First Map Based Campaign

[bert n ernie]

I don't really know where this should go, but I'm presuming general discussion is a safe bet.

I'm setting up a Map Based campaign for my local gaming group which is running alongside our Tale of X gamers painting.

SO far I have decided to stick to a Map which has seperated territories which can be conquered and fought over, some giving special abilities, and some serving as points boosters or strategic points. Each player starts with only a few.

I'm not playing the game myself, and I want to rules to be rather simplistic(for a few newbies), yet still exciting enough to keep em coming (it should last for every week from 1st week of Oct to mid december) till the end.

The main special rule I want to concentrate on, and the main point of the campaign is Alliances. It won't be the biggest player, but the biggest alliance which wins in the end. However alliances are decided by the players (depending on race etc they may have to roll to see if they turn on eachother, or may Choose to turn on eachother) outside of gaming times.
This means that I don't need to have random events effect battles, as it will be your allies which create random events for you.

I don't knwo if this is too complex or what. I haven't played in a Warhammer Campaign before, so if there are any Vets out there who could tell me if I'm beign too ambitious, or too boring, please comment.
Also, if I could be advised on what campaign rules to impliment, and which rules of mine will not work that would be great.

Thanks in advance!

[IcedCrow]

I love complex campaigns. However, 99% of anyone willing to play in a campaign is NOT into complex campaigns. I know this from sad experience over a number of years. The more special rules you have, the quicker your campaign will sail into the west.

[Scythe]

I'd suggest you check out the General's Compendium. It contains some great material for campaigns, alliances, alternative battles and multiplayer battles.

The thing you have to be carefull with when basing victory conditions on alliances is the number of good/evil players (generally speaking). To keep the campaign a bit believable, basic good armies won't ally with basic evil ones (tough some armies aren't good ot evil per se, they usually lean towarths one side heavily). When your campaign has 5 good players and 2 evil ones, for example, the evil players will be quite hard pressed to win if victory conditions depend on alliances. Of course, you could completely ignore this, but it's always quite odd to see High Elves and Dark Elves fighting side by side.

[Griefbringer]

Remember to keep the map small (in regard to the number of territories), otherwise you might end up with a campaign where players spend turns wandering in the wilderness without meeting anyone, and where it would take ages to get really conclusive results.

[Avian]

A couple of suggestions from our map campaign (this is the third season we're running one, and all three times we've had 12 participants).
- all the territories should be handed out at the start, so players can fight each other from the word go.
- having people fight in teams makes it much easier to keep the campaign going, as you don't have to rely on everybody showing up to every meeting, and it's easier to compensate when one player has real world commitments. We use 6 teams of 2 players.
- don't have too many random effects, but let the players who win battles get more freedom + some advantages.

The campaign rules can be found here Jungle Hell
and the campaign homepage here

[Sinew]

I've played many campaigns (though not for a few years now) but they broadly fell into three types: full on complex 'Mighty Empires' campaigns, map based campaigns with some special rules and purely narrative campaigns. The latter is semi-pointless; it's pretty much fighting battles and stringing the results together into a story, so I'll concentrate on the other types.
The really complex Mighty Empires/similarly complex system campaigns were a pain. Players couldn't often find more than one opponent on the map easily, so there'd be extended mini campaigns between 2 players, fighting each other till one was destroyed. Also the random events in Mighty Empires could be a bit over the top. For example an exploration of a mountain ended up in the destruction of over 4000pts of troops and most of the nearby terrain because of a 'dragonrage' event. If you go for a campaign based on a map I'd encourage you to simplify movement to make it possible (necessary even) for players to continually fight different opponents. I'd also try not to limit what people can take in their armies to territories too much, as it annoys players and always favours some armies. A bit of restriction is characterful, too much will spoil the campaign.
The campaigns I always enjoyed the most were the ones designed in a similar way to the campaign packs that came out with 5th edition Warhammer like Grudge of Drong or Idol of Gork. They had a 'ladder' system of battles leading up to a final conflict. The scenario of each battle was slightly different and often what forces were available was dictated by the scenario. We modified this to allow players a choice over their army list but still gave restrictions (eg you must have at least 2 units of cavalry) and the outcome of the battles affected the next fight AND the final battle.
Hope that helps.

[Avian]

If you go for a campaign based on a map I'd encourage you to simplify movement to make it possible (necessary even) for players to continually fight different opponents.

I second this. To take it further, we don't even represent individual armies on the map, so there is no moving about and hoping to catch someone. Instead players can attack neighbouring realms, like in the Bloodlands campaign.

[Griefbringer]

The campaigns I always enjoyed the most were the ones designed in a similar way to the campaign packs that came out with 5th edition Warhammer like Grudge of Drong or Idol of Gork. They had a 'ladder' system of battles leading up to a final conflict. The scenario of each battle was slightly different and often what forces were available was dictated by the scenario. We modified this to allow players a choice over their army list but still gave restrictions (eg you must have at least 2 units of cavalry) and the outcome of the battles affected the next fight AND the final battle.
Hope that helps.

