How to Run a Campaign.

Figured it may be nice to have a thread to discuss how to run a campaign. I want to get one started but have never done it before myself and don't really know where to begin.

what type of campaign do you want to run? long, short, story driven, ladder matches? there's a whole bunch of different campaigns to be run, so what are you looking for?

Well that's the point of this thread is to give beginners (like myself) an introduction to what to do. Personally I want to run a short one as a test run.

I think that you would get more of a response on the Rules and Game-play or Battle Reports and Fluff sections.

Campaigns are highly personal projects so their details vary.

Things you need.
~A venue to play games at. The space must accommodate:
~The number of players you expect to include in the campaign. If you are playing at your house or apartment 2 to 6 players is probably a maximum. A store or club can accommodate more bodies.
~Terrain and miniatures.

The rules provide a basic campaign system.
~The warbands involved. Are any warbands useable in the campaign? There are so many warbands and more are being written as I type. The campaign organizer must prepare to decide what can be included. If you say bring 'whatever', people will.
~Scenarios. The rule book provides a list of scenarios. You may use these or add to it. You may determine the scenarios played randomly or players may choose or they may be mandated by the map or the storyline of the campaign.
~Randome events, Hazards and the like. Mordheim has a random event table as do most campaign systems. You may use those or decide to make up your own or decide to do without.
~Exploration, income and trading. Mordheim provides simple tables to represent these actions. You may decide to alter, limit or eliminate options.

Tired of typing. More later.

Von Kurst is, as usual, correct. You'll get much better response in the Battle Report & Fluff Section or, failing tha, in the Rules & Gamesplay Section. The Tutorials are meant to be a repository of how-to modeling ideas.
SO off to Fluff Land...if you don't get responses or would prefer it, we can move it to the Rule area.

More thoughts on How to Run a Campaign:

~decide which House rules to use or not use. If you are starting a new group or have a lot of new players it is best to keep these simple and few in number. I do think the only way to avoid House Rules is to stick to vanilla rules and the official warbands.

~decide which Campaign setting the campaign happens in. There are several settings. All of them vary in the amount of extra work they require to play.

~decide the type of campaign you want to play. Is it a Map campaign? Is it narrative driven? Objective driven like BTB? Is there going to be a campaign winner? How will you determine victory conditions?

Campaign play can be really easy. Just use the system provided by the rulebook and play until a period of time has elapsed or an number of games have been played or a warband rating threshold is reached. For the last several years my group has played around 14 weeks of real time for each campaign we do. We used to end campaigns when one warband reached a warband rating level ceiling, usually 500 I think.

Mordheimer has a prepared campaign map for Mordheim, if you want to use a map. He also has guidelines on using the map in campaign play.

Personally I prefer campaigns that tell a story, however, I prefer the players and the games they play tell the story rather than a predetermined path. I use themed scenarios and a limited number of locations to provide a plot. One week the players play scenarios set in a port, for example. The next week they must leave the port and roll on Jungle/Wilderness or Ocean/islands scenario tables. Each week provides episodes of the story of the campaign.

Sorry to cast necromancy on this thread but I just could not resist even thoough I know this is probably a moot point by now.

Other things you (and others) need to think about if they never ran a campain before:

1) Experience! Not only yours but that of your players. If you and/or your players are not well versed in things or just haven't played a whole heck of a lot, I would keep it simple by just starting out with the basic rulles and warbands. Try not to muddle things up as too much info can confuse both your players and you. More often then not, if some one feels overwhelmed or unsure about something, they tend not to enjoy it as much.

2) Keep it small! This once again goes into keeping yourself and others from being overwhelmed. Not that you can't grow on the next few campains but for your first one I would keep it at 2-4 players. This will also allow a better adherence to my next bullet point.......

3) Make a schedule!!!!! And more importantly Keep to it!!!! To keep all your players involved and your sanity intact, keep it realistic. Discuss it with your players before the start of the campain. Allow enough time for everyone envolved to get their games in but not too long that you you have your go getters (people who knock out their games quick) get aggitated waiting.

4) Make a Phone/Email list for all players involved. I particularly like email because of pure record keeping. That way they can contact one another to set up times to play. Unless you all have a set day you can all agree apon they will need to get ahold of one another to set up games. You have enough to and if they play this game they should be old enough to set times up themselves.

