Campaign Suggestions?

[Tyriks]

Hey, everyone. My group wants to do a slow grow campaign as motivation to paint and learn new armies (or revisit old armies). I'm more or less in charge of organizing it. It will not be Crusade based.  The basic idea is there's one system we are all fighting over. There's nothing really on the line other than bragging rights for winning (I will probably 3d print a cheap trophy of some sort, but no cost to play and no prizes of value).

 

What campaign structures have people used and appreciated? I want to have multiple means lf scoring, so it doesn't just come down to whoever wins the most games. I keep bouncing back and forth between what are probably overly simplistic and overly complicated systems.

 

My current thought is maybe something like: every game, score one point for winning, one point for having a fully painted army, and ideally some other criteria. There could then be more than one winner, like whoever scores most in each category. There was an idea pitched of something like pulling off a gamble gets you a point, but I don't know if that's feasible or not. In our games thus far in 10th, no one has really done the gambles much (all out of Leviathan, not the new pack).

 

Any resources on this, or ideas people have enjoyed in the past?

[WAR]

Following as I am doing the same thing, 

 

I talked to another gamer at work and he hyped up the Crusade system (not from the main book as it is highly focused on Marines and nids) but he said Pariah Nexus is good.  I feel a slow grow league is better as it Motivates to paint my groups armies. 

 

I would do like Hockey, 2pts for a win, 1 for a tie, 0 pts for lost. 1 point for painted. 

[Deus_Ex_Machina]

Do it like this:

 

1. Create a map for the campaign with sector cells. These may be hexagonal or any other type which would strike you as being appropriate.

2. Establish certain special landmarks on the map which will boost a faction once it has been captured (e.g. Shield Generator, Manufactorum, Power Generators, Command Center, Airport, etc.).

3. Determine an armies speed on the map by looking at it´s army list (e.g. infantry only would be slow and every unit being in transports would be able to move faster).

4. Determine from the start of how many sectors one faction needs to control in order to score a strategic win. Otherwise just determine the crucial and thus game-winning sector in the middle of the map and all players start from the edges of the map who will try to reach the centre first.

5. You may also want to include neutral forces which inhabit some sectors which may be controlled by a player whose army is inactive right now.

[N1SB]

I swear on my cog the most powerful tool for any campaign is a pseudo-map:

 

 

It does NOT even have to have any fancy game mechanics.  It's just a visualisation tool, like every battle won takes a hex from your enemy to you.

 

The whole idea is, I think (I'm not sure), we're so used to seeing war documentaries like the WWII or Lord of the Rings where they have a map of Europe or Middle Earth and arrows are pointing everywhere or a gauntlet is pointing at landmarks, that we instinctively feel this is epic/important/etc.

 

I saw this from a local campaign and it really resonated with people.  I made the above a long time ago over a lunchbreak on Powerpoint, saved a slide as an image.  If I were to run a campaign, I'd use this as basically the scoreboard, making changes after a game and just send it to the WhatsApp group or however you're organising your games.

 

Low effort, high impact.

[Focslain]

46 minutes ago, N1SB said:

I swear on my cog the most powerful tool for any campaign is a pseudo-map:

 

 

It does NOT even have to have any fancy game mechanics.  It's just a visualisation tool, like every battle won takes a hex from your enemy to you.

 

The whole idea is, I think (I'm not sure), we're so used to seeing war documentaries like the WWII or Lord of the Rings where they have a map of Europe or Middle Earth and arrows are pointing everywhere or a gauntlet is pointing at landmarks, that we instinctively feel this is epic/important/etc.

 

I saw this from a local campaign and it really resonated with people.  I made the above a long time ago over a lunchbreak on Powerpoint, saved a slide as an image.  If I were to run a campaign, I'd use this as basically the scoreboard, making changes after a game and just send it to the WhatsApp group or however you're organising your games.

 

Low effort, high impact.

