Avoiding quitting in Campaign Games

In reply to James Butler:

>	 Has anyone else experienced this? It seems to be the way a lot
of
>our old board games went as well--one big battle involving most of both
>sides' forces and whoever lost quit.

	Yes. In the campaign I ran (Hordes of the Things), I included a
population surplus as a trait so that losses could be easily replaced as
low grade troops in the early stages ie. you had the same points, but
overall your army was not of the same quality. I also allowed people to
do
an emergency levy of an extra 50% of troops if their core territory was
invaded (this did affect economic production for the year though). This
made a big difference to the drop out rate, as it meant you could afford
to
lose one or two battles decisively before you started running out of
troops. It is possible to do something similar with perhaps a reserve of
outmoded ships that could be pressed into military service if necessary.
This allows the inexperienced players the luxury of a mild learning
curve
for the first couple of battles.

	One thing I did include was different types of government eg.
democracies were profitable, but you had to roll 7+ on 2d6 to declare
war
(it took one nation three turns to backstab an ally, by which time the
guy
was well and truly aware it was coming because the repeated failures to
declare war were mentioned in the campaign newsletter); dictatorships
were
not very profitable, but you could declare war at the drop of a hat.
This
made an interesting difference to strategies and gave the game a flavour
it
would not have had otherwise...

Regards,

Kevin.

Kevin Mc Lean.
STEPS Co-ordinator/CLC Tutor.
Central Queensland University.
Mackay Campus.
Ph  (079) 407416.
Fax (079) 407407.