Narrative Play Grand Events

[Oppenheimer]

One of the things that came up in the What is Filth thread is that people should expect armies to be built for winning not for thematic reasons, that people who play in tournaments are playing to win and not to enjoy a narrative.

That got me thinking. I would love to go to a grand event like a tournament. I would like to meet people from all over and show off my army and play some games. But, I don't want it to play against people or have the objective be just to win. 

Since narrative Play is a thing now is there a narrative grand event? Where people who like fluffy armies can play and the prizes aren't for winning but for making the best story?

What do you think?

[Double Misfire]

I'd imagine future Warhammer World campaign weekends will be something like what you've just described. I'm off to the Throne of Skulls next month with friends which is only pseudo matched play and requires sports scores to win.

[The Jabber Tzeentch]

Warhammer World have ran a lot of events over the past year with a more narrative friendly approach and some more campaign oriented and they were pretty great.

I would expect more events to come with a focus on Narative and Open play from the Generals Handbook. I would love to see an escalation weekend campaign using path to glory rules

[Sleboda]

For yeeeeeears I have wanted to run what I have been calling a "Grand Get-together. "

You are guaranteed 5 games. Armies must be painted. The works. Just like a Grand Tournament, except you don't keep any kind of score at all.   You just get to play a bunch of games against new people and see the hobby shine.

 

Someday.

[MechaBriZilla]

I'm working on the details of a small campaign for my friends and I, and hopefully some drop ins, that will hopefully be a bit of a hybrid.

I intend to use points, but I'd like the campaign to tell a story, and if I can convince the group, make extensive use of the narrative battleplans and time of war rules.  

Ultimately, I want this to be the seed for a community built around semi-competitive narrative play.

[Spiky Norman]

I would love to see a Narrative Event Pack, that was easy to take an use "straight out of the box".

Hopefully if we had such narrative packs, it would start to shift a little away from hyper competitive tournaments being the default (almost only?) event type out there.

[Bowlzee]

One thing I loved about Horus Heresy were the tournament events. It wasn't about 1 winner it was about traitors vs loyalist. I ran a few events in Brisbane, Australia with different types of games that seemed to go down well.

With this in mind, I'm writing up an event that I'm hopeful to run next year sometime. 

The premise: 4 teams - Chaos, Death, Order, Destruction. 

Team captain will chose who is put forward for each game, like ETC style. Unique characters are limited to 1. For example, just one Archaon in the event. In the past I've used Facebook to create closed groups to allow teams to chat with each other on what they are taking and come up with general strategy, but the idea is for a fluffy narrative event.

Games will be a mixture of 1v1, 2v2 and 1v1v1v1. 

With a trophy for each of the winning team members etc.

[RossMHoward]

9 minutes ago, Bowlzee said:

One thing I loved about Horus Heresy were the tournament events. It wasn't about 1 winner it was about traitors vs loyalist. I ran a few events in Brisbane, Australia with different types of games that seemed to go down well.

With this in mind, I'm writing up an event that I'm hopeful to run next year sometime. 

The premise: 4 teams - Chaos, Death, Order, Destruction. 

I'm personally thinking of doing something similar. But the teams wouldn't be from the same club, it'd be a mix and match of different clubs. 4 Death players from 4 clubs etc. 

First scenario of the day would be generic, but then if team Chaos are in front after the first game, a custom scenario is picked that pits Chaos as the enemy. 

Could add further complexity in that if Chaos are winning and Order are losing, then the draws are all Order Vs Chaos and Undead can fight against Destruction. And whoever is out in front again come the end of it have a custom scenario. I'm tying myself in knots over it!

 

[AGPO]

I can see campaign weekends becoming very popular. A range of themed scenarios including breakthroughs, last stands, meeting engagements and night attacks, with the results feeding in to decide the next round. You could even finish off with a big mass participation game.

