Warhammer Campaign and Mission Ideas

When I was in secondary school, I played Warhammer (both fantasy and 40k). I've been dabbling in it again — this time using wooden cubes instead of expensive miniatures. Since this is my "gaming blog" (I guess), I thought I'd write down some thoughts about campaigns and missions.

Narratives and Campaigns

Some time after 6th edition of 40k, Games Workshop introduced strategems and "narrative campaigns". I don't fully understand what these mean, so I will ignore them. Instead I will discuss different ways to structure campaigns I've enjoyed.

Path to Glory

Back around White Dwarf issue 275 or so, there was a free supplement called Path to Glory. You started with a Chaos warlord, and you built your war band from scratch using dice rolls and tables. The exact initial setup was the same for everyone, you start off with 35 "favor points" and then:

• Step 1: your warlord. Your warlord starts off with basic gear, but you can use 1 favor point to get gear (you roll 1d6 and use a table of possible gear)
• Step 2: your gods. You pick a Chaos God to follow (or you can worship them all equally); this is done once and cannot be undone.
• Step 3: Form a war band. You need at least two groups [squads] of followers. You get followers by spending favor points to roll a die and use particular tables. If you use 1 favor point, you use the "more common follower" table; if you use 3 favor points, you can use the "awesome follower" table.
• Step 4: Play a game! You play against others, and accumulate favor points by accomplishing various goals. You then use favor points to build up your war band further.

I really liked the feeling of building up an army from scratch. This guided my approach to structuring game play; for example,

• Orkz: you are a nob trying to become a warlord. Or you're a Mek, trying to become a Big Mek.
• Space Marines: you are a sargeant working his way up to higher rank; or a tech-marine trying to gather artifacts (or whatever they do); or an apothecary doing...apothecary-stuff.
• Adeptus Mechanicus: you are a lowly tech priest trying to find artifacts and research sufficient to win favor and your own fabulous new car Martian forge.
• Imperial Guard: you are a second-lieutenant given command of a platoon, rising through the ranks.
• Inquisition: you're a paper/button pusher (or whatever they have in the 40th millenium) given a field job. (That's how inquisitors start out, right? Or is this like the Freelance Police where anyone with a gun can claim to be apart of it?) In either case, you start off with nearly nothing, and working your way up to Space Pope CEO of the Inquisition.
• Sisters of Battle: you're a sister superior, working to fight Chaos.
• Adeptus Custodes: ...wait, that's a "thing" now?
• Chaos Space Marines: this is pretty much the same as Path to Glory, isn't it? You could be a "goodie two shoes" space marine who has fallen to evil ways, or a "vintage" 30k traitor.
• Necron: you are some minor dignatary of your dynasty, trying to accumulate more power to guide your dynasty to power.
• Dark Eldar: you're a space elf pirate "captain" of a pathetic vessel, or you're a petty officer of one, trying to accumulate enough to form your own mighty pirate fleet.
• Eldar: are you an exodite? Or a corsair? Or a craft world? Perhaps you aspire to join the Harlequins? You hate chaos [or Necrons, or...] and you're forming a gang ranking up in the military to fight it (or whatever).
• Tyrannids: you're a bug.
• Tau: pick a caste, get some followers, and find out the real empire is the friends you make along the way.

In many cases (e.g., Imperial Guard, Sisters of Battle, Tau, probably also Eldar, etc.), for this approach to campaign building to work, then you need a "Game Master" who will set up an over-arching narrative. Why? Because the player is literally working at the "tactical level", and someone needs to fit it into an overarching strategy.

For others (e.g., Orkz, Chaos Space Marines, Adeptus Mechanicus, Dark Eldar, etc.), it's pretty self-sufficient for motivation: you're trying to smash other players (or, for Adeptus Mechanicus, accumulate artifacts).

