Help me brainstorm FLGS campaign rules, please?

[Kastor Krieg]

I'd like to run a 40k campaign in the FLGS, but the meta in Poland is severely competetive and I'd rather attract more narrative / fun players, while still giving them a sense of achievement and progress, discouraging min-maxing, netlisting and all kinds of WAAC behaviour.

My idea was as follows:

• use narrative play rules only
• open play / narrative missions allowed, but can use Maelstrom ones and Tactical Objectives or come up with a mission of their own (players' choice which, assymetric scenarios allowed)
• therefore, Power Points instead of small points
• any amount of points that players feel like
• Rules like Battlefield Terrain, Battlezones, Planetstrike or Cities of Death, etc., as well as multiplayer battles are allowed, as agreed to by players
• make it a map campaign
• Kill Team games allowed
• promote full WYSIWYG and painting
• promote the attitude of "Win, but with a smile and in style!"
• thus, scoring, reported by each player to me in private:
  +1 pt "my opponent won the scenario" (both winning players awarded in a 2v2, etc.)
  +1 pt "my opponent had a fully WYSIWYG and/or painted&based army" (at least one gets a point, neither gets none)
  +1 pt "my opponent was fair and friendly, it was fun to play against them" (people netlisting and bringing tournament grade optimized stuff comes into play here, unless the player asked for such a challenge)
• these points decide who won the "map square" for their factions and I mark the progress on the map

Thoughts?

[Kastor Krieg]

Another thought - if any rewards are sponsored by the FLGS, use only the "hobby" and "fair-play" points to win them, tie-breaking with the victory points? 

[thewarriorhunter]

I'm tossing the same questions around myself because I eventually want to organize something at my store. Couple thoughts I have are:

 

• What is the time frame? Too long and people may drop, too short and some folks may feel like they never had a chance to really 'win'.
• If it's too flexible it may be too much for players, perhaps cap points during certain weeks? First week is a large engagement so we play at 100PL, next week we're focusing on the smaller skirmishes so it's KT or 25PL armies, and so on.
• If it's narrative how does one game affect the next? Personally I would want the winner to have a small advantage, nothing game breaking, but maybe if they win they get an extra 3 inches to their deployment zone to show their advance or perhaps regardless of mission they get to deploy last? The reward should be a small one time thing for flavor and not affect the entirety of the next match.
• In my experience (and from talking to others) Prize Support breeds WAAC players so perhaps that's not included, or kept a secret until the end.
• Limiting the amount of data sheets that can be used might help to stem 'competitive' lists since stronger units would be limited. You could also implement Highlander games where only one of a unit can be fielded.

[Kastor Krieg]

> What is the time frame? Too long and people may drop, too short and some folks may feel like they never had a chance to really 'win'.

I assumed 2-3 months tops. Several consecutive weeks. Start first of April, end at the end of June, just as people start leaving for holiday period, I guess. Maybe extend into the summer holidays if there are willing players.
 

> If it's too flexible it may be too much for players, perhaps cap points during certain weeks? First week is a large engagement so we play at 100PL, next week we're focusing on the smaller skirmishes so it's KT or 25PL armies, and so on.

I don't want to force players to play outside of their zone of comfort or play in formats they're not familiar with. Some people play just Kill Team, some only regular 40, some have tiny starter armies and some large collections. I want people to work it out themselves, either this or that.
 

> If it's narrative how does one game affect the next? Personally I would want the winner to have a small advantage, nothing game breaking, but maybe if they win they get an extra 3 inches to their deployment zone to show their advance or perhaps regardless of mission they get to deploy last? The reward should be a small one time thing for flavor and not affect the entirety of the next match.

Yeah, exactly stuff like that, one use "cards". Your last victory was at a Munitorum Depot, you get bonus X. It was the Orbital Station last time? OK, this special action for free. 

> In my experience (and from talking to others) Prize Support breeds WAAC players so perhaps that's not included, or kept a secret until the end.

That's why I thought to directly reward the fair play and hobby factors and use victories as tie breakers. And yeah, keeping it a secret until the end might be a good idea. But I'll most likely forgo the prizes completely or exclude myself completely from them, because I want to play as well :D
 

> Limiting the amount of data sheets that can be used might help to stem 'competitive' lists since stronger units would be limited. You could also implement Highlander games where only one of a unit can be fielded.

 

I'd rather not get into "game design" and let people play as-is. There's a large and deserved stigma among Polish players of both the community and some TOs trying to play "polhammer", a version of the game that's modified to their taste "because reasons". 

I'd much rather make it openly known that if your opponent brings a competetive all-out Eldar list to a game vs your fluffy Kroot footslogger army, you're not to give them the "fair play and nice, fun gameplay" point. It's also unlikely they will have full WYSIWYG and/or a fully painted army, because of the constant netlisting and meta adjustments, so that's two points down for the WAACer.

