While I'm pretty prolific on Mission Control, I haven't delved much into setting up campaigns - until now.

Presenting: Battle for Ord Calda , a new narrative campaign I've put together.

I've published seven new scenarios on Mission Control as part of the narrative campaign, drawing on some of my established missions, such as "Gamma Base", and introducing some new ideas that have been rattling around in my head for too long. The campaign is set on the planet of Ord Calda; a world of my own creation, where Imperial and Rebel forces are about to clash.

The Campaign calls for a fairly high number of ships; 400 points per side, plus 70 points of ordnance. I realize some of us don't have that many ships to put on the table, but I figure that most players crazy enough to do a narrative campaign won't find this to be a problem.

I decided to leave out any mechanisms for pilot progression, because I think they tend to become unwieldy, but unique pilots will be susceptible to death and injury through a relatively simple mechanic.

Ordnance is also quite relevant in the campaign. Each player buys an initial stock of 70 points of ordnance, and can equip missiles, torpedoes and bombs at no cost in each mission. But once fired, the ordnance is gone, and won't be available in future missions. So you can load up on missiles and torpedoes to give yourself an advantage in a specific mission, or save them for the final confrontation.

The campaign builds to a final deciding battle, determined by who wins the missions leading up to the climax. There are two final missions; an attack on the Rebel base and an attack on the Imperial base. If the attackers win, the campaign is over, but if the defenders win, they have a chance to counter-attack the enemy base, and whoever wins that battle takes the campaign.

Overall, I think the campaign looks pretty good; a fun thematic track of missions to play. One disclaimer, though- the seven scenarios published on Mission Control are in various states of balance. Eye in the Sky , Hide and Seek should be fine. Mercy Mission , First Catch of the Day , and Extermination are probably a little off, but playable. Prison Break and especially Killing Blow may be significantly unbalanced; hard to tell for sure until I or someone else does a playthrough. If you're interested, take a crack at any of these and send me your comments and suggestions; they're always welcome. Otherwise, I'll be getting to them as time allows.

I hope you all enjoy!

Very cool. While tournaments are great and all, I would really love to do an X-wing campaign, featuring a squadron that grows and develops over time. Maybe even throw a storyline in there while we're at it. Great work!

Very cool. While tournaments are great and all, I would really love to do an X-wing campaign, featuring a squadron that grows and develops over time. Maybe even throw a storyline in there while we're at it. Great work!

Thanks!

I'll probably crank out a campaign system that incorporates pilot/ship progression, but I wanted to keep this one fairly simple.

Very cool. While tournaments are great and all, I would really love to do an X-wing campaign, featuring a squadron that grows and develops over time. Maybe even throw a storyline in there while we're at it. Great work!

Thanks!

I'll probably crank out a campaign system that incorporates pilot/ship progression, but I wanted to keep this one fairly simple.

That makes perfect sense. I actually wouldn't mind running a space pirate RPG with dogfights being at the core of it, and the ability to purchase new ships and upgrades to make your individual fighters better. Would be a fun twist on things.

I've tried pilot progression a few times, never found anything that has really worked for me unless the pilots are used as a resource which may be upgraded as part of a D20/other game. As previously discussed(with using rogue trader for stormtrooper on rebel action),

Not saying it's impossible, heck if you find a system that works for upgrading pilots without being silly let us know!

My thought was rather than upgrading pilots, you upgrade ships. So, at the start you have a certain number of points you can spend on your starting ship. This limits you to certain choices. So, you're not treating the pilot cards as pilots, you're treating them as ships, and the more expensive ones have better capabilities (IE the pilot talent). And then in addition to that, when you can spend more points, you can add upgrades. So, if I were running a space pirate game, I might give everyone 14 points to start the game, which allows them a Scyk or a Z-95 or maybe even a TIE fighter to start with, and those who spent 12 points on the pilot card can spend 2 more on upgrades. Those who just flat out spent 14 points on the pilot card are stuck with that. Then, as time goes on, they earn more points through various means to get better ships, and they can choose to either sell their current pilot card and upgrade to a new one or upgrade their current card with droids and EPTs and things. Depending on how slowly you give them points, it might be a tough decision.

My thought was rather than upgrading pilots, you upgrade ships. So, at the start you have a certain number of points you can spend on your starting ship. This limits you to certain choices. So, you're not treating the pilot cards as pilots, you're treating them as ships, and the more expensive ones have better capabilities (IE the pilot talent). And then in addition to that, when you can spend more points, you can add upgrades. So, if I were running a space pirate game, I might give everyone 14 points to start the game, which allows them a Scyk or a Z-95 or maybe even a TIE fighter to start with, and those who spent 12 points on the pilot card can spend 2 more on upgrades. Those who just flat out spent 14 points on the pilot card are stuck with that. Then, as time goes on, they earn more points through various means to get better ships, and they can choose to either sell their current pilot card and upgrade to a new one or upgrade their current card with droids and EPTs and things. Depending on how slowly you give them points, it might be a tough decision.

