Rogue trader-writing narrative campaigns

MadDrDevo

Member
hey all. having recently come across all my old figures from my early teens i have become fascinated by the world of rogue trader again. I would love to run some narrative campaigns for my friends, the trouble is, well im not sure how to go about writing a good one.

what i would like to do is run a campaign for each general group of figs i have. So theres one where the players are a rogue trader and retinue, another they are orks working their way up their own waggh(this one writes itself really). I was going to use the same settings for each.

anyway i guess what i want to know is are there things you guys like in your games, ideas and concepts about running campaigns, what makes one good vs bad etc.
they would be smaller games of two or three players at most and me as gm.

I realize this is vague.. but im looking for some general help with this. thanks in advance :)
 

MadDrDevo

Member
THe issue that i am having is that this is not a traditional kind of campaign, its not really a wargame campaign, those arent narrative, and its not quite going to be long enough or in depth enough to play as Role Playing campaign. its hard to find anything that helps
 

Zhu Bajie

Member
Keep it loose and light, just run a number of linked scenarios where the 'plot' develops through each game. Give the players slightly different forces each time they play, with some narrative reasoning.

Lichemaster and McDeath for fantasy are nicely structured, there are smaller independently fought battles, the survivors of which then meet in the grand finale, gives a sense of building scale and drama, and rewards players without going over the top.

Back in the day I ran a campaign where victory points were allocated that the players could then spend on new equipment, but one player got overpowered very quickly and dominated the game. The Realm of Chaos campaign system suffers much the same problem.

If you're doing fast, small skirmishes within a fixed grand narrative, having players play each side works well.

A genuine campaign system where you track resources and spend on a Strategic level, something could be adapted from Mighty Empires or Tony Baths How to Set up a Wargames Campaign. or Archworld. But I can't think of a sci-fi or particularly Rogue Trader-ish one. Not sure that kind of fully fledged Wargames Campaign is what you're after.
 

MadDrDevo

Member
Zhu Bajie":1mdquj37 said:
Keep it loose and light, just run a number of linked scenarios where the 'plot' develops through each game. Give the players slightly different forces each time they play, with some narrative reasoning.

Lichemaster and McDeath for fantasy are nicely structured, there are smaller independently fought battles, the survivors of which then meet in the grand finale, gives a sense of building scale and drama, and rewards players without going over the top.

Back in the day I ran a campaign where victory points were allocated that the players could then spend on new equipment, but one player got overpowered very quickly and dominated the game. The Realm of Chaos campaign system suffers much the same problem.

If you're doing fast, small skirmishes within a fixed grand narrative, having players play each side works well.

A genuine campaign system where you track resources and spend on a Strategic level, something could be adapted from Mighty Empires or Tony Baths How to Set up a Wargames Campaign. or Archworld. But I can't think of a sci-fi or particularly Rogue Trader-ish one. Not sure that kind of fully fledged Wargames Campaign is what you're after.

My plan is to never let players fight each other. it removes the option for one player to quickly over power the rest.

I dont think i made that point clear, since all the options you brought up are really traditional wargaming style campaigns, linked battles with light narrative little to no role play or personal interest in the characters development.. like when yo play star wars, you can be han solo and i can be luke but so what. they never improve or change or become "mine"

does that all makes sense? I really want them to get into the game, even if they are my figs
 

Zhu Bajie

Member
Well the narratives can be quite compelling in a traditional wargame, if done right, most of the narrative emerges from play and isn't really 'written' before hand.

But from your clarification it sounds like your not talking about a narrative campaign, but a roleplaying game. Getting buy-in and investment from the player usually comes from the character generation aspect, the "I wanna play a space-pirate" then rolling up and stating out a "space pirate" character, working up a bit of background story and then getting in the game. So maybe the player gets to pick out one mini from your collection, and use that to base their character concept of.

Are you going for an old-school Player/GM split where the GM controls the world, and the players define character actions, and the GM defines the results, or are you looking of more modern storytelling-games, where the players get to define the results of character actions?
 

MadDrDevo

Member
Zhu Bajie":1puw2jpt said:
Well the narratives can be quite compelling in a traditional wargame, if done right, most of the narrative emerges from play and isn't really 'written' before hand.

But from your clarification it sounds like your not talking about a narrative campaign, but a roleplaying game. Getting buy-in and investment from the player usually comes from the character generation aspect, the "I wanna play a space-pirate" then rolling up and stating out a "space pirate" character, working up a bit of background story and then getting in the game. So maybe the player gets to pick out one mini from your collection, and use that to base their character concept of.

Are you going for an old-school Player/GM split where the GM controls the world, and the players define character actions, and the GM defines the results, or are you looking of more modern storytelling-games, where the players get to define the results of character actions?


sorry im clearly just wasting our time with this.
 
Back
Top