Objectives and Missions

One of my favorite parts of BTB is the Objectives. They help flavor the game, and they allow for some cool role playing.

Has anyone developed Objectives for other Campaigns like Mordheim Proper, or any of the other Alt Settings?

I was also think about creating mission, the idea would be that you would have a 2 to 5 games mission arc where you would have to complete missions to gain extra money, CP, XP, magic items etc...

An example mission would be kill the Necromancer and deliver his ring to the sister's temple as proof. You would play a scenario where the Necromancer is sacrificing a woman, you would have to stop that, take him OOA, then when you do he would drop his ring, if you ended the scenario with the ring in your possession then you would play a get to the other side of the board scenario with one of your characters holding the ring, then if you succeeded then you would get to play the drop-off scenario.

So back to my original question has anyone developed Objectives for other Campaigns then BTB?

Has anyone developed multi-scenario arcs?

This is a cool idea - it could be used to make a campaign more interesting (especially if you only had a small gaming group, say just 2 or 3 players). You could all be trying to kill the Necromancer and get the reward, so the arc would become competitive as well as narrative! A series of arcs would make for a very exciting campaign...

I haven't heard of anyone else developing objectives like BTB but I would be interested in trying them!

The follow-up project to BTB will - of course - revisit the objectives system and, hopefully, take it to the next level.

Oooooh! What is the follow-up project Cianty?

I am not allowed to spill that yet.

A few months back, we got tired of playing the same scenarios over and over, so we decided that each of us had to come up with a new scenario for game play. It was pretty fun, but felt a little bit like test playing the game.

Its hard to say how balanced / unbalanced something might be till you play it once or twice. I think the main thing to keep in mind when doing your own stuff, is to keep it fairly simplistic.

A year or two ago I did a set of linked scenarios, for use with a preset group of warbands. I later replayed them with a more eclectic group of warbands, and they worked pretty well. They were designed for cooperative play, and revolved around an Orc raid into the Empire. (The first run through I was playing solo, running orcs and warbands - both for fun and as a playtest; the second time three of us were running warbands against the orcs).

Scenario 1: The warbands launch a dawn sneak attack on some orcs who are occupying a fortified Imperial farm, using it as a base for raids. If the warbands win, they go to scenario 2

Scenario 2: The warbands set up an ambush at the farm, and wait for orc raiders to return. If they win, they go to scenario 3.

Scenario 3: The warbands are on a sweep, looking for orc stragglers. They find some... (Basically, one random warband is set up in the middle of the table, and orc groups come in from randomly determined table edges. The remaining warbands have to make reinforcement rolls to come in, and also start on random edges). If the warbands win, they proceed to scenario 4.

Scenario 4: (Which was supposed to end the mini-campaign): one orc Boss has led a large group of orcs into Mordheim - apparently looking for something specific. The warbands have to prevent him from finding it. This is my "Looting the Looters" scenario, which my brother posted on his blog, I think:

http://hobbyblog.wargameweaver.com/mordheim/looting-the-looters-new-mordheim-scenario

The two times we played this mini campaign, the orcs won the 4th scenario. So I created a 5th scenario to give the warbands another chance...

Scenario 5 (a, b, and c). The orcs have left Mordheim with their loot and are trying to make it back to their own territory. The warbands have one last chance to prevent the Boss from escaping with whatever it was he wanted (I never did decide what it was). The orcs now want to avoid fights, since getting the loot back is their priority. The orcs not taken out of action in the previous scenario split into three groups. The warbands have to decide how many of three escape routs they want to set up ambushes on. Once they decide how the bands are divided up for the ambushes, the orc groups are randomly assigned to one escape rout or the other. The warbands score a draw for the campaign if they defeat the orc group that includes the boss - and win the campaign if they take him out of action. I think I said it was a draw if they lost the ambush of the boss scenario but won the other two.

Anyway, it was fun running a series of linked campaign scenarios, and I am interested in seeing what other people have tried.

