Frequently Asked Questions
Welcome to Rex's quickly made combination of the FAQ's made by Trench and inasfe.
Q. What is the Meta Campaign?
A. A cooperative tabletop roleplaying wargame designed by CaptainShack to be played out over Discord. It is set in a Cold Science-Fiction universe where players assume the role of a commander of a company of mercenaries trying to eke out an existence with dreams of one day reclaiming their lost homeworld.
Q. Cold Sci-Fi?
A. A Shack-ism. A loose mixture of Hard and Military science fiction with a layer of grit. The settings of Alien, Battlestar Galactica, BattleTech/MechWarrior, Halo, Helldivers, Firefly, StarCraft, Starship Troopers and RimWorld all have elements of what could be considered Cold Sci-Fi.
Q. How many players can participate in a campaign?
A. The end goal is that there will be no limit to the number of participants. The system is still in development however, so there may be player caps imposed on a campaign if it is deemed necessary for testing purposes.
Q. How does it work?
A. Each campaign is broken up into multiple rounds. Each round is played out in three phases over the course of a week. In the Player Phase, players discuss intel, plan actions and submit orders for their unit to their Battle Group’s Tac-Com. In the Tac-Com Phase, Tac-Coms combine the orders from the players in their Battle Group into a map depicting the players’ intentions for that round and submit it to the Game Master. In the Game Master Phase, the GM combines the Battle Group maps into a single map of the battlespace, resolves the outcomes of players’ orders and posts situational updates to the players in the form of midround events. This process repeats until a campaign reaches its conclusion.
Q. Tac-Com? Battle Group?
A. Tac-Coms are players who have volunteered to parse and map out the orders of other players inside of a Battle Group for the duration of that campaign. Battle Groups are organically formed groupings of players centered on a specific objective or task in the campaign. Tac-Coms are not the ‘leader’ of a Battle Group, and have no authority over the actions taken by other players outside of informing players when their submitted orders are invalid and in need of correction. Battle Groups are limited at 30 players per Battle Group to avoid overburdening a Tac-Com.
Q. Who are my commanding officers?
A. Nobody except yourself. This is a core aspect of the Meta Campaign; you and you alone have agency on what your unit does. Nobody can ever tell you what you're required to do. This also means you cannot force people to do what you want.
Q. When is the next campaign?
A. Whenever CaptainShack is able and willing to run it.
Q. How do I join?
A. When sign ups for a campaign open, a post will be made tagging the Meta Campaign Trooper role on the ARMCO Discord server announcing the start of a campaign. Follow the steps outlined in the post to register for the campaign. You can grab the Meta Campaign Trooper role in the Channels & Roles tab at the top of the server navigation bar.
Q. Can I join an in-progress campaign?
A. No, sorry. Wait until the next one, though you can certainly watch and help plan in the meantime.
Q. What unit should I play?
A. Pick whatever sounds fun and interesting to you. Don’t worry about how many of a specific unit type there is or isn’t in a given campaign.
Q. Callsigns?
A. When signing up, you can pick a short name for your unit that will appear on the map. Try to avoid double-ups. If you find someone else who has the callsign you want, try to reach an agreement civilly. The proposed maximum callsign length is around 7-9 characters. It’s recommended to keep it to one word as well. If your callsign is too long, it might get forcibly shortened by Shack or a TAC-COM.
Q. What do the coloured callsigns mean?
A. While these are generally used by TAC-COMs to make conveying orders to Shack easier, they can sometimes appear on the larger tactical map too. They each mean a different order type.
Red - Advance Yellow - Assault White - Either Maneuver or Hold Orange - Bombardment (for Artillery) Green - Skirmish (for Light Vehicles/Mechs) Blue - Aid (for Medics)
Q. What is SAM?
A. A (currently in development) bot for the Meta Campaign, dedicated to handling pay and dossiers. It is being made by @LtCmdr Cheese, HVT "Junkers". The name is a backronym, meaning Supply Allocation and Management.
Q. What is the lore of the campaign?
A. Most of the lore is fairly vague to allow players a great amount of freedom in establishing their RP. What has been established is as follows:
-Decades before the Haven campaign, the planet Armitage in the Orion system was raided by a hostile alien armada. The resulting battle was lost by Armitage’s defenders, and the human colonists were forced to flee the system as the aliens bombarded the surface of the planet. Those refugees would go on to found The Armitage Free Company (ARMCO), a loose coalition of mercenary companies that would largely operate independently of one another until the events on Haven.
-Galactic powers introduced include The Federation, The Syndicate, and The Alliance.
-Galactic threats encountered or alluded to include Bug Hive Swarms, AI uprisings, and Pirate clans.
Q. Can I RP my unit as _?
A. Players are free to flavor their units as they wish, keeping in mind that RP flavor will not impact game mechanics.
Q. Where can I roleplay?
A. You can add a small bit of roleplay in each of your orders, conventionally after the mechanical details. RP posts in comm-net are also acceptable, though I would highly recommend not posting especially long ones during an active conversation. Most people tend to indicate that certain posts are roleplay with “RP post” or something similar as well.
Q. How many guys/vehicles are in my unit?
A. Mechanically, units made up of personnel are considered to be groups roughly or equal in number to a unit’s Force Strength. Vehicle units are considered to be a single vehicle. Players can flavor this as they wish, but RP does not influence or override game mechanics.
Q. How many units can I have?
A. Ideally, one per campaign that you have participated in. In actuality, as many as you are willing to spend Requisition Points on purchasing. Keep in mind however that you are only able to field a single unit at a time, and are not able to switch out units mid-campaign.
Q. What happens if my unit dies during a campaign?
A. That unit is considered K.I.A./M.I.A. for the remainder of the campaign, and upgrades specifically tied to that unit are lost. Players are free to RP this as they wish, but the unit is functionally incapable of continuing to participate in the campaign.
Q. Can I give Requisition Points or Bonus Pay to other players?
A. No.
Q. Can I submit orders for someone else’s unit / give someone permission to control my unit?
A. No.
Q. Can I (insert war crime here)?
A. No.
Q. PvP?
A. No. The Meta Campaign is and always will be a PvE game, and the mechanics are not intended to be used in a competitive format.
Q. Can I ram [Unit] into enemies?
A. No.
Q. The rules don’t say anything about X, Can I do Y?
A. You can certainly try. The Meta Campaign is as much a roleplaying game as it is a war game, and some of the best and most memorable moments have come from a player thinking outside the box. Players aren’t strictly limited to only the actions & order types outlined in the rules. Just don't expect unrealistic outcomes, bugs aren't going to be talked into surrendering the same way human pirates might be able to.
Q. I want to suggest something to Shack. How?
A. Firstly, don’t ping him. This is a server rule. Shack comes by in this channel frequently, so if you see him in chat just say what you want to say. It might take a couple tries as comm-net is very active, but rest assured that he will see it.
Q. Do people with special roles know more than other players?
A. Generally no. The only person with more knowledge than the average player is CaptainShack himself, the GM. Patreon supporters, moderators, fleet operations officers, etc. do not have any kind of secret insider access or anything, so please do not hound them for answers they probably don’t have. Note that other Fleet Commands (Morphologis and w4stedspace) aren’t GMs either. Only Shack is.
Links to the original FAQ documents:
This rules clarifications doc also has clarifications that Shack has made in discord, but may not be fully up to date with the newer rulesets.