Campaign Developement open to public.

[Ikarus]

Campaign Developement open to public.

We need:

A few main organizers

-Plot/Story/Purpose

-General Idea on how the campaign is going to work.

Lets develope it

[Plisken]

Im in. i have some ideas do you wnat me to post them? or pm them too you?

[Chaptermaster Kezef]

how are battles going to take place, are they going to be story done or actuall battles

becouse im working on something i call Virtual Battle Network (im not good with names so sue me) basically its wh40k battles played via counters and a board posted on the web. if interested i'll explain more.

[Brother_Ambrose]

I had an Idea, Maybe you guys could modify/suggest/tell me its stup/whatever...lol. My idea was that there forces of the imperium discover a planet that was untouched during the time after the great crusade/ heresy. On the planet, one of the original primarch's that for some reason was unaccounted for remains alive. The star that the planet orbited has burned out and become a black hole, and it is about to engulf the world of the lost primarch. The forgotten primarch controlls the world for a great palace hidden deep within the center of the planet, where it is still warm. The armies of the 40k universe arrive on the planet with the following objectives in mind:

Imperium: Want to recover their lost Primarch, as he would be a great asset to the imperium. He is of unlimited strength and could turn the tide of the galactic war and allow humanity dominance once again.

Chaos: Wish to reach the Primarch first in order to convert him to Chaos . Having this mighty being under the sway of chaos would help them to crush the Imperium.

Eldar, Dark Eldar and Tau: Wish to assasinate the primarch. The imperium would become too strong with such an ally.

Tyranids: Have live on the planet for thousands of years. New arrivals provide new meals.

Orks: Arrived on the planet as part of their Whaaaaaag!

Necrons: Just awoke on this planet.

So basically the campaign would consist of the various forces engaging each other and trying to sabotage each others drilling equiptment, ect. in an effort to keep them from the primarch. Whoever reaches the primarch first, casptures him and gets him off the planet before the black hole arrives wins. Any thoughts?

[Torquemada Coteaz]

ok not to be harsh but i'll adress some of these ideas:
1) i tried making an online 40k game (using counters similar to that of the WD "overhead cartoon shots" of a table) to play 40k.
I also adressed GW on this, and they told me that if i was going to do it, they'd be on my arse in a nanosecond like kroot to raw flesh.
2) battle reports go in the respective section, probably some sort of log system using posts to log wins, but must be tied in to battle report to confirm validity
3) some of the army excuses have been done, and I really dont like messing with the "2 missing primarch/legions" idea. sorry but thats one of those "forbidden fluff" things. thanks for contributing ideas though. perhaps an STC is better than primarch?

[Levin]

Maybe I'm not thinking big picture here, but why not just make a map and assign starting points for different armies (while not filling in which armies they are, just Army 1 starts here...), maybe each controlling 2 different sections with a lot of room in the middle left up for grabs. Who really cares about the storyline as long as the battles themselves are themed. All campaigns are pretty much the same as far as why different armies want the same resources, but it would be really cool to do it in the battle report style>> However I could see this getting really bogged down and slow as who really has time to sift through all the ramblings of a battle report just to put another notch in a win talley?

Other than that, I think it would be cool to leave it up to the local players to decide and kind of "fill in the blanks" if you will. Come up with a standard map. Make a list of all registered to play in the campaign. Have a minimum of 4-8 players per mini campaign. And play it out on several small scales and have the winners come together (not litterally) and be posted as the heroes claiming what territory. You could then make a new End Campaign map illustrating what was taken by each army.

How many people do you legitemately forsee entering this campaign and playing til completion? A couple hundred at most? If this is the case you would end up with rought 10-20 victors, hopefully representing different races. Then again, if not, hey that makes more since on the grand scheme anyway. Personally, I was very disappointed how "everybody" won the Medusa V campaign. This way you could look at a tangible map and say, yep, Marines captured x number... IG have X number.... And we could all have a lot of fun with our local friends in the process.

Not to mention that could be a serious draw to get members to recruit their friends to this forum

I've got more ideas on how to make the individual battles more interesting via an experience points table that has worked out very well in the past. Let me know what you think of all of this.

[Torquemada Coteaz]

hmm... perhaps an extensive fluff is too much.
but i think there should be at least limited fluff to support the campaign. as well as some new missions and maybe units/lists to go aong with it.
As for the battle report, i generally suggested that because I want to prevent the case of players not having played and posting "oh yeah, umm... chaos won" just to shift the tide.

[Levin]

That's why you do it in mini campaign format. Each group of 4-8 players registers with this site and is assigned a map. They use this map to play their campaign and in the end, post the results. We then compile the results of all of the mini campaigns to have an overall victory map. This means that somebody couldn't just say, well, chaos won, as it would only account for 1 victory on the overall map... so basically 4-8 players get 1 vote kinda deal to keep us accountable.

