Are campaign rules important for you?

[Ivan Sorensen]

I define campaign rules here as “a system to link together multiple games”.

That could mean rules for troops improving (“leveling up”), consequences or benefits from winning battles, a map system to move guys around etc.

Is this sort of thing important to you in a set of war-game rules?
If so, how important?

Must-have? Important? Nice to have? Pleasant surprise? Don’t care?

[Mr. Average]

To me personally, yes, they’re super-important.  Building and maintaining a persistent narrative is a big part of what makes games fun and interesting to me, and even if I don’t use the system, having it on hand helps me to write scenarios and generally get the “feel” of the world.  Games that happen in a vacuum leave me cold.  I wouldn’t call it a “must-have” really, since I’ll write my own if none is available, but I would say “Important” for sure.

[Victoria Dickson]

I’d say nice to have.  If it’s not provided and I want it I can knock something up myself easily enough, but it’s nice to have an ‘official’ version.

http://crazywargames.blogspot.co.uk/

[kyoteblue]

Campaign’s are why I game. So yes they are important to me.

[irishserb]

Campaigns are a driving force behind most of my gaming these days.  That aid, I’m not using any published campaign rules for the three campaigns that I’m involved in  right now.

[McKinstry]

I do most of my own campaigns using board games as a basis but tactical/operational rules that include campaign items that help me with logistics etc. are more likely to catch my attention.

The tree of Life is self pruning.

[Shaun Travers]

Pleasant surprise.  I would tend to use other campaign rules to drive games.  I have tried campaigns and so far how found them a too much work for me to change unit statuses from game to game.  But I have a plan – to use an operational boardgame to generate battles.  That way I hopefully don’t need to remember individual units.  This plan is hoping to start generating battle this or next month so we will see.

[Mike]

I find games where the outcome has a knock on effect for the next game are more enjoyable.

Be that less troops next time, less support, less replacement troops, the opponent chooses the battlefield, all of the above.

I find it requires a less gung ho approach which for me is always a bit more ‘realistic’

[Mike]

They can be really simple too, my KR 16 rough campaign rules are:

You start with a fixed force written down.
At the end of each game you roll to see which downed troops are dead and which need to miss X games to recover to full health.
A minor victory gives you X points to spend, a major gives you 2X.

You use these points to repair damaged vehicles and recruit new troops.

And that is pretty much it.

[Nathaniel Weber]

I don’t need campaign rules in the actual rules set itself, but they are great in scenario books, even if they are only linked scenarios with some special victory conditions/extra reinforcements as described above.

Possibly my single favorite gaming experience was playing one of the published Check Your Six! campaigns, with the Luftwaffe vs US bombers and fighters. The way the campaign mechanisms awarded or punished casualties and scenario victories really made me and my opponent play must more realistically. Nobody was diving in for risky, late-game attacks—-we’d break off, conserve pilots, etc. It really made the game much more realistic. The campaign’s victory point system and its rewards system for winning scenarios did all of that, with no complex modifications to the rules.

[Phil Dutré]

I usually invent my own campaign mechanics. But it’s nice to have when there are some original campaign mechanics in the rules, or an actual sequence of well-thought out scenarios that logically link together.

[Author]

Posts