Campaign Series - What is Narrative Gaming?

[Auticus]

[url]http://baelsoubliette.wordpress.com/2014/05/02/forging-the-narrative-what-is-narrative-gaming/[/url]

A campaign series of articles I am writing. Part I is "What is Narrative Gaming" in the first place. (IMO)

[Mad Cat]

Interesting stuff. I like the idea of usign less than optimised units in campaigns representing the fact that those forces were all that was available to repel the enemy. Example - an Imperial player is tasked with defending a system agains a Tyranid horde and from each planet (or continent or hive city etc) he can raise troops. If one area can provide 20 Ogryns then even though they are poor for the points you may want to put a pin in that area on the map to get hold of them to fend off the invasion.

A campaign where the rules tell you what you can use can be a nice change rather than simply giving you a point limit and people just bring a finley tuned tournament force along to each battle. The problem there however is you assume each player has access to those models needed.

Designing narative scenarios can be a good way of encouraging players to bring along different stuff. In a "Defend the Bridge" scenario for example expect to see more static firepower units and fortifications brought along. In a "Destroy the fuel dump" scenario expect more flyers, bikes and skimmers etc.

GW does very little to "Forge a Narrative" in its campaigns. Most of them take the form of just playing any game against any enemy player in any map area you like then send in the results and place a flag if you win.



My personal favourite are limited linked scenario campaigns without too many players who have a set number of games so it doesn't always fade as 40% of your players drop out over time.

For example my VANTOR PRIME campaign was run over 3 Wednesday nights and one all-day Saturday session at the end. It was for 4 Chaos players and 4 Imperial players. Each person had to pay £5 but if they turned up to all their games they got their £5 back (forefited deposits were spent on cream cakes for the final game).
Session 1 was 4 individual games of 40k at 1500 points each.
Session 2 was 2 doubles games of 1500 points per player.
Session 3 was 4 individual games of 40k at 1750 points each.
Session 4 was a big apocalypse game with all players and 10,000 points a side (4x2k + 2k of superheavies).

Some scenarios in sessions 1 and 3 were from the 40k rulebook, others were specially designed such as capture the bridge, planet strike, cityfight, Spearhead etc. I wanted to put in a BFG or AI scenario too but there wasn't the demand. Victories in session 1 & 2 got you a small advantage in the next sceanrio such as choosing your warlord trait, automatically going first etc. Victories in session 3 gave the winners an extra strategic asset to use in the final apocalypse game.

The great thing about this type of campaign is that you can expand it vertically by adding more sessions or horizontally by adding more players (and therefore more scenarios per session). It also keeps up interest with plenty of games, definate scedule and an easily achievable final goal of capturing the planetary govenours palace in the big scrap at the end.

[Auticus]

Yes one of the things I have had to tackle is players dropping out of campaigns. I like faction based campaigns for that reason.

My next post will actually be on that very thing, a narrative-based linked game faction based campaign, which is what I have had the most success with over the years. We also have a scheduled game against a scheduled opponent that can be played anywhere at any time and then a campaign day event which is last saturday of the month at various stores in the area.

[John Bower]

To suggest that a 'narrative' game is only so because they 'can't win' is highly unfair. I play mostly narrative games as part of an ongoing 'self written' campaign. Of course I like the 'good' armies to win, and they don't always. I just don't get pleasure from competitive play; where winning is all that matters even if your opponent doesn't enjoy it. To me fun is what 40k is, was and should always be about. Often my games are not necessarily balanced though I do try to do the lists in a regimented fashion; actually this is the first time I've run my campaign where lists were all created before the campaign began; so no army should have any advantage over any particular army. They are all generic lists, no min/maxing; I never do that even when I'm trying to beat my mate's Eldar list. who I've never beaten yet (best was a draw back at the beginning of 6th ed).
Story gaming is much more fun for me, it lets me think about 'why' the battle is taking place; you know who gains from it and for what reason.

You simply don't get that with a competitive game, there's no fun for me in just turning up with a maxed out list and then winning with it. Of course I like to win; but really it's a game, it's not that important, what is important is whether I'm playing alone as I do or with friends that everybody enjoys it. I have in the past written 2 narrative Apocalypse games which everybody at my club enjoyed; and played in 1 'competitive' campaign, which ended up with our resident Tau/Blood Angel player winning because he was using a lot of OP FW stuff in his armies and finding loopholes in the rules that pretty much excluded others from winning. He also wrote the rules for said campaign; which I did feel were too complex for our group; it died a death half way through and he had the most points so won. I was playing a Tyranid army and doing quite well with it until an argument erupted over the Mawloc and cover saves. Ultimately I won the argument but it had spoilt the game for me and I pulled out of the campaign myself; I think I was the first to actually stop playing in it. My point there is that sometimes a competition can get 'too' competitive, and spoil it for somebody. When that happens people really should notice what's happened, and step back and say; 'okay, this is getting too serious now'.

Sorry for the long post.

[Auticus]

John - I tried to address that very misconception in my piece. I hear it a lot and it does grind my gears when I hear how narrative gaming is code speak for people that are not elite enough for competitive style of play.

I used to be a competitive guy and played in many many tournaments to include the old GTs and I placed well and collected trophies over the years... I just got bored of the same lists over and over again.

[John Bower]

Mad Cat - I don't think it's so much a case of telling players what they can bring model wise, just limiting their slots more heavily; you know you can bring x troops or y elites. I tried that very thing one time around; where I actually as part of the mission process had my spreadsheet tell me what each army was allowed to have. The problem even I ran into then was that it became very limiting at upper points levels. You could find you just couldn't make the list without having a mass of points below the set amount. So the larger army was having to drop units to match.

It's all a delicate balancing act if you want to make the game fun and narrative yet stop WAAC players turning it into a competition event.