Weekender XLBS: Are Campaigns Better Than One-Off Games?
March 8, 2020 by dignity
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Happy Sunday!
Happy Sunday!
“No” is my simple answer to the question before hearing your discussion.
– What about organised play?
– What about the ability to organise a pick-up game at the last minute before club night?
No doubting that campaigns can be a lot of fun.
Happy Sunday mate
Be interesting to know your thoughts after watching 🙂
Oh, I’m all for campaign play whenever possible and extending the game beyond the tabletop session, but the question was “should we all ONLY play campaigns?”
I was thinking of other games and systems that include an element of either resource management, or inter-battle manoeuvres and skirmishes that influence the upcoming battle (inc the element of surprise), or post battle impact on what follows meaning losing well is worthwhile striving for. Here’s a few…
– Diplomacy boardgame for macro map play (simultaneous hidden orders and agreements). See Torros’ comment below about getting someone else to fight your battles for you!
– HATE by CMON, campaign level resource mgt including how captured enemy could be… let’s say, “converted into resources”.
(Got to run, have more to add later)
–
The English translation of the US term “quarterbacking” in co-OP gaming is “Alpha gaming” (not the same as “alpha striking”). It’s often a fine line between coaching new players how to play a game in terms of rules and mechanics, and telling them what decisions they should make.
Yup. I detest alpha-gaming. So many coop games I might as well just not play because someone else at the table is doing all the playing for the group…I have to make sure that folks really don’t do it when playing the likes of Pandemic etc
Happy Sunday!
I really love a good campaign! I think it helps bring narrative into the battles, prevents/diminishes just throwing troops away into meat-grinders and I really love the development part of campaigns as you build up skills and equipment.
Campaign style games can mean you have to take troops you might not normally take in one off games eg light scout cavalry. These would be the guys who would locate the enemy but also the ones who would protect your army if you were withdrawing from the field or harry the enemy and not allowing them to regroup if they were withdrawing
If you look at Waterloo and the casualties for the allies which was 24000 men killed, missing or wounded (I think of which about 5000 were killed ) out of 118,000 and that is seen as an absolute bloodbath
Great show guys.
If @avernos @warzan @dignity you guys want to try out a campaign then why not give Sharp Pradtice a go? Dawns and Departures is one of the best campaign systems out there and it’s very quick and easy. I’d be happy to GM the story for you over email/discord.
Lord of the Rings was built to be played as a campaign. All the early Sourcebooks and scenarios were linked and it took a few years before they started doing things like limiting allies and making proper points match style scenarions.
On your Siege of Jerusalem point yesterday @warzan first of all wow you are really doing some hardcore research well done. One small point. The number 185,000 dead is debated by religious scholars and now we think that the number 5180 is more accurate and there was a mix up with the numbers at some point. The bit about paying the bribe is also biblical as we read that the King of Israel emptied all the gold from the temples to pay the Assyrians and it wasn’t enough.
I would say most figures for casualties and army sizes should be viewed by a certain amount scepticism
In campaigns knowing when not to fight is just as important of when to fight. There are many examples in history of armies desperately trying not to get engaged with the enemy until they are ready to
On a silly note many years ago our club ran a 2 day Hordes of the things campaign. Our country as each country had 3 players managed to win fir wan of a better word the campaign by not having to fight an actual battle but by persuading others to fight our battles for us
so pretty much like the real world then … 😉
I love the idea of campaigns, unfortunately i only get a game in once every few months, so chances of getting a campaign going is basically impossible.
Is it with the same people every few months.
If so you could easily link those and use the time in between to do any book keeping and plan the next game.
If not then you probably are screwed
No, its just with who ever is free at the time.
Does Modiphius not have a special system for campaigns in Fallout?
I really like the idea of ransoming or prisoner exchange. How about if you fail to pay the ransom then the prisoners are executed and beheaded then the heads can be used as ammo and cause morale issues when hit. Terror? or hatred?
Have you tried Irregular miniatures for your 6mm WW2, they do Commandos and Germans
I’m pretty sure during the Weekender you said last weeks winner was revealed on the site. I’m not seeing the last 2 weeks worth of winners. Someone need to whip a whip’er. Or just send me the prizes 🙂
I’ve always loved the idea of a campaign with progression. The problem I alwasy come down to (Beyond player availability/consistency) is that the advantages end up going to the victor so if one player wins a few games they ten to end up unbeatable from then on. I like the idea of scenarios having separate objectives that do no contribute to that battle, but have effects on the next or on a players troop roster going forwards. This means you can throw this game but chase those objectives. Not quite sure how it would work though where a weaker opponent could do this if they couldn’t win the game anyway.
