campaigns.

[skilgannan]

Hi All

I have just proposed my local gaming club that we start a year long campaign ending in apocalypse. The problem is I only started playing about 6 months ago and have never played let alone organise a campaign before. So any help would be much appreciated.

Tim.

[Dave Mcturk]

donald featherstone.. the grandfather of modern wargaming... his book is probably oop now but it gives a great intro to DIY wargaming campaigns... think it was called "Wargames Campaigns" [surprisingly]. ;)

[chicop76]

Best campaign I done was we did a point system and a grid map. Each side had 10k points to spend on each side. You could send a max of 2, 500 to a minimum of 1, 000 anywhere in your territories. You had to do an inventory of your models an invest 10k knowing you had to break them down. It works if you have atleast 2k in points since you can simply use the same army over and over again.

The 10k allows you the flexibility to adapt to the forces you fighting. Like making 33% anti horde, 33!% anti meq, etc. Some of the rules was if you lost a squad it was gone, so if you loss that super bad *** commander that costed 400 points he is gone for good. However surving single models or units that above half strength can get experience.

The beautiful part of the set up is you have to defend territories as

[Wolfshade]

There is consideration of how to run it.

1. Narrative
2. Map
3. Ladder

Depending how many players you have and how much time you can dedicate to it depends really what is best.
Also, consideration will need to be given to what is the point to each game. Does the ultimate victory depend on the result of the Apocalypse Game? Do units gain experiance? Do you have perma death?

Depending what you want depends what to do.

[energongoodie]

Do units gain experiance?

Wolfie, would you run experience like in Kill Team or do you have another method you've used?

p.s I'm gonna be in this campaign :D

[Wolfshade]

I can't recall the Kill Team rules. But in a previous rule book, I think it was 4th (could be 5th) they spoke about running a campaign and had an experiance system with that. I've played a campaign like that before and that was fun, though keeping track of what skills a unit has could become a little effort especially several months in (it was a long narrative campaign that lasted almost a year).

[chicop76]

You could make your own.

For example why should a boon be furious charge for Tau. It doesn't really help them.

However boons like
Preferred Enemy
Tank and Monster Hunter
Etc.

I think the boon should go along with what they did in combat. Like just because yoi survived shouldn't mean you got experience, but if one unit killed a bloodthirster and two squads of letters than monster hunter should be an option and if you charged all the units to kill them than furious charge should be an option.

Also raising stats should be looked at. If you shoot all the time your bs should go up and the same with ws. I disagree that a whole squad should go up due to members in the squad that die off. Also if a squad is reduced to 25% unless they started at are slightly above the size it should not retain the boons since the squad was replaced with new meat unless two swuads withh preferred enemy joined each other.

[henrythesecond]

Hi Tim,

I've got some pretty tight rules scripted and formatted for a map style narrative campaign with each player using a Master Army List composed of multiples of each unit he owns.

PM me with your email address and I'd be happy to let you have a copy for your own use.

Cheers.

[SotonShades]

Keep it simple, especially if it is your first campaign. Most of the campaigns I've seen fail do so either because it is is too complex or too long. If players have to do ANYTHING outside of the normal game of 40k more complicated than record their result (by placing a pin in a map, writing it down and handing it to you, etc) I can almost guarantee you will be kept busy enough you wont actually be able to play in the campaign yourself. They will find loop holes or things your rules didn't quite cover and, with the best will in the world, no matter what your decision is the other side will not think you are being fair to them (even if the decision favours them over your team, it won't be by enough!)

Next, keep it short. The other reason most campaigns fail is that they go on and people start to drop out. Sometimes they just want to throw dice without consequence, sometimes they will want to play games as practice for a tournament, perhaps someone will want to use a different army (and that's not even counting the fact that if a new codex comes out, someone will want to use it OR if it is the army they are using it will shift the balance of power within the campaign). In my personal experience, 6 weeks is about the limit for most groups, and by that point a lot of people are starting to drop out. 4 is better and allows for things to go wrong and get delayed by a week. For the last campaign I ran, there were 6 turns lasting 1 week each. As GM, I kept the map and updated the digital version on facebook. I was really ill one week, so couldn't get in (and no one could get out to me to pick it up) so we delayed the next turn by a week. Lost half my players from the final Apocalypse game because they couldn't make it or just lost interest. If you want to run a really long one, build up to it. Start of with a short campaign and work up the time over several campaigns to get your players used to it, but I really wouldn't expect them to get much past 2 months ever.

