{"id":3175,"date":"2015-05-14T11:13:48","date_gmt":"2015-05-14T15:13:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rocketshipgames.com\/blogs\/tjkopena\/?p=3175"},"modified":"2022-07-01T08:53:00","modified_gmt":"2022-07-01T12:53:00","slug":"narrative-tournament-design-in-tabletop-wargaming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocketshipgames.com\/blogs\/tjkopena\/2015\/05\/narrative-tournament-design-in-tabletop-wargaming\/","title":{"rendered":"Narrative Tournament Design in Tabletop Wargaming"},"content":{"rendered":"

Someone asked on DakkaDakka today<\/a>\u00a0“What makes a good narrative tournament?”<\/em> My club<\/a> is very much committed to narrative play in\u00a0Warhammer 40,000<\/em><\/a> (40k<\/em>) and other tabletop wargaming, and has held\u00a0a number of story-heavy\u00a0events over the years. Among those, for\u00a0the past seven months I’ve been organizing\u00a0the monthly 40k<\/em> events at my\u00a0local shop<\/a>\u00a0(with which I’m not otherwise formally affiliated)\u00a0as narrative\u00a0tournaments. \u00a0I’ve also played in a few other such events outside our group, notably the NOVA Narrative<\/a>. Suffice to say,\u00a0I’m way excited about this topic and have a few\u00a0thoughts. My experience and comments are mostly ground in\u00a040k<\/em>, but all of this is generic and applicable to other\u00a0games.<\/p>\n

I note\u00a0up front that I reference\u00a0the NOVA Narrative repeatedly below because it’s among the most prominent and widely known narrative tournament events in 40k, <\/em>and therefore among the most prominent in tabletop wargames, as well as\u00a0one outside my\u00a0club with which I have direct experience. A few\u00a0of the comments\u00a0are criticisms, but they’re meant\u00a0with all due respect and as hopefully constructive notes. That’s a super fun event, it’s well executed, the organizers are amazing, and I’m devastated that I cannot by any means make it\u00a0this year with the rest of my crew (I’m expecting my firstborn the week before). I do though think that some aspects\u00a0of its design includes\u00a0pitfalls that I would guess are fairly common for narrative tournaments, including my own events.<\/p>\n

\"Title<\/a>

Title page from our Caldor IV campaign tournament series packet.<\/p><\/div>\n

Narrative Tournaments? \u00a0WTF?<\/h2>\n

An important opening\u00a0point is establishing just what we’re talking about here. There’s definitely a valid viewpoint that “narrative tournament” is a contradiction in terms. This is aptly expressed by the first comment to the Dakka thread<\/a>\u00a0as to what makes a good narrative tournament: “Not being a tournament.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Much as in wargaming\u00a0\u00a0overall, there’s a spectrum of organized events. On the one end\u00a0are\u00a0competition focused events, with more or less mathematical tournament\u00a0structures, more or less tight mission design, limited or sidetrack painting & hobby components, and zero concern about fluff and story. At the opposite end is\u00a0totally narrative play, with the only thing distinguishing it from casual pick-up play being that there’s a story being built or utilized, and some kind of minimal organization of players and matches.\u00a0Obviously there’s a space for both. Though I’m not myself engaged at any kind of serious competitive level in 40k<\/em> or any other game, I’d argue strongly that a vibrant competitive tournament scene is a\u00a0good and critical thing for most\u00a0games’\u00a0long term longevity and, if properly utilized by the designers\/manufacturers (*cough*), actually adds\u00a0a lot of value to the game even\u00a0for\u00a0those not interested in participating directly. But fluffy play\u00a0is\u00a0also great; our club has gotten immense value out of events we’ve organized purely to drive narrative. I’d also argue\u00a0that most 40k<\/em> tournaments at least actually aren’t very far on the spectrum toward pure competition, especially smaller, regularly scheduled shop or club events: Missions might have some wacky elements, tournament scoring often isn’t\u00a0well published, there might be more or less arbitrary army composition restrictions or rules modifiers, painting\u00a0and\/or sportsmanship components might\u00a0be significant, and so on.<\/p>\n

I don’t think it’s a huge stretch then\u00a0to fit\u00a0some narrative elements alongside tournament aspects and fall somewhere in the middle of that spectrum, and\u00a0there\u00a0are good reasons to do so. With the monthly 40k<\/em> events at our local shop, I’ve been specifically trying to see if we can get both the fluffy and the competition-oriented players engaged in organized play.\u00a0Our tournament crowd\u00a0is fairly well established and dedicated, but somewhat\u00a0small. We do though have another contingent\u00a0that’s much more motivated by narrative and team-based play. It would be great if we could run at least some events that were appealing to both and get everybody out at once.\u00a0Emphasizing narrative and hobby components also tends to push against\u00a0poor behavior and win-at-all-costs play.<\/p>\n