On the subject of Coronavirus: “Nation turns to Warhammer players for advice on how to stay at home for two weeks”
https://newsthump.com/2020/03/04/nation-turns-to-warhammer-players-for-advice-on-how-to-stay-at-home-for-two-weeks/
Happy Sunday folks!
After the rigmarole I went through to solve #18, #19 was a doddle.
Does somebody have screenshots for #1-#15? I wanna go earn some sweet xp.
Would be nice to see Lloyd join the Clash crew, I have some Republican Romans that want to smash those Carthaginians. Feel my pilum, bitches!
The chat about campaigns was interesting. Linked games don’t have to be played over weeks – the Kings of War International Campaign Day was great fun and something I would definitely want to take part in again. One thing the discussion did bring to mind is we don’t play enough asymmetric games, games were both forces have completely different objectives and scenario driven games.
A ruleset you may want to have a read of is Ragnarok – Heavy Metal Combat in a Viking Age… As far as I can remember, it doesn’t even tell you how to play one off pick up games and has been designed to be played as a campaign. I was impressed when I read them and even bought some Vikings so I would have a starting Warband – not that they are painted or I have played it yet…
On the fleeing troops front, a game I’ve been looking at recently is Battle Valor Fantasy. In it there isn’t a moral break, but you can elect to have units flee if you think they’re in hot water, and as they do so the mechanics are such that a fleeing unit may slowly disintegrate as bases get left behind (in it to flee you roll a die for each base and for each success one base does a full double movement for its flee and each failure one base only does a regular movement so gets separated from the main body, representing troopslagging behind due to fatigue, injury, etc, and if they stay separated the lagging bases get removed as they succumbing injury, fatigue, etc).
Regarding capturing troops: something you could do is when a unit is cornered you could give peasant minis some sort of last stand bonus representing them fighting harder because they know if they get captured they’ll get executed while the nobs will get a comfy cell and be ransomed.
A fair few games are coming with campaign rules in the rulebook now I noticed.
Things like aeronautica and SPRQ.
I don’t mind pick-up games. But then again, we play so many different systems that it never gets boring. If you only play 1 or 2 (or 10) different systems then i could see it getting a bit stale.
An idea for the “fighting a losing battle in a campaign”. Maybe you could abandon the scenario objective, thus losing the game, but get a secondary objective. Examples could be:
Fighting Retreat. You can only move away from the enemy but any enemy killed count as double, which will hopefully put them off completely destroying your army.
Minimise Losses. Again you can only move away, but any friendly losses from that point onward only count as half. Or you get some sort of defence/armour bonus. So you will hopefully preserve more of your army for next game.
The animal skin huts can be great for Zulu’s or Orks depending on the game your playing @avernos
If you’re into campaign games you could do this around a map so you can have a record of terrain an supply’s to dictate pro’s & con’s in following game’s.
I like the ‘resources on the tabletop’ that can be looted and that are the currency you spend between games.
Very nice. ??
Yay XLBS.
Happy Sunday all. 😀
Happy Sunday Jim, hope life’s treating you well
Thanks, @avernos . Sailing is smooth enough at the moment. 😀 Hope it’s the same with you.
not bad at all, staying well liquored up so I am immune to coronavirus. I’m pretty sure that’s what the medical advice said to do.
Like Churchill said (so the legend goes) before heading to Yalta in ’45…
“The Crimea? I believe I can bear it, provided an adequate supply of whiskey. Good for the digestion, and deadly on lice.”
Campaigns are great. If you’ve got time and space to play them.
For me campaigns are nearly impossible to do (at this moment in my life) because I don’t get to play more than once a week simply because of time restraints. And since Star Wars: Legion hasn’t really implemented any long term campaigns (yet) I can’t really do it since I’d have to come up with some rules for it and I don’t really have time for that.
That being said there are boardgames that work like a campaign in them selves (Like Mice & Mystic and Stuffed Fables) by making it easy to set up and put away afterwards. Maybe it’s just the scale for me.
Again: I like the idea and concept of Campaigns but currently short skirmishes are for me the way to go. This is the way.
