Skeletons in the Closet, or How to Make Campaigns More Effective

I've started a pair of solo campaigns a few months ago. One of them was taking place on the Continent of Rot in my Schultze-Böhnstadt imaginary setting, and the other was a Chinese warlords type game called Rennui Unification Wars. Due to the necessity of keeping tabs on the movement and logistics of multiple factions all by myself, I quickly got tired of both, and they were left for dead on my Roll20 account. 

I thought about starting a new one in a fantasy setting, just to occupy myself when I've got the time, so here are a few approaches on how to prevent it from failing again.

1. Fewer Zones

The problem: the Rennui Unification Wars campaign had four factions, each holding four countries, that were divided to four sub-zones. This had a two-fold effect: 1. the progress of each conquering faction was very slow, 2. it sort of imbalanced the game economy. 

Regards to point 1., without trying to bore anyone, the basic rule was that movement on friendly territory is 3 zones per turn when unimpeded, and each hostile zone that is in the path must be conquered, which ends campaign movement. It was mathematically possible to Blitzkrieg the thing, fight a path to the enemy's main city and decapitate the kingdom, but this is highly dependable on the opposing faction's strategy. 

Regards to point 2., the average price of a unit is about 3 Wealth, so a kingdom of sixteen zones (counting the ones conquered and the ones lost to enemy conquest) can recruit about five units per turn without any hassle. This is a lot more than a campaigning army loses, especially if it moves through friendly territory during the turn. Resource management at this low complexity should revolve a lot more around scarcity than excess wealth. 

The other element is that a conquering army cannot really de-stabilize an opponent economically, as the defending army can easily take a conquered zone as soon as the conqueror's main army moves out to take the next, and thus armies can stalemate each other endlessly with this bunny-hopping avoiding strategy. I do not wish to alter the basic rule for keeping garrisons on conquered territories, as this would result in even more extensive book-keeping, and we do already have enough of that (although, now that we speak about it, I could replace the current dice mechanic with a card draw).

One possible solution: drastically reducing the number of zones each faction holds. The Continent of Rot campaign had four zones per faction, this could be taken down to three. This would result in the factions taking more care of their own territory during offensives, make campaign movements on friendly territory more progressive, and the scarcity element would have a higher importance. The end result is then a much faster campaign. A zone/ladder chimaera with limited choice of movement between territories, e.g. something like this, has the potential to be rather interesting:

2. Fewer Factions

The problem: a campaign with two factions is just a tug-of-war, while a campaign with more than two factions bogs down while each faction takes their turn (ever tried playing a multi-player turn based game online? That's how it feels like, except you are all the players). To top it all off, there seems to be no middle road.

Solution: one way to address this without simplifying the campaign map is asymmetric campaigns. Either there is a PC faction that has to conquer a great bunch of neutral zones, or a smaller faction taking over an entire empire whose army has limited lines of movement. Including multiple passive / NPC factions is another way to do it, perhaps using escalation rules, where the conqueror has to face ever stronger opposing forces. When I think of it, re-designing the Continent of Rot campaign along these lines should be a fair proving ground for the concept.

3. Less Book-Keeping

When playing the RUW campaign, I had to consult at least five different documents: the generic rule book, the speficic campaign rules, the campaign map, the army rosters and the campaign log. This is obviously way too much, even for two factions and/or a small campaign map. This was partially addressed by dusting off my skills in Pascal and scripting a very rudimentary auto resolution simulator, speeding things up a bit, but by my estimates, learning an actually useful programming language takes somewhat more time in the long run than writing a Google doc with army lists in it. The downside is, of course, that it's a sixth platform that has to be kept open.

Solving any of the previous two issues, of course, is the step in the right direction for reducing the amount of scribbling necessary to make the thing work. This is where the above two issues cumulate a bit: fewer zones mean smaller armies, and so when a smaller army takes huge losses, it must remain idle for multiple turns in order to be replenished; and then fewer factions mean a fewer number of armies tabs have to be kept on. 

One of the advantages of using virtual platforms for conducting campaigns is that they do not require physical space, so creating tokens for units and currency is out of the picture. So, in the end, this issue cannot be circumvented - other factors might help a great deal to overcome it though.

4. More Abstract System

I have tried a narrative campaign with my Formaggian Succession Wars, and fought it to a resolution (it's just not published yet). The caveat is that in that case, I knew what the end result would be. The rules were rather arbitrary, but the overall feel of the thing was very Game of Thrones-esque. The same could be applied for other campaigns as well, they would just require a strong / entertaining basic concept, and a few less arbitrary rules regarding what each faction can and cannot do. The FSW campaign was basically a recruitment - action - reaction type of game, with the seasons somewhat effecting campaign turns. Perhaps this is actually the key: to not take everything all that seriously, as these games are supposed to be, above all else, entertaining.

5. Smaller in Scope

This one is sort of related to the asymmetric nature of the campaign, mentioned in Segment 2. Instead of having larger factions fight for dominance, it could be about a single leader / warlord and a small army operating against enemy forces. This could then add the interesting aspect of having to match the expectations of the army leader's superiors with real life occurrences, like receiving an order to storm an enemy garrison that is just too well defended. 

6. ...Source of the Nile

Another way around simplification is, interestingly, to add a great deal of uncertainty. It could be an exploration campaign, where the PC faction begins a conquest or colonization effort on the Unknown Continent. Most of the concepts from the game mentioned in the segment title should provide rather useful, or a very basic terrain / NPC faction generator, similar to the battle resolution aid, could be implemented. This campaign can also go on for an indefinite period of time by generating the next stage and overcoming the obstacles it presents, focusing on development instead of pre-set victory conditions.

Final Word

Almost all of these ideas have some value by themselves, but most likely the combination of a few (which are not mutually exclusive) shall provide a new boost to my otherwise sparse gaming activity. As always, any comments are welcome.