This is basically what I did for the campaigns at my FLGS, though mine was a little more involved. 

 

Took a picture of the old Planetary Empire titles and layered the icons on top of the image. Personally I use PaintSAI, but any image editor these days can do the same.

 

You also don't need to be as detailed as this, the simple map N1SB showed would work as well. Basically have them fight over key locations on a map or give points for surrounding said location. 

[ThePenitentOne]

Everyone knows by now, I'm the world's biggest Crusade advocate; from my perspective, you lose a lot of narrative options by ruling it out. It has mechanics for slow growth of the army built in, and the 10th ed base Crusade system is better than 9th because there are limits on growth- standard units only grow beyond the third battle honour unless you burn a requisition point to let them- which limits the runaway skew. Also, battle scars are more serious than they were. Finally, in my opinion, Crusade works best in small battles, so having made the decision to slow grow, you've already created an environment where the system would shine. 

 

The system creation rules in the Tau dex are great for randomly generating a star system with a variety of battlefields suggested by the various types of celestial objects that are determined to be in-system. Even if you eschew Crusade, you might use this system to generate your theatre of war.

 

But whatever-not my place to tell you you're playing it wrong; you have your reasons, and the decision is yours, so I'll try and give you some advice you might be able to use.

 

The campaign system from 8th's Urban Conquest is pretty much system agnostic. The campaign system in Ashes of Faith is one of the best I've ever seen, though both of these might need a little tweak.

 

Map-based campaigns are fabulous, but there's a fair amount of minutiae to consider- can territories be reclaimed once captured? Must you leave a force to maintain control of a territory? Are there benefits to territorial control? Are moves on the campaign map limited to adjacent territories? Are there multiple continents?

 

As your armies grow, are they always used in their entirety, or are new units at to a roster from which they can be chosen for battle? Will the growth rate of each army be the same, or is the growth of an army triggered by narrative factors?

 

 

[Bung]

If people want to do their own campaigns i recommend this Book

https://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/Wargaming-Campaigns-Hardback/p/14601

[spiros14]

A campaign I ran to pretty great effect for my Hobby Group was the Vigilus Ablaze campaign during 8th. It was a pretty simple setup that I think should suit your group well.

The basic principle was the group was split into three teams (Imperium, Chaos, and Xenos) though for your group you may want to split it up more (Making an Orks or Astartes team for instance). Players organised games between themselves against opposing teams, and netted points for their team depending on how the game went.

The campaign was then split into phases which were split into rounds, with each round representing a story beat in the Vigilus Narrative. What this meant was the players would get more points for their team if they played the mission or set up terrain to better reflect that story beat, so for example the first phase and first round represented the first story beat where the Chaos Fleet has shown up and begun planetfall, with Calgar getting caught up in a boarding action that almost cost him his life (for about the third time running). As such, players got a bonus for playing using spaceship rules or for playing a planetstrike mission. The occasional team apocalypse game was also held around once per phase for a certain narratives that had the teams play each other: In phase 1 was the siege of the hoist where the GSC infiltrated an Adeptus Mechanicus space elevated and had to be purged by the Imperium; in phase 2 we had the Ritual, where the forces of Chaos were attempting to summon a daemonic army to take a xenos held city on Storvhal hive; and phase 3 had the Death of a Legend game where Calgar attempts to fight the Despoiler one-on-one, which almost cost him his life (for about the fourth time running. The man has a bigger death-wish than commander Dante).

 

In addition, even though it had no mechanical effect, I added a faction icon to an area on the map each time a player reported a victory in that vague area. (One player managed to eat up the whole of Dirkden Hivesprawl this way after several chaos players tried to take it for themselves, unsurprisingly, he was playing Genestealer Cult!)

Finally, I had players give their warlord a name. No extra rules, just a name to attribute the wins and losses of most if not all games. You should then be able to form a fierce narrative rivalry not between players but between their characters, as Captain Aphael of the Blood Angels thwarts Lucina Vorstadt the Genestealer Magus and blows up her leg with a plasma pistol shot in the bargain!

