Narrative Necromunda Campaigns
I’ve just recently finished arbitrating my first Necromunda campaign. A lot of what I did was building on the knowledge and experience of those Arbitrators that had come before me, but I also experimented a lot with what I could do, so I wanted to document what I learnt for those that come after.
Campaigns as they exist in the rulebooks don’t offer any strong narrative, they’re just a series of random battles. But I see those campaigns as just a starting point. There are so many tools available to Arbitrators that allow for stories to be told and roles to be played. I took the approach of trying to piece together components across multiple books in a manner that was both easy for players to follow and that allowed me to tell a story.
I created a blog to manage the campaign. You can check it out in order at Helm'ayr's Own to follow along.
I started with the story, picked straight from the Necromunda timeline. The timeline is a great inspiration, full of narrative hooks from which you can construct a story. I chose the story of Helm’ayr’s Own, where a son of Lord Helmawr bears resemblence to Martek Helm’ayr of old, and as a result is cast out of the Spire. I then planned out six weeks of story loosely based on this idea.
While I wanted players to be able to make decisions that would ultimately affect the journey their gangs would take, I also wanted to keep things simple for me to manage. As such, I decided not to think up a new story development each week based on player actions, but to pre-plan a narrative such that it could proceed “on rails”. I planned two alternatives for the final week depending on how things had proceeded up until that point, but that was the only branch. I tweaked things from week to week but on the whole the narrative proceeded as planned.
This approach worked pretty well and I would definitely do it again. Because there was an overall story arc, I think players found it compelling with each revelation.
One other thing I’ll mention about story: different players will react to your story in a variety of ways. Some players will become heavily invested and look forward to the next episode each week, while others will just turn up for a game unprepared and expect to be told what to do. I personally got a lot of validation from those who were heavily invested, so the others just came along for the ride. But that’s OK: not everyone is into the game for the same reasons. If you are having fun telling the story and at least some of the players are enthusiastic, you’re probably doing well.
There are dozens of scenarios available now, but the scenario selection rules in the rulebook limit battles to just six alternatives. Our desire to incorporate other scenarios or even custom scenarios concocted by the Arbitrator meant we had moved away from the rulebook scenario selection. I thought this was a shame as there are a number of mechanics that allow players to manipulate the scenario selection that we were just ignoring.
To remedy this, I selected a shortlist of three scenarios each week that captured that part of the story. I then substituted those in place of the three results on the scenario selection table, such that players could use all the normal rules associated with scenario selection but would use the thematic scenarios instead. I didn’t make any attempt to balance rewards from the three scenarios; this was the whole point of being able to manipulate scenario selection, after all, and rewarded those players who had invested in these mechanics. I feel that this aspect was a huge success: the scenarios themselves could help tell the story.
There were a couple of weeks where I wanted everyone to play the same scenario without any scenario selection roll. Originally I had intended these to be one big multiplayer game, but I soon realised this wouldn’t work logistically as multiplayer games of more than four people can become very slow. We ended up breaking these into multiple smaller games playing the same scenario. In future I think I would stick to making a scenario shortlist every week for more flexibility and try to avoid mandated multiplayer games as much as possible.
As the weeks progressed I began adding Badzone events from the Book of Peril. Again instead of using the full list, I prepared a shortlist each week that reinforced the narrative. Players still rolled for the event discard, and would then generate a new one from the shortlist. While I think this added a fun element, it did complicate things, perhaps unnecessarily. In future perhaps the Badzone events would just be for the climactic games rather than every game. I didn’t use Badzone environments at all as it was just too much complexity.
The campaign was based on a Law and Misrule campaign from the Book of Judgement. However, because I had a set narrative in mind, I thought it might make sense to use Alignment as a means for constructing two opposing sides to the story. This worked for determining attackers and defenders and having it fit the narrative, but on the whole this was a bit too restrictive and I think I would avoid it in future. Players wanted to tell their own story such that there were Outlaws in opposition to Helm’ayr, so it felt a bit artificial. It made changing Alignment a bit awkward, and players had to face the same opponents multiple times. Next time I think I’d let players choose which side of the narrative to be on and not let Alignment dictate it.