@mweaver sounds cool I think that could be a good series of Scenarios.

I was thinking that the Scenario Arcs could be a fun way to tell a story inside of the Champaign. I was debating on how to best implement them. I have been debating that you would get them at CP points, so you'd get one at 10, 20 and 30. The other Idea I had was that you would be able to purchase them, either with gold, wyrd stone, CP, or some combination of the 3.

I think that they would fold well into the BTB rules, because you would have a special scenario so you would get some priority to pick warbands and scenarios.

I also think it could be a good way to bring an artifact into the Champaign.

I certainly think that introducing some of the more basic Warhammer magic items would be fun (the Mordheim artifacts tend to be quite powerful). A sword that gives +1 attack, or lets you parry if you equal the attacker's highest roll, etc. We did have one campaign a few years back where we carefully introduced such items - basically a legacy item for the captain of each warband (like many of our campaigns, that one was collaborative).

I really need to read though the Border Town Burning stuff. I glanced at it when I first came across it, and it looked interesting, but I have never really looked at it.

In BTB there are very small scenario arcs that span over two scenarios only and they are all meant to fit into ther overall story-line. Small "stories" of three to four scenarios would be a nice addition to any campaign setting. Hmm... Maybe warband-specific setting-independent scenarios would work nice.... *ponder ponder*

I'd love to see an extension of the brilliant BTB objectives to all the existing settings. It'd give games so much more sense of purpose. Perhaps as a few people have mentioned before have specific 'ending' scenarios for each warband type, such as Von Carstein invading Mordheim if Undead win?

In my real heart of hearts though I'd love to see a Mordheim campaign where warbands can travel all over the old world and beyond as part of an ongoing campaign, perhaps on an ongoing quest or purpose. I've no idea how it could work without being too complex but maybe have rules for traveling between games, regional availability of items and hired swords?

How exciting would it be if your warband could grow and seperate into two warbands, with one trusty lieutenant leading the second and them travelling off to another part of the world. Having ongoing battles in different settings with plotlines that tie in to each other?

Maybe I'm being too dreamy and ambitous but I'd love that level of contiunuity between my games and characters.

I doubt many gamers would even have the time for such a monstrous campaign, which would require at least one day of gaming a week.

What I think is the hardest concerning Storyline-Scenarios is to come up with scenarios that both represent relevant events for the story and make for good wargaming scenarios. The latter is hard enough on its own. AND then the scenarios need to be "mix-able" with different warbands, i.e. played from different perspectives. Makes my head spin...

cianty - I agree that you could have issues with perspectives, i.e. it would be silly to have an Undead Warband hand over a Necromantic ring to the Sisters of Sigmar.

I think you could fix that by having different missions available to different warbands, or you could have the scenarios change based on your warband. i.e. if you were the undead you would protect the necromancer and take him to his safe house.

It's just the number of different warbands with their individual ambitions and goals that worries me. I was happy that we found a way to fit all of the warbands (all official ones plus those frequently used from TC or even LotD) into a rather small number of objectives. Ideally you'd have specialized objectives and missions for each warband but the creative effort and necessary playtesting is not feasable. At least not in anyone's free time.

One approach from the local perspective would be to set up a cooperative campaign with a group objective, have the players choose their warbands from a list of options of groups that could reasonably cooperate with each other, and then develop individual objectives for the different warbands that they could individually pursue while simultaneously contributing to the achievement of the overall objective. That way you don't have to come up with objectives for every warband every created - just the four or five or however many you have in the campaign. We did do something like this a few years back, with the individual warband objectives being a magic item tailored for the warband's captain (a longbow with extra range that allowed an additional shot for the Reiklander captain, a dwarf axe that granted +1 strength and +1 on parry rolls for the dwarf captain, etc.).

