Does Warhammer (tabletop) have a campaign (politics / diplomacy / building chains etc.)

[von stoker]

I was wondering if the original Warhammer (tabletop) has a campaign element featuring such things as a politics system, family tree, diplomacy, building chains etc, (that Total War games have). I've always seen Warhammer tabletop as hobbyists getting together to fight battles, unconnected by a campaign.
Is this so, and do you think CA will implement a campaign similar to historical Total War games.

[HigoChumbo]

Not really, it's just a wargame. Originally it was mostly a set of rules to play with the miniatures.

It has plenty of lore now though, and it has been adapted to videogames countless times (more for 40k than for fantasy), so that won't be a problem. There is plenty of lore to support an individual political system for each faction, diplomacy, well expect it to be really different from previous total wars, I don't imagine an orc warboss shaking hands with the Emperor, building chains can be adapted on the go and I doubt we will see a family tree since apparently the game will give you a default named faction leader/hero that I imagine can't die and leave heirs. That said, there are plenty of family dinasties in Warhammer, like the Von Carsteins for the Vampire Counts.

I've always seen Warhammer tabletop as hobbyists getting together to fight battles, unconnected by a campaign.

Well, that's pretty much what it is. Or at least what it was originally and what most wargamers stick to.

But the game has been out for decades and they've added tons of lore, so a lot of people got hooked to it, to the point that some actually read the lore but don't play the game.

and do you think CA will implement a campaign similar to historical Total War games.

They have already said that it will be sandboxy, although with quests for your hero to do (if I recall properly). I personally hope they take TW as a reference, but not as something they have to stick to in detail. If they just made a generic total war game with added orcs and dragons, it would be a disaster. Warhammer deserves (and needs) its own design proccess. It should be built almost from scratch, keeping just the very basics.

[Karnil Vark Khaitan]

First of Nope to all of it, Gw rarely makes those things anymore.

second of, You don't hirer CA to make any other game but for TW games, So as Higo said, I really hopes it is going to be sandbox, because it is what CA is best at.

[veverčák]

Well the Warhammer tabletop rpg is pretty close to have such features as your character "lives" in the Old World so I think it is not problematic part.

[Himster]

I was wondering if the original Warhammer (tabletop) has a campaign element featuring such things as a politics system, family tree, diplomacy, building chains etc, (that Total War games have). I've always seen Warhammer tabletop as hobbyists getting together to fight battles, unconnected by a campaign.
Is this so, and do you think CA will implement a campaign similar to historical Total War games.

Except for building chains Warhammer lore has all of that. Except diplomacy isn't possible between all factions.
Typically Warhammer campaigns, on table top are played on maps similar to total war, except you fight one battle to gain control of a region, you can't build anything and there's no NPC faction, but there may be buildings, like wonders in Rome, like a sorcerer's tower, so whatever faction holds that region, their wizards get an extra power die, a forest gives a bonus to spearmen etc. Diplomacy would be similar to how diplomacy would occur in playing Risk, sneaky back-stabbing between players etc.
Another kind of campaign, Chaos Warbands, this one is like a mini Atilla campaign, where you have about 10 guys, you can't conquer regions, you're nomads, you just wander around fighting. You're men gain experience by rolling dice and you can spend the points of the figures you kill on attracting new followers, but again that's determined by rolling dice.

There is some overlap between traditional table top and Total War, but the Warhammer lore is (I think) more compatible with Total War than Table-top, so we shall (almost certainly) see Total War mechanics being favored as a general rule.

[HamNEggs]

There are absolutely map campaigns similar to Total War games. Games Workshop (the creators) even released a book called Mighty Empires specifically for this, with rules for winter months, navies, spies, assassins, mercenaries, army mustering, towns, buildings, sieges, and yes even diplomacy. It even had rules so you could either fight the battles in tabletop or just roll for them. (Auto-resolve!) They've also released a few other sets of campaign rules for map campaigns over time, and players have come up with probably hundreds if not thousands of different sets of rules for them. Campaigns are fun, it's just a logistical nightmare because you have to wait for players to fight their battles and if one person misses one session the whole campaign has to be put on hold, making them prohibitively difficult for most groups.

