N18 Law & Misrule campaign without alliances

[Scophthalmus]

Hi,

Short background for my gamimg group: We played so far the Outlands campaign, with some more settlement management added in, followed up by a narrative driven Ironman campaign (no income, limited post-battle actions). We will play a Law & Misrule campaign next. However, the general consens is that the complexity and amount of bookkeeping between battles should be somewhat between the two previous campaigns. So between 'a lot' and 'barely anything'.

My idea as the arbitrator is to remove alliances from the campaign and only focus on rackets and intrigues. Some of the linked rackets have to change as I will remove the guild bonds as well. To further simplify the bookkeeping, I'll plan to print a deck of cards with the rackets and intrigues.

Has anyone any experience with a Law & Misrule campaign without alliances? Is there anything else to adjust for the lack of alliances?

Looking forward to your insights.

 

[RKDuncan]

I just finished a law and misrule campaign, and only one of five players wound up with an alliance (you only get them with the guild bond if you're law abiding). In my experience, the intrigues offered the least benefit relative to their amount of bookkeeping. They are extremely variable in value and difficulty, with some being both hard to claim and pointless and some just offering a massive boost for no cost. If you're trimming the campaign, I'd probably cut those first.

 

[Scophthalmus]

That's a good point. In the past we had the loot cards from the open hive war (or whatever the name was). And they were well received as side objectives. But when I was reading through the campaign rules, I had the same impression about the intrigues being all over the place in terms of difficulty and rewards.

 

[RKDuncan]

As long as you don't start anyone with a guild bond/alliance, players can choose whether to even bring them into the mix by challenging for them in the first part of the campaign, but it also breaks nothing to just not have those rackets available. There are plenty of other cooler ones anyway.