Best Case Scenario is a regular column written by Martin from Narrative Labs, reviewing narrative play scenarios, missions and battleplans for Warhammer 40,000, Age of Sigmar and more. This week Martin has some ideas on how to improve the Abandoned City scenario featured in the Beyond the Veil mission pack. Check out Narrative Labs on Twitch, Twitter and Facebook for the latest streaming times, and for some fantastic interactive narrative gaming.

This month I thought I would try to challenge myself to take a type of scenario I’m not too keen on and try to find the positives. For this I’m going to try to get some narrative inspiration from a Warhammer 40,000 Crusade scenario. Now that’s an odd statement to start with, you might well be thinking, so let me set my stall out.

I’m a huge fan of Warhammer 40,000 Crusade (it’d be pretty hard not to be), but I’m less enthusiastic about the mission packs. I’ve been quite vocal about this on Narrative Labs. Not that I don’t think they work for Crusade, but many of them just don’t carry the same narrative weight as the scenarios that Games Workshop used to publish in campaign books like Vigilus Defiant and Vigilus Ablaze. In Crusade missions every mission seems to have a progressive scoring element. In some cases these progressive objectives are utterly pointless - there are a few where there’s an end game objective with such a high number of victory points that achieving it automatically wins you the scenario, regardless as to how well you’ve done with the progressive objective. In other cases they don’t add anything to the narrative of the scenario and, as a result, detract from it.

If Games Workshop offered an alternative set of narrative scenarios (such as they could have done with the Charadon campaign books) then I would be a bit less frustrated by the Crusade mission packs as I would have a different set of new resources to go to. However, as it stands Crusade is the entirety of Narrative Play in Warhammer 40,000 9th edition and no other choices are offered. As a veteran narrative gamer this doesn’t hold me back at all, but I feel a little bit sorry for newer players who enter this arena and aren’t provided with opportunities to really explore narrative gaming outside of this single concept when there’s so much more out there!

So, with that mini rant over and done with I’m going to pick a Crusade mission I’ve played, pull it apart and see if we can come up with some cool narrative experiences.

As things stand I don’t get to play much Warhammer 40K, so when the opportunity arises I tend to look over the new missions and pick the ones that look like they’re the most interesting and most suited to the people I’m gaming with. To that end I recently played the strike force scenario ‘Abandoned City’ from the Beyond the Veil Crusade mission pack. In the ruins of a city, two forces clash while trying to investigate some of the larger structures to uncover why the population has vanished entirely.

Unlike a lot of scenarios that Games Workshop has released in previous editions, the narrative justification for Crusade scenarios is usually very light. On the one hand this can be seen as a positive as it allows story-creators to inject this into any narrative situation they want to. On the other hand, however, you feel very much that the narrative of the scenario is an after-thought. Maybe the concept of the story was created first, but in order to make the mission fit within the 9th edition structure (i.e. progressive scoring) the story was moulded around the scenario and not the other way around (another gripe I have). Maybe I’m being unfair here, but as you’ll see later on, the narrative presented here raises some questions.

The scenario is won through the completion of ‘investigate area’ actions, which a unit can perform in up to 9 pieces of area terrain set up across the battlefield. The number of points you score for this depends on where the area terrain is located – in your deployment zone, in the area between deployment zones or in your opponent’s deployment zone.

There are a few questions that jump out at me based on this, from a narrative perspective. First of all, why are both sides investigating the area? The obvious conclusion is that neither force understands what strange events have happened here and finding out represents a valid concern for both. This sounds like a really good scenario to explore a mystery about a setting we’re gaming in where the more investigation you complete, the more information you gain about what’s really happened, allowing you to explore the story further. I can imagine a Games Master having great fun with this (in fact, we’ve done this on Narrative Labs for our Age of Sigmar Purge of Barelia story).

