Narrative Warhammer is a brilliant way to play – with an interwoven plot and stakes rising with every game, it’s brilliant fun to participate in. But as the incredible organisation that goes into the annual Grand Narrative shows, a successful organiser needs to think beyond Victory Points and HQ choices. The Warhammer Events Team are back again this week with their thoughts of characters, Game Masters, and storytelling.
Lords of War
At the Grand Narrative, we have Lords of War: human actors playing characters who lead their factions, growing, developing, and issuing orders throughout the day, and leaving plenty of space for flexible story arcs. Before the day begins, we know who they are, what they want, and how they’ll act – but they are conditioned by the results of the games on the day, and how the players interact with them.
As there are three factions, they may not necessarily be a totally lore-appropriate commander for every single army, but they should be pulled from character archetypes that might conceivably have the broadest or most flexible range of command. For example, a Space Marine Apothecary might be ripe for good story-telling, but their decisions and authority are hard to stretch across a broad Imperial faction that includes many different commanders of significantly broader military rank.
A Black Legion Warlord will give rise to more interesting story interactions than a Chaos faction led by a raving Khorne Berserker lost long ago to the Butcher’s Nails. On the other side of the coin, it can be a risk to select singularly unique characters as your Lords of War: it might be hard for players to connect with a meaningful range of possible character outcomes for an Imperial faction led by Roboute Guilliman or Lion El’Jonson, for instance.
For the war over Kessandras, our Lords of War are flexible: a veteran Rogue Trader for the Imperials, a Dark Apostle for the forces of Chaos, and a wheeling and dealing Blood Axe Big Mek for the Interlopers. Each of these could conceivably interact with, consort with, or command a broad array of forces from a variety of potential factions or sub-factions, and each could reasonably face a variety of character outcomes.
At the last Grand Narrative
Last year, war fleets escaping the Pariah Nexus found themselves trapped around an artificial world called Occultaris. Hidden within it was an ancient Abominable Intelligence from the Dark Age of Technology (not that our Lords of War or Field Commanders knew this going into the event).
While the discovery of the Abominable Intelligence and its destruction, extraction, or worse by one of the factions had to happen as part of telling an immersive story with significant stakes, there needs to be more than a predetermined story to create a good narrative. That’s where the Lords of War come in.
They pass along strategic-level missions to participants and act as points of reference for their progress: this avoids “non-narrative” elements such as Victory Points or wins as the sole available metric (after all, within the confines of a good story, what the heck is a Victory Point?).
Players engage with their Lord of War’s story, character development, and the like. For example, while combat outcomes for the forces of Chaos were not universally positive, their Lord of War’s journey from fallen Cadian sergeant seeking bloody death in service to Khorne to trying to find a different patron by stealing the Abominable Intelligence and delivering it to Vashtorr the Arkifane inspired incredible acts of devotion and bravery from the players who were his followers, and who often abandoned the pursuit of small tactical victories in favour of chasing overall strategic directives. As a result, Thedge managed to escape off planet with the Abominable Intelligence and present it to the Arkifane, though his subsequent fate was murky at best…
Similarly, the Imperial Lord Inquisitor, who began last Grand Narrative in nominal charge, found his sanity slowly slipping away under the machinations and manipulations of the Abominable Intelligence, twisted into believing it was a long-lost tech priest in need of rescue and being brought deep into the Imperium Sanctus. His followers engaged more with the story of a loyal, hard-bitten Valhallan Ice Colonel who herself saw the truth of the situation, following said hero of the Imperium in an (arguably heretical) rebellion against the Inquisitor’s mad plans and leading to his eventual execution at the end.
These outcomes were entirely driven by player agency: how they did in their battles, how they engaged with each character’s personality, characterisation, and story arc, and how deeply they committed to following their overarching strategic directives.
How to GM your own event
One of the main features that an organised campaign permits is the concept of the GM: a “Game Master” who can help coordinate, organise, and orchestrate the story, with the ability to inject things into the experience that help it feel more immersed.
At the Grand Narrative, one way we do this is through Strategic Directives, which deliver orders aligned to an individual Lord of War’s story arc and which may conflict with particular mission criteria during any individual game. For example, players may be facing a Kill Mission where in-game points are earned for killing enemy troops, and additional points earned by standing models within range of key objective markers or terrain. But while these are necessary mechanics for measuring a game, they are not especially immersive from a story-telling perspective.
A Lord of War might, however, be hoping to stem the tide of losses they’ve been suffering. So, before the next series of battles, they could deliver a Strategic Directive to their followers to “minimise casualties and maintain force cohesion”. A GM can assess success qualitatively rather than quantitatively, encouraging participants to engage with the spirit of the campaign and mission strictures, rather than simply following a set of game mechanics and tallying up their VP. This permits players to report on their game outcomes with an eye toward convincing a GM of their particular mission performance.
Directives can be as simple or as complex as you like, but the key is using the story told by your Lord of War characters to deliver mission parameters that are framed as real, as a commander in a real wartime situation might deliver orders to their senior battlefield commanders.
Lords of War give you malleable and relatable characters to use as a connection point and to give texture and agency to the narrative experience. It’s one thing to tell your own tale of a war for a planet or system, a battle over a key artefact, or a fight to stem a Tyranid invasion. It’s another to up the stakes and agency of your participants by putting real characters into their hands. The fate of a renowned (or despised) commander helps give weight and meaning to the various outcomes of battles and conversations amongst the participants of a narrative throughout its course.
Next week, we'll talk about how to take the concept of thematic battlefields and experiences well beyond the tabletop with a host of simple tips and tricks for organisers and GMs.
