Mordheim Campaigns: Tips and How to Run Them

[Music] okay now I'm Ready the morheim campaign system is probably the main reason why this game continues to Foster communities all over the world the amount of emergent storytelling that this game facilitates based off of its relatively simple system is kind of Staggering the mechanisms at play present so many interesting decision-making opportunities and unexpected twists that it becomes hard not to think about your warband long after the game has been packed away over the course of just a single campaign you can easily find yourself sucked into a narrative that you didn't even know existed and you'll probably start to care about your little war band of plastic and metal way more than you thought you would so what is a campaign a campaign is simply a series of games in which each player keeps track of their War band's progress from game to game you play a game of more time you go through the warband management and up upkeep record your warb band's progress on your roster and continue on to the next game of more time you can do this for as many or as few games as you want depending on the sort of campaign you are running this is the ideal way to play more time as the system for fighting one-off battles does not showcase what is best about the game which is warband progression but how do you actually run a campaign how many players do you need what if I have an odd number of players what if your players have varying schedules what if players quit and new players join no need to worry it's actually super simple and there are several ways of handling a campaign based on what suits your group best luckily a morim campaign is very different from a role playing game campaign in that you don't need a game master to plan out the story or serve as the referee although it can share similar properties if you want it to but more on that later let's just start off simply I have semi arbitrarily decided that there are three types of campaigns open limited and narrative these categories don't exist in the book but they're helpful for me when thinking about how I want to run a moretime campaign let's start with the open campaign the open campaign is basically the campaign style as described in the rule book you have however many players you want all play mtime in a single campaign that stretches on for eternity or in until you all get bored or die or something this is the simplest way to play a campaign and it is the most free flowing and schedule friendly way new players can join the campaign at any time and players can even have more than one war band involved in the campaign there are no limits as to who can fight who and there are no limits to the amount of games a warband can have under its belt this is a great system if you have a large group of players who are all on different schedules and if you don't have a dedicated time and play for more time it's also great because if you have more than one warband you can pick which one to play based on your available opponents for example if I have a witch hunter War band with five or six games under its belt but I also have a scaven warb band with only two games and if a new player joins with a brand new war band then I can have them face my scaven so there's a bit more balance however there are rules that reward players of lower warband ratings for facing tougher opponents this is called the underdog bonus and it can actually accelerate a new war band's growth if the weaker War band is smart enough to avoid being completely wiped out plus this is morheim and this is a D6 you're as likely to roll a one as you are a six I've seen incredibly powerful war bands get absolutely shredded by the New Kids on the Block which is always equal parts hilarious and kind of sad another good thing with this system is that you can scrap a war band and start a new one pretty much at any time so if you get bored of your mercenaries you can scrap them and maybe start start up a sister of Sigmar warband so in the end everything kind of tends to even out and the open campaign system is actually the main way in which my group plays M time because we have all kinds of players who have different schedules and come from all over the county so this example here kind of brings up another good question what if you have an odd number of players on game day the scenarios in the rule book are really only geared towards one-on-one games well the solution to this problem was provided in issue number five of the town crier which is a publication that was dedicated strictly to more time issue number five entitled chaos in the streets has rules and scenarios for fighting battles with more than two players which they call multiplayer battles I mean technically two player is also multiplayer never mind it works the rules mention setting up and playing on a 6ot by 4ft table but my group has found that a standard 4x4 setup still works pretty perfectly with up to four players either deploy your forces on the corners or work out some way to keep distance between warbands to pull it on table edges you could find Town Cryer number five as well as pretty much all of things more related on broheim Donnet so that's it for the open campaign let's move on to what I call a limited campaign you can call it limited structured closed or whatever you want I like the word limited because well it's kind of what it is it's a moretime campaign with certain limitations in place to keep all the war bands progressing at the same pace usually a limited campaign is a set number of games and players are limited to a single War band furthermore there could be some sort of wind conditions set for the end of the campaign be it greatest number of Victories most weird Stone collected highest warband rating or whatever you want you can also choose to run these campaigns round robin style meaning each player must face each other once before any matchups are repeated so in this