Early warning - rumblings of a small Fantasy league in Ames

[Mark]

Just throwing this out here, loosely based on what Brian mentioned...

"Its good to be the king"

Create a map similar to the Vogen 40k Campaign map.

A Lord of Change has infiltrated the region of Vogen and turned the king to worship him. In order to keep some sort of peace in the area while he further instills himself, the Daemon plays various factions against each other.

An army, largely dedicated to the changer of ways (AKA Brian's army since he wants to be game master), holds a castle near the center of the map. The army is Huge (3k+? points). The holder of this castle gently nudges various other factions to fight amongst themselves (The king assigns games, or at least chooses scenarios). Each other player starts with a smaller army (500-750 pts?). Winning increases their point limit, or gives some other advantage.... maybe +50 points in your army for every territory you hold? At certain dates in the league, the basic army value increases.

Any player may disregard their assigned game, and instead attempt to overthrow the king. They fight a game, maybe similar Grand Assault from Cities of Death 40k supplement. If they defeat the king, they win the campaign, or maybe become the king (and have whoever is king at a certain date win?). If they lose to the king, they suffer a loss of points. If they are Massacred by the king, they are removed from the campaign (too harsh?)

Commentary:
Its meant to be a story based, escalation-ish league... assuming points value starts at 500 and increases 500 points every month... and you can make a campaign turn every week you're present... you could get 600-700 points per month. Maybe set the King to 2500 points, players who are winning a lot would have an even-ish fight with the king after 4 months. Points could be easily adjusted, maybe give the king 2000 points to allow him to be deposed earlier and create a true free for all at the end?

I can't commit to joining any league running on specific evenings, because I've got no clue what my schedule is gonna be like once school starts... but it'll likely be mostly set, so if I have tuesdays off, I'll probably join in.
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Mark

[mearn4d10]

I LIKE this!
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BattleHammer's Brigade: Stalking foes of Karak Hirn.
The Ashen Hearts Astartes!
Cadian 713th Regiment, 1st Platoon "Better Lucky Than Good"
The Trollkin kriels rebuff the invaders!

[blue_brian]

Ah, cool. I knew you were in some plot-based campaign, I just didn't know which one or how it worked out for you, Mark.

Our current league allows "proxies" so, if people can mostly make it Tuesdays but might miss now and again, they can designate a proxy to handle stuff. Or, if it turns out everyone's on the forum by then, I'd prefer forum-based scenario assignment.

But I like the idea of a king-centered campaign. I would think of most of the territories initially belonging to the King ("neutral") but, as reward for completing Quests, the "lesser" gentry would gain provinces to protect on behalf of the king (perhaps the lord of change is intentionally splitting up the land in this fashion...). Perhaps no one can attack each other until the king is overthrown by force of arms - since the deposer has only a tenuous ancestral claim to the throne, people could then directly attack each other after that.

Deposed kings would just retreat to their ancestral lands and sulk. Winners would be the last N people listed as Kings of the Land (for N < # of players) plus an overall painting prize at the end. Of course, being King would convey an advantage as well (such as, perhaps, assigning scenarios or maybe just having a castle is enough) - otherwise, people would just wait to the last turn to go at the "King of the Hill," as it were.

One thing I would like to do: Have a static "who decides when to go" counter. PE battles are decided by a die roll this summer and it would be nice to, say, let the King choose his battle first then next in power etc. That's why I'm still pondering a decoupled "glory" and territory owned idea. Floating in the back of my head is the board game Game of Thrones where "influence" is accumulated independently of territory and the player's rankings is determined at random intervals by bidding influence. Territory is still crucial (and the win condition) but influence is useful in side ways (perhaps "spend an influence to get +1 to a single roll *at any time* during the game" or "spend an influence to name the point level instead of using the assigned scenario points").

I was just reading last night about castle sieges in my old Warhammer book. (Old) rules for ramparts, seige engines, and battering down gates. I'm already thinking of fun scenarios ("A summons to the summer court? Why, certainly his lordship would not set a trap for me there. Perhaps I shall bring my honor guard nonetheless..").

[moonscrow]

These ideas all seem fun. To add another element of convolutedness maybe more than one king? Say each king rules his kingdom and the king with the largest at the end wins. Each kings vassals have territory within the kingdom they belong to depending on how their games go. (you win your game which increases your territory by one which also increases the kingdom by one.)

Each week you could chose to fight under your king (a good choice for someone without a large vassalship) or chose to try to overthrow your king (a good choice for someone who has been winning a lot of territory for their kingdom.)

Each player gets bonuses based on their own territory, but the king gets bonuses for his entire kingdom.

So strategy-wise you want to win territory for your kingdom, but you eventually need to become the king to win.