That's how I am kind of doing it for my hybrid D20 thing.

They start with 4 Y-wings, and their pilot skills increase allowing them to buy higher level and then EPT's / unique pilots - they can have multiple EPTs.

Resources gained via missions, convoy raids, the players repair skill etc may be used to modify (more than once) said Y-wings. The repair skill to put multiple mods on a ship is quite high.

They might (will) get other ships down the line, and will be able to transfer pilots, pilots that are uniqued lose their unique and go to the highest nearest PS to them. In that sense, a unique pilot is a specialist for that craft, if that makes sense?

For the D20 hybrid system, there is an equipment, astromech and ordnance pool. they are considered free, but if you run out you run out.

For my Battle of Heshik System I am using something similar to what Gadge I think came up with. The campaign is split into segments. Engagements, missions, and acts.

A mission (capture this) may consist of 1-5 engagements depending on what happens, an act is the overall battle.

Example. Mission 1 is capture a GR75.

First engagement is a 200 point fight around it and a bunch of roids.

Second Engagement is a transport escort to repair or capture depending on which side won the first

Third is Escaping captured/repaired ship out of the area.

Depending on the various outcomes mission 2 3 or 4 may change.

When a ship is killed, roll a damage dice crit being pilot dead (means more for uniques) a hit being miss the rest of the mission/next mission if on last engagement of the mission, and focus being miss next engagement. In this, there are no pilot advancements. It is possible to rescue MIA pilots that were critted in unique missions.

This campaign is scheduled to start this friday time and tide willing. (it's been delayed but now i has scum) I am still debating the use of ordnance pools as described above.

One thing I'll add is that with my D20 it's clearly asymmetrical. with Heroic Rebel characters being upgradable, and Imperial TIE mooks being cannonfodder. This only really seems to work for Scum/Rebels (same difference).

Another idea I had (i've had lots of campaign ideas and have been trying to make a whole bunch of things work) is buying a large force (like 24 ships) and upgrading ships from lowest skill up, with 1 XP equaling 1 point, and using a D20 result to determine KIA/MIA/WIA/SURVIVING for both the ship itself and pilot, and using my S&R mission to rescue downed pilots.

Fun ideas!

Very cool. While tournaments are great and all, I would really love to do an X-wing campaign, featuring a squadron that grows and develops over time. Maybe even throw a storyline in there while we're at it. Great work!

Thanks!

I'll probably crank out a campaign system that incorporates pilot/ship progression, but I wanted to keep this one fairly simple.

That makes perfect sense. I actually wouldn't mind running a space pirate RPG with dogfights being at the core of it, and the ability to purchase new ships and upgrades to make your individual fighters better. Would be a fun twist on things.

I've got a pretty simple one in the development stage. I figure it's my best chance to get my non-minis gamer friends to play because it eases them into the rules. Mine is set up RPG style with a GM on one side and 2-4 players running flights of 2 fighters on the other side (player-character and wingman). The pilots gain experience which lets them buy PS and EPTs, and the squad gains "standing" for competing the mission, which gives them access to equipment in the form of astromechs, mods, secondary weapons and replacement and/or upgrade ships.

Very cool. While tournaments are great and all, I would really love to do an X-wing campaign, featuring a squadron that grows and develops over time. Maybe even throw a storyline in there while we're at it. Great work!

Thanks!

I'll probably crank out a campaign system that incorporates pilot/ship progression, but I wanted to keep this one fairly simple.

That makes perfect sense. I actually wouldn't mind running a space pirate RPG with dogfights being at the core of it, and the ability to purchase new ships and upgrades to make your individual fighters better. Would be a fun twist on things.

I've got a pretty simple one in the development stage. I figure it's my best chance to get my non-minis gamer friends to play because it eases them into the rules. Mine is set up RPG style with a GM on one side and 2-4 players running flights of 2 fighters on the other side (player-character and wingman). The pilots gain experience which lets them buy PS and EPTs, and the squad gains "standing" for competing the mission, which gives them access to equipment in the form of astromechs, mods, secondary weapons and replacement and/or upgrade ships.

Very cool. While tournaments are great and all, I would really love to do an X-wing campaign, featuring a squadron that grows and develops over time. Maybe even throw a storyline in there while we're at it. Great work!

Thanks!

I'll probably crank out a campaign system that incorporates pilot/ship progression, but I wanted to keep this one fairly simple.

That makes perfect sense. I actually wouldn't mind running a space pirate RPG with dogfights being at the core of it, and the ability to purchase new ships and upgrades to make your individual fighters better. Would be a fun twist on things.