[Inquisitor Rosenadel]

I think to solve the problem of cliche reasons why all the races are on one planet could easliy be solved: make the campaign over several planets. That way different races have different objectives on different planets (one overall objective), but don't necessarily need to attack/defend every planet. Kinda like playing Risk with objectives: if you have to destroy all Red, not all territories have to be attacked, but if Red controls a lot of territory, you have to attack a lot, and might have to attack other players to get to red.

[Chaptermaster Kezef]

well none of the players at my shop even sign up for forums they think that forums are a waste of time i asked them, and most of our pick up games are random from the BBB (big black book). last forum campaign i tried to play in sucked becouse of it.

Me: hey guys im doing a Campaign on a forum and i need to do a battle using these guidlines

Everyone else: .....Silence....

so unless its a narrative im out

[Inquisitor Rosenadel]

Originally Posted by Chaptermaster Kezef

so unless its a narrative im out

Agreed. I think narrative is a pre-requisite for campaign play. Otherwise players may find it boring.

I also think that each race should have a captain so that decisions about how to achieve that race's goal can be achieved. The Captains turn in troop movements by an appointed time. When opposing forces want to move to the same place, there is a battle. Players do not have to fight against each other, necessarily, but should fight a player with that race.

[Levin]

Again the problem lies in the fact that just because you move your army into my zone, doesn't mean that you and I live on the same cotinent, much less close enough to play a game. What I'm talking about is setting up some kind of minor narrative, but rather than going through all of the cliched ideas of the past, we focus on the individual battles. Whether they be jungle, dense forest, urban, desert (this is a fun one, but often unbalanced towards shooty armies)... Either way, what draws people in is a merit system. Form a chart of different "awards" individual models and units can earn by doing rare or difficult things. Like a troop unit must slay a 3 wound model with no outside help from other models, or for every 100 pts. a unit kills, it earns 25 xp that can be traded in around 250 xp level for a free upgrade like furious charge, or sharpshooters... Also have drawbacks like if a unit is completely wiped out, then it looses all xp and any special abilities unless it immediately passes a ld check... This makes your vet units a liabilty. And if you do an escallation style campaign, it could make for a lot of fun, and possibly help out new players to build up their army.

To get back on point, the reason I forsee a problem with assigning races to fight each other is in the fact that in some groups its hard to find players that necessarily play that particular army. Especially if you're looking for even matchups skill-wise. For this reason I think that each offical member of this site should be given a territory map and fight their own friends locally. In some cases this would mean other members of this forum, in which case special rules should be thought up. All I'm saying is it's going to be difficult to keep things strait if all we have to go on is 1 big map. The site isn't nearly large enough to insure that there is an even sprinkling of different armies represented here. And it would seem kind of difficult to keep everything strait unless we pre register all of the armies in question before kicking this thing off. Otherwise you'll have 3000 marine armies and maybe 3 Sisters of battle armies. This would force minority players to lose by default, even if they won every game....

I guess I've talked myself into a circle because now the only thing that sounds logical is an individual map for each army where they either win or fail on a personal level. I dunno. Anybody else got anything?

[Torquemada Coteaz]

Well, games workshop has solved the problem of matchups by just saying "any wins, and your side gets a point"
but i don't like it
Though we might just have to make it that way.
Basically that's where the battle report kind of thing comes in: you don't need to play a 40kTerra member, though you have to be one yourself (duh) and handing in fluff-ish battle reports 1) ensures validity of results 2) gives additional fluff to campaign 3) means that you have something to say " hey i didn't just fight nids in ork territory at random "

really the only true way of getting it to work between Terra members is to make a video game out of it.
and that is illegal =/

EDIT: to clarify; by game i meant an overhead view Turn Based Strategy game, java or flash based (most easy to make), runs in IE and firefox, and emulates 40k exactly. This is hard to make, and GW smashes you when you make it

[Levin]

Then I guess I'll shut up for a while and let you more creative guys fill in the fluff gaps. I'll toss in my 2 cents after we get into the business of making up the rules and incintives and all of that... Assuming I'm necessary.

[Torquemada Coteaz]

Sorry didn't mean to offend you in any way.
do continue to contribute.
I just can't think of any real solutions to the problem xD
so i think i'll let YOU (the more creative one) solve it
*apology*

[Chaptermaster Kezef]

Originally Posted by Torquemada Coteaz

really the only true way of getting it to work between Terra members is to make a video game out of it.
and that is illegal =/

EDIT: to clarify; by game i meant an overhead view Turn Based Strategy game, java or flash based (most easy to make), runs in IE and firefox, and emulates 40k exactly. This is hard to make, and GW smashes you when you make it

according to legality issues on this sort of thing as long its for private use and no money exchanges hands and all credit is given to GW legally they cant do squat about it, otherwise you wouldnt be able to make your own fansites and the like using artwork or anything else... ive had to deal with this before doing an ongoing campaign for a differnt game called Star Fleet Battles & the Computer Game Starfleet Command.

technically the banner for this site is illegal becouse the eagle image is property of Games workshop.............. did you get express written consent to use it?