[Thornshield]

@Oppenheimer What's your definition of grand event? Is it the size (say 40+ players) or a well-run organised weekender? I'm a huge advocate of Narrative events and along with 3 other hobby heroes, am running a 40 player Narrative event in two months time (Shameless plug, check out Realms at War).

Even as Narrative-driven as it is though, there's still the element of winning, because ultimately, that's what generally defines a game. But there is definitely a high focus on crafting a story throughout the weekend both individually and at an overall level.

5 hours ago, The Jabber Tzeentch said:

Warhammer World have ran a lot of events over the past year with a more narrative friendly approach and some more campaign oriented and they were pretty great.

I would expect more events to come with a focus on Narative and Open play from the Generals Handbook. I would love to see an escalation weekend campaign using path to glory rules

WHW events are always done to a high standard and am really hoping to visit them again next year for a campaign weekend. Also, not quite a weekender, but this one-dayer uses PtG as a starter. I've seen a sliver of what @HobbyHammer has in store, highly recommend you check it out.

 

4 hours ago, Spiky Norman said:

I would love to see a Narrative Event Pack, that was easy to take an use "straight out of the box".

Hopefully if we had such narrative packs, it would start to shift a little away from hyper competitive tournaments being the default (almost only?) event type out there.

Last plug from me (I promise), but one thing we're building towards is a collective resource pool to help out budding event organisers to run Narrative events of their own. To everyone who's posted in this thread, given your interest in the topic, I hope you can help out here!

 

[Oppenheimer]

@Thornshield looked briefly at it and it does look neat. Mind you I don't actually live in the UK so there's no way I could attend. But, I am very glad there are people like you out there running narrative focused games ?

[Thornshield]

10 hours ago, Oppenheimer said:

@Thornshield looked briefly at it and it does look neat. Mind you I don't actually live in the UK so there's no way I could attend. But, I am very glad there are people like you out there running narrative focused games ?

Where are you based? If in the US, there's the awesome Holy Wars GT run by @Holy Hammer Hern, and I trust @StoneMonk would be hosting someone in the near future, among others. 

And if you're sadly in a location where there really is none, try organising something of your own. It's not the same as taking part in one, but it's a start! =) 

[StoneMonk]

Love this thread and idea of a Grand Narrative event, or even a grand get-together. Anything that spurs other facets of the hobby around playing games, modeling and painting, and telling stories. I also think that if narrative players and hobby players and competitive players all have their outlets in the community, it will help us celebrate all aspects of the hobby without feeling like we're sacrificing one for another. We have a history and templates for competitive play, while narrative and hobby events are seeing their first seeds through @Holy Wars & Holy Havoc TO and @Thornshield's RAW event. 

Would love to run a narrative event some day. Would be cool if it built towards a Grand event.

[Spiky Norman]

Would it be possible to get place on TGA to host Narrative event packs, so people can pick up one a run it locally and maybe provide feedback to improve it?

That way it would be easier for people everywhere to set up a narrative event, without having to (re)invent everything from scratch, and the community-driven event packs could be improved over time, as they get run by several people in different places. :-)

[Oppenheimer]

@Thornshield

I'm in Canada. There was a tournament in Ottawa run by the Can Hammer boys but it is both very competitive and they are really more of a 40K group. Maybe I should consider running something someday. It's certainly something to consider. ☺

[The Jabber Tzeentch]

Would it be possible to get place on TGA to host Narrative event packs, so people can pick up one a run it locally and maybe provide feedback to improve it?
That way it would be easier for people everywhere to set up a narrative event, without having to (re)invent everything from scratch, and the community-driven event packs could be improved over time, as they get run by several people in different places. :-)

@hobbyhammer is doing a pretty awesome narrative campaign at the moment.

[HobbyHammer]

2 hours ago, The Jabber Tzeentch said:

@hobbyhammer is doing a pretty awesome narrative campaign at the moment.

