A few months ago, I wrote a post about various and sundry ways that the Imperial player in an Imperial Assault campaign could influence events that might generally be out of their control. Despite the fact that the general consensus seemed to be that these things were done by players to increase the "fun factor" of a session, I'll admit that many of these adjustments were a little questionable, and some would even call them cheating. Stacking the side mission deck, hand picking Agenda cards, and being involved in Rebel decision making can rub some people the wrong way, even if it is done with the best of intentions.
However, there are some ways that the Imperial player can seek to make a campaign a more thematic and cinematic experience, regardless of whether or not they directly manipulate the campaign. While Imperial Assault isn't quite a D&D clone, it does allow for some roleplaying, and some player have found that they could really expand on that.
Like last time, I reached out to the awesome users on the FFG and BGG forums to see how common this sort of "DMing" is. When asked if they had ever implemented any strictly narrative changes to their campaigns to enhance player experience, we had an almost perfect 50/50 split.
Now obviously that's a pretty broad topic, and being the first question in the survey, it was really down to user interpretation of what exactly I meant by "narrative changes". For example, when asked if their groups had inside jokes regarding characters in their sessions, over 75% of respondents reported positive.
Personally, my groups almost always ends up having inside jokes about the characters in a campaign. Ranging from my Rebels giving profane and derogatory nicknames to my officers to our unending stun-fest of a rivalry between R2-D2 and Dengar, we have a lot of fun and sometimes get kind of silly when we play.
I was excited, then, to read some of the responses by others who have had their own inside jokes and rituals within their campaigns. Some people reported that their groups also like to give silly names to the figures on the board. Another user reported that the "most bearded player" always had to be a wookie (hey, at least they'll have options now!). An extremely common inside joke and tradition seemed to be either saying specific lines at events (such as saying "You Rebel Scum" right before attacking with an officer) or making sound effects (like wookie roars or Vader breathing). In fact, out of all the responses I got back about inside jokes and traditions, almost all of them mentioned quotes and sound effects of some kind, with a lot of apparent wookie roars.
In fact, it definitely seems like more players preferred to make their own sound effects than have an app do it for them.
Which, honestly, makes sense to me. Whenever my group used a sound board on missions, I found it to really just be one more thing to keep track of. Seems like it'd be easy, but I usually ended up forgetting to hit effects on cue most of the time, anyway. Having to press the "blaster" button for every attack, Wilhelm Scream for every death, famous quote for every ally activation (always use the "Power Converters" quote for Luke)... it's just tough to keep up with. It is a lot of fun when it works (gotta love that Death Star siren), but I'm not at all surprised that soundboard use hasn't really taken off much.
Music does seem to be a little more popular to play with, though.
Music is nice because it gets you into a nice thematic Star Wars mood. Star Wars music typically has a pretty good ebb and flow between intense action heavy songs and more contemplative ballad-esque stuff, too. Our group definitely falls into the Always category. We've tried listening to other music while we play, but it's just not the same. Each time we try something new, without fail we find ourselves back on my Star Wars playlist before the end of the mission. IA and Star Wars music are pretty much inseparable, in our opinion.
If you're interested, I've gone ahead and embedded my playlist here. It's mostly just stuff from the main films- there might be some Rebels or Clone Wars in there, and I think I had some Shadows of the Empire at one point, but I believe I removed it (since no one else even knew what it was).
Anyway, now that we've got some music to set the scene, it's high time we started talking about some of the more DM focused stuff. As most players surely know, Imperial Assault definitely has a good amount of flavor text, but the vast majority of time is spent in the tactical battles. Missions usually have some context, but it's usually not a ton. The first context players get for each mission usually comes on the text of a mission card, like this one.
You get a little bit of an idea what the goal of the mission is, maybe some foreshadowing for some of the events that might happen in the mission. Then, of course, you get the script in the mission itself- some of which describes the mission itself, some that might give some sparse background on one of the heroes or characters, and sometimes it'll drive the plot of the entire campaign forward.
But again, it's usually pretty minimal. Sometimes, flavor text might even be as sparse as something like: "You see blaster fire erupt in front of you as more Stormtroopers appear." And that's it. You don't necessarily need more context than that, but some players find it helpful to be more invested in the plot of a mission. To do this, some players add in their own flavor text, to spice things up.
Similarly, some players find it helpful to be more personally and emotionally invested in the characters that may appear- and I admit, this was a poorly arranged question, but I'll point out that roughly 35% of people reported as having added in flavor text for at least one of these categories, if not more.
Like anything in regards to spiffing this game up, your mileage may vary. Some players might just add in a line here or there. For instance, I've added in lines referencing previous missions. If a villain had previously been defeated by the heroes on another mission, I might add in something like them saying "You won't get so luck this time!". Sometimes I even use this as an opportunity for some good-natured mocking, too- if a mission goes particularly badly for the heroes, I might throw in some extra adjectives just to show how "abysmally the heroes failed in securing their objective." Obviously, you'll want to be careful with teasing like this, depending on your groups- you don't want to demotivate them.
Or, it could be more. Some players give their characters complex backstories, or reference more clearly a Millennium Falcon-esque ship that the heroes fly from mission to mission on. I've even heard of a user who has an enhanced upgrade phase, where the heroes are placed on the Cantina tile after every mission and have interact with NPCs to spend credits to buy their upgrade items. By taking one of the more abstract elements of the game like that and making it into one of the more immersive ones, your player might have a much more enjoyable experience!
Another thing that I think helps the campaign be more memorable, particularly for newer players, is the inclusion of exciting canon characters. Stormtroopers are pretty cool, but the game cranks it up to 11 when Jedi Luke is tearing through the battlefield, or Boba Fett or Vader might be lurking just around the corner. While the Rebels are pretty much able to independently choose what allies they want to earn, the Imperial player may or may not earn their own villains. We talked in my other article about how some Imperial players might sometimes stack their agenda deck to get the cards that they want. Again, this is typically done in the name of fun, in this case usually to allow for the drawing of Agenda cards that can bring in cool villains. However, this time I was curious how many players actually usually just saved their Infulence specifically to try villain acquisition mission, regardless of if the deck was stacked or not.
Finally, I was curious at how many people have played and designed custom missions. Or, should I specify that I meant to ask that, but like the idiot that I am, I forgot to add a question about design.
I was kind of surprised that only about 25% of people have played any custom missions. I expected that to be a bit higher. The filesharing on BGG is full of all sorts of fan missions that players can try, some of which look really neat. Some even address issues that the official game doesn't- for instance, one campaign allowed for a more canon-friendly use of the Wave 7 figures (Greedo, Obi Wan, the Grand Inquisitor) by making a pre-A New Hope campaign long before Heart of the Empire was announced.
I actually designed a short mission recently (curse me for not taking pictures!). I was teaching some friends how to play the game in preparation for a new campaign, and instead of going through the dry How to Play in the core set, I created a scenario based off of the Rogue One hallway scene. It wasn't terribly well balanced, but it was fun, and more importantly, it taught the Rebels a lot more about the game than the official intro would have. But other than that, I don't really have any experience with custom missions- clearly I need to give some a try, so hit me up if you have any suggestions!
Anyway, these are some of the ways that I think Imperial players can augment a campaign without really causing too many balance issues or raising questions about questionable player ethics. Let me know in the comments if you have any other ways that your group has helped make a more unique campaign. And a HUGE thank you to everyone who participated in the survey!
May the Force be with you!
(And enjoy Heart of the Empire!)
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- Thomas
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