Cautionary Tale: Running a 40k Campaign
Pictured: The main point of my article. I’m not good at subtlety.
Here are the things that Pimpcron learned while trying to run a campaign.
If you’ve played wargames long enough, you’ve probably tried participating in a campaign. These are the main problems I ran into while trying to run one.
What Type of Campaign?:
Wow. This is may be harder than “Who is your favorite porn star?” There are so many options and the closer you look at them, the scarier they all look. Do you use Resources? A Map-based Campaign where you take ground with every victory? Do you use a victory tree? Do certain areas grant bonuses for controlling them? Are you running a Narrative Campaign or a Tournament-style Campaign?
The number of options and choices you have to make can be dizzying. And there is no right or wrong answer. Unless of course you pick an option that I wouldn’t. In that case you’re probably wrong.
I know you’re mad, but clicking with your teeth will only slow you down.
For my campaign I chose a map-based system with solar systems being the control points in each sector. Each person started out with a “Homeworld” and another sector. Each Homeworld was randomly allocated a Special rule to give to the army that controlled it. For example: one might be “Forgewolrd: All of your vehicles have a 6+ It Will Not Die” or one might be “Sensor Relay Station: You get +1 to your Reserve Rolls”. Nothing too game-breaking, but some of these worlds quickly became hot beds for combat while others were kind of “meh”. But that’s the way it would be in real life, right? Some planets have more desirable resources.
I actually thought this part of my campaign went pretty well, once I actually picked a campaign style. I sifted through article after article, forum after forum, to find something that fitted me. And in the end I just made my own up based off of a couple I’d seen. You can go completely detailed with supply lines, reconnaissance, etc. like real war. Or you could do what I did and make it more stream-lined and more of a tournament style. It seems to me that Narrative Campaigns are designed more for only two players or so. The more people playing, the simpler you should make it.
How Many is Too Many?:
[Dear reader: insert sex joke of your choice here] So I started off with 8 people, which I thought was a manageable number. Well then the word spread and suddenly I had 12 people. I was excited to have so much interest, so I didn’t want to say no; but things were getting out of control. Then people started dropping out before they even played, or joining last minute. We finally ended up with 8 and paid the fee, and started playing.
Here are all the people who wanted to play. Pro tip: The more excited they seem at first, the quicker they’ll drop out. Only the woman with the hat stayed.
My campaign was more tournament style so I guess 8 is as big I’d ever suggest getting for that style. But the number of players to accept is a major issue. You want people to play, but when do you cut it off? It’s hard to say but ultimately it depends on your group. If your people are well engaged in the campaign and have the time to bust out at least one game a week for it, then you could go bigger and/or more complex. And probably no more than 4 well-engaged people for a Narrative campaign, it seems to me.
Keeping Their Attention:
Here is where it started getting really messy. I had some of them excited about the campaign, and others moderately engaged. But most of my gaming group only gets to play once per week (on our Wednesday Warhammer night) at our FLGS where we usually just play pick up games. Well, in that free-form atmosphere of usually being able to play whoever you want, being tied down every week with the campaign made some of us restless. “Hey man, wanna play me tonight?” “Oh, I’d love to but I have to do that campaign thing.” So suddenly everyone had to spend their one game a week playing someone in a campaign that they don’t necessarily feel like playing. This may work well in some groups, but not in mine. We are free spirits dammit! So the campaign suddenly kind of became a chore for some of us.
Look at us! A guitar and loose clothing means freedom!
The biggest thing I learned here was that you have to walk a fine line between keeping the pace of the campaign going, and also giving people the freedom to play other games. We started doing a “game every other week” rule where you had to at least get 2 campaign games in a month. That alleviated some of the stress but started making the campaign drag out. Argh!
Attendance:
Aaaaanndddd here is the train wreck. All of our players in my group are working adults and many of them have families. Suddenly we had some games scheduled between two people and one couldn’t make it. Every week was at least one person calling me and saying:
“Child is sick.”
“Work called me in.”
“Jury Duty.”
“I’m on trial for murder.”
“Traveling to Saturn.”
“I have a date with Carrot Top.”
“I got poop in my raccoon wounds.”
Well color me frustrated. Whatever color that would be. Orange?
In my wide-eyed n00b campaign runner view, I figured people wouldn’t join a campaign that they knew they couldn’t finish. Well guess what Buttercup? Once again I over-estimated Humanity. It’s no wonder why my race is crawling up from our Tomb Worlds, ready to destroy the living. You guys do nothing but cancel on us. I was so mad, I would have called that Flayed One I knew back in college if I still had his number. The biggest thing I learned here was the same thing I’ve learned by being Dungeon Master over the years: You can spend all of your waking hours to make a storyline (or in this case campaign) seamless and humans will still find a way to ruin your plans.
Running Too Long:
“Class, can anyone tell me what happens to a Campaign when people are always cancelling?” “That’s right Martin, it goes on for too damn long.” So this doesn’t need much explaining. We had like 6 people left in the campaign by this point (some had been eliminated), but people weren’t even making their 2 games per month anymore. Mostly due to scheduling issues. So now even the people who were psyched for the campaign in the beginning were losing their steam for it. We ended up playing a couple more weeks until there was just four people left, and split the pot evenly between the four remaining people.
Martin Prince: Answering hard questions for decades.
Well that was a disappointment. So what did I get out of this whole thing, besides a stomach ulcer? I realized that the success of a campaign is ENTIRELY dependent on the type of people in your group. This is true for any size or style of campaign. If you have a group of people who are enthusiastic about the campaign and have the free time and life situation to keep it going, then you can play with more people. If not, keep it small of don’t do one at all. The stress of this situation was not fun and the whole point of it was to have fun!
Now, I know that this whole article was pretty negative, and I apologize. I did have fun in my games and even managed to win a battle against Tau with my Nids! (Gasp!) But it was a very disappointing venture for me overall because of the way it had to end. I have decided personally to only run one-day tournaments and skip the whole scheduling issue thing. I hope some of you learned something from my campaign disaster.
Have you ran a successful (or otherwise) campaign? What did you learn?
Want to witness my slow descent into madness first-hand? Check out my blog at www.diceforthedicegod.com
