Valley of Divine Tears

I wanted to drop this up here so you could all see what I was working on right now. I'm designing this to work similarly to the campaign system for Operation Frostbite, another of Rackham's products for AT-43 their Sci-Fi miniature game. One of the things I have felt for some time that Confrontation really lacked was a campaign system to help gamers organize a story and theme around their games. Being a long time tabletop RPG player I ahve always tried to come up with a story for my miniature games. It's part of what I love about the playing them. Beyond just the enjoyment I get from painting my own miniatures.

So let this be the official announcment of a work in progress the Campaign book Valley of Divine Tears. So far its shapping up to include ten missions. I wanted to use a larger mission map than Operation Frostbite uses. Being a fantasy game I didn't feel that three zones spread far appart was appropriate. Also Frostbite makes use of the future tech of aircraft to allow players to drop ship their armies from one of the campaign zones to the others. This would be inappropriate for Confrontation so I opted for a larger single campaign area. The upswing is their is more area to fight over. One down swing to the campaign system so far is that week 1 is effectivly a paperwork week with no games. (You simply can't move enough to get to an opponent.) However it's also designed with a certain timing in mind to seperate phase 1 from phase 2. So I think the loss of the first week is not an issue. It is like the deployment phase of a regular game of Confrontation anyway. So effectivly the campaign is a game over the game. Each of the 7 weeks corresponding to a game round of a regular game of confrontation, (the first round being deployment then 6 regular rounds).

I have basic themes set up for all 10 missions, as well as some basic design done on about half of them, couple are pretty wel wrapped up. The campaign will also use an MP system, although no RP will be used within the missions themselves the MP gained will be used to replenish lost troops, re-organize units, and purchase extra's to boost performance at various missions on the map. The campaign will use a slightly modified deployment rules to allow for more variety and intresting extra's for MP purchase. Deployment will utilize face down unit cards rather than the unit's themselves. The cards will be placed a minimum of 20cm from enemy units, mostly important for scouts. Once the full deployment phase, including scouts, is completed the players replace the cards with the units representing them. This will allow for example the use of campaign effects like... SPIES!: Choose one mission for the upcoming week, for that mission your opponent will deploy his units rather than cards during deployment as your spies provide intelligence for your commander.

Well I hope you all are finding something here to look forward to. I will keep you all abreast of my progress on this campaign book as the work goes forward.