I was always intrigued with the Orkz. You could be following the footsteps of Ghazghkull, trying to unite a planet to then lead a WAAAAAGH somewhere. Or you could be following the footsteps of Orkimedes (I love that name), trying to become a better Mek. (Or you could be a Dok trying to gather the resources and skills to become a better Dok.) Or you could be a speed racer trying to get parts to make his truk go faster.

(My favorite backstory for an Ork Mek: a tech-priest got hit on the head, and when he came to, he awoke amidst orks. The Tech-Priest then believes he is an Ork. Thus we got some fascinating backstory for a Mek. Disclaimer: I stole this from some guy, who posted it back 15 years ago or so, as a backstory to Orkimedes...I just can't find where it went on the internet.)

If you just look around, you can find inspiration for campaigns all around you.

Black Library Ideas

You can "take a page" from Black Library books: their plots literally consist of missions and campaigns.

The Infinite and the Divine revolved around stealing one artifact, and stealing it back, then transporting it to some location. (It's a great book, by the way, I'm just "gutting it" for meat.) This idea could easily be adopted for an Adeptus Mechanicus and Ork Mek pairing, or Inquisitor and Chaos pairing, or...

Belisarius Cawl was about escorting a tech-priest to study ruins, while another squad of Space Marines fought tyrannid bugs (or joined a cult, or whatever).

Priests of Mars is a rescue expedition, and an opportunity to find lost artifacts. On the flip side, it appears the Eldar are keen to defend their territory from pesky hew-mans.

Horus Rising is about violently suppressing innocent civilians, and terrorizing advanced civilizations. There's also some chapters involving space marines bullying giant spiders (finally something we can all relate to).

Example: Exploring a Planet

The computer game Mechanicus centers its plot around an Ark Mechanicus exploring a Necron tomb world. Each level boils down to [procedurally generating] some number of rooms, of which a few have Necron enemies. But each room has a decision to make: explore the room, analyze some obvious artifact, or leave as quickly and quietly as possible.

This could easily be turned into a game: represent a room by a card, shuffle your deck of "room cards", roll several six-sided die to determine how many rooms to place, and randomly generate a map using them. Be sure to make the outcomes of the choices depend on dice rolls, consider whether you want the results visible or hidden in a sleeve [e.g., an envelop contains a folded slip of outcomes, and an unfolded slip of choices], and so on.

In short, you start with an existing game for inspiration, but keep modifying it to work on the tabletop. If there are multiple players, for example, this could turn into a Hunt the Wumpus-type game: no one knows the location of other players until they run into each other, then it's a skirmish on the tabletop using 40k rules.

This works for Adeptus Mechanicus and Necron players, but it could include other Xenos players as well (Eldar could be trying to recover an artifact, as well; etc.). But it works with only a subset of factions. For example, I wouldn't know how to add fluff to explain a Space Marine player (or any other Imperium faction).

Missions follow from Narratives

If you have a strong narrative setup to your campaign, the missions follow quite naturally. Usually. For some (e.g., Imperial Guard), it's rather "exogeneous" [i.e., you need a Game Master]. Here history helps. For example:

• You need to escort engineers to form a bridge to cross a river; this requires protecting the engineering squad for N turns, then rush the bridge to secure a bridgehead foot-hold. (Conversely, hold off an attacker from crossing a bridge.)
• Escort character [pilot, VIP, POW, whatever] from the North-East corner to the South-West corner of the board. (Conversely: kill character before they escape.)
• Search for MacGuffin [holy artifacts, secret battle plans, munitions/supplies] and return with it.
• And so on...