Alliances was an aspect of the game that the group had been a bit undecided about. I wanted to build them into the campaign to get people a bit more familiar and comfortable, but also as a means to drive narrative. The campaign focused on Noble Houses and the Spire, so I limited the available alliances to the Noble Houses and a Fallen House. Players could opt not to have an alliance and would receive House Favours instead. The Alliances are not finely balanced but they do have drawbacks, and I think they can work without any additional balancing mechanics placed on them when compared to House Favours.
I used Alliances and Rackets as a way to let players choose their path within the wider narrative. This built in a level of role-playing that we hadn’t really tried before, and I think on the whole it worked well. I matched up the Noble Houses with Rackets such that if a player tried to take a Racket that was against the alliance’s interests, they would need to Test the Alliance. For example, House Ty is all about psykers, so if a player allied to House Ty wanted to take the Witch Seeking Racket, they would need to Test the Alliance.
Because the rules for these Alliances were spread across six different books, I provided a one-page summary sheet so everyone knew what was out there.
I think offering a subset of Alliances to players worked quite well. Players were more open to taking Alliances as they knew their opponents would be expecting it and might even have their own Alliance to counter. It was also another means to reinforce the narrative.
In a normal Law and Misrule campaign, players fight over control of Rackets. Apart from not being very narrative-focused, the main downside I saw with this was that the Rackets themselves are not at all balanced, so if a player obtained a particularly good one early on (or a good combination) they would gain a huge advantage.
Instead, I saw an opportunity to let the Rackets tell some of the story while also building in opportunities for role playing. First, I ranked the Rackets in order roughly from weakest to strongest. Of course, different combinations can make things a lot stronger, and that had to be taken into account too. Here’s the ordering I came up with:
Out-hive Smuggling Routes
Peddlers of Forbidden Lore
Each week I prepared a set of available Rackets and allowed players to pick one to gain. Each Racket had a narrative reason as to why a gang might choose it, and were all roughly the same power level. For example, the starting Racket options were as follows:
Spire Patronage: A Noble of the spire is willing to pay handsomely for your gang’s services.
A gang allied to a Fallen House or a Noble House must choose this option or Test the Alliance.
Settlement Protection: Your gang sees a way to increase their power, moving from petty thugs to wealthy tyrants.
Production Skimming: Your gang is in it for the money. By skimming a little off their current enterprises, they see a chance for a big return on investment.
Rackets could not be won or lost as normal, so everyone had the same opportunities. If players claimed an Intrigue that granted them an unclaimed Racket, they could choose from a limited list. If players fell behind as Underdogs, I gave them opportunities to mix up their Rackets to compensate.
On the whole I was happy with how this worked, it kept power levels relatively in check. The main problem was where multiple gangs chose the same racket, so there was less variety. I think to combat that in future I might offer more than just three Rackets at the start, as that would potentially seed different possibilities as we progressed. I might also allow Rackets to change hands in some way, although I still think the winner-takes-all approach of the campaign in the book is too unforgiving.
Bounty Hunters and Capturing
Previously our group has seen very little use of Bounty Hunters and we often don’t even bother to roll for Capturing. I wondered if this was because of how dense and cumbersome the rules are surrounding these aspects. Since my story was about a manhunt it made sense feature Bounty Hunters, so in week two I offered players any one of the Rackets that grant a free Bounty Hunter.
People seemed to quickly learn the power of Bounty Hunters. Since we had Rackets granting them for free, nobody really got to know the rules around how they work with regards to staying around across multiple battles, and I think there is a big misunderstanding there. But even despite that I’ve heard from a few people that they’re thinking about using Bounty Hunters in future campaigns because of how good they can be. There are a number of ways to get free or discounted Bounty Hunters, so hopefully they’ll see more use in our group going forward.
