Hi All,
Because I want to be lazy and paint today I decided to slot in an interview I did with one of the organizers for the event Chris Stover.
1. Tell me a bit about you and the other organizers, what armies do you play? How long have you been playing and what are some past events you have organized?
I’ve been collecting Warhammer 40K miniatures since I was about 6 years old; although, I don’t think I played my first real game until I was maybe 10. My first true army was a hodgepodge of metal imperial guard that I managed to scrounge together from my collection. Over the years I’ve collected just about every faction available to some degree or another, but I found my true passion in terrain and creating immersive gaming environments. Throughout my time playing, I’ve organized many small narratives, but really started getting into the event scene when I began running the game room for the Valhalla gaming retreat around 2015 and providing terrain for the NOVA 40K narrative the next year.
2. How is the event structured? How do you try to involve players in the story?
We try to make NOVA Narratives more than just showing up and playing normal games with a narrative background, both in the structure of teams and the game experience itself. To let players decide how involved they get, we set up four tiers of play with varying degrees of impact and commitment, Warlord, Lieutenant, Sergeant, and Militia. Warlords set the tone of each round of conflict, and the story evolves based on the outcomes of planets, battlefields, and certain preset thresholds, which all players can have an impact on. Additionally, we have multiple ways for players to feel involved in the overall narrative and the personal development of their forces by detaching certain game objectives from relying on winning or losing.
3. How do you develop your ideas for these events? Do you have the stories build on a past event or start fresh every year? What is the narrative hook for this year’s event?
This year is a fresh start. Fortunately, we wrapped up the 7-year story line for the previous narrative in 2019 and were already planning to start over. The narrative hook for this year centers around the reemergence of a lost imperial system, Aquilonium Ignotix, the disappearance of an Admech Excavation Contingent and subsequent Raptor search party, and other strange happenings, but the details will be released in small injects leading up to the event and during, so I don’t want to spoil anything here. Like narratives past, though, we focus on two meta factions instead of the traditional Imperium, Chaos, and Xenos. This serves a functional and narrative purpose as it represents the confusion that often happens in the 40K universe about who’s really the good guy or bad guy (or at least what objectives are done for the right or wrong reason), and allows both balanced teams and more player choice. I learned a couple of lessons when Imperial soup with a Castellan was all the rage, 1. It can be hard to get enough folks to sign up for an under-powered faction and 2. Playing every game against Blood Angels, Loyal 32, and Knights and getting stomped….well it sucks…even in a narrative. With the meta faction structure, and personal motivations, you get much more varied sides, battle-groups, and opponents.
4. Are you planning to use any of the crusade elements in the campaign? Why or why not? Are there any story concerns about how some armies take over/consume/ integrate planets as part of their rules?
We will be using crusade elements this year with some degree of customization. Players can decide how much of their crusade sections they want to use, but the minimum will be using Crusade elements in initial list creation. I won’t be banning any crusade elements that deal with world conquest mechanics; however, I also won’t be factoring in things like that for the campaign/narrative progression.
5. What are you most excited about for this event?
Honestly, I just love seeing folks playing on thematic terrain and having fun immersing themselves. I have some other surprises in store that I’m pretty excited to reveal, but those will have to wait!
6. I saw you disallowed Legends units, is this primarily about balance? Do you have a particular example of a unit you were thinking about when creating this rule?
It’s sort of a three-fold issue. Balance, Opponent Unfamiliarity, and Lack of Ruling Precedent should situations arise. They don’t really go through any rigorous playtesting or points adjustments after getting sent to legends, and as the rules move on, some legacy rules language or interactions may cause unfun or confusing situations. Second, they just aren’t commonly played anymore, so opponents may end up with tons of questions that could frustrate or slow games down. Lastly, narrative events don’t really have the judge support that GTs have, so trying to translate and or interpret questions about legends rules without being able to rely on other ruling precedence could overburden our small team. We may reconsider next year.
Thanks Chris! I am really excited to be attending, and can’t wait to see what you all have cooked up. Are you coming to NOVA and the narrative event? Let me know in the comments!
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