The two event types\u00a0can also bring a lot to each other. I’ll touch on this more later, but one aspect of tournaments frequently overlooked by less\u00a0competition-minded players is that a typical, proper tournament pairing mechanism works toward players competing against opponents of similar skill level. That’s a great feature to incorporate into an event and try to ensure people are having fun games.\u00a0In contrast, many\u00a0campaign structures can unfortunately lead to devastating matchups, often repeatedly. For example, it can be tough\u00a0as a new player competing in a classical map-based campaign if a\u00a0neighboring opponent on your borders is a hardened, competitive veteran.<\/p>\n

So, over the years and especially recently, I’ve been\u00a0experimenting with different approaches, from riding light narrative overtop standard tournaments, to embedding\u00a0tournaments and prizes inside campaigns and narrative.<\/p>\n

\"We<\/a>

We all just want to roll dice. But sometimes there’s dramatic narrative!<\/p><\/div>\n

Storylines<\/h2>\n

“Narrative” is, of course, an imprecise term, with several dimensions: Detailed or abstract, storyline or vignette, and so on.\u00a0Many of my battle reports feature a paragraph here or there with a short, isolated vignette about a\u00a0particular event or character in the game, and I personally frequently consciously field lists and\u00a0play with a style emphasizing dramatic, story-oriented actions in line with and developing my army’s character. Over time\u00a0all those separate, simple bits of story have yielded\u00a0an elaborate emergent narrative. Everybody in my club is at least vaguely aware of different major storylines of my chapter of Space Marines and its major characters. In a more top-down and a priori<\/em> fashion,\u00a0right now\u00a0a group of 40k<\/em> players in my community are running\u00a0a campaign league (that I’m not in) featuring elaborate\u00a0creative fiction\u00a0about\u00a0the armies, their commanders, and the battleground, with everything\u00a0being written\u00a0over time\u00a0into\u00a0a long-running, detailed narrative. The NOVA Narrative storyline is fairly extensive and lengthy, has emerged from the overall outcomes over the years, and for both better and worse is essentially entirely unrelated to the official\u00a040k<\/em> universe.<\/p>\n

As a narrative tournament organizer and designer, I mostly try to keep the story fairly light, providing some theme and background while letting the outcomes themselves drive the story. The explicit narrative is usually just a few paragraphs of background text, and a short, marginally\u00a0dramatized accounting in my campaign reports relating\u00a0the progression of events. A good example is the report from our most recent event<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0general, I\u00a0don’t\u00a0spend a ton of time crafting and writing explicit narrative. Most of it’s coming from the players and exists in their head and the community gestalt, and is all the more powerful for it. My goal is just to provide basic structures enabling that\u00a0better\u00a0than straight tournament or pick-up play. For example, in our current campaign there’s a touch\u00a0of\u00a0backstory about the planet and what’s going on, but it’s very short and light.\u00a0There is though a map, and on it\u00a0is a Starport, which one player\u00a0decided he particularly\u00a0cares about, even though it doesn’t help him in-game at all and offers only modest benefits to his alliance.\u00a0At\u00a0some point he just came out with\u00a0a short\u00a0narrative that his army really wants to ensure they can get off this Emperor-forsaken rock once this war’s over and is terrified they’re going to get stuck there, so they’re\u00a0fighting\u00a0like hell to take and hold the Starport. He’s made that a vocal priority in\u00a0the strategic discussions within his alliance, and the other players know he’s fighting for it and talk about it.\u00a0That’s a great emergent narrative. At the same time, he’s also one of our better players and has been able to pursue that personal\u00a0story\u00a0and motivation while competing for the tournament prizes.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The map for our Solypsus 9 campaign, featuring the major installations.<\/p><\/div>\n

Tournament Structures<\/h2>\n

The structures enabling that and what “narrative tournament” actually entails in practice then fall on that same spectrum above of being more or less oriented\u00a0toward fluff\u00a0or competition. The key things are that there’s a narrative—a story being built and\/or motivating\u00a0gameplay—alongside a tournament. In this context\u00a0the latter is a\u00a0flexible term and not necessarily a mathematical tournament structure, though it might be.\u00a0I take the\u00a0minimal requirement as being that there are points being awarded to individuals, standings, and prizes of some sort.<\/p>\n

