Our Mission Packs Feature Story MssioNS!
So What?
Our last dev blog talked about objectives-based fighting, and in our introduction to Vignettes we highlighted the story-based nature of the setting. We continue the story-focused trend in The Old Ways, our latest Vignette which takes a closer look at the Tribes of the Zemin Exodus. This time around, rather than walking through a teaser battle, we wanted to talk about how we’re designing the mission packs.
Building a Baseline
Our core rulebook contains four starter scenarios. The missions progress in a way that teaches you the core mechanics of Fleet Command Hevelius: movement, terrain, objectives, small craft… all the systems which make up our game, gated in a way that doesn’t force you to learn everything all at once.
Each one also acts as an introduction to two of the six factions (we call them “Sponsor Powers”). The missions gives you a couple of paragraphs about why you’re fighting, then assigns each player a Sponsor Power, a fleet roster, and a little bit of guidance about how to use your new ships.
These four missions are meant to be a starting point. They are meant to introduce and inspire you to build missions of your own, because we believe the best way to use our setting is as a framework for you to tell your stories. So the core book does not really make for a grand narrative.
Scoping our Campaigns
When we began building the Vignette system, we had two things in mind: First, focus in on a Sponsor Power to explore what makes each of them unique from a narrative standpoint. Second, introduce something new to the game, to expand the variety of experiences you can live on the tabletop.
The hook for Vignette #1 (The Maganec Incident) was a branching narrative structure. The goal was to give you reasons to replay a series of structured games. Running 5 missions from a pool of 8 gives you a little bit of incentive to run it a couple of times as written, and a list of reasons to get the other Sponsor Powers in play gives an opportunities to spice things up.
In contrast, Vignette #2 (The Old Ways) is a very tight, very linear narrative. The goal was less about building a story - although story remains a focal point - and more about introducing new terrain types. We settled for a three-mission structure to introduce two new terrain types one at a time; and then have a “graduation” match where you fight with all three at once.
How Much Is Enough?
An open question is how many missions are enough, and how many missions are too many. We want our story packs to enable organized play, which means keeping our games playable in under 2 hours. That makes a three-mission scenario playable in 4-5 hours (with breaks) - or a single Saturday with your friends.
The five-mission branching narrative could be doable in a day, but may need two. If you were planning on a two-day event though, would that be enough missions to choose from? Would that variety be too much to ensure fairness between tables?
For now we don’t have a concrete answer. Our next Vignette will be a different spread of missions, likely focusing on how to make Objectives more dynamic. That probably means fewer missions and less branching to keep the progression feeling balanced.
Having a future Vignette revisit branching missions could let us bring forward some of those other systems into something that makes each match feel more unique than the last.
And of course, this is just speaking to narrative missions packs that you could use in organized play. We have a couple of events coming up where fair and balanced organized play will be the heart of mision design. A lot of what was written above still applies, but it does introduce a new design structure that we will likely have to tackle in a future So What.
So What?
We set out to build missions that made you feel like you were helping your Sponsor Power score points in a shadow conflict far from the watchful eyes of a living galaxy. To do that, we had to think about what makes a mission pack fun to play. A strong narrative core helps, but we felt too much pretext for a fight can get in the way of actually playing the game.
So, we opted for variety as we built out the first few Vignettes. Branching narratives, new features, and organized support play all help make each fight feel different from the last. We’d like to think that design philosophy works. With only two mission packs out, though, we don’t yet have enough data to say one way or the other.
In the meantime, The Old Ways (Fleet Command Hevelius Vignette #2) is available on Wargame Vault.
In this three mission campaign, it falls to you to choose a successor Hegemon after the previous one’s demise. Designed to be used in conjunction with our Core Rulebook, it features:
A short primer on succession within the Tribes of the Zemin Exodus
A 3-mission campaign narrative which judges your right to lead
New terrain types (No Fly Zone and Safe Harbor) to support more dynamic battles