Maybe when I’m old(er) and grey(er) I might find time and space to indulge myself into more and longer playing sessions 😉
Years ago I played a Battle Fleet Gothic campaign and found that linking battles had completely the opposite effect to what was intended – i.e. ensuring players kept playing the game to the end. In a campaign game the minute a player started to loose the cost of continuing to fight was deemed too great so their forces disengaged so that their ships would not take any further damage. This was probably much worse in Battle Fleet Gothic where a spaceship could choose to leave the battle simply by passing a leadership test. However the underlying point is that in a campaign you have to balance the cost of loosing against the potential gains of winning. If players don’t stand to gain enough from winning they will retreat too readily.
Happy Sunday, yep agree with the mighty Gerry, love a campaign once again being a solo player you can’t beat them, take Bolt Action you can go from The D-Day landings right through to the fall of Berlin using the same unit and all its challenges for re-supply of ammo, food, new troops, prisoners etc love them and even if you just have a small skirmish patrol game you can tie into the campaign.
I like the idea of story mode alot and think games would be better for it. A few think you may want to consider for a narrative campaign:
Currency (to buy benefits)
A discount structure to allow the people falling behind to catch up.
If you have baggage on the table retreating units could take it with them assuming they have space to do so. So using a rear guard to buy you the time…..
It could well be that the winner of the battle may be at a disadvantage for the next game, as they extend their lines, the one after they may reap the rewards …..
There are loads of cool ways to make a story and play it
BLUF answer for me is Yes, always campaign over a one off game. I NEED A STORY. In a campaign you get to make your own story!
What’s up @silverfox8 ? 😀
Always prefer campaigns myself, one-off games I usually use for only for recruiting / instruction, playtesting, or historical commemorations (we recently did USMC on Iwo Jima for the 75th Anniversary).
We’ve got two community-based campaigns going on OTT at the moment, one modern (private military contractors), one for sci-fi in Darkstar.
Trying to get another one going for American Revolution, an “alternate history” campaign that imagines a third campaign in upstate New York in 1778 (after Saratoga in 1777, but before Sullivan Campaign against the Iroquois in ’79). Sort of “gaming in the gaps” as @warzan might say. 😀 This way we get the feel of American Revolution, but aren’t bound by historical outcomes / timelines.
Hope you’re doing well!
open ended campaign….so the folks have flexibility….and throw in side treks or one shot scenarios…..then when all are raring to go…back to the main campaign….and i found this keep the campaign going for eternity…until we grew up…we still drink beer and give tribute to many who have fallen….and roar with delight at our journeys
15mm biblical: https://www.magistermilitum.com/era/biblical.html?cat%5B0%5D=59625
If that’s the old Chariot range then it’s generally pretty awful
I don’t know. I was just browsing the site yesterday and remembered they had this biblical stuff including crucifixions and angels in 15mm
LMAO
Hmmm yes getting people together to play can be hard, especially when some buggers off to Tenerife when a session was organised 4 months in advance…… just saying……. @dignity
I’ve played campaigns and most just are not fun, usually because of “cascading failure syndrome.”
Let’s take an example. I play the first game of a campaign and lose. Why doesn’t matter, bad luck, incorrect strategy, whatever. It really doesn’t matter why. Now typically, the winner gets benefits that can be used in the next game and the loser has negatives. It doesn’t matter what the benefits or negatives are, they just exist and apply to the next game.
The way most campaigns are structured, the winner of the first game is more likely to win the second game. And the loser is more likely to lose the second game. That’s the “cascading failure.” You lost, therefore you’re more like to lose again, and again and so on. And the upward or downward spirals are unlikely to be changed.
I’ve seen this in multiple game systems, so it’s not just the games themselves, it’s the basic campaign structure.
Yes, you can mitigate this by losers only playing losers or winners only playing winners but in many campaigns, a clear winner is established early and his/her lead becomes insurmountable and everyone just drops out due to sheer frustration.
Are there ways to prevent this? Sure, by a proper campaign structure.
Narrative campaigns are the easiest. The results of the fist game determines the scenario for the following games. The armies are still equal but the win/lost still retains value as it dictates the next game. Such a narrative could be mission 1 is a patrol. If you win, then the next mission is a raid for you into the enemy territory. Win again and the next scenario is whatever you want. But you can map it out with branching storylines and then keep track of that either by opponent or by overall successes.
So, I’m not opposed to campaigns, but the structure has to be really well thought out to prevent early wins or losses from becoming insurmountable obstacles to fun games.
I’ve designed and run a campaign or two. It’s a tricky balance. Yes, campaigns must provide some measure of momentum. Victories have to MEAN something. Wins and losses have to carry forward to the next series of engagements or else what’s the point? BUT … What you say is also totally true. Campaigns must also allow room for TURNING POINTS.
Two or three early victories cannot result in an avalanche that cannot be stopped.