Earning experience and/or boons can be great. It can also be a massive headache, both in terms of keeping track and making sure it's balanced. Often, players will spot combos of boons you weren't expecting to be particularly powerful (particularly if they have a character/unit that all ready has a special rule or two) and the game can become lopsided very quickly. I would certainly advise limiting them to a single HQ character (that isn't a special character all ready) and having some form of limiting in there. For example, if the character is removed as a casualty, have a table to see what damage they take; perhaps lose a wound from their profile or another stat, perhaps lose a boon they have previously acquired, I would certainly suggest including permanent death, even if it is fairly unlikely. I remember a fantasy campaign at my old FLGS were by the third week, all the characters were massively powerful and nigh unkillable. They had not enforced the death thing for the first round or two and it ruined the whole system. Half the characters had the stupid special rule (because of rerolling the death roll on the table) which did make for some very funny moments, but most games boiled down to who had played the most games with their character to get the most boons, rather than following any story arc. Don't feel pressures in to having a boon system; remember that most of the characters in codices have their special rules from centuries of conflict, where as your campaign may only cover a period of a few weeks, months or probably years at most. Not necessarily the length of time that will significantly change a character in the grand scheme of things.

I do like having an apocalypse game at the end though. If you've set things up right, players will have natural grudges they want to play out that have developed throughout the campaign. It is also great to get a proper conclusion to the story, which should be the ONLY reason why you want to do a campaign over a tournament or league. Make sure their is a plausible reason for them all to be fighting in one place and that the mission fits that story though. I would not necessarily suggest that the team that wins the apoc game wins the campaign though, as the other side can feel cheated. In the last campaign I ran, the size of player forces was determined by how many areas of the map they controlled, but the objective of the game was a doomsday device. controlling it allowed them to choose to use it or not, which would destroy a random set of territories based on the turn number and a dice roll. the winner of the campaign was the side with the most territories held after the apocalypse game had finished, which resulted in around 3/4 of them disappearing. All of my players had said it was a really satisfying way to finish things, even though all of their forces ended up dying as the planet they were on got blown up (ending the game and the campaign).

I would strongly suggest going to a campaign or two before trying to run one, chatting to the organiser/s and maybe getting some ideas from their system. Conveniently, my friend is running one over a weekend at the end of November;

https://www.facebook.com/events/209153825913090/

Feel free to sign up and come along. It is a prequel to one we ran not long ago, with tweaked and streamlined rules, so we know it is going to run well.

I'll probably think of a few other things, but before I sign off I'll say this; definitely do run a campaign! I had 6 weeks of having an absolute blast NOT playing 40k and I know people get a lot of pleasure out of them.

Shades

[chicop76]

I agree with the boons point. They can get rather over bearing even with perm death. Although if a unit had too many boons it was usually the most targeted since it would be more of a pain in the future.

What cause problems in our first campaign was people would lose all their best stuff early and be stuck with a bunch of troops. Experience did help iron that problem out.

We figured to use Axis and Allies as a template and went from there. Each region had pre deployed armies that was done in secret. Than an oversight gamer would double check where every thing was and everyone had a copy. We played the campaigns on certain days. It took the place of role playing. Which ment most of us was there. It helps to have an even number of people to help get multiple attacks going. Odd works too where one person can be a judge/ organiser.

Absent players can cause problems since that person cannot attack or be attacked and can cause a game advantage. We simply played regular 40k instead.

It worked for us since it was 4 of us that always got together and did gaming and we did it at my home with me picking everyone up.

[TyG17]

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.

[henrythesecond]

Hi Tim, how did your search for campaign rules turn out? Did you find the ruleset I PM'd you any use?

Cheers.