I've got a pretty simple one in the development stage. I figure it's my best chance to get my non-minis gamer friends to play because it eases them into the rules. Mine is set up RPG style with a GM on one side and 2-4 players running flights of 2 fighters on the other side (player-character and wingman). The pilots gain experience which lets them buy PS and EPTs, and the squad gains "standing" for competing the mission, which gives them access to equipment in the form of astromechs, mods, secondary weapons and replacement and/or upgrade ships.

My brother wants to run something very similar to this in my old gaming group. More of an RPG feel, played with X-wing rules. Sounds like a lot of fun, and I think it works well in the star wars universe. It feels right to have a few plucky rebel pilots going up against faceless hordes of TIEs.

I think pilot progression works just fine in a GM-administered game, since the GM can always adjust up or down to keep the game balanced and fun. It's way more problematic if you remove the GM from the equation and try to have things self-balance. A problem with progression is that it makes the winner of each game progressively stronger, which can lead to an imbalance feedback loop (if one player keeps winning and getting stronger, which helps them win). Also in a wider campaign setting, with rosters of 10+ ships on either side, the complexity of book-keeping becomes a factor.

The nice thing about Ord Calda is that it's fairly simplified. No progression, but you can lose your uniques (so you have to be careful about investing in Biggs or Whisper). Winning is important, because it gives you the best/first shot at winning the campaign, but the advantages you accrue aren't going to impact the balance of the game-deciding battles in a big way.

Agree 100% about balance. In a lot of ways, it's easy to go the GM route because the missions themselves don't need to be balanced that much. They're just encounters. For balanced games where progression is desired, I think there are a few of things that can help introduce balance.

1.) If the progression bonuses are a small part of the overall "points" of the scenario. For example, if you're looking at 200 points per side and the progression is +1 PS for the guy with the most kills, then it's not effecting things that much. That can be pretty unsatisfying, though.

2.) If progression works faster at low levels than high levels. Maybe you can jump from an Academy Pilot equivalent to a Black Squadron Pilot equivalent fairly quickly, but earning that EPT takes a lot more work. Make it so that losers can still earn a good chunk of experience compared to winners, and one-sided progression can be limited.

3.) If you have a large pool of forces (say 300 theoretical points), and you keep sending your aces on every mission to level them up, you might end up with a core of amazing pilots, but if they get unlucky and die you're back to Rookies. This works well with 2.), because someone who sends a rotation of pilots has large pool of "pretty" good instead of a few "great" and everybody else "baseline".

That kinda reminds me of the old days of Xcom and terror from the deep.

If you kept sending your A squad it was truly tragic when one bit the big one.

But you always had one useless git survivor.

That kinda reminds me of the old days of Xcom and terror from the deep.

If you kept sending your A squad it was truly tragic when one bit the big one.

But you always had one useless git survivor.

That's probably because I experienced such a thing first hand with the new X-com (Enemy Unknown). Nothing like getting your butt kicked and having your A-team in the morgue or in hospital beds for two weeks when a terror mission shows up. You NEED a B-team (and probably a solid C-team) if you're playing that game on Iron Man, which is the only way to really play that game.

That kinda reminds me of the old days of Xcom and terror from the deep.

If you kept sending your A squad it was truly tragic when one bit the big one.

But you always had one useless git survivor.

That's probably because I experienced such a thing first hand with the new X-com (Enemy Unknown). Nothing like getting your butt kicked and having your A-team in the morgue or in hospital beds for two weeks when a terror mission shows up. You NEED a B-team (and probably a solid C-team) if you're playing that game on Iron Man, which is the only way to really play that game.

XCOM is EXACTLY what I thought of when I read that description. High five!

Very cool. While tournaments are great and all, I would really love to do an X-wing campaign, featuring a squadron that grows and develops over time. Maybe even throw a storyline in there while we're at it. Great work!

You know what, someone should run an event that did just that, maybe over a weekend...

http://theblackorifice.co.uk/page.php?type=event

Very cool. While tournaments are great and all, I would really love to do an X-wing campaign, featuring a squadron that grows and develops over time. Maybe even throw a storyline in there while we're at it. Great work!

You know what, someone should run an event that did just that, maybe over a weekend...

http://theblackorifice.co.uk/page.php?type=event

Now somebody should do it in the US! I really need to get over to England at some point, I'm a pretty committed Anglophile, but just haven't had the opportunity.

This is right on, see how that REAL STAR WARS stuff is just to cool for a fool.

Love it!

As promised:

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/138002-the-battle-of-heshik-chapter-1/?p=1491666

My write up on the start of a narrative campaign.

The Victory Class Stardestroyer Adjudicator has disabled a pirate GR75 with it's ion batteries, Elements of Black Omega (mine) and Eclipse (Jons) squadrons have secured the vicinity of the ship on the inner edge of an asteroid field. Now A stormtrooper transport has been dispatched to capture the ship...