example if I have four War bands here I could have my witch Hunters face the sisters of Sigmar and the mercenaries face the scaven round one but next round we'll put the witch Hunters Against The Mercenaries and the scaven against the sisters and then for our final round we'll have our sisters versus our mercenaries and our scaven versus our witch Hunters any subsequent rounds will require repeating matchups and then maybe at the end of your campaign you could have a final round that includes all four players duking it out in a giant Battle Royale this can also be a good way to determine the number of games you want your campaign to be for example if we have four players we can either do a short three game round robin campaign with an optional fourth multiplayer game or you can do a six-game campaign where each of the matchups are held twice if you have an odd number of players you can either work in a multiplayer battle each round host the whole campaign as a series of multiplayer battles or have a player sit out each round and give them some kind of compensation just do your best to try and keep it even whatever you do multiplayer battles can tend to take a little longer so it can be offputting to be the one player who's always finding them in a multiplayer battle each round on the topic of compensation for sitting out one round that's something I should talk about what happens if a player misses a game in a limited campaign because all war bands are progressing in parallel an absent player will be left behind we try to work it in compensation for a player that misses a game usually they earn something like a D3 plus1 extra weirdstone shards each time they miss a game and then they can go on the trading step this keeps their income steady while not offering them any greater reward than those who actually participated obviously limited campaigns work best when every player can commit to playing each game of the campaign one popular variant of the MIM campaign is the morheim map campaign this involves players picking districts to fight over on a map of the city each territory confers a specific benefit to the warband that controls it meaning that as territories are scooped up warbands will get stronger and stronger this campaign really adds a lot of interesting context to the battles you're fighting and it could be fun to carve out your own slice of the city of the dam the map campaign can also be found on broheim Donnet the rules for the campaign are printed on the map itself but even after reading them my group and I still had a lot of unanswered questions maybe I'll get around to describing how a map campaign works sometime but until then use your best judgment and you'll be just fine you'll have a ton of fun running a map campaign with your group the final campaign type is the narrative campaign a narrative campaign is a type of limited campaign where the focus is on immersion and storytelling you still play more time and manage your War band normally but there's an overarching story being told from game to game and the scenarios will usually be based on what the narrative is centered around at any given time these campaigns usually take the most planning of any campaign type and they're sometimes run by a game master who can serve as the referee or run special events or characters that appear during the games a narrative campaign usually has some sort of story hook that explains why all the war bands are involved and there can be a lot of interesting ways of interacting with the story or the individual scenarios that are not dictated by the rules in the morheim rule book this is why a game master can sometimes be required for a narrative campaign while narrative campaigns can be fun they probably take the most time investment from the players to run successfully as they can be pretty dependent on player attendance and enthusiasm games in a narrative campaign can also deviate greatly from the normal rules introducing strange new mechanics or systems to help serve the narrative because of this narrative campaigns are usually best played by people who are already pretty seasoned moretime players who are looking for a new and interesting way to connect with the game I myself have written my own narrative campaign setting called the procession of more it evolves the warb bands escorting of more through M time shepherding lost souls to the realm of the Dead all while uncovering a mysterious plot it's a six game campaign that has several new scenarios that differ widely from those found in the rule book doesn't require a game master to run and introduces a fun weirdstone bidding mechanic to the post game if you're a seasoned more time player looking to try something different you could give my campaign a try I'll try to put a link in the description of this video so to quickly recap open campaigns are the most flexible letting anyone play against anyone anywhere and as often as they like limited campaigns are more structured and are intended to create a concise focused experience where success is determined by whatever parameters that the players see fit and finally narrative campaigns are story focused experiences that require a good deal of prep sometimes a game master and more commitment from everyone involved I hope this gives you some Insight on what sort of campaign style works for you don't worry too much about trying to shoehorn some epic story or wild Victory conditions into your first campaign the game naturally has enough twists and turns that just playing a single War band will give you some sort of story arc and remember that no matter what sort of campaign you're running the goal is always to have fun if everyone has fun together then your campaign was a success so thanks for watching and have fun

Channel: Get Tabled

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Id: 054yXEqH1Xo

Length: 11min 33sec (693 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 02 2024