ordinarybass | 27 Feb 2015 8:27 a.m. PST |
I'm curious to hear if anyone can point me in the direction of any territory based (ideally using a map) campaign systems that are either generic or could be easily adapted. Free would be nice, but I'm not averse to purchasing something. In past years our summer Song of Blades campaign has been mostly narrative. We've of course tracked our warbands' progress and sometimes kept win loss tallies, we've even created maps and locations to give our games a sense of location. However, we've never really had a campaign where groups gain control of land and it's resources or any such thing. I don't feel up to writing such a thing, and would rather use a system that is already made requiring not too much modification. Note that the scope isn't entirely set at this point, so I'd be as interested in systems that span a wide area of land as I would be in warring over neighborhoods in a city. Also, simiplicity is generally favored by the group, so if you've got a simple home-brew system I'd love to see it. I look forward to your advice. |
Justin Penwith | 27 Feb 2015 8:36 a.m. PST |
Two Hour Wargames' Rally Round the King has a nice & easy campaign system. link It is available as a pdf, or softcover book. |
Ed the Two Hour Wargames guy | 27 Feb 2015 9:21 a.m. PST |
Here's the map Justin was talking about in a campaign that's been going on for 5 years or so. link |
snodipous | 27 Feb 2015 9:36 a.m. PST |
The campaign system for Dux Britanniarum is really nice. It's not generic – in its original incarnation, it's designed for Saxons raiding into Britain and taking territory, so there's an aggressive raiders vs. defenders dynamic. That said, it shouldn't be too hard to adapt it to other situations and other warbands. You would have to re-text the charts and options to suit your story, but I guess that would be the case with any system you find. |
Jcfrog | 27 Feb 2015 9:47 a.m. PST |
Look on cyberboard, no doubt you'l find some strategic boardgames with zones. |
Great War Ace | 27 Feb 2015 9:53 a.m. PST |
Using the Kingmaker system produces fun campaigns that generate lots of battles. I adapted it to my own island realm, created my own map, nobility, and decks of cards accordingly. The system is simplicity incarnate…. |
boy wundyr x | 27 Feb 2015 12:53 p.m. PST |
RRtK is really nice, I'm looking to use it for things like an Imagi-nation India too. Dux B could also work, and the Canadian Wargames Group's ECW rules had a really nice system too, the only downside to me was events were tied to the VP total and force levels, hard to disentangle that to use for other periods. |
Rudysnelson | 27 Feb 2015 3:42 p.m. PST |
For ancients and medieval we used Supreme Warlord for decades. Originally released in 1984 as a hex system, it revised in the 1990s as a area and a second version for point to point. Later years we did other versions for later eras. |
shelldrake | 27 Feb 2015 4:43 p.m. PST |
The campaign rules from "1644" ECW rules are worth a look at too. Very simple and easily adapted to other settings. I actually purchased a copy of the rules just for the campaign section. |
Chinggis | 28 Feb 2015 4:16 a.m. PST |
The Society of Ancients used to do a small boardgame called Emperor of the Steppes which has a decent sized and useful map of the Mongol wars included. Don't know whether it's still on their books though. I'm thinking of adapting it for a solo campaign at some stage. soa.org.uk/joomla |
ordinarybass | 28 Feb 2015 11:41 a.m. PST |
Thanks for the suggestions, keep em coming. Has anyone worked out or seen ultra simple rules. Something where you have a map and each victory gains this number of hexes, etc. |
Pattus Magnus | 28 Feb 2015 2:23 p.m. PST |
I'm currently doing an ultra-simple campaign of that sort. It's so simple that I hesitate to use the term "rules" to describe it – it was originally intended to be more of a structure for trash-talk with a regular gaming opponent! It works like this: 1. Make your map with a couple dozen territories/cities/resource nodes/whatever. (Ours is "Petrolia" a continent based loosely on the 'footprint' of the city we live in, and the territories are neighbourhoods.) 2. Define links between territories – I use roads and sea-lanes, with distances highly abstracted, but hexes would also work as long as travel is easier in some directions than others (thus creating strategically useful crossroads, etc) 3. Pick one home territory each. (In my case, we used the neighbourhoods we actually live in – which was the original starting point of the trash-talk that the campaign grew out of) 4. Play the wargame of your choice. 