The problem here is I find that, given a random combination of any two armies fighting this battle (going on the premise that this is a random mission rolled for a Crusade game), I would really struggle to justify why they both want to understand the events that happened in this location. Isn’t it more likely that one side was responsible for the events? Some forces, you would think, really wouldn’t care at all that the population has gone missing so why are they investigating these sites?

The next question I have, from a narrative perspective, is why do I get more points for investigating areas that are further from my deployment zone? I appreciate the reason for this is to make it a more interesting scenario and force the units to play aggressively, but what makes the areas in player B’s deployment zone more valuable to player A than the areas in their own deployment zone and vice-versa? This seems to imply to me that each player gets more information from investigating areas further away from their starting location – which implies that each side is looking for something different. Now that, you might imagine, sounds like a more interesting concept for a story and a justification for the battle. It’s just a shame that the scenario doesn’t say that. So here we have a narrative scenario where the mechanics created to make it an interesting scenario in the 9th edition structure seem to be more important than the story itself.

One thing I like to look for in any narrative scenario is for any unique mechanics that I can drop into other scenarios, adding to a toolbox of mechanics I can draw from in different circumstances. As this is my first review of a 9th edition 40K scenario, let’s take a moment to talk about what a great mechanic ‘actions’ are. The simple idea that, for a certain period of time, a unit is doing something other than moving, shooting and fighting creates so many opportunities for narrative gamers. There are lots of great examples of how this mechanic can be used in really interesting ways. Flood Tide of Fathom, from The Book of Rust is particularly interesting, where the action is quite different but also has a direct influence on the game itself.

In Abandoned City the action is to investigate the areas of terrain. You can imagine a unit of infantry hunting through debris or scanning the area all the while ducking behind the remains of walls to stay out of the line of fire. It’s a great mechanic and helps immerse a player into the narrative of the scenario.

The ‘Investigate Area’ action used in this scenario isn’t particular unique, but usually investigate-style actions are focused on a particular point on the battlefield rather than a larger area, so this does offer up some potential new ideas.

Let’s talk about the narrative of the scenario and how you might incorporate this scenario into alternative stories. I’ve already mentioned a few ideas to get things started.

Taking the scenario as it’s written, it seems that each side is looking for something different. Taking this concept, you can play the scenario as written, and create a story to explain what each side is looking for. Maybe Drukhari are hunting for hidden pockets of the population secreted away in underground basements or bunkers, while an Inquisition-led force are looking for information about what tragic events befell the city, with no concern about the population at all.

Of course, there’s no reason it has to be set in a city, despite the name. The scenario simply specifies nine pieces of area terrain. These could be areas of forest or swamp. They could be Tyranid digestion pools or some weird blessing of grandfather Nurgle (although what you would be looking for in there is something I will leave to you – normally I say you should leave suggestions in the comments, but I’m not really sure I want to know!).

The mission allows both players to investigate the same site, but you could make a slight tweak to the rules to create something a little different – each area can only be investigated once. This then opens up a lot of different narrative scenarios. One question I had earlier was whether it would make sense for both sides to be investigating –what if one side is there trying to destroy evidence, to cover up the events that transpired here?

Taking that a step further, you could amend this to a narrative scenario where only one side is investigating and has to perform the actions, while their opponent is simply trying to stop them. Potentially then the investigating side has to achieve a certain number of points over the course of the game, rather than both sides scoring. A Games Master could take this and reveal increasing amounts of information to the player relative to the amount of points the player scored – the more points they gained the more information they acquire, which they can then use in future games.

Despite my poor opinions of Crusade missions in general, I think even a mission like this, which is fairly bland in comparison to many of the scenarios that exist, offers a lot of narrative potential with a bit of imagination.

Does this mean I’ve persuaded myself a little that it’s not all bad? I always find I get a lot of inspiration just by writing these articles as they make me think about a scenario in new ways. I’m definitely feeling a little better about the potential within Abandoned City, if you’re prepared to put the extra work in - and I do enjoy a challenge.

What are your favourite Crusade Scenarios to play? Let me know in the comments!