I knew I wanted the campaign to last through 2011 and start in January, so I'd have to do some preparation in 2010. There were a few things that came out of the previous campaigns that we'd identified as problematic and a list of cool stuff that I wanted to include, but before I could get stuck in, I needed to know what armies everyone wanted to play.
Not as easy as it sounds, as it turns out. When I asked everyone, they replied with answers like "well, if I can borrow some figures from my mate, I'll play chaos, but otherwise skaven or high elves." Not great, considering I was really hoping we'd have a even mix of goodies and baddies (I thought an element of teamplay would make the campaign more interesting). In the end we got:
Dark Elves
High Elves
Warriors of Chaos
Wood Elves
Skaven
Brettonian
Beastmen
Empire
Perfect. Four good guys and four bad guys.
Okay, so on to the wishlist of stuff to include in the campaign:
1. Knowing what bit of the map is at stake while you're playing. I like the idea of marching into someone's hinterland and trying to kick out the villagers before burning down their houses, or struggling over mountainous terrain to capture an important copper mine, or raiding a forest to flush out the nasty beasties. In the existing Mighty Empires rules, you just have a battle and choose a place to conquer afterwards. That just didn't sound characterful enough for me, and importantly it prevented...
2. Battlefields that resemble the bit of the map you're fighting over. So if you're trying to conquer a forest, there should be tons of forest all over the board. Bear in mind that we were starting off the campaign using 7th edition rules, which punished you for using terrain. Something as mundane as a wood slowed your movement down so much you could easily spend half the battle tripping over brambles. It was just easier to avoid terrain altogether, which is why our battlefields all looked like billiard tables. In this campaign, I'd decided that players would have to take terrain, whether they wanted to or not.
3. Battlefields that resemble the type of foe you're facing. So if you're trying to invade an swamp owned by orcs, you should expect to see lots of swampy things and lots of orcy things on the table. That just seemed very necessary to me to add colour and character to the games.
4. Battlefields that look different from game to game. Because terrain used to be so toxic, people would put the same smattering of small items (eg, a copse or two of trees, and a small house) around the table each time. Every game looked the same. Whatever system of placing terrain I came up with, it would have to
a) Be random. With any method of placing terrain by choice, you're going to do it to your advantage. The "choose your table edge" method means you place terrain that will be neither beneficial nor harmful if you were to end up coming across it. I like the idea that some battles have stuff on them that are inconvenient to both players, or just surprising or interesting. Oh look, tonight's battlefield has a river! Or a watchtower. Or a flipping great big mansion hous. You get the idea.
b) Do away with choosing a table edge. We're funny creatures, us humans. Some of us turn up early and start setting up; some late. Some of us like sitting on this side because you can put your drink on the table; some of us like being by the door. So we can't use the "choose your table edge method".
c) Give the defender the advantage. Some in the group suggested that the defender should choose exactly what terrain should be placed and where. I didn't like that idea because I could see it being abused or worse, ignored (ie players would just choose to put down the same old nondescript stuff out of habit). But in principle, I liked the idea.
5. Lots of characterful stuff. I wanted to include narrative elements wherever possible. The thing that GW does so well is create a universe - a context in which to put all this stuff. The gaming group include a number of roleplayers and I know they'd all get off on lots of characterisation and story elements.
6. Lots of different stuff. There was something depressing about setting up another boring old pitched battle. There are tons of ideas and special rules that always sounded cool but which none of us have ever bothered with (like seiges, scenarios, hidden objectives, sea battles, monstrous creatures, crazy allainces etc etc). A regular gaming group gives you the opportunity to shake things up a bit; try new things.
7. A GM. Okay, it means more work for me, but a strong GMing presence would open up more opportunities. You can have secrets. Big reveals. Twists. Things to look forward to. Things to surprise you. And a whole level of richness and detail which you'd never bother with if left to your own devices.
8. More stuff. More things to build. More things to spend gold on. More special racial rules. But they had to be mostly optional. Some of the gaming group just aren't really into the whole campaign bits, they just want to turn up and play, so I couldn't pressure them to learn tons of new rules if they didn't want to.
9. A cool map. Preferably a real, plastic one with converted bits and bobs, but as it happened that was impractical to carry back and forth to the games.
Next post I'll show what I came up with....
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