Solo Campaign Development Discussions - July to Sept. 2014

[Nightmoss]

Uhm for me rather later. Dont have the experience yet and would like to see what you guys come up with...
Ive got the story in mind but it needs to translated into a scenario.

How many ships are we going to use per side in the scenario?

And do the three scenario's fit together like a story or are they single scenario's?

I think most of your questions are touched on or answered by Eric in post #19 of this thread. You were first up and I was second, Fred was third. I'm not ready to be first that's for sure. As Eric gets ready for Origins some of this discussion might have to wait until he gets back next week?

[7eat51]

Rosters

When I return from Origins, I will set up a spreadsheet to track successes, deaths, and injuries of our captains. Each player needs to create a roster of eight captains. During a game, players can choose, from their roster, those captains that are available. As captains gain experience through victories, they will gain abilities - akin to flying aces. As they are injured, they might have to sit out one or more scenarios (I am creating such dice charts).

For the 2015 campaign, we'll probably focus on British vs. French given the ships that are available since that campaign will be thematic. For the scenarios between now and the end of the year, we can do anything we want, substituting ships for ships of other nations. Any scenario writer who wants to do so simply tells us what we need and gives us the stats - for example "2 Dutch SoLs with the following ship logs". Any captains from this year's scenarios can be carried over to next year's campaign, and if the captains are not British or French, then they can be assumed to sail under those colors next year, or have their names legally changed.

I will create rosters for the AI captains, and they, too, will gain experience.

After each player plays the given month's scenario, the player will write up an AAR and post it in the campaign thread. Again, I will set this up. You can write in any style you want. I will provide some guidelines as to the information I will need at the end of the AAR to do the record keeping. Before the end of the month, post your roster in this thread. As for ranks and starting experience, I will provide some info upon returning from Origins. For now, simply choose names.

[7eat51]

Fred, you're spot on. These first few scenarios are simply to play test rules, gain experience writing AARs, etc. Keeping the scenarios free from thematic ties will be easier. During the fall, we'll run another three-month campaign to test additional rules. Next year, we'll run a 12-month campaign that is thematically based on a given time period. We have plenty of time to discuss that during the fall, and hopefully by then, we'll have a better idea of available ships for next year.

I suggest keeping all scenarios to a few ships or less per side, otherwise it could be quite unwieldily and time consuming. This is especially true given that players will be taking photos and notes for the AARs.