[Torquemada Coteaz]

ah.
good then.
In the past (when i considered doing this for the campaign of different website, which is near-death now due to lack of posting) I've emailed GW US and Canada direct services at least 5 times total. the response (from diff people) were always "No you can't, even though it's for free the intellectual property belongs to GW and we won't let you make this game"
speculated reasonings were that if you could play it this way, than many players (especially younger ones) will simply play this instead of actual game, and they aren't getting any money out of it.
If you are sure we can, then we can go for it (though programming it with all the unit stats and stuff in mind will be hard as hell)

I also agree with levin on that it's hard to use zones when we can't see eachother regularly. perhaps instead of actually using zones, the BORDERS of the areas are affected by total wins of that side (every win for lets say nids will expand the border outward. which direction and how that is resolved is yet to be determined)
This is sort of the way guild wars the MMORPG had it working for factions, as the "control" borders between factions were moved according to factionVSfaction wins

[Inquisitor Ralei]

Any campaign where I can slaughter Tau is good by me!

[Chaptermaster Kezef]

Originally Posted by Torquemada Coteaz

ah.
good then.
In the past (when i considered doing this for the campaign of different website, which is near-death now due to lack of posting) I've emailed GW US and Canada direct services at least 5 times total. the response (from diff people) were always "No you can't, even though it's for free the intellectual property belongs to GW and we won't let you make this game"
speculated reasonings were that if you could play it this way, than many players (especially younger ones) will simply play this instead of actual game, and they aren't getting any money out of it.
If you are sure we can, then we can go for it (though programming it with all the unit stats and stuff in mind will be hard as hell)

the thing is the legality of it is a very thin line, if you distribute it as stand alone game yes you violate IP rights and all that. theres your problem making it a game, which implies you have the rules programmed in and all that, what you need is just the image of the battlefield and markers to represent the units and then by the players submissions the Game admin moves the units accordingly, this way you have to have bought Games workshop products in order to play it. as long as its not a challenge to GW as a marketed alternative to play the game you shouldnt have any problems

i dont have to buy the minis to play on the table i can have paper cutouts i made myself, as long as the other player agrees although that takes the fun out of painting and converting and all that.

"its easier to ask for forgivness then for permission"

[Torquemada Coteaz]

oh i sort of see now.
but so the map is the table, and admins move markers according to what the players say?

[Levin]

Hey, not offended in the slightest. I said that more tounge in cheek than anything else. I recognize the fact that I'm not too big on making up background that fits in with the real background so most of the narratives I do are either strait rip-offs of GW, or completely unrelated to the true background of the armies I play. Thanks for the concern though.

Levin

[Chaptermaster Kezef]

basically we all get together and decide what we are going to do
then once we have decided on how many points will be allowed to each army
say 1500 for this example, you then have each one submit a Army List to whoever is going to be the Admin, i suggest using the IAL for this as you can just attach the IAL file to an email and it can be viewed by anyone who has the program, (saves time in having the admin check each list for validation, just load up the files and see if its green box or red box etc. Its also a GW product) then you have someone make a site that will host the overall campaign map (i know some tricks that can be used that makes it easy to have clickable areas etc.)

then you make up another page that hosts the "Table" the battle will be fought on(a Grid map overlaying it helps for placing units) you can do various things for rules here, like saying each squad is represented by 1 marker instead of actually making an image for each squad member

then you play on this "Table" using the rules in the Big Black Book

it puts alot of responsibility on the guy that has to update the Table for each game, but you can have deadlines that each Phase has to be completed by with a penalty for not submitting it on time and then allow time for the admin to make the corresponding moves etc. on the board.

i have put alot of thought into this, its just hard to explaine it, my words fail me.

although if GW did put out something like you were talking about i dont think people would just play it instead of the real thing, i like going down to my local gameshop and showing off what i have done but i know those people have played them alot, sometimes i can anticipate what they are going to do becouse i have played them so many times, and im not flying to another city just so i can get into a game with a friend i met on the web not unless GW is paying for my Ticket ... HAH like that would happen

WH and WH40k is a turn based game why they dont make a turn based platform so you can play globally is beyond me. id even pay a monthly fee for the service.

i mean DoW is a Great Game i love it, but honestly, alot of people like the ones you talked about probably will not buy any models, or paint them, or even play the TT version becouse they have a RTS mind set, in a sure WH40k DoW is cool but i dont play WH40K on the table becouse :insert Reason here: its just easier to play dawn of war