Ideas for a 'balanced' event...

[Charax]

It would be fairly easy to write up Influence as an Asset as per the rules in the "Where's My Backup?" article - give each warband a number of points to spread across assets, and then introduce scenarios and objectives that are made easier or harder by certain assets - because the players don't know ahead of time what these effects will be, they can't min/max - or if they do, the advantage is minimal because they'll ace one scenario while failing the next.

Randomness is actually a great equaliser, a while ago I thought up a variation on 2nd edition 40K's Mission Cards - you set up a board and place three labelled objectives, then you give each player a random card which will tell them their goal in relation to the objectives. Player 1 might have "Destroy all the objectives" while player 2 might have "capture objective C and bring it off the opposing table edge."

They sound bland but those are just examples of mechanics. So a powerful warband is all well and good, but if they have to bring a fragile objective, intact off the board moving at a max of 4 yards per action? suddenly warband power is irrelevant. Likewise, because neither warband know what the other wants (apart from through guesswork or IC interaction) you get a much more interesting game than "Everybody rush towards X, last man standing wins". Also brings about the possibility of playing mind games with your opponent - fire off a shot at Objective B, but deliberately do so with your warband's worst shot and the other band may attempt to protect it - while one of your characters sneaks towards your mission goal, hacking objective A with a few consecutive Sg tests and escaping

[Draco Ferox]

Charax, I now have the mental image of a space marine having to go and fetch an item that happens to be on a narrow walkway that's not up to supporting a great amount of weight. Could be interesting.

[Charax]

that's pretty much the idea, because you don't know the nature of the objective, you can't maximise your warband for it - you can either make a relatively balanced band, or make specialists and hope you luck out on the mission. Add into that environmental effects and things like persistent injuries/resources and you get games that are interestingly challenging for most warbands, but also manages to neuter the bejeesus out of power-builds

[Draco Ferox]

I'm also slightly mean when it comes to objectives, so speaking as a GM, giving squats objectives that are about 6 feet off the floor has hilarious results (ok, so, speed 3, and my squat's going to jump up and down and try vainly to reach that dangling artefact ffor 3 actions, and then pause to get his breath back) [/evil] I would be concerned about llittle things that can upset tha balance however- to use a non-inq. example, a "go here, retreive this" scenario in necromunda can be extremely un-challenging if one or two of the characters have grapnels...

[Kaled]

However, players at Conclave events are already in the situation of not knowing the nature of their objectives (although certain scenarios types do crop up regularly), so I'm not sure that in itself is sufficient to get around the issue that Bloodpact brought up - which was around players who just turn scenarios into one big brawl.

Similarly, persistent injury effects are less likely to affect the 'power weapon armed, psychic and heavily armoured characters' but rather their less powerful opponents who are more likely to get injured.  And environmental effects could be designed to be 'roadblocks' for the powerful characters but I'd rather see a solution that rewards interesting play rather than that is designed to punish certain types of characters.

[Charax]

Random game lenth & an emphasis on the objectives will tend to focus people away from massive brawls - if you're on turn 4 and you don't know if your next turn will be your last, but you have your objective, will you make a dash for your board edge, or stick around fighting for the sake of fighting?

Especially if completing the objective is the difference between gaining assets and not...

Lord knows I've had my problems with focus before, I printed myself a sign saying "Remember the objective" for 40K games because so often I'd just concentrate on killing (not an exaggeration, ask Nathan)

and the power weaponed, armoured and psychic characters are the ones who are likely to be on the receiving end of the heaviest fire - resulting in more injuries. Failing that, things like a need to sneak, or a prohibition on Psykers for a mission would be useful (If you have a powerhouse of a character and the mission card you pick says "Psychic models may not use their abilities in this scenario" or "Models with a combined AV of X or more suffer an initiative penalty in this mission", then you can either choose to play on and take the hit or leave him at home and take another member.

At the end of the day, even the powerhouse characters are Characters, and they shouldn't be excluded or unfairly penalised, because you may as well just ban the player in that case, but if the scenarios are fair (any restrictions apply to both sides) and random (so they can't claim to be being targeted) then you can steer people away from the "Stomping the enemy into oblivion = win" mindset and towards the "different characters are used for different things" mindset.

