What’s you definition of Campaign?

I have a curiosity. As I read on this forum the word “Campaign” comes up a lot. The curiosity is how you all define “Campaign”? Does your Gaming Groups play a set limit of games or weeks, then just end and start another? If so, what do you do with your Warband after you worked so hard on it. Or do you just keep playing it and/or others as long as it/they survive for months or years?



My group doesn’t play a set number of games for a Campaign.

I suppose a Mordheim campaign is any series of games where a number of warbands progress and advance over time .... how its done is up to the group. Many start over because usually a select few will have gotten to a point where their warband is so powerful that they cannot be challenged anymore ... they have effectively won I guess ... and sometimes being at the top is as boring as being at the bottom so many decide to start a new, to give everyone a fair start and to regain some excitement of those make or break moments of an early Campaign.

Not to mention starting over allows you opportunities for trying new warbands, scenerios and rules .... want to try out the wild forests and unguarded roads of the Empire? Explore the sweltering jungles of Lustria in search of Lizardman gold? Take the dangerous journey to the distant lands of Cathay and beyond?

If your enjoying playing a continuious compaign however by all means continue ... we certainly wont be coming around to your house, beating you across the earlobes and demanding you play our way

We play for a number of weeks. After the campaign the warbands retire with their riches, go on lecture tours or play test scenarios.

We used to fight a big battle at the end in which any fallen were assumed killed. Now we roll for injuries even for that.

Set period of time for us (occasionally with the addition of a few extra weeks if things are just getting good!). Re-staring with new warbands is also a good opportunity for people to begin a new warband.

If you keep playing the same warbands for years it's very though to add new players to your group and some old player will loose heart if they get a battering and feel they can't recover.

The first dozen games of a warband (their "formative years" if you will) are often the most exciting time anyway. When they get old and bloated and their is nowhere they can go to add extra models a warband gets a bit stale and dull.

We play a bit of a mix of the limited-duration and ongoing campaign. When we started out our "campaign" was completely open-ended, and as a result some of the initial starting warbands in our group have become extremely powerful and also very small in number.

However, when we got to the point of wanting to try out some new settings and warbands, we would play a limited campaign (we've done a handful now), and after that campaign any participating warbands join the pool of existing warbands in Mordheim.

The end effect is that most players have a pretty good spread of warband ratings in their collection, so if we feel like playing a high-powered game we can grab some of the old guard, but when someone wants to try out something fresh then we can play with a new warband.

[rant]
Our groups been playing an ongoing campaign
from the day everyone had 500gp worth of hacksawed warhammer army.
The key for us was not to hold back. Some have used the term "powergame"
or "playing to win" but thats the point. We soon discovered that we needed to explore other avenues of gain and winnings and earnings to keep it fun as it does get boring fighting over the same 50gps worth of loot.
The first major change was camp building (this turned to compounds and chateus and various depth of home turf to fight on depending on success which in turn became a ready supply of gold that further increased the use of specialty items.) and the looting of old roleplaying manuals and codices and armybooks for items. It helps being old roleplaying fiends as A. long running campaigns is second nature and B. no one gets mad (off game) by the fact that you seriously try to kill of the other warband that a guy has been nurturing for five years.
C.openly freeforming (or brainstorming for people who can't afford to let the little actor in their brain out for fear of looking like a d*ck.) as a post game event helps create fluff and set up perimiters for whats reasonable in the reality in question and define the driving force of all characters in the campaign.
All of a sudden your witch hunter isn't steve 27 in telemarketing who wants to play nice, he's a guy whos premier goal in life is to wipe all evils from the face of the earth even if that is his fellow witch hunters who'll burn anything that moves.
[/rant]

So to answer your question a campaign can be a small series of games that ends when a set goal is achieved and doesnt break the format of point to point matching (as in being stuck with a vampire and a dreg at the end of a campaign because of warband rating)
But it can also be an infinite number of games spanning several years with multiple interuptions caused by regular life work and other activities that takes place in an on all parties agreed on gaming reality.

for me the latter campaign type is what has made me stick more feverishly to mordheim than any other game (other than inquisitor)
as we all are custom monkeys and fluff apes we like the ability to get going with anything thats at least WYSIWYG and end up with something entirely different. (better in my case would be overstating it.)

Usually a Campaign is a set number of games, under a spectific setting, ie BTB, Empire in Flames, etc...

Now that set number of games can be "set" in different way, like we'll play for 4 months, and however many games we get in during those for months is how many games you play.

Or you can have X number of rounds, depending on how many people you find during those rounds how many games you'll play.

With BTB you can go until someone finished their Objective and wins the game.