Homebrew Crusade Campaigns: Telling a Story at the Table

A Crusade campaign works without any of this. Play games, earn experience, spend Requisition Points, watch a force change shape over a season. That is already more than a series of matched-play pickups gives you.

What it does not give you is a reason to care about the third game in the same way you cared about the first. The rules describe how a force grows. They are silent on what the campaign is about, and that silence is the part a host has to fill.

What a narrative campaign needs that a ladder does not

A league needs a fixture list and a points table. A narrative campaign needs three more things, and a group will feel the absence of any of them:

• A spine. Something the campaign is about, that everyone can name without checking.
• Personal stakes. A reason this player, tonight, wants something specific to happen.
• A record. Somewhere the story is written down that people actually read between games.

Most homebrew campaigns that fizzle have the first and none of the rest. The host writes a paragraph of setting, everyone reads it once, and three weeks later the campaign is a ladder with a nice name.

1. Decide what the campaign is about

Write down five to eight things that have to happen over the campaign. Not lore, and not a schedule. Events with an outcome:

• The siege of the eastern gate breaks, or it does not.
• The relay station falls into Ork hands.
• Someone finds out who has been feeding the enemy the patrol routes.

These are your turning points. Each one is either still ahead of you or already behind you, and the campaign moves when one crosses over. Say them out loud at the start, so the group is playing towards something rather than being told afterwards what the games apparently meant.

2. Break it into chapters

Group your turning points into three or four phases and give each one a name, a place and a points level. A campaign that escalates from 1,000 to 2,000 points already has a shape; attaching a chapter to each step gives that shape a meaning.

Chapters also solve a scheduling problem. A group that cannot all play every week can still finish a chapter together, and a chapter is a natural place to let a late joiner in without them feeling behind.

3. Give each player something of their own

This is the step most homebrew campaigns skip, and it is the one that does the most work.

Crusade already has Agendas, which the player picks for themselves and scores for experience. They are good, and they are not the same thing. An Agenda is the player's plan. What a narrative campaign wants alongside it is an objective the host hands to a specific player, for a specific game, that the rest of the table may not know about:

• Hold the eastern ridge to the end of round three.
• Destroy the enemy Warlord in melee, personally.
• End the battle with a unit inside your opponent's deployment zone.

Two players can be given the same objective and only one of them manage it. That asymmetry is the story. It is also why a shared scoreboard cannot replace it.

4. Attach a reward, and a consequence

An objective with a reward is an incentive. An objective with a reward and a cost is a decision, and decisions are what people remember.

Keep both concrete and small. A free Rearm and Resupply. Three Requisition Points. A Crusade Relic of the player's choosing. On the other side: a Battle Scar of the host's choosing, the loss of a Requisition Point, a unit that starts the next game in reserve.

Two habits are worth borrowing. First, tell people the consequence up front. A cost nobody knows about is not a deterrent, it is an ambush, and it lands badly. Second, consider keeping the reward secret until it is earned. A player who knows only that something is waiting plays the objective differently from one who has already priced it.

5. Write it where people will read it

A campaign lives or dies on whether the story is legible between games. If the plot exists only in the host's head, players arrive each week needing to be reminded what they are doing, and the narrative becomes an introduction rather than a thread.

Whatever you use, it needs to answer three questions without anyone asking: what is the campaign about, what has happened so far, and what am I personally trying to do next game. A group chat answers none of them a week later. A shared document answers them badly. What you want is the story sitting next to the rosters and the battle results, so nobody has to go looking.

Common mistakes

• Writing lore instead of events. Three paragraphs of setting are read once. Five things that have to happen are checked every week.
• Making the story depend on results. If the plot only advances when a particular side wins, one evening derails it. Write turning points that can happen either way.
• Rewarding only winners. The player having a bad season is the one most likely to drop out. A personal objective they can hit while losing the game is worth more than another prize for the person already ahead.
• Retconning. Once a turning point has happened, leave it happened. A campaign whose history keeps changing has no history.

Doing this in Echelon

Echelon has the three pieces above built in, next to the rosters and battle logs rather than in a separate document.

• Story Beats are your turning points. Scope one to the whole campaign, to a chapter, or to a single battle, and mark it off when it lands.
• Missions are the personal objectives. Give one to specific players, set a reward and a consequence, optionally keep the reward secret until it is earned, and judge each player separately so one can pass where another failed.
• Codex and house rules live on each player's own force sheet, so the extra rules your group plays with are where people look mid-game.

All of it is free to use. Read the campaign setup guide for the practical side: players, points and scheduling.