The Joust Campaign

As I previously mentioned, jousting games can get a bit boring because there is really not much variation in scenarios. There is no difference in terrain or objectives, for example. To keep things interesting, I decided to add a campaign.

I began by searching out some online examples, such as the THW title, Joust: Heroes of the List. I couldn't find what I wanted so I devised my own, very simple campaign.

A campaign will represent one jousting season. It begins with the preliminary tournaments - there are 4 tourneys for each region (North, South, East, and West). The top 4 finishers from each preliminary will move on to the regional tournaments, and from there on to the championship. Each tournament will be single elimination with 16 entrants. I thought about doing a pool stage, like the World Cup, but decided it would be too complicated.

Now, I do not plan to play out every joust. Instead, I will follow the fortunes of my player character, a single jouster. I will play out his jousts to see if he advances. I will randomly determine the abilities of his next opponent (getting progressively harder if he advances). Note that I have been using this Random Knight Name Generator to create his opponent's names.

If my character qualifies for the regionals in an early preliminary, I doubt I will play out the remaining ones. This means that a season could last from a minimum of 4 jousts to as many as 18 or more (if he goes all the way!). I'll roll for my PCs advancement if he wins a tourney or at the end of a season. Advancement allows the character to improve his lance skill, rider skill, or earn more fortune (re-rolls).

So far, I've followed my character, Baldwin, up through the Regional tournament. Next up is the Championship! Not bad for his first season!

A Miniatures Moment
One nice thing about moto-jousting is that I can multi-task with figures. My motorcyclists can also be involved in road wars. However, there are some drawbacks to the figures. They are small so don't photograph well when used singly and the colors don't stand out. This has me considering some miniatures solely for jousts. Pendraken makes some nice mounted knights in 10mm.

From the Pendraken website (link above)

Right now I am resisting because I am trying to maintain a minimalist approach to figure collecting. I don't really want to add one-use figures. Still . . .