Bodha, could you link to that thread you mentioned?

The more I think about it, the more that I come back to my experience with creating and running a grand X-Wing campaign, which whilst fun, never managed to really capture the essence of the Galactic Civil War - being that the Imperials dominated the galaxy and the rebels were the rag-tag underdogs who used strategic hit and run strategies to cripple key points in the Imperial war machine and gather vital resources.

It isnt until after the battle of Endor and the Emperors death that we would actually see the "mopping up" that took another 4 years where we would get any sort of equal "battle for territory" that a campaign might represent.

The more I think about it, the more I believe that I would instead favour a mission based, rpg style campaign that could involve 2-3 players, with one player acting as the GM (see my Armada as an RPG thread if you are interested). Not because I don't love wide ranging deep strategy games, but because 1) it would take many games of armada to actually acheive anything in such a wide campaign - unless you aggregate results across many players, in which case its not actually personal to the player so I'm not invested in the outcome. and 2) It still wouldnt represent the era the game is set in well.

Im not saying that for the right people, with a sufficiently huge amount of playtime to spare it couldnt be doable, just that for the people I game with I don't think its the best option. :/

I like the idea of a combined Armada & X-Wing campaign, but using them to play out separate engagements (I don't see combing the two into a single game to be a workable concept). X-Wing games would represent skirmishes, scouting missions etc. and Armada games would be major engagements. X-Wing wins could provide some sort of bonus/benefit to the victor's side when playing the Armada game in that location.

MaverickNZ ,

That RPG-esque model is also what I would love to do, but like you it also seems to be at odds with the way these games tend to be played. I think if one were to try to move towards that model, you'd have to create the community that would do it, by gradually adding narrative stakes to the games, and seeing how your gaming group responds to it.

That's what I'm trying to make happen in my area, with the help of DagobahDave's campaign system , which will soon go into a third season, with a little more in-depth aspects of it.

Hi Mikael, I hear what you are saying, and agree - the people I play with seem pretty open to ideas like that fortunately.

Unfortunately on the other campaign idea, as soon as a system starts "aggregating" results, it loses all interest for me. To have that epic and hard fought victory that I managed to pull off, be reduced to a simple "1 win" in a wider internet tally (that might still see the sector won by the opposing side), just makes me feel "why bother". Its got to be personal, guts and glory, and representative of the skill and effort that individual players put in, or it isnt worth the effort. Thats why I created and ran my own campaign system just for the people I gamed with rather then getting onboard with the pooled X-Wing campaign.

For a BFG campaign I'm in, we make a giant list before (That cannot be changed once we begin). Any ships that are destroyed in the campaign are gone permanently. Crippled ships retain their damage until repaired.

I do believe we are allowed to replace ships over time but we won't have enough to replace an entire fleet.

You can probably set it up for Armada very easily.

Hi Mikael, I hear what you are saying, and agree - the people I play with seem pretty open to ideas like that fortunately.

Unfortunately on the other campaign idea, as soon as a system starts "aggregating" results, it loses all interest for me. To have that epic and hard fought victory that I managed to pull off, be reduced to a simple "1 win" in a wider internet tally (that might still see the sector won by the opposing side), just makes me feel "why bother". Its got to be personal, guts and glory, and representative of the skill and effort that individual players put in, or it isnt worth the effort. Thats why I created and ran my own campaign system just for the people I gamed with rather then getting onboard with the pooled X-Wing campaign.

I hear what you're saying. To break out of the anonymity of being a part of the aggregation, I put my own flourish on matters by writing lurid and propagandistic battle reports, which you can read here and here .

It sounds like what you created and might create in the future was tremendous fun, and you and I would see eye-to-eye on things. It's a pity I'm not over there in NZ, or you're not up here in Oregon. We'd have a great time, and corral the locals into an epic and storied campaign.

I'll be setting up a campaign system for this at my FLGS....weekly "rounds" using a map to trak who currently controls what. It'll be kept quite simple though.

However, myself and one of my friends who really like DEEP, crunchy campaigns with logistics etc will be running a much more indepth one for the two of us, based around something like the old Battletech system found in one of the OLD FASA books (i dont have the name handy as i'm at work). it contained a system that covered repairs, logisitics, reinforcements and so on.

I'll be mashing that together with a map based campaign, and seeing if we can hammer something out. it wont be for a casual campaign though!