- Posts: 771
- Thank you received: 2
Bugs: Recent Topics Paging, Uploading Images & Preview (11 Dec 2020)
Recent Topics paging, uploading images and preview bugs require a patch which has not yet been released.
Warhammer Campaigns - why do they fail?
- hancock.tom
- Topic Author
- Offline
- D6
Anybody played in a campaign of warhammer fantasy or 40K? Any rules suggestions? Why did yours flame out, if it did?
Nearly every one I ever played in flamed out due to a player getting discouraged and quitting due to being hopelessly behind/beat on/etc., thus leaving a big section of map open and messing with the balance. We are going to try to prevent that through the rules we are using.
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
- Sagrilarus
- Offline
- D20
- Pull the Goalie
- Posts: 8735
- Thank you received: 7349
Sag.
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
- hancock.tom
- Topic Author
- Offline
- D6
- Posts: 771
- Thank you received: 2
One thing we are doing is using a % of your total forces maintenance cost, which will of course hit the players with more total points harder than it will hit the players who have taken some losses. I'm basically looking to see if anyone has any experience with this sort of thing
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
is it just a set of games where the points values are added up in the end, or is it a real campaign, where recruiting, strategy and diplomacy are involved? In the latter option, weaker players can join alliances, lose battles but retain strategic areas.
One thing always helps: a set deadline. If you set it up to run a few months, people can see the end of the race and will hold on until then.
These kinds of problems are not limited to WH campaigns. It affects all forms of campaigns and competitions (historical etc)
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
- hancock.tom
- Topic Author
- Offline
- D6
- Posts: 771
- Thank you received: 2
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
It may help to keep the map so that players are not too dependent on each individual player showing up. If somebody drops out, it doesn't mean somebody now has an open flank or an area where he can easily walk through. You might keep it a bit abstract
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
- Matt Thrower
- Offline
- Shiny Balls
- Number Of Fence
One, keep it short. A single battle is usually an evening affair, assuming 2,000 point armies. You want these things to run a month or two, no more, with one or two games a week max otherwise people hit burnout and get bored. Vast-open ended campaigns are a sure-fire route to failure.
Two - and your friend might not like this - keep whatever homebrew campaign rules that you're going to employ short, simple and ensure they don't have a massive impact on the actual battles. Complex campaign rules which leave a heavy footprint on individual battles are rarely balanced and rarely as interesting as the individual fights (which is what the game was designed for in the first place). Making it otherwise leads to annoyance and frustration - the campaigns I've found to work best are those more focussed on generating a story than some mad civilisation-style rules.
Did you know GW have re-released Mighty Empires? Was orginally a WFB product (and far too long and complex to actually use as a campaign system) but the new version might be more streamlined and might be tweakable to 40k.
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
- hancock.tom
- Topic Author
- Offline
- D6
- Posts: 771
- Thank you received: 2
Haven't looked at Mighty Empires but I will. Our campaign is going to incorporate battlefleet gothic with 40k, so I need to start reading BFG rules too.
The key to this is going to be tweaking the homebrew campaign rules until they are simple enough to not unbalance the game but not so basic that our "campaign" is just show up and play a game a week.
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
agreed with Matt. Found out through my own disappointing experiences: use the campaign rules as scenario generator, not as a game for its own sake
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
a reason to fight the battle
asymmetric battles (ie not balanced in point value)
a couple of things that make the players think twice about wasting their troops:
such as units that cannot (easily) be recruited and
other players that may be threatening their rear
you can encourage some players to act as mercenaries. that should make them think of fighting as a cost-benefit enterprise. If you can make them act as renaissance Italian condottiere, so much the better!
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
- Posts: 2498
- Thank you received: 590
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.