For that campaign, the overall goal was to transition the warband members into the heroes and unit champions of Warhammer forces. We had just reached the point where we were using modified Warhammer Warband rules to field little warhammer forces when domestic difficulties developed between the host player and his wife, and the campaign was alas suspended.

I don't see the difference between a certain objective and then having each suitable warband keep track of their own contribution to that or have all suitable warbands contribute to the same one objective altogether. From a design point you still need to find objectives that suit warbands - as many as possible. Do you see what I mean?

What I found most difficult though was the question what different objectives could there be that both have a certain degree of interaction while at the same time are independent and present the warband's own ambitions rather than a simple "prevent X" type of objective.

cianty wrote:

I doubt many gamers would even have the time for such a monstrous campaign, which would require at least one day of gaming a week.

haha no I guess not but I can dream about having that much spare time. A whole week of gamin every week! It would've been cool if GW had somehow done a massive Mordheim campaign in a similar vein to the eye of terror, or Albion campaign! I used to enjoy sending all my results in and seeing the campaign progress across the world!

Thomas UK wrote:

In my real heart of hearts though I'd love to see a Mordheim campaign where warbands can travel all over the old world and beyond as part of an ongoing campaign, perhaps on an ongoing quest or purpose. I've no idea how it could work without being too complex but maybe have rules for traveling between games, regional availability of items and hired swords?.

Its not BTB but check the Battle Reports and Fluff for Flame On's campaigns, Captain Blacksqug's Grudge of Sheer or my own Toth Amon campaign,

Our group has started in Sartosa and sailed to Al-Haikk. From there we will explore the Great Desert of Araby with the final objective being hidden deep in the Land of the Dead.

Just do it.

Von Kurst wrote:

Thomas UK wrote:

In my real heart of hearts though I'd love to see a Mordheim campaign where warbands can travel all over the old world and beyond as part of an ongoing campaign, perhaps on an ongoing quest or purpose. I've no idea how it could work without being too complex but maybe have rules for traveling between games, regional availability of items and hired swords?.

Its not BTB but check the Battle Reports and Fluff for Flame On's campaigns, Captain Blacksqug's Grudge of Sheer or my own Toth Amon campaign,

Our group has started in Sartosa and sailed to Al-Haikk. From there we will explore the Great Desert of Araby with the final objective being hidden deep in the Land of the Dead.

Just do it.

Thanks mate, will do! Thats the kind of ongoing adventure I'm after! I'll go and read them all. Are flame on the lot located in Manchester? Thats not too far from Sheff...

Von Kurst wrote:

Its not BTB but check the Battle Reports and Fluff for Flame On's campaigns,

We transported Mordheim to the "present day" (in Warhammer terms) but kept the focus on one ruined city - Vercuso on the pirate island of Sartosa.


We don't do much travelling round, even on the small island. I figured that small warbands have less chance of running into each other and fighting if they are all wandering about the country side! If you want frequent fights you stay where everyone else is!

WarbossKurgan wrote:

Von Kurst wrote:

Its not BTB but check the Battle Reports and Fluff for Flame On's campaigns,

We transported Mordheim to the "present day" (in Warhammer terms) but kept the focus on one ruined city - Vercuso on the pirate island of Sartosa.


We don't do much travelling round, even on the small island. I figured that small warbands have less chance of running into each other and fighting if they are all wandering about the country side! If you want frequent fights you stay where everyone else is!

Great stuff, that sounds like a really exciting setting, I've just been checking out all the pictures and the terrain is certainly impressive too! Looks like you have some great ongoing characters and personalities. Are you still currently playing the campaign?

re: Von Kurst. Just checked out your lovely writeup of your campaigning too, looks like ace fun!

Thomas UK wrote:

Great stuff, that sounds like a really exciting setting, I've just been checking out all the pictures and the terrain is certainly impressive too! Looks like you have some great ongoing characters and personalities. Are you still currently playing the campaign?

We have played lots of campaigns set there, the last one (called "Bell. Book and Candle") ended in April. The next one starts very soon!