last aspect I was thinking of was having heroes for each army. You would get one main hero with certain special rules (not really sure what I want to do there), and maybe a few more minor heroes that are just like normal units for army fluff purposes. An idea I had for them was you're main hero would be free to include in any game, but they'd take much longer to regenerate if they were lost. I was also thinking that they wouldn't be able to die or be captured under normal circumstances, but they'd automatically be injured for X amount of games if they are 'killed' in a game (Like maybe say double the amount of games of a normal unit, or something like that). Also if they go down to an enemy main hero attack, maybe their respawn could be an additional one or more matches longer then normal.
The only other thing I really need to figure out is how to make your main hero stand out. I was originally thinking of just making completely original rules for each hero, but I could see that getting out of hand. Then I was thinking something like maybe you get X amount of points for your hero, base it on something in the codex, but they would be able to take any weapons or upgrades from their codex. That would allow for some pretty crazy combos (Khorne Bezerker with an autocannon, anyone? :-p).


Like I mentioned earlier on, this campaign would definitely require a bit of note-taking and stuff but I think it could be a lot of fun. Please, let me know what you think! Any comments or suggestions would be much appreciated!

biffster666
10-16-2013, 05:57 AM
Campaign's can be a blast and you've got some good ideas. Is this the first campaign you'll be running or have you run them before? Are the players experienced or new to campaign's? If everyone is new, I'd suggest going pretty bare bones so it doesn't become 'too much'. Grab a Planetary Empires box and whip up a quick planet. It comes with different buildings (Manufactorum, Shield Generator, Star Ports, etc. Include enough Star ports/Hive city's so there is one for each player. You'll have to order the Hive City's (2 per pack) separate. I would suggest a single pack for the first planet you create. You only want each player controling a single army, trust me hehehe. Break up the planet between the players and have at. You can work in a few of your options the first go around and just expand as people become more familiar with campaigns.

Katharon
10-16-2013, 08:22 AM
There is a current World Wide 40K Campaign going on elsewhere that anyone can participate in. (http://www.miniwargaming.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=150) You might take some ideas from there.

Investinlithium
10-16-2013, 10:06 PM
@Biffster Yes, this would be my first campaign. I'm still gathering players, but I think most of them would be new to campaigns but very experienced in the game itself (if that helps). I actually completely forgot about Planetary Empires, I'll have to look in to that, even if just for some rules ideas.

@Katharon Thanks, I had no idea that something like this existed!

So, other then these suggestions, anybody think my ideas look good so far? Nothing you think that looks like it could be easily unbalanced or needs to be expanded upon? Anything that needs tweaking?

TyG17
10-18-2013, 05:39 AM
I like the ideas you came up with. I have wanted to get a true campaign up and running for some time now but player and time restrictions keep coming up. I did find this set of rules you may like. http://www.scribd.com/doc/39219328/Planetary-Empires I like this rule set for the character advancement. It allows your heroes to grow each game. I played a test run of the rules and they can be easily exploited so I recommend not following them literally. (The tyranid player ended up having 30%+ more points worth of units than his opponents after he acquired a couple manufactorums).

My latest creation would be to combine the character advancement from the link above with the rules and victory point system from the crusade of fire supplement. Look into that and let me know if that helps any

Investinlithium
10-20-2013, 12:53 AM
Thanks man, they will probably be very helpful. I like the character advancement rules too, might try to implement something like it.