@Spiky Norman Yer man, feel free to use anything you like on my website. I am currently compiling all of my narrative creations into one page which will be on the site soon. This will include small narrative campaigns, longer campaigns (i.e. All the info you need to run one) battleplans, times of war, Path to Glory, Ladder and Map style etc.

this will also be available on a website @Thornshield is going to creating soon, one stop shop for everything narrative from all over the AoS community. 

i will let you know as soon as it is all in one place. 

Cheers for kind words Jabber! 

[HobbyHammer]

22 hours ago, Spiky Norman said:

Would it be possible to get place on TGA to host Narrative event packs, so people can pick up one a run it locally and maybe provide feedback to improve it?

That way it would be easier for people everywhere to set up a narrative event, without having to (re)invent everything from scratch, and the community-driven event packs could be improved over time, as they get run by several people in different places. :-)

Hope this may help you in a small way.

[Spiky Norman]

18 hours ago, HobbyHammer said:

@Spiky Norman Yer man, feel free to use anything you like on my website. I am currently compiling all of my narrative creations into one page which will be on the site soon. This will include small narrative campaigns, longer campaigns (i.e. All the info you need to run one) battleplans, times of war, Path to Glory, Ladder and Map style etc.

this will also be available on a website @Thornshield is going to creating soon, one stop shop for everything narrative from all over the AoS community. 

i will let you know as soon as it is all in one place.

I have been trying to keep up with what you've posted on the event and I really like the work so far.

I'm certainly looking forward to going through the entire pack, once it's up on the site.

Keep up the good work! I hope it can aspire other to do the same, and that I may get the chance to run something locally based off of the material you put out. :-)

[Thomas Lyons]

Our Warhammer Weekly last night dealt with Narrative Events with a special focus on the upcoming Holy Havok event in a couple weeks.   @Holy Hammer Hern was our guest for the show.  It was fantastic.  I'd encourage you to check it out.

 

  
 

[Nico]

It was a good episode.

[Bostian]

On 10/20/2016 at 9:42 PM, Thomas Lyons said:

Our Warhammer Weekly last night dealt with Narrative Events with a special focus on the upcoming Holy Havok event in a couple weeks.   @Holy Hammer Hern was our guest for the show.  It was fantastic.  I'd encourage you to check it out.
 

Awesome show! And when Stephen talked about the narrative event at NOVA I was taking notes. We're already planning for a better narrative event in 2018, and I picked up a lot from this show. Thanks!

[Spiky Norman]

I was listening to the latest Heelanhammer podcast episode about Narrative Play, and I was wondering if any of you ( @Dan Heelan  maybe?) might know if some of the event packs that they talked about is available online somewhere?

I would actually pose the same question to the Warhammer Weekly crew ( @Thomas Lyons, @Vincent Venturella) from their episode with @Holy Hammer Hern, if the Holy Hammer or maybe some of those NOVA event packs mentioned are available online somewhere?

There seem to have been made some really great narrative events and it would awesome to be able to recreate the events with their event packs, or use them as inspiration for making new narrative events. :-)

[Bostian]

Most info is available on the respective event websites.

NOVA Open 2016 is still up: http://www.novaopen.com/age-of-sigmar/ and hit the primer button.

Holy Wars and Holy Havoc is at http://www.holywarsgt.com/

As indicated by the joke among Vince, Tom, and Stephen, the battleplans and specifics haven't been posted publicly, but copies have been sent out to registered players.

The idea of putting these things together in one location is good--maybe a project for the awesome team over at Scruby & Wells !

[Thomas Lyons]

It would be up to the event organizers if they indeed want their material to be publicly available.  I think it would be amazing if we had a collective resource for these types of events.  Similarly, I would love if tournament table formats, specialized terrain, etc were available for other events to use.  Moving forward, it might be neat to put together a pdf that is effectively a codex for specific narrative events (something not unlike the current campaign books or old books like Storm of Magic/Blood in the Badlands).  I really do think a number of these events to be collated into some neat community projects.