"Campaigns" Topic

I am looking at the concept of running a campaign, I assume this will have been discussed here before (i have had a look and cannot find it). What I am looking for is a fairly basic campaign system that can be used for a few players and preferably without a GM as everyone wants to play.

If you need more info. I will gladly provide it. The campaign will be map based.

thanks
jon

Dear Ciaphas

Forget the map. Too much trouble and it's not worth it.

I'll give you the bet system right now… here.

1.Get everyone together and total up how much equipment you have in troops and vehicles etc. for each side.

2. Divvy up the goodies and decide what the total forces available to each side are.

3. You are the umpire.

4. Each player has a deadline. Four days before your frequency (if you game every week, month, whatever) both sides call you and tell you WHAT they want to do. This "telling you" is in the following form ONE sentence, correct English, no abbreviations or slang. Maximum twenty words. like "I want to lead a recon in force against the enemy." or "I want to take a town held by the enemy." etc.

5. You then decide what sort of action will occur.

6. Forces used in an engagement cannot be used in the next engagement. Forces used and DESTROYED in an engagement can't be used for the next THREE engagements.

7. The game ends when everyone gets tired of the campaing. The winner is the guy who won the most engagements.

Well, that's ONE way of doing it …

Use a boardgame and transfer on table the most interesting bits.
Use cards for example to draw forces or variants to avoid both sides perfect knowledge of troops and scenario
This allows a game with no Gm as you want.

Hmmmm. Not the way I'd do it O Schmidt, but then we rarely agree, and I like some form of map and some strategic thinking.

Without an umpire you might want to look at 'strategic /grand tactical' boardgames. General WW2 isn't my thing here, I only game late 1941 Western Desert, so my knowledge of board games in other theatres is limited. If you suggest a theatre and year, perhaps this might encourage some board game suggestions. Board games take most of the leg work out; they provide both campaign rules and a map – all you have to do is work out how to transpose table results to campaign results.

Ciaphas,

What scale of game are you looking at? By which I mean do players control a section or a division in the game?
And do you have a large collection of troops (relative to the size of game you expect to play) or is it restricted?

Both are fairly fundamental to the type of campaign I would suggest.

Dear Olicana

Yah and you'll fail.

The map and strategic thinking is worthless. No one really wants it and you make the mistake of having to play a game to play a game.

Gamers have no idea of strategic thinking and any strategic thinking they have to do through a map and campaign they won't- not because they're stupid, but they won't want to do the work. They want to push around tanks and men and roll dice and kill things and dream they are Sergeant Rock, Petrov, Steiner, etc.

Transferring it from a board game is even worse. You won't have all the troops to support the variety and numbers of a board game, nor the combinations of troops you're going to come up with., and they don't take most of the leg work out, they are traps which again make you play a game to play a game and it demotes the table top game to an annoyance. You now want to play the big game, the campaign and soon it will all implode because it's too much work and too complicated.

Been doing campaigns for decades. They all fail on the above methods. My method I devised kept a campaign game going of five players for four years and everyone loved it. That's because they got to fight neato battles every weekend and didn't have to do a lick of work.

No one really wants it and you make the mistake of having to play a game to play a game.

Maybe people WANT to play a game in order to play a game?

I've had no trouble converting ASL campaigns over to Fireball Forward. They are hard to find for a reasonable price so would not help the original poster though.

TooFatLardies has a campaign system for Chain of Command called "At the Sharp End" (I think). That is generally usable for any skirmish level campaign and if you already have a map and forces in mind it could prove useful. Pretty cheap too.

There was an excellent campaign book released many years ago, The Race To Tunis, a CD III Supplement that you can sometimes still find. Even if you didn't want to do that campaign a great way to model any campaign. Tom Harris was at least partially responsible for the booklet and campaign and he does have most of it at
link

Well Major B,

then you're the only one I've ever came across.

Yeah, I gotta agree with Otto. Keep it very, very, simple with as little homework for the players as possible. Assume they didn't do homework in school and they are not going to do homework for a campaign umpire. I have tried WWII campaigns with map. I asked the players for detailed orders involving a spreadsheet that I though made it simple. Evidently I was the only one that thought it was simple. I asked the players what they wanted to do. In short, they wanted to give general orders, let me figure what that meant in terms of conflict, and allow the players to argue that what I did was not what they meant. The fun drained out pretty fast as they were arguing over minor stuff and didn't regard their lack of strategic insight as a problem.

If you want long lasting campaigns, then as a general rule, what Otto said. I guess you could get away with more detail if you limited the scope of the campaign to 3-4 battles. Look at some of the Flames of War campaigns sketches they have on their website but use historical forces available from you/your players collections.

then you're the only one I've ever came across.

I didn't say I did want to play a game in order to play a game (maybe I do, maybe I don't …). The point is that you are only expressing an opinion. Just because you don't want to doesn't mean that EVERYONE else doesn't want to.

By way of example of those who DO play a game in order to play a game, I cite Henry Hyde's "Genouisse Ascendant" Campaign (as reported in MWBG).
henrys-wargaming.co.uk/?p=1616

Otto -
Don't make the mistake of believing that everyone wishes to, or should, or must approach this hobby from the same point of view as your goodself. Kudos to you and your gaming circle for sustaining campaigns of multiyear duration ….. if that is what floats everyone's boat on your particular wargaming pond. But what you are championing is only one workable approach to running a campaign. Our crowd up here in NE has, over the years, successfully run and enjoyed a wide variety of map based and board-game based campaigns – Ancients, 7YW, Napoleonics, ACW, WW2.

