Badab war BFG scenario creation comitee

[ThePov]

Okay, so first off, I guess this is the best place to put this, but if one of the Fly Lords wants to move it to the BFG forum, it's fine by me.

Second off, it was suggested in the Badab thoughts thread that perhaps, with over half of the Badab War taking place in space, during the Shipping Wars, there should have been some BFG scenarios in the book. It was further suggested that perhaps we, the BFG playing BoLS readers, should come up with these scenarios for presentation to the Fly Lords, and so here I am, attempting to orchestrate this project.

So, looking at the map in the (very well done) Badab war book, and taking into acount blockades mentioned in the (excellent) History of the Badab War section, I count the following major naval engagements, in rough chronological order:

1. Destruction of Inquisitor Stauff's Investigative Fleet
2. The First Punitive Expidition
3. The Second Punitive Expidition
4. The Opening Raids
4a. Unnamed Fleet Action Near Verakruz
4b. Unnamed Fleet Action Near Morgan's Reach
4c. Unnamed Fleet Action Near Zathatetus Grand
4d. The Raid on Tarturga IV (IN Cruiser squadron gets blasted 5 light years from dock, worth it's own scenario)
5. Heydon's Gambit
6. Von Strieb's Backhand
7. The Phantom Blockade
8. The Blockade of Tranquility
9. Battle of Null Point
10. The Siege of The Badab System (This may also become multiple scenarios)
11. The Battle of Butcher's Alley

I'd like to make sure that every scenario we come up with would be playtested by people other than their creators, just for fairness reasons.

Also, someone would need to arrange the above Scenarios into a Tree-based campaign, to keep with the system in the actual Badab Book. I would like to pass this responisibility off to someone else, as my expertice lies with more open ended map-based campaigns, not the more linear tree campaigns.

It would also be cool to come up with a few specialized ships for the book, using some of the ship creation and pricing algorithms floating around them (if no-one else has them, I can track them down.) Once those are in, I will arrange them and the standard Imperial ships into a custom Battlefleet Maelstrom fleet list, based most likely off of the Battlefleet Armeggeddon list, but with some subtle difference. I have a good bit of experience in this regard, having previously come up with a Horus Heresy based fleet list.

So, thats all I can think up at the moment. If anyone can see anything I've missed, feel free to let me know.

Anyone interested in taking on one of the above roles, please post below with which you would like to do.

[Bigred]

You GO ThePov!

I wholeheartedly endore this venture. The reason I touched on BFG so lightly is I don't feel competent to design missions for it. My advice is to keep the main thread here, but cross post and announcment with a link here in the BFG subforum. I bet the folks over there would love to jump onboard and help.

[ThePov]

Okay guys, any one interested in helping, please post below with what you can do.

[ThePov]

Nobody? C'mon people, I can't do this by myeslf! Just post here if you're interested at all, you don't have be actively writing scenarios, we're going to need a lot of play testers as well, so please, just hop on board!

[Inquisitor Hate Machine]

Since it was my idea and I was the first person to complain, I guess you can count me in

Sorry, Ive been really busy with getting ready for BoLS-Con. I volunteered to run some Aeronautica Imperialis demos / games and be the host for the Open Gaming section. So you all get to come and yell at that Jerk on BoLS

[foureyedtroll]

Ok...

Firstly, I have limited pre-knowledge about the Badab War. While I don't need the basics going over in intricate detail, just explain key points briefly.

Second, I need to know what you guys want to achieve from the campaign. Is this going to be competitive play, a narrative, or open-ended?


With that in mind, as an experienced BFG player I am more than happy to help you guys assemble an enjoyable, and worthwhile campaign for your project. I have the facility to get the games play tested by my local strategy club colleagues (We have a good following down at our local club, in part thanks to yours truly telling fellow club members to get a fleet every 5 mins), though while I shall be merely observing the game, I'll put together the feedback for you guys, and let you know what the players thought.

What I'll need from you guys is a basic run down of the battles, participants and key moments from each battle, once you've got a structure designed. For instance...


Battle of Pensus Prime


Battle Brief:
Renegade Fleet approaches Pensus shipyards to destroy Imperial repair facility.
The Facility orbits a desert world with 1 moon, sat near a dense asteroid field.