Capturing, however, was a different story. I had thought that the need to play a Rescue Mission for every capture was problematic when I wanted to be progressing a story, so instead I allowed captives to be freed by any gang with the same Alignment as the captured fighter, during any scenario. Yet despite the free Bounty Hunters, simplified rescue process, multiple players with web weaponry and an Enforcer gang, players still didn’t engage with capturing. I had feedback that it just seemed too harsh when you’d already defeated an opponent to then kidnap one of their guys.
I think there’s still potential there so I’d like to keep experimenting with ways to encourage capturing in future campaigns. Hopefully we’ll find a way that’s compelling enough but not seen as a massive inconvenience to the losing gang in a conflict, because right now the capturing rules just aren’t working for us.
In an effort to combat some of the equipment spam I’d seen in previous campaigns, I limited each gang to only one of each item with a Rarity or Legality. This was essentially a soft limit because there are Hangers-on and Rackets that modify items to become Common. I think this worked pretty well and in fact allowed me to provide exceptions to Underdogs when they really could have benefited from multiple rare items. I think I would keep this for future campaigns as long as there are multiple viable ways within the campaign to work around the limitation.
Each week I had a maximum crew rating. Our group had used maximum crew ratings before, but in those cases we had ignored the crew selection rules for scenarios and essentially always turned up with as many fighters as would fit in the rating limit. I wanted to keep crew selection rules, because this is another aspect where rules exist to manipulate this. So you had to follow the crew selection rules, and once selected your entire crew had to fit within the rating limit.
On top of that, I had a soft maximum fighter rating, such that any fighter over 450 credits-worth could fight in a battle but then had a 50/50 chance of leaving the campaign and ascending the Spire with all of their equipment.
While I think this helped for keeping things balanced, it was probably a bit annoying for players as they had to figure out sub-gangs to fit within the rating limit. In future I might remove the crew limit and just use a lower fighter limit, and any fighter over the limit would count as two or more fighters when it came to crew selection. Most imbalance seems to come from over-powered characters or swarms of fighters, and this change might address both while keeping things super simple to work out.
I tried not to say “no” to anything, but to find a way to work player goals into the narrative. Sometimes I would require the player involved to complete a specific sub-plot to achieve their desires, but I also added a roleplaying aspect in some cases where through the use of Leadership tests, a gang might change their fate.
Leadership as a characteristic is barely used in the game, but when it comes to emulating your gang Leader making tough decisions about the future of their gang, it’s really the perfect characteristic to use.
Through succeeding on Leadership tests in between games, I allowed certain underdogs to swap some of their chosen Rackets for thematic alternatives that would help them out of a bind. For example, a majority of Tim’s gang suffered lasting injuries during a battle, and the limit on multiple rare items prevented him from equipping them all with bionics. I offered to let his Leader make a Leadership test. He succeeded, so that meant his Leader had decided to cut ties with the Whisper Brokers that had steered him wrong and make an arrangement with Proxies of the Omnissiah to give him common access to bionics.
This is an addition to Necromunda campaigns about which I’m particularly excited, and will definitely keep in future. It actually makes Leadership relevant and allows players a bit of excitement when attempting to change the fortunes of their gang. You could possibly codify the Leadership test in a post-battle action, but I’m no sure that’s necessary as it will often be the Arbitrator who sees the opportunity rather than the player.
I don’t mind playing against unpainted models but getting my arse kicked by unpainted models is kind of different. So I added a new house rule that has been met with strong support by the group. Any unpainted model starts each battle with the Gunked condition and is always Revealed in Pitch Black scenarios. I’m pleased to say we had no unpainted models for the campaign!
With the Book of the Outcast we now have four different campaign types for Necromunda that can all be mixed and matched. On top of that we have a lot of Arbitrator tools to change things up. The aim of my customisations and experiments was not to add further complexity to this, but to cherry-pick and streamline a lot of concepts while at the same time using them to create a strong narrative campaign. I think I had a lot of success, but the trick is to bring what I’ve learnt to the next campaign and make it even better than this one.
theartofmadeline
andulkaphoto
vaporwave
tangentwithtanner
kaledo-art