 

 

[Tyriks]

I'm ambivalent toward Crusade, but the group won't go for it, so it's not an option.

 

There won't be a roster. I would rather people be able to bring fun lists than be locked in with units that they end up not liking. There will be more points than usual for being fully painted, so that's as close as we are getting to limiting unit choices. If someone keeps overhauling their lists, they will have a lot of work to do in order to keep painted.

 

The map idea isn't bad. I'd probably have to do some math to figure out how many tiles are necessary to prevent someone from being killed off too soon if they lose a lot. I will say, I likely won't have in game bonuses for holding locations. We tried this previously in a different game and it quickly turned into a "win more" mechanic that killed the game. I don't know if others would agree to that this time.

 

The ultimate goal is more aimed at playing games and learning the new armies, getting stuff painted, and then creating a narrative, in that order. This is based on other people's stated interests, not my own.

[Focslain]

For those that lose all their tiles, just have them take one when they win a game or reposition onto an empty one.. You could give a bonus at the end of the campaign to the one that has the most tiles. Something small for tie breaking (+2 or 3 pts). 

 

For taking territory to keep some in check or at least throw a bone to the ones not doing well on the field allow everyone that played a game a chance to grab an empty tile. Just do this every 'campaign turn'. To take someone's you would have to have defeated them.

 

For # of tiles I'd suggest 6x # of players. only have them start with 1 or 2 and that gives room to grow before they have to really start winning. 

[spiros14]

Fair enough.
At the start of this edition I did a very relaxed campaign with that sort of goal in mind: Spoils of the Hazaroth Abyss.
Basically the Abyss is an area of space from one of the Fantasy Flight Game RPG books (first edition Dark Heresy, I think). It's essentially the ghetto of that sector, overrun with pirates, chaos warbands, and barely protected by the Imperium.

In essence, a perfect opportunity for a campaign free-for-all as all players desperately hunt down for supplies to the point where shooting "friendlies" for a supply cache of bolter rounds is completely reasonable.

 

Again, players organise games between themselves. Any game type, any mission, any army (more on that in a sec) the only restriction is a banning of Epic Heroes with more than 9 wounds (as the likes of Magnus the Red won't stoop so low as to try and take over the 40k equivalent of skid row). If you win, you get a campaign victory point. Most campaign victory points wins.

 

As this was a "try the edition" campaign, I allowed for two things. First was that a player may use as many armies as they want, but had to treat each army as their own entity for scoring. If you played two games with orks and won one and then two games with eldar and won one, that player would get one CVP for each faction, not two CVP for the player. Secondly, was a Mario Party style surprise CVPs at the end. Your armies have been constantly been picking up stuff even when you haven't been fighting each other, so everyone rolls a D6 at the end of the campaign and add that to your total. It was a great way to encourage a lot of games, as players wanted a large lead, and also didn't put losing players in a slump, as they had the chance to go up in ranking through the Random Number generator.

 

This ended up being a moderately successful campaign, getting my group to actually play 40k after 9th edition put them off of the game.

[Cleon]

One thing I've considered for the current ruleset is drawing an objective card each campaign phase and during that phase (two weekends) either player can choose to have that card instead of one of their drawn objectives for free once per battle.

[Deus_Ex_Machina]

I have revisited the 4th 40K rulebook for campaign ideas. Here is what was suggested in that tome:

 

1) Narrative campaign

You need a neutral "Dungeon Master" who tells a story with the player´s forces being elements of said story. The results of each battle will be used to continue the story in a logical manner.

 

 

2) Map campaign

See my previous post.

