Greetings fellow Campaigners!
I, like yourselves, have never been able to restrain myself when it comes to campaigns. When I was younger my mates and I would be playing a game and all of a sudden we'd think of new theme based objectives and alternative follow up games depending on the thematic resolution of what we were currently playing.
One of my favourites was a kill team game where the Kill Team was lead by Chuck Norris and their objective was to assasinate John Howard (the Current Australian Prime minister)
But ANYWAY,
One thing most campaigns have never had are RESOURCES. For anyone who's played any Real Time Strategy Computer games or some boardgames, Resource Management can be as crucial to winning a 'war' as fielding quality or troops (Or even more so) So to add a new level of complexity (And we need more of that the way GW is designing everything for 12 yo) My latest Campaign is going to be a resource based crusade.
So first off the Campaign.The Game System we are using is Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game. Now don't groan, we have our reasons. Primarily because it is awsome. But I'm sure some of you will be deluded enough to disagree with me, so I have more. I love lotr and I've been itching to make certain terrain pieces (where my heart truly lies) so the campaign will take place within this new terrain. Also no other gaming system can truly capture such a narrative feel as lotr.
There are two sides to this war; good and evil. With a primary focus on the age old conflict; Gondor and Morder, with other races coming in as allies. The Campaign 'Map' as it were is to take place in the City of Osgiliath.
So the Resources. We have kept it simple and gone Dawn of War Style and having only one major Resource. In this case Gold instead of Requisition. but it essentially has the same theme.
Gold is accrued in a variety of ways within the Game Turn, and is then used in the Campaign turn (sometimes in game as well) to perform a variety of functions.
Gold is used for a few main things;
Purchasing New Troops for reinforcement.
Paying the upkeep cost on your existing troops.
Purchasing other items such as barricades, ships, war machines etc.
The first one is an obvious necessity. If your men die; you need more.
The Upkeep cpst however, is something I've always wanted to do in a campaign. This cost must be paid every campaign turn and represnts the gold that would have to be spent on feeding your troops and keeping their weapons and armour in a usable condition. The upkeep various from unit to unit depending on unit type. Cavalry for instance is more expensicve than infantry, but trolls are more expensive again. So if you want to field the big bad boys, you got to make sure they aren't Hungry.
Another thing about upkeep is that you can elect not to feed your troops. These troops will then suffer from certain stat penalties, until eventually they die are on the verge of starvation and in Gondor's case they retreat and count as dead, or in Mordor's case, they stay till they die
So this expenditure is all very well and good, but how do we get our gold?There are several main ways in which gold is earned;
Killing enemy troops. At the end of each game turn you receive the points worth in gold of the enemy units that you killed.
Supply Carts. These are literally horse (or warg) drawn carts that spawn periodically within the game turn in random spots of the city, and must be escorted to your command building. If the cart makes it home you get 100 gold. If the enemy destroys your cart, they get 200 gold.
Explore bonuses. Small gold bonuses can also be attained through owning terretories in a certain way, which I won't bother outlining here.
So we have gold, and we spend it. Then we push and pull and hopefully Gondor gains Osgiliath
So my question o lads is essentially, what do you think? We have done some small playtesting with the resource system and are pretty comfortable that the gold intake and expenditure should upscale and work.
Any suggestions?
Ways to get gold, things to spend it on?
Cheers lads, sorry for the novel
~Morty
PS
If you like lotr I have thread you might be interested in, about trying to get a tighter knit lotr community established within the forum, check it out;
http://www.40konline.com/index.php?topic=220191.0