Narrative Campaign

[JoeGuardsman]

Hello. I want some feedback on a campaign system that I've been developing in my free time for a while. It is a narrative campaign, meaning that there is no hexagonal map or anything but there would be a map of some kind to facilitate story ideas. I want it in the end to feel like you and your opponent where writing their own Black Library novel.
There are a couple of different types of games in the campaign. You can play a regular battle to gain campaign points, Kill-Team games to gain reconnaissance points and special scenario games. Special Scenarios are where the narrative part comes in, a player will come up with an idea to best beat his opponent on a level of campaign tactics and give me the idea in all it's devious entirety, then I draft a scenario and set the players to it. These games will be worth many more campaign points.
So part one is to pick the campaign setting. I have these four so far:
1. Hive City Siege - Attacker/Defender - escalades and all sorts of fun stuff. Books with this story line include Necropolis, Storm of Iron and most other things McNeil.
2. City Fight - Stalingradesque 50/50 land distribution and fight it out. No books are coming to mind for this exactly.
3. Trench Warfare - 50/50 land distribution. I have to check the Siege of Vraks Campaign. 15 Hours is a good book for it however short.
4. Jungle Fight - also 50/50 should make for interesting stuff considering that our minds are saturated with Vietnam war movies.
The other thing that I'm hoping to manage with this campaign is a conclusion. The way that I intend to do that is to remove the number one campaign killer in the universe; meeting times. I hope to do this at a hobby store with fairly frequent customers. I take two main players and maybe some tertiary players and we play the campaign. Since they can play a regular battle if I'm not there the campaign can still progress. Also thanks to email I might not even have to go to meet them at all. I'm hoping that my DM like presence and additions to the story will keep interest up and we can see a conclusion within a reasonable amount of time.
Feedback please. I'd like my first one to go off without a hitch and I need outside sources to see my mistakes.

Sounds like a neat idea. You'll have to be sure to tell us how this goes!

[SteveBerenyi]

Do you have a type of pre-campaign story in mind? you would have to get a history of the armies, the work their history into the campaign. you would also have to have an army that you run yourself to keep the plot moving. otherwise it could turn into a grudge match or the same battles being fought by the same sets of players. also, you have to have some sort of rewards system. if there is no territory being gained, you must have a reward of sorts or what is the point?

[hairyyahoo]

can you give us a bit more of a detailed explanation of campaign and recon points and their effect on the narative?

something i always liked about most of the narative campaigns i've encountered is the idea that winning/loosing a game will give certain benefit/penalties in a future game or games. like, if player A looses as the defender in a raid scenario they get less points to spend in their next game, of if player B succeeds in thking and holding a landing pad they get to deepstrike X many squads in 1 future game.

hows this for an idea, just came to me as i'm typing, borrowed from the LotR initiative gimmik. at the beginning of the campaign one player/side is randomly given the "Initiative". normal campaign game would be played as standard missions to represent skirmishes but the player with the Initiative gets to chose weather to be the attacker or defender in any given game or could opt to play a different type of mission altogether. they would then chose any mission and state that if they won then either their own side gets a benefit or the other side gets a penalty in the next game. the initiative would then pass to the other side if they chose the special mission but stays with them if they only chose to attack or defend. it would be up to you as the organiser to determine the objective for the special mission and choose exactly what the benefit/penalty would be. would something like that be of any use to you at all?

[JoeGuardsman]

K Yahoo the Initiative idea is pretty viable in the 50/50 disposition games because I didn't have a system for who should be able to make the first move or attack. The Recon points did need some more explanation; I want to have the players execute kill team games and compile points so that I don't have to assign them before special scenarios and tip off the opposing player to anything that might be coming. Depending on the races involved I will use my guard as PDF in order to regulate and give a change of pace.
It is hard to detail rewards that will be involved in the games because I'm talking about many different campaigns and with the players writing the story I have to think on my feet to come up with proper rewards. One thing that I want to avoid are overly simplified rewards that tip the scales too much. I have never seen a reasonable skills table in a 40k book for squads and I imagine I'll avoid that. As far as point differences the scenario will dictate that such as rear guard. An example of a reward/demerit would be with the loss of an ammo dump there would be a deduction in special and heavy weapons: Each squad may have only one special or heavy weapon.
Thanks guys you are forcing me to flesh this out a little more already.