Narratives and Warzones: How Big Do We Go?

By now you've probably looked at the small set of warzones we've set up for our glorious plastic legions to wage war across.  The first assumption you should make before reading all this nonsense below is that I am writing with the assumption that you are building warzones for story driven campaigns (like the Eldritch System.)  That being said, I believe one of the most important functions of warzone to a campaign lies in creating a structure and character to your campaign.  Is your campaign being waged across a single planet, grinding the same dust into smaller and smaller dust (like the Armageddon campaigns) or a sector wide bloodbath where innumerable souls are lost to the Emperor and scores of planets burn?  Deciding how many and how large your warzones are will have a huge impact on the character of your campaign. 

Having one or two warzones can make your players feel like their armies are constantly in the thick of the action.  By the same token, a huge campaign waged across a dozen worlds in a dozen warzones can give the impression of true scale and progress to the story.  A good way to balance your warzones would to assess how they tie up with your narrative.  Is your narrative primarily individual or character driven, following the exploits of one general or champion?  If so, it may be more satisfying to focus on one or two warzones, as the individual’s achievements will feel more monumental and have greater impact in a single zone rather than stretched across a whole sector.  For example, we have Vitsika’s Inquisitor Helena.  Her story is primarily focused on studying the Hive Fleet in the Eldritch system, so her focus has been drawn to Eldritch V, which is a madhouse of Tyranid terribleness.  It would seem jarring if in one conflict she is fighting against the Tyranids on Eldritch trying to secure research subjects, but then her next plot point be on Draken fighting Chaos for “the glory of the Emprah” and beyond!  Her story is necessarily tied up with the triumphs and failures against the Tyranids.  

By keeping the range of warzones relatively small, her story is able to grow; her successes and failures seem larger, which can then be extrapolated up to the campaign wide level.  There are some pitfalls to avoid; you don’t want players to feel trapped or bored with the warzone.  That is where Vitsika’s tips on creating a great Warzone come in.  A diverse warzone could feasibly sustain a healthy storyline, and be flexible enough to involve other factions who make incursions against one character or another. 

But wait, what if you want your campaign to be a shining example of a galaxy wide bloodbath, which is of course the heart and soul of 40k?  Your narrative may yet be character driven, but their goals and ambitions span the stars, and the galaxy will obviously weep at the terror you’ve unleashed upon it.  Good news!  You can juggle dozens of warzones and planets and maintain a cohesive, enveloping story by adjusting the tone and tempo of your narrative.  Warzones for a grand campaign serve a different purpose; they do not provide as much structure to the overall narrative but act as a foreground for whatever grander tale you are planning to tell.  Luckily, we have examples from Games Workshop/Forgeworld that illustrate the difference perfectly.

 The Fall of Orpheus (Imperial Armor 12)

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Orphean_War

And the Wars for Armageddon

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Armageddon

The difference between these two campaigns is both a matter of scale and storytelling.  Armageddon focuses pivotal points around the heroics of powerful individuals, Commissar Yarrick, Chaplian Grimaldus, and Ghazghkull Thraka.  The Fall of Orpheus focuses on The Minotaurs Chapter, the Death Korps of Krieg, and the Maynarkh Dynasty.  The difference comes into view if I were to try and put all the players in the Fall of Orpheus into one warzone like Armageddon, the setting would seem busy.  Worse, the stories that involve each player of your campaign might be muddied, perhaps making those players feel that their stories are getting passed over.  You could see the same thing occur if you attempted to plant Commissar Yarrick and his foes across a sector wide combat. A grand hero's efforts seem hollow when he crushes nameless enemies, especially when the big baddy is fighting 3 planets over but is too busy to see him right now.  It is important to note that your story should exist for the benefit of your players, its no fun to be restricted to one warzone if your players are more interested in fighting across many.  The goal of this post is to give you the tools to try and tease out the differences between a large and small scale campaign event, and how to best tell the stories that come with those events.

"My Holy Passage?!  EMPRAH PLEESE NO"

Hopefully this post hasn’t been to abstract or full of shit.  Coming up next, a timeline of the Eldritch Campaign, and where the state of the story is now!

-Nemesor Iszaek