Maybe instead of overthrowing the king you could challenge to break your territory off from your kingdom once it is large enough, if you win your territory becomes a "free" state, which makes you a king.

just throwing some ideas out there...
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-Johnny B

[Loki]

Honestly, I like a points system for determining "campaign victory". A freshly deposed 'king' might be the least powerful guy, for example, whereas a Duke-equivalent who hasn't been king yet but has tons of power, money, and territory would be plenty powerful. If I were running it I'd certainly make it so that being King (Kill the King, the King is Dead...) provided rich bonuses, like access to taxes to raise fresh troops/resources or wielding a relic of the kingdom in battle (along with some campaign victory points, perhaps?), while being the King at The End would provide a bunch of VPs. However, if you bided your time and just tried to assault the Kingship on the last turn to win by being King at the end, you still might lose to somebody who was more active throughout the rest of the campaign. Just thinking out loud here.

That said, if we can do the proxy thing, I can make it just about every Tuesday - and honestly, I can just scratch it out of my work availability.
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--Cliff

[blue_brian]

Hmm, the single king idea has the (somewhat strong to me) advantage of simplicity but the "vassal/king" distinction makes it much easier to add new players. When a new player shows up, a king volunteers (or randomly is assigned) to grant the new player the base starting value of territory from their kingdom in exchange for some sort of substantial non-territory bonus and the advantage of having a vassal (so, for example, the kingdom can grow by 2 territories instead of just 1 each week if each player can only play one game ... a practice I like, BTW).

That would give us a nice "layer" system but I'm still worried about complexity. Perhaps it would be simpler to just say that kingdoms are all that matter in the end game and the king takes X% of the prize while their remaining vassals get Y% each (for X > Y, of course). This would add the idea of rebelling to either form your own kingdom or join another's. On first glance, this is a little more political (e.g. the king could decide shares him or herself!) and we might end up with one king splitting all the prizes as he/she sees fit.

BTW, in this formulation, I would come up with the scenarios. For example, kingdom A has note a barricade being built on the border with kingdom B that is undermanned. Kingdom A designates which vassal (including himself) noticed the barricade while kingdom B would designate a vassal building the barricade. This would be a defender-type scenario (from the book).

Right now, I'd prefer the one king (with everyone a lord) model's simplicity because scenarios would already be plotty and complicated enough.

[warpspiderman]

That sounds awesome!

As a total fantasy noob, would this league be playable with a 1,000 point or so army? I could probably get it up to 1250 or so by the time school starts, but as of yet all I have is the BRB and my army book.
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The guy who plays gold Eldar and purple Orks

[blue_brian]

Absolutely. We'll start even lower so, with 1000-1250, you'll start off with a bit of a choice as to what to field.

As an aside, one thing I'm definitely trying to avoid is the overemphasis on initial tile selection present there. Specifically, while it's always hard to jump in late, at least those who start the league (or miss just the first week) should be on roughly equal footing. Or, in the case of 1 king + vassals, exactly equal footing. All the ideas so far seem to create situations where we can avoid this issue but it's good to keep that in mind.

[blue_brian]

One small addition here: For those new to Fantasy, be aware that most games are played without named (or "special") characters (hero, lord, or even unit champions). So, for example, I don't plan to ever field Fateweaver in Fantasy. It is very likely that a fantasy league would not allow special characters as well - I don't see anything in the new edition that makes specials any less unbalancing in general.

Just don't want anyone going out and building a small army around an awesome special character and then find no one wants to play them...

[blue_brian]

Minor brainstorm: Does anyone have a high-detail map of the Empire?

I'm thinking "Warhammer 4k" set in the future of the Empire, where all races live together in peace and harmony an elector count of each player race. Well, until the old king dies. But that requires a map to divide up into sensible "provinces" - then said provinces can be divided into roughly equal-power groups.

[warpspiderman]

I do. It's on page 8 of the Empire Codex. has counties, towns, terrain, and everything. I could photocopy it and get it blown up, possibly.
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The guy who plays gold Eldar and purple Orks

[blue_brian]

Cool. I nabbed that from a PDF and can do e-wizardry on it up to a point. That will serve well as a starting point for me.

I guess the only thing better would be a huge map so one could zoom in and out. My current plans include creating a (simple) point-and-click interface to recolor areas and such. But the Empire map works great.

[BlacKnight]

Is there an estimated time of when this is going to start?

I'm a huge fan of plot-driven or map based campaigns! So you can count me in!!! Depending on how small we start I might try to slowly build up (paint) and test my Brets.

[blue_brian]

My estimate would remain mid-September if I'm running it. Thing is, many of us are wrapping up a 40k league this coming Tuesday and at least I want a couple games of 8th before diving into a campaign. Plus I have outside pressures (big paper due Sept 17).

[BlacKnight]

Alright, sounds good! Looking forward to it.

I too will be looking to get in some test games in the coming weeks (wracking my brain about how to proceed with the Brets) So if you're up for it, send me a PM and I'll come on down to Ames.