#232: What a Campaign Needs

Boardgames So Very Wrong About Games
1

2022-09-27T10:00:02Z

001
You approach a door. Test perception. If you fail, go to paragraph 105. If you succeed, go to paragraph 166.

105
You fail to notice a sharp thing, so you step on it and take 1 wound. Go to paragraph 166.

166
On the other side of the door are things you must kill for reasons. Dig out tiles 2B, 4A, 6A, 8B and 12B and get ready for some paperwork.

02:23 AYURIS: Tungaru (Louis Malz & Stefan Malz, Alley Cat Games, 2020)

Games Played Last Week:
03:48 -Blood Rage (Eric Lang, CMON, 2015)
06:29 -Wormholes (Peter McPherson, Alderac Entertainment Group, 2022)
09:16 -Envelopes of Cash (Andy Schwarz, Envelopes of Cash LLC, 2022)
13:52 -Fateforge: Chronicles of Kaan (Gordon Calleja, Mighty Boards, 2023)
18:44 -Albedo: Yggdrasil (Kai Herbertz, Herbertz Entertainment UG, 2019)
22:47 -Anachrony: Fractures of Time (Richard Amann, Viktor Peter, Dávid Turczi, & Mindclash Games, 2020)
27:58 -Trudvang Legends (Jordy Adan, Fel Barros, Guilherme Goulart, Eric M. Lang, Marco Maggi, Francesco Nepitello, Umberto Pignatelli, & Fabio Tola, 2022)
34:13 -Long Shot: The Dice Game (Chris Handy, Perplext, 2022)
37:10 -Hanabi (Antoine Bauza, ABACUSSPIELE, 2010)
40:42 -G.I. Joe Deck-Building Game: Shadow of the Serpent Expansion (Matt Hyra, Renegade Game Studios, 2022)
42:45 -The Mirroring of Mary King (Jim Felli, Devious Weasel Games, 2022)

News (and why it doesn’t matter):
44:45 SHUX! September 30-October 2. SVWAG on stage for two live shows on October 1.
46:25 We stream games on Twitch and rebroadcast those session on Youtube! Most recently, Anachrony.
47:09 Space Dwarfs aka “Squats” from Games Workshop:
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2022/09/13/welcome-to-the-big-leagues-who-are-the-five-biggest-leagues-of-votann/
47:50 Fuse: Countdown expandalone

48:21 Topic: What a Campaign Needs

2

By campaign they mean a board game with a series of games. Rather than a kickstarter campaign.

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I think campaigns are another iteration of Roger’s Dilemma for individual boardgames: if you can’t win from behind on the last turn, what was the point of playing it? If you can, what was the point of playing the other turns? (There are many answers to this, but if you don’t have one at all your game is unlikely to be good.)

A wargame campaign can consist of a series of battles - but if they’re basically the same forces, modified by the results of previous games, the winner tends to keep winning and the final games can become anticlimactic. The better ones don’t do this: usually, one side is the Hero Unit, and the other side is a series of opposition units. (1 vs all works well for this.)

A variant on gradually introducing Lots of Stuff is gradually introducing Lots of Rules – for example Perdition’s Mouth: Abyssal Rift, in which the first scenario uses only fairly simple opposition. I do want the first scenario to give me a realistic idea of what the gameplay will be like, but maybe it doesn’t need to use all the special-case rules.

For me V-Commandos gets this right: you can play a single terrain card, and that’s not a cut-down or restricted version of the mechanics; or you can play an operation which will chain together 3-4 terrain cards and have some special rules. But each terrain card probably takes about 30-45 minutes for experienced players, so playing a whole operation in one sitting is quite doable.

(I think one of the worst things about Star Wars is the way the universe feels small, because the same few people keep showing up.)

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