These can be composed in larger narrative arcs. Let me show you what I mean:

• Sieging a foritifaction, which requires/allows...
  • Helping sappers dig under the fortress walls, which requires a distraction
  • Intelligence reports enemy forces are hours away, so you need to spike the emplaced guns and the enemy army is arriving!
  • Escort engineers around the fortress's exterior to help determine where to place guns, or where sappers should dig, etc.
  • A messenger has escaped the fort, you must stop (or protect) him
  • Commandos from the fort must destroy certain munition depots, at night, so visibility is limited until the alarm is raised. (Conversely, the besieging army has commandos infiltrate to open the gates, or assassinate some character.)
  • For defenders, someone left the front gate open! Get as many defenders as possible to the landing pad for aerial evacuation.
  • Etc.
• Preparing for a pitched battle
  • Protect engineers as they build a bridge crossing (happened a lot to Napoleon's army)
  • Capture and hold [building]; consequences could vary. For example, it could be a Lehman Russ factory, or it could just be a forward location which will end the battle faster.
  • Deliver a package [supplies, ammunition, fuel, whatever] to a location. No explanation: it's needed by other parts of the army, soldier!
  • Escort a messenger with updated plans, otherwise an entire Corps will be out of place. (Again, this happened a lot to Napoleon's armies.)
  • Forage for food for the corps, which requires going to fruit orchards and supply depots.
  • Blow up [building] before a battle takes place, which will affect deployment area (or delay part of the army until turn 3, or whatever).
  • Etc.

You need to weave these together to form a coherent arc for each army. These can be independent arcs: the Imperial Guard is trying to defend against an Ork invasion. The Orkz are just looking for scrap to launch their space hulk, so they can invade another planet (or whatever).

The same mission can have different objectives for each side. The Ork Mek vaguely recalls storing important stuff in the mines. The increased Ork presence in the mines motivates a reciprocal mission: the Imperial Guard needs to protect and escort the miners out of the mines.

Missions have Consequences, too

Failing a mission should have minor consequences. If the Imperial Guard fails to protect enough miners, there are long-term (but minor) consequences. If the Ork player fails to recover the Mek's parts, then the Mek needs to look elsewhere to parts to make [some class of vehicles] and the Ork player cannot use [class of vehicles] until they are found.

Failure should have consequences, but not render the game unplayable or impossible to win/progress. For example, the Mek's spare parts could be red paint, and no Ork vehicle can have red paint until some could be found. Minor, slightly inconvenient, but narratively interesting.

Settings Can Create Twists

You're on an ice planet. Using flame throwers will create water, which freeze again next turn (reducing movement). Also there's no friction, so vehicles slip and slide every which way. But the human body can survive the cold for three hours before freezing to death, which makes "Rescue [character]"-type missions now more time sensitive.

Or a desert planet, which requires careful water rationing. Without adequate water supplies, every stat decreases by 1. This motivates a new mission to resupply the water cisterns. The human body can survive 3 days without water...but it's not fun.

These are just a couple superficial examples which I give without knowing anything about the factions involved. We can imagine Forge World specific missions for an Adeptus Mechanicus player (or Ork Mek player), or Holy/Daemon world specific missions for Chaos Space Marines (or Inquisitors).

Where this is lacking

You could write down tables for followers and gear, true to form following Path to Glory, and use it to build your army up in a semi-random manner. When combined with a narrative campaign/mission, it is surprisingly compelling.

First problem: Craftworld Eldar and Harlequins are particularly difficult to work into this framework. That's because I don't know their lore well enough to "make it work".

Second problem: like Dungeons and Dragons after level 7 or so, it starts to lose something after some "initial army" has been established. I've thought about ways around this problem; for example, recursion (pick some lieutenant and build him up as a "reboot"). Or bigger rank means bigger problems (e.g., once you have reached "captain" rank, now you need to sort out which campaign arc to follow, you can be given a ship...which you must now maintain, etc.).

I don't think anyone has solved this second problem, in any game (otherwise everyone would've copied its solution).

On the other hand, at this point you will have a decent army set up. You could pivot to a map-based campaign, similar to one of the Total War video games (or Dark Crusade, or Soulstorm). This can easily be extended in any number of directions, depending on how much detail you want to include, or what region you want to fight over. (Fighting over a country is long, hard work; fighting for an entire planet would be quite another thing.)