For a competition-oriented example, years ago I ran a Combat Patrol tournament league<\/a>\u00a0for 40k<\/em> skirmishing. One of the gimmicks was that the\u00a0small games (750 points) permitted the missions\u00a0to be\u00a0asymmetric, with matches actually consisting of two games with opponents\u00a0alternating roles. Those matches though went into a\u00a0pure tournament structure.\u00a0Players earned individual points, pairings were straight Swiss across everybody, and there was a final single ranking of all players and prizes awarded based on that. But those asymmetric game results fed into an abstract narrative about a planet being invaded, and the Attackers\u00a0and\u00a0Defenders respectively fighting to advance on or defend a critical site. It wasn’t\u00a0detailed at all, but it was\u00a0a\u00a0real story and collective narrative progression that people who cared could\u00a0follow and\u00a0talk about, while others could just play the tournament.<\/p>\n

\"Campaign<\/a>

Campaign map from the 2010 Combat Patrol Tournament League.<\/p><\/div>\n

At the opposite end of the spectrum,\u00a0Saturday\u00a0we’re running a 40k Apocalypse<\/em> mega-battle to conclude our Solypsus 9 sequence<\/a>, an all-in battle royale of all the players in a single all-day\u00a0game.\u00a0Although my club’s Apocalypse<\/em> battles are much more structured and organized than nearly any I’m aware of, that’s basically necessarily a\u00a0heavily narrative-oriented event rather than a competitive one.\u00a0We are though\u00a0collecting entry fees and awarding store credit prizes. In part that’s to\u00a0give something to the shop for hosting us, but it’ll also add some excitement and motivation. Clearly though there’s no recognizable standard\u00a0tournament structure since it’s just one big match with everybody playing as\u00a0teams. Instead, the\u00a0match component of our scoring (we also include painting and sportsmanship) and the eventual player rankings will be based on personal in-game achievements designed\u00a0to emphasize narrative play. Declare an opposing\u00a0warlord your sworn enemy and then\u00a0personally ensure their demise? Earn some points.\u00a0Hold the site of one of your fallen characters? Earn some points. \u00a0So, it’s all fluffy and loose, but it does incorporate\u00a0some competitive aspects alongside very much\u00a0narrative play.<\/p>\n

Alliances<\/h2>\n

In between those two extremes are the majority of the\u00a0events\u00a0we’ve been running the past half year. A defining\u00a0feature of these has been\u00a0that players are organized into alliances and make collective strategic decisions. I specifically use “alliance” to differentiate from team-based play as in doubles tournaments, which we love and also run, including inside the narrative frameworks.<\/p>\n

Players within those\u00a0alliances don’t play\u00a0against each other, caveat\u00a0some significant exception, and the alliances have substantial input on the tournament pairings. In our setup\u00a0they\u00a0alternate putting forward a player toward some narrative\u00a0action and the other alliance(s) responding with an opponent and a specific board to play on. Thus the attacker declare a campaign objective, and the defenders choose the specific physical terrain for\u00a0the battle.\u00a0The NOVA Narrative works very similarly, and I would guess this is somewhat common and a major feature of what most people identify with “narrative tournaments.” Notably, this arrangement\u00a0is derived from some of the major team tournaments, another instance of serious competitive play contributing a more generally useful structure.<\/p>\n

On the one hand, this is a huge draw for a lot of participants.\u00a0The games themselves remain standard and players field their full armies, but they also get to enjoy teamwork and cooperative strategizing.\u00a0Depending on the complexity of the narrative framework, alliances\u00a0might have a ton of discussion about\u00a0campaign level strategy and decision making. Certainly there’s typically a lot of discussion about\u00a0which armies are the best to put forward to take on any defender, or which\u00a0should be held back to try and respond to specific attacking\u00a0armies, and so on. Lots of people really love and are excited by those discussions, and to a large extent those that aren’t can just ride along.<\/p>\n

\"Kramer<\/a>

Kramer Doyle, humanity’s commander, sends the Kingbreakers off to space to do battle against unimaginable enemies and impossible odds. A Humanity Commanders’ strategy session at last year’s NOVA Narrative.<\/p><\/div>\n

That said, this is a huge tradeoff in narrative versus competition. As soon as players are\u00a0divided into alliances, it’s difficult\u00a0to have\u00a0a single set of final individual rankings. In particular, the top players may not face\u00a0each other and will be difficult to compare. But in many\u00a0settings that’s ok. Toward that, we keep our prizes small and spread them around, so that they’re spice and a fun side thing rather than serious objectives and something to be aggressively competitive about. Our prizes are generally organized as follows, depending on the number of players:<\/p>\n