5) Have a start, a middle, and an end! Basically make sure the campain is planned out and stick to it!

6) Prepare for losses! Of warbands and Players. Warbands is an easy fix. I usually allow, if a warband is truely defunct, a way for a player to bring in another warband that is not too underpowered but at the same time not as strong as the next 'weakest' warband. this can easily be gotten from the warband rating. Players is a bit more difficult. If you have anyone in waiting, they can take the spot using the standard above for allowing in the new warband. Be prepaired though to maybe play another game to fill the void in until you can find a new replacement.

7) The most importent rule: Have Fun!!! How are you supposed to keep it going if you hate it. Do this by working within your boundrys.

I'd highlight something Von Kurst mentioned: Narrative Theme

I always give a campaign a title (at the very least that way you can talk about it later as "The Scourge Of The Storm campaign" rather than "that campaign in the autumn two years ago"...) and I try to create some kind of loose narrative framework. VK uses themed scenarios, which is a great idea, and we used themed weeks.

For the last campaign we gave the players something free for each themed week so (for example) in Monster Week everyone got a creature on a 40mm base in their warband for nothing (and it didn't have to come from the warband list they were using, so my Orcs got a rat Ogre for the week!) In Daemon Week there was a chance of a Lesser Daemon appearing in every game (and it was rigged so by the end of the game the Daemon always came!) - the nasty beasties materialised in the middle of the board and attacked the nearest model.

A simple narrative gives players something to aim for outside of just building the strongest warband - and a good excuse for a big multi-player finale game to end the campaign with everyone together. That way the campaign ends with a memorable bang, instead of just fizzling-out.

It doesn't have to be massively complex - a simple "land grab", where you get a pin in a map for each game you win, is a lot of fun. A "quest" to find a magic item can be good (especially if finding the item is a random chance each time you play instead of each time you win, so even the underdogs can end up on top!) each warband type could have a different reason for wanting to find the item - to use it's powers for good, or destroy it, or to give it to their evil masters...

So next weekend starts the first campaign I'm running/ There will be four players counting myself. I've got a Marienburger warband, my best friend likely will roll a Middenheimer and the other two guys (in the same dorm as my friend) are wild cards, no clue what they'll roll but likely humans since those are the minis available. I've limited it to the vanilla warbands and rules to keep it simple to start with.

The question I have is, how should I determine an end to the campaign? Should it be when a warband reaches a specific rating, or, what I'm leaning towards, to play a certain number of scenarios and whoever has the highest rating at the end of those wins.

Are you going to run 4 player scenarios, or 1v1 matches?

qboid wrote:

Are you going to run 4 player scenarios, or 1v1 matches?

The first game will be a 4 way and if I go with a set number of games (which my best friend also thinks is the best way) the final game will as well.

In a limited number of battles campaign, i would have two nominal "winners".

Highest warband rating, and the winner of the last scenario.

I would make this scenario absolute chaos though, like having a chest right in the middle of the board, and victory goes to the warband that gets it off the table.
Then, even the weakest warband can still stand a chance of coming out triumphant.

qboid wrote:

In a limited number of battles campaign, i would have two nominal "winners".

Highest warband rating, and the winner of the last scenario.

I would make this scenario absolute chaos though, like having a chest right in the middle of the board, and victory goes to the warband that gets it off the table.
Then, even the weakest warband can still stand a chance of coming out triumphant.

Good idea. Now to think of something insanely chaotic!

you might want to try reading the Lost Chest Scenario over at:

http://hobbyblog.wargameweaver.com/mordheim

Once you have read that, read everything else on the site, it's a fantastic place to get inspiration from, especially the co-op Vampire Hunters campaign they are currently running.


And yes, i am rapidly turning into a Weaver fanboy.

qboid wrote:

you might want to try reading the Lost Chest Scenario over at:

http://hobbyblog.wargameweaver.com/mordheim

Once you have read that, read everything else on the site, it's a fantastic place to get inspiration from, especially the co-op Vampire Hunters campaign they are currently running.


And yes, i am rapidly turning into a Weaver fanboy.

I saw their co-op vampire campaign before and was inspired. I have a friend who plays vampire counts so come summer we may do a similar campaign (he lives in a different city for school) but less co-op...