Well, this sort of campaign has the advantage that there is very little actual work to be done during the actual campaign - just write down the results and move to the next game.

The down side is that it is quite difficult to have more than two different sides in such a campaign.

[bert n ernie]

WOW.
thanks for the replies everyone.
@scythe The alliance systme was oing to have a circle with each of the name placed in appropriate places, so that each army would have its rough opposite on the exact otehr side. That way Elves would be opposite to dark elves. The further away you are from a person, the more difficult it would be to keep an alliance. SO you'd have to roll a 6 every turn of the campaign if you allied with your opposite. I wanted the alliances to stay in teh hands of the players to a degree, but also represent the men being unwilling to sacrifice their morals (or lack therof) for their general. SO its tough to keep an alliance. Also if an alliance grew beyond two people it would be even more unlikely the alliance could hold together.
If an alliance falls apart you have to fight eachother.
Looking back on these rules they seem a bit complex for a first timer.

@everyone: I was going to do a full map, with players territories marked out, so they could ony attack people in their range (though I am now thinking I'm gonna hve to mix it up a lot). Is this a bad idea.
Should I just do kingdoms, and any player can attack another?
How does this work best?
Can I still introduce special scenarios and territory?
(I don't have any of the books anyone mentioned, and can't afford them as I jsut got back to uni)

Oh, and it'll be 8-12 players.

[Count Ted Out]

All of the above are great suggestions. The biggest danger, by far, in keeping a campaign game from coming to a satisfactory conclusion is players dropping out. A few thoughts of my own from having run several campaigns:

The first three rules for the games master in running a campaign are the following, in no particular order:
1) Minimize the paperwork for the games master.
2) Minimize the paperwork for the players.
3) Minimize the paperwork for all the participants.
Get the idea? Some players will want a lot of paperwork. Some will want none. Play it close to the lowest common denominator to minimize the dropout rate.

The KISS principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid) applies to all facets of running a campaign. After the initial campaign, you and the players will have an idea of what you like and dislike in a campaign and you can make additions to the rules for the next one. Piling on the rules and concepts in the first one can alienate some or all of your players and maybe even the gamemaster. Eat the elephant one bite at a time.

Far from being a GW shill, I nevertheless highly recommend the General's Compendium. You will find it money well spent. Whether or not you use their rules, there are enough ideas in this to give you some real focus on how to set up your own campaign. It is written so that you can pick and choose the rules which best will meet your needs.

The GD comes with its own map with movement rules and special areas. Especially if you have not run a campaign before, this can considerably cut down on your own development time.

The GD's map-based rules put a premium on keeping the basic forces on the table-top within about 20% of each other. Remember that the purpose of the campaign--generally speaking--is to create interesting table-top games through the use of the strategic overlay. How excited are you going to be to fight a battle in which your opponent is 50%-100% larger than you are? And how much fun is it to beat an opponent which is half your size? These are great ways to get players to drop out of the campaign.

I use the basic GD campaign rules, adding a few wrinkles of my own. For example, I find the GD's Random Events Tables cumbersome and time-consuming (read time-wasting). What I did was to simplify these into one table using a single d100 dice roll instead of several d6 and 2d6 rolls, adding my own little flavors in. For example, you could have a result that an army's random unit was carousing last night and their strength is reduced by -1 in the battle. Or, the quartermaster is on the take and all cavalry movement is reduced by -1" in the next battle due to the use of substandard equipment. You get the idea. What you generally want to do is throw a fly in the ointment and give the player one more thing to have to think about on the table-top, not poison the whole army. Influence, don't dictate.

Make sure your campaign has a definite end-point or end-points. Have both a strategic goal which will signal a campaign winner AND a time at which a winner will be declared if no one has reached the strategic goal. This accomplishes two things. One, interminable campaigns invite dropouts due to boredom. Two, it may invite a player or two who will try the campaign knowing that there will be a definitive end, thus not having to commit to a campaign which could conceivably run forever.

Hope this has not been too long. Campaigns can add real depth to the table-top one-offs which seem to plague Warhammer. Hope yours goes well. Have fun with it!

[bert n ernie]

Thanks everyone for your suggestions so far.
I think I have enough to make an easy first campaign.
Will probably convince the club to buy the general's Compendium with its budget, so I don't get stuck with the bill.
Bert

[scatterlaser]

Another campaign system that might be worth looking at is the one used for the Cityfight Vogen campaign. It's fairly abstract (dosn't have individual armies moving around on the map), so it's pretty simple to use and it works for basically any game system. I used it (with a few changes) to run a couple of campaigns (40K and Fantasy), and it seemed to work quite well. I think you can find information/rules for it on the GW Cityfight page.