It is true that, once you get into a Warhammer campaign, the events of that campaign are likely to be divergent from canon, but you could say the same thing about any Warhammer battle where a special character dies. You could also say the same thing about any Total War game's relationship to actual history. I see no reason why a proper Total War game with all the fixings can't work for Warhammer. And frankly, I see no point in this if it doesn't have all the fixings. Who would want Mark of Chaos 2.0?

[CyberianK]

the mighty empires and its equal in 40k is basically a simplified campaign to connect a large number of battles. The rules are very simples but as it is easy to modify there are many player groups who modified the rules or even made comletely new tiles or different campaign maps not using the premade tiles.

This is some pictures of the default map tiles and the flag you use to mark conquered territory:


(does not come painted btw. but grey plastic but thats always true with WH and part of the fun/tedious work)

[Didz]

My sons and I wrote a whole expanded set of rules for Mighty Empires which was intended to provide the campaign background for our tabletop Warhammer battles.

Unfortunately, it never really worked as such for a couple of reasons:

1. The map was made up of lots of seperate tiles which allowed it to be reconfigured and used to produce random campaign maps. But it meant that it couldn't be stored anywhere over time as it used up too much space and kept falling apart if knocked. We waited in vain for someone to come up with a digital version which could be saved and reloaded but it never happened. In the meantime we were left hand drawing the layout on the back of rolls of wallpaper and sticking them on the wall. So the game itself never really got used.

2. The game came with some rudimentary rules for assassinations, diplomacy and espionage, which we expanded with extra idea's. However, what happened was that these little events became more and more frequent as players tried to negotiate deals and eliminate key oppoents without starting a war. The war of the shadows kind of took over the whole campaign and instead of fighting tabletop battles we found ourselves spending more and more time roleplaying the adventures of our key undercover agents. In fact, it was this that which prompted me to buy my first copy of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and eventually saw us all move from tabletop wargaming to roleplaying.

There were some notable scenario's such as the assassination of one leading Imperial General with a bomb planted in a birthday cake. The general had been an incompetent idiot and lost several battles to Brettonnian Forces leading to speculation that the bomb had been planted in the cake by his own side rather than the enemy. He also happened to be married to a very attractive and ruthless wife, and there was a theory that she had her husband murdered simply to get rid of the idiot and leave her free to make a play for one of the younger rising stars amongst the Imperial Court.

We also had wizards wandering around, some of whom were capable of casting world changing spells if provoked or rewarded enough, and these were a constant threat which had to be eliminated or recruited as quickly as possible. So there was always a constant need for new Witch Hunters and other specialists capable of tracking these walking WDM's down and dealing with them.

Finally there were the outbreaks of weirdness that always infest these fantasy campaigns. Necromancers playing around with the normal cycle of life, would occassionally succeed in creating a personal following of undead souls that needed to be eradicated and returned to their graves, and there was also the occassional misguided cult or demonologist who was tampering with forces he didn't reallly understand who needed to be stopped and his accidents dealt with.

And then there were the vampires, don't talk to me about the vampires. Damned difficult to spot, you could be having dinner with one and not realise that you were on the menu for desert, and they spread like the plague so if not nipped in the bud you can find they simply take over entire towns and provinces, and the poor people are just being used as a food crop for their elite.

So in the end the warhammer tabletop campaign kind of fizzled out and we ended up spending all of our time dealing with these much more interesting incidents.

[Påsan]

I was wondering if the original Warhammer (tabletop) has a campaign element featuring such things as a politics system, family tree, diplomacy, building chains etc, (that Total War games have). I've always seen Warhammer tabletop as hobbyists getting together to fight battles, unconnected by a campaign.
Is this so, and do you think CA will implement a campaign similar to historical Total War games.

The game itself do not, but the lore certainly do. The world is very well built with plenty of Total War features already implemented. Besides while there certainly is "evil" factions, most of them are various shades of gray.


Besides the Med 2 mod already have recreated the WH world and it works great both lorewise and Total War wise. I imagine a game specifically tailored to the quirks of the universe can do an even better job.

[Bust Nak]

The map was made up of lots of seperate tiles which allowed it to be reconfigured and used to produce random campaign maps. But it meant that it couldn't be stored anywhere over time as it used up too much space and kept falling apart if knocked...

Consider using a digital camera for a snap shot of the world.