Horus Heresy: Top Five Tips for Running a Narrative Campaign or Event

[@saucyben4175]

Having a 'what-if' setting for a campaign is a fun way to include everyone and explore unique narrative options. It doesn't have to be super complicated in premise, but you can get down to nitty gritty stuff as time goes on. For example "what if the Thousand Sons were loyal?" Maybe instead of Prospero burning things happened differently and Magnus was arrested by Leman Russ; brought back to Terra in chains to account for his actions. Maybe another traditionally loyalist Legion would end up taking their place as traitors? Maybe some Thousand Sons would end up being traitors anyway? Lots of fun things that could happen.

[@darnokx9277]

Some great advice, agreed on all points. The tricky part is of course getting this into an actual system working for you and your group.

[@mattjohnson2090]

Thank you! My community is pumped. I'm a TO that had given up on 40k, and I told them about this concept, they are onboard.

[@blackbriargaming5483]

Aweaome to hear!!!

[@andrewbakescakes9684]

Interested to see how your group counters Fury of the Ancients. Keep us posted!

[@uberleech3096]

Always good to show love to your LGS

[@blackbriargaming5483]

LGS's keep our communities going! 😊

[@johnmertens3022]

We have a rule for campaigns where if you complete certain tasks you gain bonuses so like if you hold. A arm factory you gain a reroll but the arms factory is off the main objective so you are likely to lose if you hold it but you could also get both

[@joahnaut]

Sadly, we're seeing a schism in our local HH community already. There is a new group of WAAC players from other systems coming in and scoffing at the narrative element of the game. It's frustrating when a new player comes into our store and is being told that unless they're running a top Legion instead of a Legion they love, they're going to have a bad time. Hopefully with the narrative days we have planned win out, but it's already causing issues.

[@blackbriargaming5483]

Oh dear. I guess it's important to highlight that both competitive and narrative are feasible ways to play the game, and just make it clear which events are which. There will be growing pains. But the community will adapt and overcome.

[@sk4p3g04t]

The Horus Heresy Heresy

[@hate2191]

Many said this wouldn't happen, yet clearly it will. Gatekeeping seems to be the only solution I can think of. if someone isn't fun to play against, let them know you don't enjoy playing against them and so you won't. Then thay way either a: The new WAAC players will conform, or form their separate group and you can have new players decide how they want to play.

[@liammorgan1413]

For a narrative event, I can definitely attest to victory points being a better scoring method than win/draw/loss. My most recent experience with it was at a local Adeptus Titanicus Titandeath event, and while it wasn't strictly narrative (AT doesn't really account for traitor/loyalist splinters among the titan legios or knight houses, even though there were a fair amount of loyalist vs loyalist and traitor vs traitor games at the event) it certainly incentivized playing to the objectives as best as possible rather than simply trying to table your opponent. Adding on to this, I've also been party to seeing Horus Heresy events where special characters were limited to at most one per player, and no more than one of each character across the entire event, even in a relatively competitive region like that of Vancouver Island. While this does end up leading to scenarios where players will scramble to claim those characters on a first-come-first-serve basis leading up to the event (event coordinators should do their best to mediate this process), it also helps incentivize building around the possibility that you might not be able to include a special character at all in your army, thus reducing the importance of taking one.

[@andrewdryburgh1893]

Planning on hosting an event for a bunch of friends who all collect, definitely appreciate some of these pointers as I was struggling to make battles meaningful without “this unit is dead forever”. Really appreciate this video, keep up the work! ((Also, any cool suggestions from others I’ll totally look at

[@WeOnlyEatSoup]

Great video! Looking forward to trying a campaign someday with my friends for HH the timeline is just so cool (I'm used to 40k)

[@remusventanus5341]

This channel is awesome. Keep up the great work!

[@jw7500]

This is an important thing yes. I my opinion, the happy medium is somewhere in-between ultra fluffy meme lists and WAAC level optimization. Playing a strong army is not a problem as long as it's very lore appropriate and the narrative + hobby effort is there. E.g. showing up with a spam list (outside of running a ton of basic infantry) is not what I mean by that. Strong and well balanced out lists is what I mean.

[@demonic_myst4503]

For number 3 i think just A random star system say in the eastern fridge near triplex or somthing ome place with little to no lore but we know would be in the imperiim and say it has so and so resources like a forge world or a titan legion their that the traitors may want to destroy and say here lets use rhis as a location for a long campaign. Thats what id personaly do

[@AndrewFishman]

Funny. I was just wondering f Jolt would be doing anything Horus Heresy. LOL. Maybe I will give them a call tomorrow.

[@SoldierAssassin98]

How do you feel about named characters in a Narrative Campaign, do they break the immersion? are they too much powerful? For example, if I were to participate in this kind of event and I wanted to play Sigismund, would it be too much? I don't know because I'm really not good at making deep lore and background for every character in my army so having a named one and following his stily would help big time. great vid, as always

[@blackbriargaming5483]

Nah you go for it! Some campaigns avoid Primarchs for a number of reasons. But otherwise don't stress.

[@highmarshalbalian680]

So you’ve stopped covering each legion than….

[@blackbriargaming5483]

The drama! Nope! Just took a break. Next vid is 15th Legion 😊

[@RustyARMPIT12]

@@blackbriargaming5483 i have been waiting for this one. thank you so much for your work.