I have finally come up with a map campaign ruleset! It's been so long in development, but now it has finally coalesced into being!
I decided to share this piece of rules kit that I developed for our local games store, to solve the problem of getting all players together on the same day for a Map Campaign.
We've all been there, and it's complicated. Hence, I finally came up with Warfront.
This is a Map League/Campaign for a gaming group/store, where every game played, even random one-off games, can count towards the overall advance of each Grand Alliance as they conquer territory along the map. Even better: each new game can benefit from the bonuses accumulated by previous games from players belonging to the same Grand Alliance: either previously established garrisons on the map or Spoils collected from previous victories.
All very easy and straightforward: 1-2 pages of rules.
This map is for a 'Firestorm' Warfront campaign, with a few embellishments of mine.
Note: Destruction Grand Alliance HQ a tribute to Warboss Kurgan! :D Orc pirates abound.
All you need is some corkboard, some coloured pins, and presto!
Winning battles grants the winner control of the map region and Spoils markers, or if they win a Skirmish battle they can choose to earn Intel markers or destroy the enemies' fortifications.
Players keep track of which territories their Grand Alliance controls, and how many Spoils and Intel markers they have accumulated using the coloured pins. Fortified and Garrisoned map regions, as they are developed by winning players, are further marked with extra white/transparent pins (these are places with defensive earthworks or full-fledged forts, respectively).
Warfront had been developing in my mind for quite a while, from what I started a couple years ago with the 8th Edition "Theaters of War" scenario generator. I've been trying to make a modular scenario generator that would fit seamlessly into a map campaign. And a type of map campaign that could be run in a store that anyone could contribute to, without any input or coordination from any manager or Games Master.
But development slowed down as I became more focused on Mordheim, and had to face the fact that there were indeed a lot of rules required, which I kept tweaking slowly over months... and as Warhammer Fantasy slowly lost steam.
But it was really with the release of the Firestorm boxed game for Age of Sigmar that this all really crystallized in my mind, and I found out how to implement it.
Warfront is also very customizable: the ruleset is meant to be so simple it should work for every map you can come up with for your own gaming group, or even work in multiple systems.
I have also developed a version for Warhammer Fantasy 8th Edition, and cooked up a Map set in the Dark Lands, Mountains of Mourn and the Sea of Dread.
It is truly more a logistic framework to organize players than necessarily a rules supplement. The easiest and laziest way to insert narrative into your games. :)
Combining it with Army Progression
Within the larger pool of players participating on-and-off in the League, a smaller group of players can always come together to play an army progression campaign "story" together, growing their armies as they go. All the while participating in the larger war for the territory.
In Age of Sigmar this is best done via Path to Glory or the Skirmish campaign systems, which both allow for growth of armies and gaining veteran abilities as they grow in experience.
Because the WarFront rules contain an in-built balancing system when forces are of different sizes (Sudden Death and Ruses/Stratagems), even when some players have played more games it would not severely unbalance the game if they have a larger force.
Try it out! Put one up in your store or gaming club today!
Playing in a "campaign" was never so easy.
Play hard and prosper!
Possible to have the edit PowerPoint file (why do you use this ?!) of WARFRONT Rules Warhammer Fantasy for a french translating?
ReplyDeleteSure. Just please include the WarhammerNarratives logo and blog link, so people can backtrack it here.
ReplyDeletehttps://drive.google.com/open?id=1FswvuUdIMMvk_ymPWuLyPmGuYrmCE7wM
More than happy to disseminate this thing :) Good luck!
I use ppt simply because I haven't invested the time in Illustrator/Acrobat, and it works well enough for me this way, to push out stuff more easily... it consumes a lot of time to put ideas into paper already, and I'd rather use a "good-enough" method and get stuff out, than using something more professional but spend even more time on it. :P
Thanks. And about the Warhammer Fantasy version?
ReplyDeleteOh I see, I hadn't noticed you had asked specifically for WH Fantasy.
DeleteThere you go:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1aaxteqfUvx-J9U_expoMtUHmxC163jgo
https://i.imgur.com/1yL2RMF.png
ReplyDeleteHi Benoit, thanks for your feedback! Sorry for the delay in replying.
Delete"Intel markers" are just another type of marker that you have in your board, to differentiate from the "Spoils" markers.
What they do is described below the table: Using up an INTEL marker grants you a Stratagem or D3 Treachery Cards to use in your battle.
Stratagems for WHFB are described in End Times: Thanquol, and allow you to add special rules for your battle. You simply apply the Stratagem bonuses, without using the other Stratagem rules of rolling off Guile/Persuasion, etc.
I have a list of Stratagems I have been building from multiple sources and optimizing, but I haven't uploaded it yet.
My work has been sucking me down a hole recently, that's why I haven't been able to update the blog recently.