[Kinstryfe]

In my experience, too few constraints is worse than too many. I understand the concern that you're dealing with players at every level from Kill Team to 10,000pt hordes, but the problem with leaving it open is twofold. One, you fall into the trap of trying to please everyone. Two, you end up with a campaign that has no real narrative because there's no way to get Mr. Only-plays-killteam and Mr. Only-fields-knights to interact in any meaningful way. Picking a type of engagement (kill team, small games, big games, escalation, etc) ensures that you'll get a group of players on roughly the same page. You may end up running a tight 8 person narrative campaign versus a twenty person free for all campaign, but I'd almost guarantee that the 8 person campaign will both run more smoothly and be more engaging every time. You're also very open on what variant is played when which upfront sounds fun but often in practice means you're not really running any structure to the campaign, rather you're just letting people play whatever they would normally play. In essence, you've made yourself non-essential to the process. It also prevents a scenario where (assuming your map based idea involves players basically challenging each other over map spaces) two players just can't play each other because their armies and expectations don't match up. As unfair as it may seem, it's not unrealistic to think that maybe the guy with half of Dark Imperium and the guy with half a Chapter aren't going to both be candidates for the same campaign.

 

As an example the last campaign I ran (which was run just prior to KT releasing) was a small points narrative escalation league. The goal was to forge a narrative thru the campaign's progress on the Imperial planet of Gavallon VII while only requiring a couple of hours a week of play unless the players wanted to play more. As such I designed scenarios for each of 5 weeks, plus a capstone team game for the 6th week to end the campaign. We progressed from 500pts thru 1000pts with a required scenario each week, with players having the option to play a second game each week as they desired (squad level, which would now be Kill Team, up to however big they wanted) for bonus credit. This gave the players both a fixed game each week and the option to play however they wanted as well.

For the narrative portion, I made sure to stress upfront that because it was story driven the campaign was not guaranteed to be completely fair, and that some scenarios would favor one faction (Imperium, Chaos, or Xenos) and that based on how well players did they may get benefits beyond the normal points structure. Anytime a player won their main match they were given a small benefit to use in a future week. They were usually minor but a couple were fairly substantial if the win was enormous. Examples ranged from additional made up relics, getting to deep strike a unit that isn't normally allowed, getting to redeploy a unit after setup, or choosing a turn in which they would automatically pass all leadership tests. Things which were useful but not necessarily game winning on their own. Additionally players were instructed to tell me anything especially noteworthy and individual units could gain special rules for their exceptional deeds. One unit of Krieg Deathriders charged and ran down a unit of 30 Bloodletters in one combat round and was rewarded with counting all hit rolls of 6 against Chaos units as double. A unit of termigants just would not die ever and gained the ability to regenerate D3 models a turn. Bonuses which were often useful but again, not game winning on their own.

 

Basically, don't be afraid to structure things a bit in order to fit the narrative. It's important that you control the flow of the event rather than have it control you and just like roleplaying it's important that you as DM are the one in charge of the story your players are playing in. Other than that, I largely like your scoring placing emphasis on playing politely and not being a jerk and hope that you figure out a method that works for both you and your players.

[grailkeeper]

edit: Just saw you are using a map which was my suggestion. Maybe use a map of your home town? You could have preset minor awards for possessing certain areas and landmarks- including the FLGS. 

 

Maybe do a bulletin newspaper every week or fortnight to let people know of developments from all the games posted in the FLGS. You culd use it introduce new rules to reflect things that happened in games. Maybe a kill team started a big fire when they blew up an enemy promethium facility so the first turn of every match next week uses night fighting rules until the smoke clears. Maybe also throw in real world events too- if you have really bad weather one week then the models could have a small movement penalty. Players could contribute, talk about their characters and maybe even issue each other challenges through it. If they get involved and come up with suggestions based on their own narrative that would be great! you could reward those that do- very small increase on their commanders command range or something.

[DuskRaider]

Any veteran players with access to BFG? I remember playing campaigns that incorporated BFG (sometimes simultaneously) that could effect the ground battle. The same could be said of Epic.

[Kastor Krieg]

Having read your comments, I guess I'll default the games to a certain Power Points level each week / month, to scale the battles and make Kill Team face offs optional if both players agree (some objectives would be achieved by "special forces" and "direct action" rather than open battle).

Gaining ground would net you single-use benefits of course.

[Exilyth]

I'd be carefull with running campaigns with mixed games and free game mode choice - there's the risk of one group forming around one game mode and one group around the other with only minimal interaction between the two groups. Running a campaign with one game mode and mixing in the other for a few missions is usually fine, e.g. 40k campaign with a kill team mission every now and then. The best way to make this work is to have semi-realistic reasons for why a certain game is played in a certain format, e.g. "we can only afford to send a kill team into the mine because we cannot move the vehicles through the tunnels and we also need someone to secure our only way out".

