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Narrative Play


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I don't get much time to play these days, but narrative is my preference. Some tips as requested:

  • The more quirky and characterful scenarios that lend themselves to storytelling and dramatic moments are found in the Realmgate Wars campaign books, and to a lesser extent the faction battletomes.
  • The General's Handbook isn't just for competitive players - there's good stuff in there for narrative players too, including various different campaign structures and battleplans.
  • GW is releasing some kind of add-on soon called 'Age of Sigmar: Skirmish' which is all about fielding small warbands and will probably lend itself well to narrative play (although we know almost nothing about it yet).
  • There are 2 great AoS fan projects that are very narrative focused and complement each other well:: AoS28 and Hinterlands. Both are about building characterful warbands and telling ongoing stories through narrative play.
  • If you're having trouble finding narrative games you may be able to find a narrative event near you - they seem to happen fairly regularly in the UK, maybe not so much elsewhere.
  • There is a global narrative event coming up called Coalescence, which you may be able to get involved with either as an organiser or a participant.

 

That's all I can think of right now!

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I do, I never liked points systems in any form, and AoS does not really get along with them. As far as scenarios are concerned, I experiment with them, and first settle on two types -role playing ones like in Silver Tower and more mass scaled but with unique objectives, like in the Fyreslayers book where they had to carve through undead hordes in dungeon to come for the vampiress. I like this idea very much. For example, your elvish archmage with his 10 swordmaster bodyguards comes to some ancient ruins to uncover their secrets, but the ruins are infested with goblins! So you have to cleave your way to the center of the ruins where ancient magical spring is located (and which is sacred to the goblins so they will attack you til the last breath) and perform a ritual, and while you are at it, you must hold your positions until the ritual is completed. 

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Mostly points, but I'm trying to push a more relaxed point approach so its not all pretend tournament type games.  But people seem to want some sort of balance so just saying pick a few things is too open for anything other than a prearranged game, although I have a couple friends who might try out that style.

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In my group, we pretty much just use points as "guidelines" more than actual rules.  Basically, they are just a measure to us of a unit's estimated power, and we try to get within a hundred points or so of each other for our games.

Narratively speaking, my group is somewhere between Matched, Open, and Narrative.  We just use the points, we don't worry about Battlefield Role too much (not worrying about Battleline, Leaders, etc.), and we are working on putting some campaign stuff together since we all come from D&D in our younger days.

22 minutes ago, Jamie the Jasper said:
  • There is a global narrative event coming up called Coalescence, which you may be able to get involved with either as an organiser or a participant.

I recommend this!  I am looking at getting this going in my area, as it seems a good way to give the local AoS players some "validity" to the old guard who are still bitter about WHFB being killed off.

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Anyone still focusing on Narrative or is it all points based games now?
 
If you do play Narrative on the regular....got any tips?

If you have a WHTV subscription, I'd recommend checking out Wednesday's stream where some of the NEOs (Narrative Event Organisers) took over the channel with a couple of linked games & accompanying commentary on why we play Narrative.

Also, the Jervis interview on Thursday focused on Narrative play and I highly recommend listening to it too.

If you don't have a subscription, I guess you may have to settle for me on TBS as mentioned by Chris.

There's also a Narrative subforum here, so do have a look and post stuff there!
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Thanks for the tips, fellas.

I totally missed the Narrative Play subforum...doh!

Before this thread concludes, are there any sort of narrative play report pdfs or something where we can record the name of our generals, battle results, etc. I guess like a character sheet for RPGS...something to record the history of our armies.

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48 minutes ago, Mr. White said:

Thanks for the tips, fellas.

I totally missed the Narrative Play subforum...doh!

Before this thread concludes, are there any sort of narrative play report pdfs or something where we can record the name of our generals, battle results, etc. I guess like a character sheet for RPGS...something to record the history of our armies.

 

It is - from the Path to glory, which GW now includes in battletomes. Here it is.

 

Путь к славе.jpg

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44 minutes ago, Mr. White said:

Oh, what's TBS and where can I listen in?

The Black Sun Weekly - A weekly AoS podcast that comes out every Monday at 7pm GMT. Topics range wildly so some may be for you and others perhaps not. You can listen on www.theblacksun.co.uk or search The Black Sun on iTunes.

Also this section of the forum lists all the episodes;

http://www.tga.community/forums/forum/61-the-black-sun/

This week's episode was about themed armies with @Devilreefman and I've also done shows on Hinterlands with @bottle and general hobbying with @Bishmeister all of which may interest you. There's also one with all 4 Narrative Event Organisers (NEOs) covering off their Realms at War Narrative Event - @Thornshield @Mitzy @Jimbo @Devilreefman

Maybe just have a look through the list and see which ones you like the sounds of as like I say there is a wide variety of topics covered. Whilst the Podcast is listed as "explicit" on iTunes, all of the particular episodes mentioned above are clean.

The forthcoming episode with @Thornshield is likely to be scheduled for 15/05/17 (potentially 08/05/17).

Hope you enjoy if you listen!

Chris

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