5. Whoever wins claims a territory adjacent to one already held – the name of the battle is then retrofitted to the claimed territory (ex. player A wins and claims the territory called "Sandwark" adjacent to his capital then the battle is entered in the histories as "The Battle of Sandwark" – the fact that if the other player won then a completely different territory would have been claimed is wilfully ignored…) 6. Roll for "ripple effects" from the conquest. Basically, any territory that is NOT the capital of one of the players might decide to capitulate when a territory adjacent to it falls (thus sparing itself being sacked…). The likelihood of a territory capitulating is determined by the degree of victory the winner achieved. Since we usually play DBA and we use a d6 roll, we take the number of elements killed by the victor (and adjust for sacking camps and killing generals), subtract the number of elements (and camps and generals) killed by the loser, then subtract that from 7 to give the "capitulation roll target" for each territory. For example, I win the game 4 elements to 2, so the capitulation number is 7-(4-2) = 5. If I just took Sandwark and it has 2 adjacent territories each would capitulate on a d6 roll of 5 or 6. 6A. We use one exception to "adjacent" – because ports connect via sea lanes to ALL other ports on our map we ruled that other ports are NOT considered adjacent – instead the player would have to launch a naval action to take a connected port (which would be played with a naval action game) We opted to avoid ALL book-keeping, aside from marking on the map who holds which territories. We totally ignore supply and logistics (armies can attack from any held territory). We also ignore attrition between battles (in each game both players start with a full army). Despite being dead-simple, it's been a lot of fun so far campaigning in Petrolia and has added a new dimension to between-game (and in-game) trash talk. |
ordinarybass | 01 Mar 2015 11:34 a.m. PST |
Mr Magnus, you're a genius! That's just the kind of thing I was looking for. I may add some in-campaign rewards for conquering certain territories, but it's definitely a solid base to work from. Appreciated. |
Pattus Magnus | 01 Mar 2015 12:37 p.m. PST |
You're welcome, I'm glad the ideas may be useful! One of the interesting (and initially unanticipated) side-effects of the "ripple effect" rule, combined with a transportation network where each node has a different number of connections (ours is based on the actual system of major streets/freeways/rapid transit routes in the city) is that it inherently makes highly connected territories more desirable because taking one gives more adjacent places that might capitulate, and so faster expansion. In general, those highly connected territories are toward the centre of the map so there has been a tendency for our empires to expand toward each other even without any other system of rewards to encourage us toward conflict (of course we also agreed from the outset that the campaign would be a structure for war, so desire for conquest is a given). That's not to imply that you shouldn't add a set of rewards for taking certain territories – I can see how that would be a fun addition – just that interesting stuff happens anyway! Have fun with it and keep us possted how it works. I'd be interested in hearing about any innovations you add! |
Pattus Magnus | 01 Mar 2015 12:50 p.m. PST |
BTW, I should add that I took a lot of inspiration about how to do an ultra-simple campaign from Tony Bath's book on campaigns – it mainly explains complex campaigns, but the chapter on simple ones has some great ideas. I also lifted the idea of 'ripple effects' from an article in Wargames Soldiers and Strategy about doing a Seleucids vs Ptolemys campaign. That's why I want to hear what you do, more ideas to draw from! |
ordinarybass | 09 Mar 2015 6:47 a.m. PST |
Thanks for that. If I can find time to incorporate this kind of thing into our summer campaign you can be sure that it will all be documented on our blog with notices here. |
Henry Martini | 09 Mar 2015 10:33 p.m. PST |
There's a very simple but complete free medieval campaign system on the Junior Generals website that focuses on feuding barons. |