 

 

One scenario for a combined kill team & 40k game could be:

The 40k game runs as normal on the large table, the kill teams fight on a small table. The kill teams compete for the control of a manticore, deathstrike missile launcher or other artillery piece. The player who controls the artillery at the end of a turn/end of the kill team game gets to fire a shot at the big table (into the 40k game). This gives an immediate impact on the campaign, but a single arty shot does not unhinge the balance too much.

 

 

As for players agreeing upon stuff:

I found that giving a bit more structure and order tends to make campaigns run smoother, e.g. some stuff should be dictated by what map square players are fighting over.

• Attacking a fuel depot in a desert region? Flat table + a few cacti & rocks for terrain. Also "capture/defend fuel depot" or "destoy/defend fuel depot" mission depending on what players want to archive.
• Combat in a city? Lots of buildings. Could be "search supplies", "liberate [this place]", "rescue civillians" or some other such mission.
• Canyon/Mountains? Put some books on the table and spread a roll of fabric over them. Then add rocks, trees, maybe an additional hill or two. "Stop enemy convoy", "escape the ambush" or "Find enemy HQ" would be good for such terrain.

What missions are available could depend on terrain, player faction and on the actions choosen by players.

 

 

 

I'd also suggest taking a look at the following thread:

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/353544-tips-on-how-to-organise-a-40k-narrative-campaign/

[TrawlingCleaner]

I'm currently in the same boat, instead it's with a group of mates instead of a FLGS. I tried running one before but I had several people have to drop out from games if they were busy with work etc. I ran it as an escalation league which was cool in principle but was probably the reason why we never got very far.

 

I ran it so that we started at 500 pts and ran up to 1250 pts with a 250 incremental increase and 2 games per increment. I made it so that whatever your 500 pts list was, it would have to stay in your list all the way up to 1250 pts. Warlord traits were unlocked at 750 and you could give 1 trait from the Chapter Approved tables (for 10 pts per trait) to characters per increment as evenly split as possible between characters. When people started dropping out I couldn't pair the people missing out on a partner easily as people had played some games or less games. I didn't want to just give out auto wins for people who lost their opponent (to be fair no one wanted to have an auto win over playing someone) so it quickly fell apart. The guys that did have to pull out of some games were gutted for themselves and for the others because they felt like they had let everyone down.

 

So I went back to the drawing board and I came up with a flexible narrative campaign system that should (hopefully) hold up to people having to drop out. I've decided that there will be Teams instead of single players so that if you have to drop out, you just ask someone else on your team to play for you. Thankfully each team has an Anchor or someone who's down every week and can pick up games for the others. Currently there are 3 teams, good, grey and bad or Imperium, Xenos and Chaos. Depending on numbers this will be changed to just 2. I made the points flexible, they just need to decide points level between themselves. It's run from the Vigilus book so they get bonus points if they play one of the Vigilus round missions. Additionally if they lose twice in a row against one player, they gain access to a grudge which is worth 1 additional point if they achieve it. The player decides what the grudge is but is encouraged for it to be fluffy depending on the outcome of the games lost, i.e. a player has their warlord smashed down by the enemy warlord for two games so they make a grudge to stay alive or to kill their warlord. My idea is that at the end of the campaign we can do a Last stand type deal, we all take our warlords and fight against waves and waves of something. Potentially Genestealers or Chaos cultists. Not too sure.

 

I'm going to try to do a round-up of the games for them per round and include some cool stuff from each of their games. I do have some power gamers that I'm not sure how to curb but my hope is that they try to be as narrative focused as possible. Any pointers on this would be great. I'd like games to effect other games later on but I'm not sure how that would happen or where to start 

[Trevak Dal]

About the loose battlefield requirements (planetstrike, battlefield terrain) shouldn't you have tighter rules regarding that stuff?

 

I've never run a table top tournament, but I did run a Halo 4 tournament back in the day, you really have to quarterback (shot call) a lot of the stuff so the players can just play. They are your customers and you are trying to provide a service for them.

[MegaVolt87]

Is there any support for titanicus at your store? Linking that, or kill team (or both) would be interesting for a narrative campaign. This way you can expand who participates, no one is excluded. Maybe some have no time for a big 40K game, kill team could contribute some campaign pts to help in a small way, etc. 

[Lord Raven 19]

I find painting competitions with a theme (leader, squad, commander, ect) help to motivate painting while adding points to the league. You could have a bad tactician who is a really good painter who could catch up on points that way.

I do: 

Entry = 5pts (this way everyone gets something for entering)

3rd = 1pt extra

2nd = 2 pts extra

1st = 3pts extra

Maybe get the store owner to help judge?