Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Planting the seed of a Campaign

Okay so I am going to be doing a Narrative campaign here with my local gaming club (The Wargamers at Georgia Tech) . In the past we have tried to organize map based and turn based campaigns, but participation has never taken off. To get the club more enthused I am going to be running a narrative campaign which I will retell here.

While digging up all sorts of missions I found something I made for the first attempt at running a campaign: An Archeotech Table. I made a list of tons-o-cool special wargear in 3 broad categories: Xenos, Imperial, Warp. They each then had 6 subcategories: CCW, Ranged Weapon, Personal Device (sm), Personal Device (lg), Squad Device, and Army device. These further broke down into 6 actual items that someone could gain.

This has led me to come up with the idea to make this table the center of the campaign. A world recently out of a warpstorm seems unpopulated (although it won't be, that force will be played by me). The attention of everyone falls upon it, and so battles rage across it's surface for the lost tech upon it (the souls for Necrons and Biomass for nids).

I will be assigning all sorts of crazy games and missions. I have dug up everything I could so far and I am in the process of getting more from a friend. I need to go through and compile all the missions and re-write them to fit any army or the armies in the club at least. Some of the missions range back to 3rd edition (Blood Angels Frontal Assault for example). A few I have made, some from BoLS campaign/minidex books, and a whole lot of them from Games Workshop. I will also be implementing Kill Teams into the campaign so I can create plot twists and such. BUT to feature kill teams, I have to modify their rules a little to address 5th ed changes (running and what not).

Here are a few little morsels of archeotech I will give today:
Power Bayonet- The user has attached exotic blades to his firearm, allowing him to use it to far greater capacity in melee.
A model equipped with a power bayonet always gets +1 A in close combat when equipped with a two handed weapon. Reduces a target’s amour save by 1 to a minimum of 6+.

Void-Gun- The void-gun works by ripping a small hole in real space into the warp, tearing apart its target as it is ripped between dimensions.
It is a two-handed weapon. The void-gun always wounds on a 2+ and a roll of a 6 inflicts instant death, regardless of toughness. It ignores cover saves. Against vehicles, roll to hit as normal, but then roll a d6. A result of a 3 and 4 glances and a 5 or 6 penetrates. A unit suffering a casualty must immediately pass a Ld check or fall back 2d6. It has the following profile:
R S AP Type
12 X 2 Assault 1

Artificer Jump Pack- A powerful and more compact version of the jump packs commonly found employed by Astartes and Soriatas.
The wearer counts as Jump Infantry. Landing in difficult/dangerous terrain does not affect the wearer. He may turbo-boost, following the rules for a bike, once per game.

Artificer Gauntlet- The bearer wears a gauntlet crafted by the most gifted techno-magi of Mars.
The gauntlet counts as a power-fist with a built in bolt pistol and counts as one single handed weapon. If the wearer is equipped with another single handed weapon, it confers a +1 attack as per the normal rules.
R S AP Type
12 4 5 Pistol

Terrain Deformer- The army found a device which allows the to change the very nature of the battle field.
The controlling player gets to place all the terrain and choose his side of the table. No more than 2/3rds of the terrain may be on one half of the board.