My group is getting closer to starting a new campaign after our last one fizzled out pre-pandemic. One of the main factors our last attempt fell apart was the difficulty of issuing and receiving challenges, and the scheduling problems that could arise from it. We’re running a combined Dominion and Law & Misrule campaign (to encourage players to diversify their portfolios a little and to still have plenty of options after removing the worst offending Territories from the Dominion deck) with a group of six. These are some of my concerns:
If we do have players issuing challenges one at a time (starting with the lowest gang rating/wealth/rep or some other metric), it means a potential backlog as the earlier games have to resolve first, which will affect how subsequent players want to use their “turn.” We could have everyone issue their challenges at once and fight the new owner of any territories/rackets that change hands when their turn comes up in the order, but this also results in a lot of potential for multiplayer pileups. The other two players who are co-arbitrating this with me as a kind of rules committee are veterans of the original Necromunda and are adamant that multiplayer games, making deals for alliances, and the inevitable backstabbing are part of the fun, but this is exactly what contributed to our last campaign falling apart and some players having such a bad time they’re not interested in rejoining at all (we discovered that the Toll Crossing terrain is nothing but detrimental to a campaign, for instance).
And even setting aside the politicking aspect, multiplayer games require their own set of missions, and there simply don’t seem to be that many good multiplayer scenarios available. Games devolving into two gangs shooting it out until one of them bottles is already an issue, and this seems like it would aggravate it by taking an already-slow framework (we tried a four-player mission last weekend as a test game and while we were admittedly rusty, we barely finished two turns over four hours) and dragging out the game length.
We’re already planning on smoothing out income generation by having it happen once at the start of each campaign week instead of after every game (especially since players will control both starting Territories and Rackets), but I’m still concerned about the potential for huge clusterf*cks again.
The compromise we settled on to reduce multiplayer games was having all players simultaneously reveal their attack targets— naming individual Territories or Rackets, not players— and letting each player attack once and defend up to one territory/racket (and with rescue missions scheduled at the convenience of both players). This solves one problem (ensuring everyone plays at least one game per campaign week) and makes a stab at a second (ideally cutting down on the number of multiplayer games), but practically guarantees a high turnover and some feelbad moments as players feel hanged up on and have to cede territories in excess of their ability to hold them.
How have your campaigns handled the issue of who fights who when? It feels like it should be simple, as it’s the most basic element of campaign play, but it’s a ridiculous can of worms; only Uprising and Outcasts seem satisfactory on paper (with income once per week by default and other kinds of progression than territory turnover) and the group decided against those campaign types.
If we do have players issuing challenges one at a time (starting with the lowest gang rating/wealth/rep or some other metric), it means a potential backlog as the earlier games have to resolve first, which will affect how subsequent players want to use their “turn.” We could have everyone issue their challenges at once and fight the new owner of any territories/rackets that change hands when their turn comes up in the order, but this also results in a lot of potential for multiplayer pileups. The other two players who are co-arbitrating this with me as a kind of rules committee are veterans of the original Necromunda and are adamant that multiplayer games, making deals for alliances, and the inevitable backstabbing are part of the fun, but this is exactly what contributed to our last campaign falling apart and some players having such a bad time they’re not interested in rejoining at all (we discovered that the Toll Crossing terrain is nothing but detrimental to a campaign, for instance).
And even setting aside the politicking aspect, multiplayer games require their own set of missions, and there simply don’t seem to be that many good multiplayer scenarios available. Games devolving into two gangs shooting it out until one of them bottles is already an issue, and this seems like it would aggravate it by taking an already-slow framework (we tried a four-player mission last weekend as a test game and while we were admittedly rusty, we barely finished two turns over four hours) and dragging out the game length.
We’re already planning on smoothing out income generation by having it happen once at the start of each campaign week instead of after every game (especially since players will control both starting Territories and Rackets), but I’m still concerned about the potential for huge clusterf*cks again.
The compromise we settled on to reduce multiplayer games was having all players simultaneously reveal their attack targets— naming individual Territories or Rackets, not players— and letting each player attack once and defend up to one territory/racket (and with rescue missions scheduled at the convenience of both players). This solves one problem (ensuring everyone plays at least one game per campaign week) and makes a stab at a second (ideally cutting down on the number of multiplayer games), but practically guarantees a high turnover and some feelbad moments as players feel hanged up on and have to cede territories in excess of their ability to hold them.
How have your campaigns handled the issue of who fights who when? It feels like it should be simple, as it’s the most basic element of campaign play, but it’s a ridiculous can of worms; only Uprising and Outcasts seem satisfactory on paper (with income once per week by default and other kinds of progression than territory turnover) and the group decided against those campaign types.
