Ruckdog, excellent post as always. Was Operation Watchtower the campaign you ran with me and Ken at E&E a couple years back? That was a lot of fun!
You bring up some good points about pros and cons, and Mark, you make a good point about economics. If you accomplish an objective in one game (or chapter), what does that do for you in the next game? What's the incentive?
Ruckdog, I also like your point about game masters. This is a concept I've been thinking about a lot here recently. My wife got me a subscription to a British wargaming magazine last year--the magazine deals mostly with historical wargaming, but many of the concepts are broadly applicable to all tabletop gaming. One of these is what they call the "umpire"--what we would call the GM or the dungeon master, depending on what you're playing. This umpire facilitates the game--answers rules questions, provides judgments, etc. He also controls the battlefield, adding in random effects to keep things interesting. Been thinking about how to apply that concept to the games I play, and how it would work.
So, I've thought up an idea for a short, 3-game "campaign" for X-Wing, based on some single-game scenarios I've run in the past. Basically, here's how it would go:
Game 1: The Empire has set up a new comms satellite in a specific sector. The Imperial player is a squad leader, and has been tasked to patrol a nearby nebula that sensors can't penetrate to ensure the Rebels aren't hiding there. The Rebel player is also a squad leader, and has been tasked to patrol the same nebula based on rumors of Imperial activity. A meeting engagement battle ensues.
Game 2: The Rebels now know something is up in that sector, based on running into the Imperial patrol in the last game, so now they're paying attention to what goes on there. A spy tells the Rebels an Imperial shuttle is moving through the system with valuable info on board (the satellite's location, shield strength, etc). The Rebel player has to intercept the shuttle and hack it electronically to get the info; the Imperial player has to escort the shuttle to its jump point on the other side of the board. If the Rebels won Game 1, they get to deploy closer to the shuttle; if the Imperials won Game 1, the shuttle deploys in the middle of the map (closer to its escape point).
Game 3: The Rebels have gained the locational data for the new satellite (whether by hacking the shuttle's hard drive, or by deducing the shuttle's origin point based on where it was intercepted), and are going to try to destroy it. The Imperials have to defend it. If the Rebels won Game 2 (successfully hacked the shuttle), they get extra points to equip more ordnance weapons (torpedoes, missiles, etc). If the Imperials won Game 2, they get more starfighters to defend the satellite.
That's the basic shell. I have some ideas for earning XP based on actions in each game (killing higher-ranked pilots, for example), and using those XP to "purchase" named pilots and modifications/upgrades. My plan, though, would be to keep each side in the blind--they would get a mission briefing before each game, but they wouldn't know what it was ultimately leading to. Ruckdog, I think you did something similar in our campaign.
I'm interested in any feedback. I've never run a campaign before, and X-Wing is a fairly simple game, so I thought it might be a good game on which to "cut my teeth" with designing a campaign.