The most enjoyable campaigns (speaking for myself) were based upon 1814 Leipzig, 1815 Waterloo and 1864 Wilderness – all run by the inestimably clever and creative Peter Sablock using non-hex historical maps and daily turns; these involved up to 10-12 participants and were all fought out to definitive conclusions over periods of real time that very closely correlated to actual campaign time spans. I was so impressed by my experiences that I adapted Peter's approach to two campaigns of my own (Chickamauga and PQ17), both of which were also successfully carried out to conclusion.

All that having been said, I do agree with you that successful wargame campaigns to share certain principles: carefully delineate and limit what is expected from each participant; limit to the maximum degree possible the book-keeping load placed upon the participants; keep the affiliations of the other campaign participants secret and require that all communications pass through the campaign master; make clear that the campaign master = God.

There is an infinity of enjoyably different ways to skin the proverbial cat.

B

It partly depends how much stamina your players have, if they are going to lose interest after half a dozen battles (in my experience, pretty much the effort limit for most campaigns) then some sort of linked scenario thing is probably the way to go.

Some sort of replacement/carry forward of losses is nice to have. Some sort of meaningful decision making is also nice. It depends if you are running the campaign to generate battles, or to model operational command.

You may wish to have a look at the campaign system in KISS Rommel, which is simple and effective.

If you are doing platoon vs platoon, check out the Lardies "At the Sharp End" supplement. It provides information on running three different types of campaigns from simple and abstract to more detailed.

There's some character development and some stuff on how the men and the CO are feeling about how things are going. But the heart of it is the campaign ladder and how that sets up the next game.

I've played in and run many campaigns. All used a map or a game board. Some were as simple as the ancients campaign for Sicily that had them saying, "I'll make a stand outside of Syracuse" to Napoleonics using the SPI game 1809. Any that failed were from the "I'm losing, ergo I've gotten too busy to play" syndrome. My players were pleased to have the prospect of out-maneuvering their foes.

I've run multiple campaigns, from map based to linked. The linked campaigns are by far the easiest to sustain. Even then, player interest in a single period tends to wane after about 3 games/battles.

Here's a quick and easy system. However you usually come up with designs for terrain, etc., on your table, dream up 3 of them. Then each side secretly divides their forces into 3 sub-forces: one for each table. Fight the 3 battles. Whoever wins at least 2 of the 3 wins the campaign.

The same could be done for any number of tables, but 3 is the minimum.

Here is a campaign that was done online a few years ago (I was the French player). It worked really well. But it did have, and need, an umpire/game master. (Unfortunately, the last few battles of that campaign have never been added to this site.) link

O Schmidt, you really must get out more. Not all players mind committing to a 'long game'. Though, I guess it does depend on the company you keep (or that keep you).

I agree with you that most players don't want to commit to a campaign lasting a year or more, or that players will drop out if asked to put in written orders every week. That is why I suggested a board game as the basis for a campaign. Such things don't apply in these games.

Blimey, do you really think you have the answer for everything when it comes to war gaming and that no one else can have a solution.

Anyway, O Schmidt, my very best regards to you,

James

I have used the boardgame to individual battles system and it has been fine so far.
Used mighty empires for GW fantasy over a 4 year period with a 'seasons' system to get short term winners.
We used Fortress Europa map for battalion size battles.FoW rules
I missed a Gibson games kingmaker WoTR campaign. A coat of steel rules
My favourite was using the SPI war of the ring map and GW LoTR rules.
To be fair the ww2 campaign was unfinished but highly enjoyable .each to their own I suppose as any campaign idea ultimately needs the backing of the people taking part.

It all depends on what you want out of a campaign. We did a modern campaign, just two of us, but it would have worked at 1/144 in WWII. This was a long road run about 6 km of relatively dense terrain, with an alternative bur restricted route. This road was defended by roughly by a company with engineering capacity but the need to buy time to execute the work. This required the commanders to decide where and when to delay and when to replace units that were exhausted (fear,fire,fuel and ammo). Possibly not a massive multi player game. It depends on what the campaign aims are. Ours was to work closer to a general planning an operation lasting longer than the capabilities of the first battle group fielded. In our case the attacker needed close on a regiment to do the job. One platoon dug in with engineering support,took 2 companies alone to dislodge and they were up to nothing at the end of it.

However I agree it's not every bodied cup of tea. Although it's all on on board it still is difficult rationing artillery, defining replacement points and practical objectives for each unit. The rules may not need this, but the players do to stay sane and not get wiped out when they run out of fuel or ammo.

Pardon the plug, but if you are looking for a variety of campaign mechanics ideas, we carry a $19 USD (plus shipping) booklet called Wally Simon's Campaign Secrets of Wargame Design (#4)that provides a dozen different campaign ideas.

NOTE: None of the 12 is specific to WWII, but most of the various mechanisms can be adapted pretty much to any period.

* Dot Wars: Armies on the Move
* Solo Campaign: Zulus Against British
* Simplified Campaigning: Napoleonics and Status
* Campaign Anyone? British Colonial Era Ideas
* Ancients Campaign: Army and Commander Points
* American Civil War Campaigning: Styles and Substances
* Zulu Uprising: A Mini Campaign
* England vs. Colonies: American War of Independence Campaign
* Lost Napoleonic Campaign: Planned Moves and Victory Boxes
* Rhombusia Campaign: Colonization and Rebellion
* Campaign Trail: Play by Mail Wargaming
* A Map Exercise: Tiered Movement