Animosity Campaigns celebrates half a decade with “Animosity V – The Fated Blade”, the newest installment of the unofficial Warhammer Age of Sigmar global narrative event.
Beginning June 1st, join #DaWarpath on social media in preparation for Animosity V, launching Wednesday, July 12th.
WHAT’S AN ANIMOSITY CAMPAIGN?
Animosity Campaigns’ global narrative events are immersive online experiences where players around the world participate by submitting PLAY, HOBBY, and WRITING reports. In addition to Age of Sigmar, players may also submit games of Warcry and sessions of Soulbound RPG.
Each campaign consists of five week-long turns, divided into a four-day Player phase and a threeday Gamemaster phase. During the Player phase, players will collaborate in the campaign’s Discord server, discussing strategy, engaging in diplomacy, and submitting reports. During the Gamemaster phase, Gamemasters will enter these reports into the campaign game engine, decide the outcome of each turn’s conflicts, and combine the player’s creative efforts into a single, coherent storyline called the Unfolding Narrative.
Each campaign depicts an epic struggle between six rival player teams called Coalitions. Each Coalition is led by a charismatic non-player character known as a Figurehead. These Figureheads are the catalysts of the conflict, whose ambitions have caused the player’s armies to muster for battle.
The Coalitions and their Figureheads then fight across the campaign’s Setting, depicted by Animosity Campaigns’ own original, hand-drawn map and dotted with grand and mysterious Locations. All of this and more can be found on the Animosity Campaigns website, www.AnimosityCampaigns.com.
Players managed to explore most of the territories of the map, and the place was left battered and bruised.
HOW TO PARTICIPATE
When jumping into the campaign, players will first need to join the Animosity Campaigns’ Discord community (click here).
After reading the #rules channel, everything they need to know can be found either in the #updates or the #resources channels. Players questions are welcome in the #ask-the-team channel, where a Gamemaster or community Moderator will promptly respond.
Once the campaign starts, players will visit the #registration channel and choose a Coalition to join. This will unlock private channels for that Coalition, allowing players to plan, plot, and scheme with other Coalition members in secrecy. When reports are ready for submission, players can simply visit the Animosity Campaigns website (or the server’s #resources channel) to fill out a report form. This easy-to-use Google Form places all contributions at the gamemaster’s fingertips, ready to be entered into the game engine and written into the greater Unfolding Narrative.
WHAT TO EXPECT FROM ANIMOSITY CAMPAIGNS
Each campaign is an experience in shared storytelling, whether by playing games informed by the ongoing story, crafting models specifically to join the story or unique terrain pieces in locales of the campaign, or writing original stories of the quests and action-packed battles of each campaign turn.
Each campaign is a riot of non-stop creativity by more than 100 players, over the period of 5 weeks, as well as the weeks preceding and after it.
Local players and Narrative Event Organizers (NEOs) can also organize to play together in their local clubs, participating as different Coalitions of the campaign and taking the rivalries close and personal to the tabletop.
Previous events have seen players battle over the ruins of a long-lost religious necropolis (to see it eventually fall to yawning mawpits of gut magic), the fate of a lost Shyishian underworld for the souls of dead sailors (now ruled by a resurrected godbeast of the depths), take sides in a civil war for a secluded kingdom of aelves on the very edge of Hysh (and stop a vampire megalomaniac from taking over), and battle over the body and soul of an ancient dragon while exploring the wilds of Ghur and Chamon over a rift that was slowly merging the two realms.
Each campaign provided players with the inspiration for unique creations, original stories, and a shared living gaming community, spawning stories and news armies for years to come.
THE ANIMOSITY CAMPAIGNS TEAM
Behind the curtain, Animosity Campaigns is a creative collective of writers, artists, engineers and community moderators. Although the Animosity brand existed as a venue for Warhammer Fantasy Battle campaigns on the internet between 2004 and 2014, Team Animosity considers this current Age of Sigmar incarnation to be the spiritual successor of the acclaimed Coalescence Global Narrative events of 2017 and 2018, organized by the founding members of the NEON.
It was in 2019 that the Animosity brand relaunched for Age of Sigmar with “Animosity I – The Hallowed Necropolis”. NEOs ran events across the United States, including Virginia, Washington state, Pennsylvania, New York, and also in Thailand and the UK. During July-August of 2020, “Animosity II – The Burning Winter” proved itself to be a breakout campaign, despite, or perhaps because of, the global pandemic. Taking place primarily in the Animosity Campaigns’ Discord server, many practices were re-instituted from Animosity’s forum-based, Warhammer Fantasy Battles past to allow for a socially distanced Warhammer experience on a worldwide scale. The 2021 and 2022 campaigns, “Animosity III – The Prime Dominion” and “Animosity IV – The Bleeding Wilds” proved just as popular, with over 150 players averaging more than 300 unique reports per turn.
Today, the Animosity Campaigns Discord community boasts 500+ members with a four-person moderation team ensuring a positive, welcoming environment for Games Workshop hobbyists around the world. Even outside of campaign season, the Discord community maintains year-round lively discussion about Age of Sigmar lore, narrative play and sharing of ideas, as well as collaborative projects and meetups.
JOIN NOW!
You can join the community of players who have been playing Animosity Campaign right now by entering their Discord server (click here). You can find more information from past campaigns and how to play on their webpage.
Animosity V: The Fated Blade
#DaWarpath for Animosity V starts on June 1st for players to start sharing their creations on social media and kick off some good old grudges. The campaign itself kicks off on Wednesday, July 12th.
Narrative Event Organizer Network 