Participants:
Loyalists: Pensus Defence Fleet
Renegades: Red Corsair Fleet

Notable Characters:
Huron Blackheart, aboard the renegade Strike Cruiser 'Dissent'

Key Moments:
Blackheart destroys the Pensus orbital shipyard with a full frontal volley from the S/C.

Outcomes:
Loyalists Win: Goes on to Battle 2a
Renegades Win : Goes on to Battle 2b


That's a rough idea of what I need to know, key ships, named vessels and characters and key moments will determine fleet compositions and objectives, as well as starting positions and board layout.

The first thing you might want to do is assemble the campaign structure. If some battles seem a bit unimportant to include them in the proper tree, make them an optional scenario.. e.g.

The above example scenario was a minor skirmish, and not required as part of the campaign flow, however if the players opt to play it out, the winner will gain an advantage going forward into the next full campaign scenario i.e. Loyalists gain 1 free capital ship for the next mission, Renegades can pick one opposing capital ship to begin next mission as a crippled vessel.

Have a brainstorm and discussion about how you want to proceed, then come back to me with how you want the campaign to play out (yes/no chart, fixed flow of scenarios, free-flow scenario) with a diagram if possible, and then we can begin work on mapping out the scenarios.


Feel free to email me at [email][email protected][/email] with any ideas, I've subscribed to this thread also.


The Troll
a.k.a Vice-Admiral Zippy of the Gothic Sector

[ThePov]

Well, all the story is in the mini-dex in depth, so you couldn't go wrong reading the History section and some of the little blurbs scattered throughout.

As for campaign structure, I was thinking an extended tree campaign, to match with the 40K campaign already in the mini-dex.

[foureyedtroll]

Unfortunately simply telling me it's in the mini-dex doesn't help, as...

A) I've never heard the phrase mini-dex before you used it on the Port Maw website,
B) I've no idea where to find it,
C) I have about a million other things to occupy my free time than read hours of background fiction to find snippets of information.

I'm quite happy to put together the working scenarios as part of a campaign structure, but I'd rather not have to write the campaign as well. I have very little interest in the 21st founding aside from a little bit of Astartes trivia, so it would work much better if you guys summarise the bits you want into something I can read in a couple of minutes so that I can begin devising scenarios from it.


The best place to start would be to isolate all the space battles you want in a campaign (once you've decided exactly what you want to achieve in your campaign) and begin producing fact-files about the battle as explained above in the Pensus example.

When I say what you want to achieve, I mean why are you creating a campaign? Are you allowing the players to follow history, is this a chance to re-write history, or it this just a fun story arch from which you want to devise a game? Is the Loyalist player going to win? The Renegade? Is it down to the game results? Is it down to the story-line? Is it a flexible sequence of events, or is it rigid? Do you want it to tie in to 40k games, or will it stand alone?

You guys need to know what you want before you can tell me what you want...

[ThePov]

Well, we know what we want, you see... we want to follow the mini-dex's campaign structure, just with BFg battles. Honestly, it would be a heck of a lot easier if you just took a look at the Badab War PDF [URL="http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2009/08/play-aid-badab-war.html"]here, at this link,[/URL] and read through the History of The Badab War section. It's all very much gathered there. Like I said, the campaign is already written, it's just written solely for 40K and we simply want to add a BFG element.

[foureyedtroll]

I downloaded the PDF...

The 40k campaign doesn't exactly translate well, mainly due to the fact that it's an entirely different game system from BGFG. Some missions are space-borne boarding actions, and assault raids of orbital stations, and for those I suspect it could quite easily be altered into a BFG scenario by taking the number of points and playing a BFG game of that size, with an equivalent objective for each fleet.

If that's what you were aiming for then sure, give me ten minutes and I can take the list and where it says 1500pts 'Planet Strike' game and replace it with 1500pts BFG 'Planetary Assault' game and just modify a few bits and pieces to make it translate to a BFG player.

If not, it's going to require someone to make some executive decisions about the game. After all this is a Bell of Lost Souls project, not mine. It's not my place to replace what's in your codex with a new campaign written by me, because it's not my work to 'fix'. If what you want is a new storyline BFG campaign written by me, it won't be about the Badab Wars, it'll be something closer to the Black Crusades, as that's my area of interest.