Challenges to Campaigning

Thank you to all the people that commented on my last post about campaigning. when I wrote that one it was much, much longer, so I decided to cut it into two posts. I probably put the cart before the horse on this one, since now I want to write about the challenges of running a campaign.

I've been a part of two 40k campaigns(one of which I "ran"). I've run a map-based Necromunda campaign. I've also watched some campaigns from afar (notably Brian's Ahon Project).

I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to make a good campaign that adds another dimension to people's games.

These are what I see as the challenges to a good campaign:

Time commitment - It seems to me that campaigns fall apart because most people have real lives that interrupt their gaming lives. This is natural. Still, a campaign system must be robust enough that it doesn't fall apart when people drop out.

Consistency of Attendance - There are some people who can play every week. Some, like me, can only two every-other week. Some people will play three weeks in a row and then disappear for a month and a half. No matter how much people play, it should disrupt the flow of the campaign.

Simplicity/ Complexity - There is a very tenuous balance between making rules simple enough that it doesn't bog down the actually playing of games but complex enough to make it worth doing in the first place.

Amount of work for the organizer - If all the work for doing everything falls on one person, that person is going to get burned out really fast. I think the trick for an organizer is to make a system that runs itself.

Commitment to the story - The way I look at it, campaign is just a way to bring role playing into war gaming. It's more fun to say, "My chaos sorcerer, Rhum Dutt, is going to slay your warboss, Snagal Teef!" than, "I'm totally going to win tonight's game, dude." However, not everyone "gets into character" with their army. That's fine, but how do you make it fun for those of us that do?



I have solutions for some of these and some I do not. I'll go into those in greater detail in future posts.

Before I get to those, I ask you, what do you see as the challenges to running a good campaign?

Is this a totally crazy idea?

There are a lot of challenges to running a good campaign (which I will go into in a future post). For some time, I have been brainstorming this and I think have some good ideas. However, I would like your input.

My over-all plan is very bare-bones right now, but there is one aspect I've been struggling with.

My idea is to make up an entire galactic sector. The sector would be the setting for all the games in the campaign. All planets would be under the control of different factions. There would be imperial planets and Ork planets, for example. A good example is this from Dark Heresy.

Before each game, the players would decide what planet they are playing on or for. Then, the results for that game would be applied to that planet. In this way, the factions could take control of various planets.

Recently in my Mighty Empires-based campaign, a lot of the players have been wanting to play new armies. This has happened for several reasons. Mostly it was because people wanted to start a new army or re-start an old army when the new codex came out. Sometimes, I think people just got bored with playing one army.

For the campaign I have in mind, people would be able to play whatever army they wanted on a given week.

So for example, let's say a player (we'll call him Bob) started the campaign playing space marines. Two months in, Bob is getting ready for a tournament where he wants to play his Eldar. He wants to play some practice games so he asks the GM if he can switch.

This leads to many questions. Should Bob get to keep the territory/ points he's earned? How does this affect the story background? If he can do it, why can't other people do it?

So I say, let's make a campaign that's so broad in scale that players can play any army they want. It still affects the story of the campaign, but gives all the players a lot more freedom.

To use the above example again, Bob would simply play a game with his Eldar army and apply the results to a planet where Eldar had a presence. If he wants to switch back to Marines, he'll apply the game results to plant that the Imperium is contesting. If he's smart, he won't apply the points to the same planet thus negating his own progress.

Assuming the mechanics of the game actually work, what do you think? Is this crazy? stupid? Keep in mind that this really isn't meant for super-competitive players. I'm just looking for a framework to make games more characterful.

Quick updates

Just two quick updates before the holiday weekend. I wanted to share what I’ve been working on.



First off, I’ve almost completed the map for our upcoming campaign. I have to tell you, painting Mighty Empire maps is tedious! I still have to paint all those little flags, too. Ugh.

Anyway, it was fun adapting it to 40K. I built 3 hives cites and added as you can see. I also made some counters to represent airfields (to be featured in a future installment). More on this to come.

I also started to teach my son to paint.

Not bad for a first time by a seven year old. It’s 100 times better then how I started (which is to say: In my mother’s basement and using Testor’s high-gloss enamel straight out of the bottle onto lead figures. They were made of lead for crying out loud!)


That’s all for now. Everyone have a safe Memorial day weekend.