Diorama by Jordan Cuffie
It’s finally here: the full campaign system for Gaslands is now available for free download in Issue 4 in the Time Extended! series.
Long Hard Road
This campaign system has been a very long time coming. I first wrote about the beginnings of this system in September 2015 and have written about it a few more times since.
In the time I had before turning Gaslands in, I couldn’t find a way to solve the core problem I perceive with all campaign systems. This problem is the fact that most campaign systems rewards better players faster and the result of this is that better players end up both better AND more powerful. This leaving the weaker players dropping out because whilst it’s not fun being stomped into the ground game after game, it’s just awful to have that done to you in a campaign system were each game leaves your force more and more damaged.
I did write a full campaign system, which was released to the original beta testers. Eventually, it was cut from the rulebook, replaced with the a simpler one, which I wasn’t sure would be a popular choice, as I explored here.
My thoughts about how campaign systems that lock away the goodies remained strongly held and were expressed in the perks system, which is not trapped behind an experience points system, but open and available to all players at all times.
However, the full and detailed campaign said would not let me be, and of course it has been a regular request from players. I published the beta version in Miniature Wargames magazine in late 2017, but that was only ever a holding pattern until we figured out what the campaign system should really be.
The break-through was offered by Glenn Ford, who suggested that there ought to be an alternative way to participate in the campaign, once you start to drift out of the running for the championship and that the Pro-Earth Resistance would add a really thematic way to do this. I simplifying his initial ideas, creating essentially two alternative crowns at the end of the campaign. Players that start to drift away from top of the leaderboard for the championship can start to change the way they play in order to cause merry hell and show their opposition to the Martian occupation.
I hope you download and enjoy the new campaign system, and I would love to hear about what does or doesn’t work about it, either in the forums here, on Facebook, or on BoardGameGeek, as I hope this won’t be the last campaign system I write, and I want to learn anything I can from this one.