Writing a Campaign

So, as pictoral evidence from the last blog post will testify, I have been building some soviets for bolt action. There are a whole bunch of guys locally who picked up bits and bobs but things haven't been happening recently. I figured a good way to get the ball rolling would be to come up with a campaign. I thought I would write my opinions on how to write a campaign.

 I think the most important point to make would be make the campaign match your player base rather than the other way around. It might seem obvious, but if you have some keen competitive players who want to lock horns on a level playing field there is no point making a rules set which leads to inbalanced forces. It is much more difficult than you think, you tend to introduce elements which you think will be cool but your player base may not.

 Another critical point is you have to be flexible. There is no point making a system where players have to attend every week without fail and with no room to add more people and lose others. If you have players who can make those commitments, amazing, but for 99% of the world that is just not plausible. Real Life gets in the way, it's annoying like that, all you can do is roll with the punches. Make sure your system can withstand that strain.

 There is a phrase I use for almost all wargaming rules. Keep it Simple, Stupid. Obviously it's not my own, but the point stands. All too often gamers let their OCD take control and include details such as the fluctuating cost of carrots in geographical areas. Only include what is necessary to make the game run. If you make it too complicated people will lose interest because they don't know what's going on. Think of it like getting results from a search engine, what's the most amount of pages you have ever trawled through, I bet it's not all of them.

Keep it short. It is always much better that a campaign ends on a high note rather than people just giving up, then they will want to play another one later! Also you tend to find that some players will just end up with a massive gain on the others, when that happens people lose enthusiasm. Short, Sweet and Simple.

I could probably go on, but this is probably enough. In short campaigns should be: Simple, Short, Focused on your players and Flexible. If I make any rules for a campaign then I will probably post them up here. Until tomorrow.