Greetings scummers! The GHO Necromunda Weekender was a smashing success, and Primaris Kevin is here to talk about his experience running the show, lessons learned, and how much fun it was!
As much fun as playing Necromunda is (and I absolutely love playing it), there’s something incredibly validating and fulfilling about Arbitrating a campaign. In addition to having a significant amount of responsibility for the enjoyment of the people playing in the campaign, the “unique” nature of Necromunda’s rules mean that you often need to be deeply involved in how the campaign runs. Experienced players are all too familiar with the need for house rules, the risk of snowballing, the threat of people losing interest, and how incredibly imbalanced the missions can be. The stakes are even higher in campaigns at events like GHO, Adepticon, or NOVA where your customers are paying to be there.
When we updated our article about how to run a campaign back in November, we talked about how the two most important steps were scope and vibe. For an event-driven campaign like GHO the scope is easy; you know how many people, you know how many games, and you know how long you will play. For the vibe I made a deliberate decision; I never wanted anyone to have a “feels bad” moment. That meant structuring the campaign and the missions so that everyone enjoyed every game and nobody felt left behind due to the snowball effect where successful gangs gain more and more credits and leave others behind. The campaign was structured using a variant of the escalation system, only instead of receiving a fixed number of credits each game the gangs were capped at a ceiling that started at 1200 credits and increased by 200 credits each game. Instead of a traditional Trading Post, I auctioned off various items that people wanted with bids being made using the same Shards that would determine who won the overall campaign.
Click Here for the Campaign Primer
Click Here for the Missions
We had a total of nine boards, with a diverse array of Sector Mechanicus, Zone Mortalis, Ash Wastes, and even a sewer tunnel Death Race map. I would like to extend a warm thank you to Crimson Oracle from Dome Runners for providing several of the tables, including an incredibly detailed Baltimore map featuring a Domino Sugars factory (which we immediately declared a toxic waste dump with a fungal infection) and a wonderfully tall map which we turned into a King of the Spire mission. She’s a wonderful part of the Necromunda community and will be running the NOVA Open campaign.
I decided to have each board use a fixed mission that was secondary to the primary goal of obtaining Shards. That could be getting to the highest point in the map, murdering each other while playing with experimental drugs, claiming structures on an Ash Wastes map, or doing a Monster Hunt in a dilapidated hellscape under the Domino Sugar sign. Each mission was selected to use the available terrain as well as possible and give each side an equal chance of success. Since it was an escalation campaign and every gang was equally priced everyone got two uses of the Adrenaline Surge tactic and Crew Selection used the Custom Selection (69) method so that every fighter could be fielded.
For Game 1 everyone did a simple Gang Fight with the Shards on the board. This gave everyone a chance to remember how to play Necromunda, enjoy the vibes of the game, and gave me a chance to print off the missions and answer questions. Games 2 through 5 used the missions that were fixed to each table, and for Game 6 I gave everyone two options. Option 1 was that people could do one last game using fixed missions, or Option 2 was that I would run a Convoy Attack where everyone would fight off the Murder Hornets as they stood atop a full Land Train worth roughly 3000 credits. I made it very, very clear that Option 2 would be a complete clusterfuck.
Option 2 was the unanimous choice.
The Land Train
It’s become a big of a Goonhammer Open tradition for the final game to be a massive battle featuring lots of insanity, and this year was no different. Instead of a Warhound Titan everyone battled to deal wounds and detach the cargo pods off of a Land Train. Each cargo pod had Shards inside that would be split by everyone who was inside at the end of the mission. We had everyone roll for initiative and then everyone who had the same number went simultaneously, which worked out very well considering how many people were playing. Kevin Fowler and myself ran the guns and the guards on top, and as soon as Joey (Crab-stuffed Mushrooms) saw that Crabro himself was the final boss he put a $10 bounty on his head.
The final game was a huge success, although in hindsight I wish I had just told everyone to treat hull points as wounds and not worry about rolling on the Vehicle Damage table. It’s fine for two-person games, but when you’re dealing with this much insanity you’re better off simplifying everything that you can. Credit to Matt’s terrifying Slave Ogryns for ramming the Land Train in an attempt to dislodge Crabro, and Jeffrey’s Cawdor for getting the killing blow.
Champions!
In the end we had a few awards that went out to various awesome people!
- Explosive Wealth went to Sean and the Smokeless Fire Delaque Gang, for securing the most Shards with 26.
- Murderous Intent went to Cody and The Thirteenth Tapferkiet Exploration Force. Watch out for Squats; these guys took out a total of 39 fighters!
- Detonable Potential went to Trevor and his It’s Always Sumpy in Necromunda Cawdor Gang, who managed to lose a total of 9 of his own fighters to exploding Shards. To put that into context, everyone else only lost a total of 10 fighters combined.
- Beautiful Carnage went to Matt (@hivemarketminis on Instagram) who had a beautifully customized and painted Slave Ogryn gang called the Rust Storm Raiders.
- And literally last, but definitely not least, was Chris and his Escher Blue Feather Crew who “won” Fuck You Baltimore! for not winning a single game.
Lessons Learned
Overall, the campaign was a massive success. This is entirely due to how awesome our players are and the amazing support from people like Crimson Oracle. As the Arbitrator it was very rewarding to see everyone so happy, and I hope to leverage this approach towards future campaigns. That said, there were a few things that I would definitely do differently in the future.
The first thing I would change is to make the game more generous with respect to experience. I doubled the experience granted to everyone on Day 2, but it would have been better to do that on Day 1 and also incorporate more experience rewards into the missions. for example, it would have been fairly easy to award every fighter D3 XP for participating and 2D3 XP if their gang had won. To my knowledge no player in the history of Necromunda has ever complained about getting more XP. I would also remove Reputation since it’s an escalation campaign and if someone wants to take 4 Brutes then who am I to stop them?
We also made the Shards more lethal on the second day, blowing on a D6 roll of 1 or 2 instead of 1. This was another bit of feedback from the players and reflects how important it is to be flexible. Overall the Shard mechanic was a huge success and I would encourage any Arbitrator to look at campaigns where success is driven by something other than the collection of raw credits.
The final mission was a lot of fun, but I think it would have been even better had I made it a long single table instead of a Rolling Roads campaign. Having everyone move all of the terrain back 8″ every turn delayed things quite a bit. For a larger mission like that it would have also been a good idea to simplify the vehicle rules so that vehicles lost Hull Points like Wounds.
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