 

 

3) Tree campaign

This is the most simple version of a campaign but only works well with two opposing players. So if you want to use it pair off players in your group. Here is how this works:

At the beginning of a campaign a diagram is written down which nominates the type of scenario which will be played at each step of the campaign. This diagram can be as elaborate as you like but works best, if it isn´t too complex. An example:

 

Step 1:

Force A squares off against Force B by chance while patrolling a specific area. As none of the forces were aware of one another before the battle very little scenario rules apply. One force is nominated as the attacker and the other as the defender. This battle and all the following ones CAN´T have a draw as an outcome because you need to determine the next battle by knowing who was the victor.

 

Step 2:

Attacker has won the previous battle: The next scenario being played is "Überrennen" (English: Overrun; not sure if that would be the correct term). 

Defender has won the previous battle: The next scenario being played is "Take & Hold".

 

Step 3:

And so on.

 

[2PlusEasy]

No point reinventing the wheel: check older, earlier editions of 40k and Necromunda for inspiration which had extensive advice on thematic missions and campaign progression. There's also other narrative driven games like Mordheim, Stargrave / Frostgrave and Malifaux which have extensive guidelines and lateral ideas for linking games into a campaign.

 

There's a difference between running a campaign and running a tournament / league (or event if one wants less competitive wording) disguised as a campaign however. Campaigns have flow on effects between rounds as the campaign progresses which the players are invested in, an event disguised as a campaign does not.

 

Similar to RPGs, it's important to understand what your audience actually wants before investigating time into developing a campaign. Consult your players regularly.

[spiros14]

6 hours ago, 2PlusEasy said:

Similar to RPGs, it's important to understand what your audience actually wants before investigating time into developing a campaign. Consult your players regularly.

 

This above all. There is nothing wrong with switching things up on the fly to suit your players wants and needs. Bonus points if you can write it as something that happened in universe. If one side has done amazingly well and you want to nerf them a little, say that their leadership has congratulated them on a job well done, give them a medal and then take a bunch of their gear for use in other engagements in the next sub-sector over. 

 

Never be afraid to try new things, but if those things just aren't working out, consult the players on what they think would work better. They have a much better perspective than you do, and they are ultimately your friends, and are here to have a good time.

[sonsoftaurus]

Best thing I’ve ever included in an escalation league/campaign is:

 

Winning is its own reward: losers go up in points faster than winners. (Tweak specifics to taste) 

 

If you win you don’t need more points, and eventually the difference will make the games closer. 

[Dr. Clock]

In 9th I developed a simple character xp campaign system. Players choose their detachment and name a single non-unique character unit worth no more than 100 points at the start of the campaign, and a single infantry unit as their 'honour guard' in each game. Then xp is awarded each game as follows:

 

Win game: 5 points

Lose game: 2 points

Tie: 3pts

Warlord survives: 1 pt

Honour Guard unit survives: 1pt

PoV Character dies: -1 pt

 

Importantly, xp character is always the same game to game, but it doesn't matter what list you build around it so people can swap stuff out whenever they want if they have the units for agreed points limit with opponent.

 

Then the advancement path was based on combination of relevant crusade benefits and just free enhancements to sprinkle in. The chart I did at beginning of 10th was basically:

 

3xp: 1 free faction enhancement on xp character (stays same between games)

7xp: 1 other free enhancement on another chosen character per game

12xp: Faction Crusade Infantry veterancy applies to 'Honour Guard' for rest of campaign

18xp: xp character gains faction Crusade Relic (is it a good idea to stack enhancements? At least everyone starts at below 100pts...)

25xp: Faction Crusade Vehicle / Monster upgrade applies to 1 chosen unit

33xp: A faction crusade relic is available to a non-xp character in each game

42xp: One Battleline unit in each game generates a random faction crusade benefit

52+xp: ???

 

If you wanted to make losers go up faster that's not a bad idea either, just reverse w/l points scoring.

 

I haven't implemented this in our 10th ed. games due to lack of codexes for upgrade diversity, but there are more now so I might dust it off again soon!

 

Cheers,

 

The Good Doctor.