Necromunda campaigns and those crazy players…

[TheKran]

A couple of things I’d like some others thoughts on…

Number 1
Anyone else find it hard sometimes to reign in your players in a campaign your arbitrating…? From the pre campaign times of trying to get them signed up on here, check their lists, explain house rules and campaign structure to get three weeks in and be asked the same questions…? I thought a campaign pack would help…

Number 2
How to check if a player fully understands the rules without coming across as a nob…?

There’s the usual small issues but otherwise it’s seemingly ok, except for one gang leader who’s some how got 26xp over 4 games… action hero style…

 

[Doomidius]

A couple of things I’d like some others thoughts on…

Number 1
Anyone else find it hard sometimes to reign in your players in a campaign your arbitrating…? From the pre campaign times of trying to get them signed up on here, check their lists, explain house rules and campaign structure to get three weeks in and be asked the same questions…? I thought a campaign pack would help…

Number 2
How to check if a player fully understands the rules without coming across as a nob…?

There’s the usual small issues but otherwise it’s seemingly ok, except for one gang leader who’s some how got 26xp over 4 games… action hero style…

I am fairly new to Necromunda. Using the Necrodamus ruleset helped a lot for new players trying a campaign out. I eventually wised up and made a word document with snip tool inserts, categorizing these things as abbrev. as possible:

• Gang Roster:
• Rules
• Trading Post
• Sub Plots
• Tactics
• Shopping list
• Weapon Traits

So I just look at my printout instead of having to ask the arbitrator questions each game. as always there are niche scenarios that will lead to disagreement. we just roll off sometimes if its too close to tell. Making a completed yaktribe campaign and having a notebook made a big difference with mysterious point hikes and the like, sometimes the yaktribe changed stats and referencing a good log helped backtrack when anyone made a mistake.

 

[TheKran]

Yes getting them to take notes as they play if who’s action did what if significant is proving hard. Sometimes find my self arbitrating games just to make sure everything is kosher.
Anticipating your players shenanigans is proving fun though.

 

[Doomidius]

Yes getting them to take notes as they play if who’s action did what if significant is proving hard. Sometimes find my self arbitrating games just to make sure everything is kosher.
Anticipating your players shenanigans is proving fun though.

Get one of those Escher death maidens with displacer field, and a few types of parry’s/ dodges. Arbitrate while they try to kill that bloody thing.

 

[Tiktaalik]

Campaigns always consist of people at various skill levels and mastery of the rules. Maybe it is your task to indeed make sure that things are kosher during some matchups.

But a concrete suggestion: Multiplayer games that include all the players can be spliced into the campaign and will definitely help the less experienced gangs learn more by interacting with more than one person. It was in my experience so that the role of arbitrator was shared by others during these games.

Ultimately it comes down to what you and your players want to accomplish during the campaign. Do you just wanna play games and have the gangs become more powerful through gaining experience? Is there some sort of narrative element to the campaign? Are there NPC‘s? Are there organizations that are working against the gangs? If it’s just guys playing games then the arbitrator serves mostly as the rules guru. The more creative and conceptual a campaign becomes the more the arbitrator is tasked with keeping things moving; he or she can change or alter anything in order to make the campaign fun and interesting for everyone involved.

 

[TheKran]

Multiplayer games every few weeks have been key to making sure everyone’s playing fair and by the same rules. It’s also opened my eyes up to styles of play I don’t see in my games (running a right bastard of a delaque gang right now, the amounts of creds my opponents have wasted on gear to counter me and I keep outwitting them with new shenanigans) like brutal close combat with knock back attached makes me admire goliath even more now.
id include a pic of the table from a 5 way game at the weekend but I can’t seem to share the link properly so maybe another time.
It went down as so… My main rival/criminal ally and I were there to test out some toxins and watch the enforcers raid some Goliaths, then some slave ogryns appeared and everything went crazy!
That was a little hard to arbitrate AND play in and took quite a while to play through. I might have to double down on some table side etiquette but otherwise it went quite smoothly.

 

[Doomidius]

We are going to employ a chess clock to try and mitigate wasted time deliberating, more incentive to know your gang and their rules.

 

[TheKran]

We are going to employ a chess clock to try and mitigate wasted time deliberating, more incentive to know your gang and their rules.

I considered one in a blood bowl league I ran, some people took 5 hours for a game…
I’m encouraging smaller scenarios (max 3x3 but usually 2x2 board size) and customised the scenario table to include open hive war incase anyone wants to play on a 4x4 underhive board, this seems to keep games pretty short, it’s the big multi player ones that definitely take time and patience

 

[Doomidius]

I considered one in a blood bowl league I ran, some people took 5 hours for a game…
I’m encouraging smaller scenarios (max 3x3 but usually 2x2 board size) and customised the scenario table to include open hive war incase anyone wants to play on a 4x4 underhive board, this seems to keep games pretty short, it’s the big multi player ones that definitely take time and patience

I just like enough space on a board where a player can’t jet pack 20” and immediately template 4-5 gangers turn one.