Planning a good campaign

Campaigns are great fun. They are, without doubt, a great tool to bring friends and fellow club members together for a common goal. But they aren't without difficulties. Without planning they can become a burden or players can lose interest. Getting the balance right can be tricky.

I thought I'd explore campaigns in this blog as we are planning to do a mini campaign using the new Barons' War Medieval skirmish set. 

Our campaign is going to be based locally in Devon at the time of the Barons' War. Players can make up their own noble houses and heraldry or use one of the existing families who owned land in the area. The map above is from 1575, so some of the places won't exist or will be quite different. For example, the castle at Berry Pomeroy wasn't built until the 14th century, so the Pomeroy holdings would have been a fortified manor house in the village. 

Locally, apart from the Pomeroys, there were the de Courneays, the Fulfords and the de Mohuns, each of which have their own distinct and interesting heraldry. There were several monasteries in the area, including at Torre, Totnes, Buckfast and Cornworthy.

At this point, we are discussing what format the campaign should take. Should we have a linear set of battles, sort of like a football league, and then sort the winner by elimination, up to a 'world cup' final? Or do we want something more fluid, like an open sandbox, where players can forge alliances or be sneaky and devious?

Various suggestions have been floated - we could incorporate realistic losses and troop recruitment or assume that sides recover after each battle. There are several ideas to make it really realistic (and complicated at the same time). I'm reminded of the wise words of a friend:

"Just because you can, doesn't mean you should."

So let's consider what makes for good campaign rules:

(a) The rules and game size should be simple and have a structure, setting parameters (limitations) to make it interesting for players. There is no point in painting 200-plus figures if you only need 40-odd to play the game, for example. 

(b) Allow players a lot of freedom in expression, so they can (mostly) take the armies they'd like. Missile fire can be very powerful in Barons' War, so we might limit the number of missile weapons to a percentage.

c) Fairness is important - so even losing players can feel like they can win or be on the winning team. We have an idea that defeated players can join their victorious opponents as vassals.

And most importantly...

(d) A set goal so we know how the campaign will end and how frequent games will be. So there will be set victory conditions, probably a mass battle at the end to decide the ultimate victor. Also, we'll arrange a campaign turn so it will not interfere much with players' schedules, so they can still play other systems in between battles. 

There's still a lot to decide and chinks to be tested and ironed out before we have a fully working model. 

We'll keep you informed how the campaign goes and what we learn from our experiences. These will appear in future blogs.