[Kaled]

Random game lenth & an emphasis on the objectives will tend to focus people away from massive brawls - if you're on turn 4 and you don't know if your next turn will be your last, but you have your objective, will you make a dash for your board edge, or stick around fighting for the sake of fighting?

I'm not sure if random game length is really an option for an organised event though - there could be some element of randomness, but not too much.

and the power weaponed, armoured and psychic characters are the ones who are likely to be on the receiving end of the heaviest fire - resulting in more injuries

I'm not sure I'd agree with that. In my experience they might draw more fire but are far more likely to survive it with only light injuries compared to a lightly armoured character when anything more than a glancing hit is likely to do a couple of levels of damage at least.

[Heroka Vendile]

However, I will add that the idea of a non-combatant only event doesn't hugely interest me - firstly, I can't see that the games will pick up that "action movie climax" feel if there's no characters prone to thrilling heroics.

Just because your warband aren't necessarily the best-equiped for the job, wouldn't mean they won't have to fight/escape/avoid tough goons.
An added incentive for exciting play could perhaps also be given by ruling that every character gets the Plain Dumb Luck ability (to be used at GMs discretion?).
There would maybe be a greater need for an armed NPC threat to replace the threat of powerful PCs.

Second, I can't really see how the whole concept would be justified. If an Inquisitor sends a team of savants, political manipulators and information gatherers to investigate something, he's very unlikely to not add a couple of badasses to the team to act as bodyguards or to swing into action if it turns out the situation requires it.

To be honest the ideas I've presented are much more suited to a narrative campaign rather than an event like the IGT, because in such a situation the Campaign Masters word is gospel, with any GMs merely being his disciples.
As an example one very quick and simple set-up for a game/campaign focused on low-stat characters would be:
"Your small support team has been sent to research something relatively minor of interest to your master while he and most of his acolytes focus on an on-going major investigation. After your initial investigations however you slowly realise you are in way over your heads and desperately need to find a way to get word of your discoveries to your master ."


Joining into more recent comments,
Random game length is already somewhat enforced with the hour-ish slot you get at the IGT (or any of our big events).

Persistent injuries is only really suitable for narrative campaign days, whereas it would over-complicate the IGT by adding spanners into the works of GMs and players.

One thing that I think holds back "more creative/outside-the-box" scenarios at the IGT, is that fact that the tournament rules state that all player models must remain WYSIWYG. The specific example in the rules being that the GM may change the pattern of lasgun a PC is armed with, but may not change it to an autogun. This inability for the GM to put PCs into a state of being unarmed without breaking tournament rules seems kind of incongruous.
Sure we don't want GMs willy-nilly ruling that player character "X" is now armed with power armour and two chainaxes, despite being a weakling sniper whose model is touting camouflage and a needle rifle (and really, I don't think anyone would be silly enough to do that - and if they do and players object, that's why we give marks out of 10). But when you consider everything else we imagine our models doing, is it really a stretch to say "all your characters start this game unarmed"?

[MarcoSkoll]

Random game length & an emphasis on the objectives will tend to focus people away from massive brawls

I don't think it that random game length can really help, because a game that deliberately ends without a resolution could be as disappointing as one that devolves into a big brawl. And ultimately, if there's an objective one side wants to destroy and the other needs to escape with, it is going to be the big brutal characters who are more likely to get their say.

Just because your warband aren't necessarily the best-equiped for the job, wouldn't mean they won't have to fight/escape/avoid tough goons.

Fight/escape/evade is not congruous to "thrilling heroics".

As a rough rule, thrilling heroics is the kind of thing for which music like The Raiders March, Rock Anthem for Saving the World, the LotR "hero theme", or the climaxes of either the 1812 Overture or Beethoven's 9th would be a valid (or even compulsory) soundtrack.
My non-combat characters, generally being a lot more cautious about their well-being and less capable of the physical feats required, are going to be much less likely to do something which deserves that.

As an example one very quick and simple set-up for a game/campaign focused on low-stat characters would be...

Which seems very out of character for an Inquisitor. With an organisation that will includes any number of mercenaries, veterans and thugs, as well as the money and authority to hire more on the spot, to send a team out that didn't have anyone that could protect it if things went sour is on the wrong end of plausibility.

One thing that I think holds back "more creative/outside-the-box" scenarios at the IGT, is that fact that the tournament rules state that all player models must remain WYSIWYG.

