Good morning all,
My local club has recently wrapped up out first major crusade campaign which started last May. Over the course of a year or so I have learned a lot about running these campaigns (and some of the unexpected issues to try and balance). The following is a debriefing about the strategies I used during my campaign, and an analysis of what worked and what didn’t. Hopefully it will be helpful for you as you plan or participate in your next crusade!
Initial Setup:
When I developed the campaign I set it on a small, fringe colony on the eastern part of the galaxy. The story involved a civil war between two imperial factions with a fair degree of ambiguity as to who was in the right. Players were divided into three categories: One for each group of loyalists and a third renegade option (these teams weren’t faction locked). Players earned points for playing in battles and narrative events and the points leader in each group impacted the narrative outcome.
The crusade was designated to only run 8-10 months from the start (which is about as long as you can keep a coherent narrative together). Players who joined late were allowed to pick 3 units to automatically get to the first level of experience so they could play catch-up. Aside from players choosing their own battles, there were three narrative events as well: two apocalypse battles and one narrative day featuring team and individual events.
We tried some home-brew balancing rules such as: players could only have a max of 10 Crusade point difference in their rosters) and used the Site: Administratum.net to coordinate our rosters. Additionally we allowed players one extra agenda per battle than they usually got (so 3 in a 2,000 point game). Rosters started at 2000 points and players could increase the size of their rosters using RPs but all battles had to be fought at the same point limit.
What Worked
Overall, not to toot my own horn, I think the campaign was a success. While some people played a lot more games than others we had a good number of participants (14 total) especially given how many books were yet to release when the event began. The narrative events were well attended (a special shout-out to Dave who volunteered to be the DD at a beer festival so that he could be sober enough to make the final event!) The story was flexible enough to adjust to the outcomes of the narrative events in a satisfying manner. While the story quickly became one-sided I was able to adapt it such that there was still some tension. Additionally, several players even wrote their own fluff pieces at the end and shared them with our group which I thought was really cool.
What Didn’t Work Well
As I always feared, the balance home-brew rules were quickly forgotten by most players (myself included). They were also questionably effective. As some players raced out ahead of others, the balance between rosters deteriorated. People also started to crumple under the weight of all the book-keeping especially as the size of the rosters and number of battles increased. With three factions it was hard to keep a narrative balance as there were two very active players and then a big drop off (this was also made balancing the apocalypse games more difficult as the number of superheavies didn’t always line up well). Finally, it was difficult to maintain some sort of balance early as the gulf between armies with crusade rules and those without was significant.
Plans for the Next Campaign
With one proper crusade campaign under my belt I am working with the coordinator of my local club on our next campaign. As is my goal the story of this next event will build on the events of the past one in order to create a setting that is localized to our community. In order to refine our events we are going to be implementing the following trial changes:
- Rather than track every unit in a roster, players will create a unit sheet for every character model and one unit from each battlefield slot (Troop, Elite, Flyer, etc.) Any units added through army-specific requisitions can also gain experience but players are not allowed to use more than one of these units per slot in a battle (character units are excluded).
- We will be removing the standard battle traits tables with a new one that focuses on more interesting options such as: gaining Core, getting a once per game deny the which roll, auto-passing morale etc.
- We will divide the campaign up into three sections and will use one of the Crusade supplement’s rules missions, upgrades, stratagems etc. After each third we will have an Apoc mission or narrative event day to close that chapter and move the story forward.
- Your opponent will get to pick which unit is marked for greatness at the end of each battle.
- We will try using the Octarius rules for the campaign, it’s all quite daunting but our goal is to try and start using some of these interesting crusade rules that have been published. There is going to be the danger of someone coming up with a weird combination out of left-field but I guess that is Crusade in a nutshell haha.
As ever I will be providing updates as we go along. I would love to hear your feedback about what you think will work and what your think won’t. It’s a great time to be a narrative player!
And remember, Frontline Gaming sells gaming products at a discount, every day in their webcart!