We’d all be speaking German, otherwise.
Of Course Gerry is right , he is always right (unless he is wrong) , in fact the idea ended up with is very similar to some of the linked game campaigns mentioned in quite few rule systems, When Fantasy Flight brought out the big ships for X wing, we played the one for the corvette, well up to game two when it blew up !
I feel your pain regarding horses without tackle @avernos. I have been looking everywhere for those online without luck. I managed to find some from a company (by complete coincidence in the wonderful Battlefield Berlin store) but I unfortunately unblistered them and now I can’t remember the manufacturer. But they were metal and in a black blister pack…. I think ;-P
essex do some I believe, but they cleverly don’t show their own product on their own website, because people don’t like to sell their own stuff I think.
Tuesday it is!
Interesting topic today, although it kind of was two separate ones: in-game retreating and confusion and post-game consequences.
I’ve played a few campaigns (not finished any…) and one question I think you need to ask yourselves is which game is more important, the tabletop game or the campaign game? It’s very easy for players to prioritise the campaign game which means you get people min-maxing armies, playing very cautiously and/or setting up games which are very one-sided, etc. In which case you might be better off playing a board game type strategy game.
If you want to keep the focus on the tabletop war game then in my experience you need to keep the campaign side of things, and the consequences to a minimum. In your discussion about resource rather than model implications you might be on to something.
The way I’d like to do it is to have story consequences. e.g. if you get slaughtered the next game is a siege game. You can still play an ‘even / matched play’ game, but the result of the previous game determined the scenario. Alternatively, you could have other ways of rewarding players. So, the aim of the campaign isn’t to come first but to tell a cool story. The general who got defeated several times in a row, took to the hills, raided opponents and developed a reputation for treating prisoners well would be an interesting story arc / character development. You might want to create some kind of mechanic for regulating this, not to create extra rules, but simply to give some structure and focus. e.g. Both generals pick a reputation card at the end of the game. None of the options need have any in-game effects, but by the end of the campaign your general’s personality and reputation will be defined by the cards you picked in response to the outcomes of games.
The other thing I’d like someone to do is create a campaign that balances victories with defeats so that games remain balanced even while the combatants change. For example, if you win, you receive ten extra troops who are worth 100 extra points to reflect your expanded territory. The loser’s army retreats to the mountains and only the toughest survive. The loser’s army gains a universal +1 resilience that is worth 100 extra points. So there would still be consequences of losing a game, but players would not actually be penalised.
Interesting topic this week. One of the pit falls of any campaign is if the player/s who are doing well become more powerful, while the player/s who are doing badly become weaker. This can create an ever decreasing circle of predictable outcomes. Thinking on this I had the idea that could work for some systems. Let’s say you only had basic officers to lead your forces at the beginning of the campaign, with fairly basic units at their disposal. Winning games gives you access to more specialist troops and equipment as your superiors trust you more and more after seeing results. If you begin to lose however, more senior leaders will have to intervene to get things back on track, so you might have more powerful leaders along with their household troops become available. It would create two different progression paths that would help keep the game balanced as well as introducing new units in limited supply!
One thing that stands out to me from the discussion is a binary win/lose situation.
A number of games have a points system to determine the margin of the win. So once a player determines that they aren’t likely to win, they can still play to make the margin of loss the least possible, rather than being resigned to their fate (or knocking their King over and shuffling away mumbling).
I have yet to come across a wargame that rewards a player for force preservation, rather than a fight to the death. If someone knows of such a game, then please inform me as I’m keen to find one.
I am aware that current 40K has a deck that draws objectives each round, if I have this correct, that are used in the scoring for the winner. Perhaps once a side has taken a number of casualties, an automatic inclusion could be some form of withdrawal from the battlefield that the opponent has to try prevent.
For a while now I have wondered why wargames’ objectives aren’t more battle realistic, take the hill, crossroads, farmhouse, capture ammo depot sort of thing. In a number of game systems the only impact of terrain is blocking line of sight, maybe impeding movement…
I’d certainly like to see that change….
Could a scenario be played out on the tabletop were one side is trying to engage in a battle and the other doing their best not to be caught where they are? Or is that more of a off table, between game sort of thing?
Thank you guys for your concern about my Greeks. In the cold light of day, once the tears had gone. I have assembled them all and now i am in the process of touching up my Greeks :O
Totally agree that linked game series can be more satisfying than one-offs. I have often run into problems with the winners keep winning issue which gets boring. Generally winners advantages should be small and not stack from game to game to game.