I agree that the restriction probably should go the way of the dodo, but in practice "You've run out of ammo" or "It's broken" would work if you need characters to be less armed.

~~~~~

In any case, I've taken the decision at rather short notice to re-write my IGT scenario to see if I can encourage some more thoughtful and less aggressive play. Let's see if it works.

[Charax]

Will be interesting to see if any of these ideas filter through into the IGT games

[Heroka Vendile]

not that likely this close to the event, but bits may well trickle into other future events.

[Van Helser]

Here's a couple of my thoughts:

I don't think limiting the type of character that people can bring is that good a move - it would impact on the number of attendees as not everyone has multiple warbands they could bring, and try as we might, it can be difficult to buy and build a new warband to a set deadline.  As a small community we can't really afford to turn people away on the basis of their warbands.

Scenario design can have a huge impact on how games pan out, and I think Charax has illustrated many good ideas.  By making combat a negative outcome due to security defences and the like players need to get creative in how they go about achieving their objectives which all adds to the fun.  One of the scenario ideas I put in my "Fickle Warp" article has bloodshed directly fuelling a daemon summoning that the PCs must stop.  By coming up with a way of despatching the summoner without letting his blood flow will make the PCs' task much easier.  By illustrating to players the downsides of the bullets and swords approach you can reign in those players that only want to chop up the other characters.

I like the idea of a campaign that revolves around influence with organisations within the Imperium.  If each player has an organisation they wish to get friendly with at the outset, their scenario objectives can then revolve around doing things at the behest of that organisation while trying to keep a low profile in the eyes of other organisations that will make their lives miserable.  Want to ascend the ranks of the Inquisition?  Your sponsor wants you to steal artefacts from the Ecclesiarchy and the Adeptus Mechanicus.  Want to summon a daemon for your Chaos Cult?  You need to deal with the Adeptus Arbites and Inquisition cells blocking your path.  In both cases, being identified by the opposing groups would be very, very bad, buying you an enemy and bringing down your reputation with your sponsors.

Not that I'm volunteering for this task or anything!

Ruaridh

EDIT: I'd also like to echo what Heroka Vendile said earlier about the IGT rule about being unable to strip characters of equipment: one of my scenario ideas for last year involved having the Primary PCs of each player waking naked and shorn of equipment in a cell with an explosive collar around their necks.  One would have six bullets on him, another an empty revolver, and the third a vial of blood.  The characters would have to work together to escape the diabolical maze they had been placed in by their mad captor - creatures would need shot, gene locked doors would have to be overcome with the blood in the vial, and the group couldn't stray more than five yards apart from one another before their explosive collars start beeping alarmingly...  Anybody else think they would have fun playing in a game like that?

[Stormgrad]

Sounds like you have been watching the saw movies. I did a game.based off of them this year and had the good fortune to run it twice and have two very different games, the first game descended into a frantic combat in the objective room as the characters chained up attempted to get free (One pc even tried to hack his own leg off sadly the rusty hacksaw failed to penetrate his armour). The second game was all about cooperation and clever thinking two very different groups of characters led to two very different games with the same scenario. Certain characters won't work with or can't work with others, a puritan Inquisitor and a Hrud are hardly going to make nice. Two moderate Inquisitors might however find common ground.

[Kaled]

The intent of that rule was so that GMs wouldn't change characters drastically or confuse players by making them not wysiwyg. It wasn't intended to prevent GMs from running the sorts of scenario that you mention - and indeed Stormgrad did run a scenario like that. The rule could just be dropped for next time.

[MarcoSkoll]

I suspect that GM's aren't about to go and say "Your Inquisitor is now a street urchin", not unless they want to get some very low GMing marks.

Perhaps it could be altered to being able to add/remove equipment, but if they're keeping it, it has to be WYSIWYG. So you can take away their lasgun, but you can't turn it into an autogun just for the hell of it. And/or perhaps there should be some scenario design note to the effect of remembering they're the players' characters and thus don't frak around with them in silly ways unless you want some unhappy players.

I do have to say though, I don't want to see too many "mad death trap" scenarios. While I scored Stormgrad well for his scenario (which turned out an entertaining lark with some good cooperation), I'm not turning up with my characters for the sake of finding out they're kidnapping magnets, I do actually want to be able to play some slightly normal games as well.