It’s getting to be that time of year when I start to look back at what I’ve done over the past year and start to think about plans for the next year. I know I am far more productive when I have a plan – and especially when there is some specific goal worked into that plan.
At the beginning of this past year we were playing a campaign set in Rokugan (The Asian fantasy land that is the setting of the Legends of the Five Rings series of card and role-playing games). That fizzled. I would like to run that campaign again sometime – at the end of 2009 I bought a whole shwack of the RPG setting books and adventure modules and even some of the novels – dirt cheap. On one hand it’s great because there’s all that rich background already fleshed out for you… on the other hand it’s daunting because there’s all that rich background already fleshed out for you… One day I’ll get back to reading through it all and pick it up again. Probably not this coming year.
Then we ran a short far future sci-fi campaign. It fizzled too. I do have a lot of old Traveller stuff that I’d like to make use of some day… again, a lot of work… I’ll get to it some day…
Around April I started TWO simultaneous campaigns! On Wednesday nights I was running a World War Two (occasionally “Weird” War Two) East Front campaign and on Saturdays I started a Realms of Cthulhu campaign. They both started to fizzle in August as I got a bit burned out. I tried to get them BOTH going again in September but after another month burned out again and took another break. Since November I’ve got the WW2 campaign going again and everyone seems to be having fun..
I’m sick right now (bleh!) and so there’s no game tonight, and won’t be one next week as that’s Christmas.
So… Next Year…
I’ll definitely be pressing on with the (Weird) World War Two campaign. Ultimately I’d like to see it through to the end of the war… or until all the characters are killed in some climactic battle against some ultimate German evil nasty….
The Realms of Cthulhu campaign has really just been on the back burner and I’d really like to get playing that again. I’m sure how I’ll be abl to do that…? Alternate between the two…? Or put the WW2 campaign “on the back burner” for a bit…?
One part of the reason for wanting to get back on the Cthulhu campaign is that Dave has cleverly linked his two characters – his character in the Cthulhu campaign is the father of his character in the WW2 campaign!? I’d kind of like to tie those together game-wise, but obviously I can’t drop the elder into the WW2 campaign from time to time if I don’t know how his life plays out through the 20s and 30s – his life could very well end on some uncharted island in the pacific in 1926 or in the Antarctic in 1934 (unless, of course,we assume they are alternate parallel universes). What do I do – put the WW2 campaign on hold until his fate has been determined – either by his demise or that campaign catching up to the WW2 campaigns timeline!?
Whatever I do I’m pretty sure this year will be mostly weird war and cthulhu…
Possible Distractions…
Space:1889
The release of the Savaged version of Space:1889 poses a very real possible distraction. I loved that setting. I have almost all of the original GDW printed modules and source books. I also have a lot of Victorian era miniatures; largely Victorian Horror minis from playing Rippers, but I also have a few “colonials” and even some old Space:1889 Martians. Oh, I also have a lot of “old West” figures, which would be entirely appropriate.
Of course I’ve often thought of running a Space Rippers:1889 campaign too… Werewolves on Mars, Vampires on Venus…
North West Europe 44-45
I’ve finished my Canadians and will be working on some more Germans in the new year. The ultimate goal will be to run a campaign following a platoon of the Regina Rifle Regiment through the campaign in Northwest Europe, startingwith their assault on Courseulles on D-Day. I have a lot yet to do on this… but as I get closer to finishing up the Germans and new terrain…
Other campaigns I’d like to run… someday… that I have some miniature and/or campaign material for... that I occasionally get out and look over and consider… include Twilight:2000, Zombie Run, Traveller/Far future/Sci-fi, Rokugan/L5R, Tour of Darkness, Supers, Pirates, etc…
Hmmmm… Actually I think having typed this out has helped me focus a lot and I’m not feeling so distracted by other things at the moment…
Probably won’t be posting anything else on here for the next two weeks (unless any of my players get a character background to me that I decide to post!) so I hope you all have a happy holiday season and a joyful new year!
Showing posts with label Space Rippers: 1889. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Space Rippers: 1889. Show all posts
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Sunday, September 21, 2008
What to Do... What to do....?
As I mentioned in the previous post I’ve got my weekly Savage Worlds game up and running again on Saturday evenings (Savage Saturday!). I’ve been running weekly games for quite some time now. 7 years with the core members of the current group. I’ve taken a few breaks, here and there, and we’ve switched games and campaigns quite a bit. We’ve even switched times (sometimes Saturdays, sometimes Sundays…). I took the summer off gaming all together to concentrate on.. well… other things.
Around mid-August I sent out notes to the lads suggesting that we get Savage Saturdays going again. The problem was what to play
WHAT TO PLAY….
I wasn’t really sure where to begin…. There are so many things I’d like to do! Campaigns I’d like to run… So many choices, so little time. I got my whole life ahead of me though and I’ll get to them all eventually…
So I threw a bunch of ideas out to the guys to see what they would be most interested in playing… What would inspire them to show up week after week? Here are some of the options (Note: while many of these are games themselves we would be using Savage Worlds and just make use of the worlds and adventures):
Space:1889 – the old GDW game set in the colonial era except with interplanetary travel through ether flyers. All the colonial powers have colonies on the various planets around the solar system – Mercury, Venus, and Mars. A little like ERB’s John Carter of Mars… But not really.
Rippers – Victorian Monster hunters track down evil across the globe. Not only do I have all the adventures in the book – I also picked up the Rippers’ Companion a while back – which has more that I haven’t even LOOKED at yet… I still have most of their old characters kicking around somewhere… October is apparently Rippers Month at PEG
Tour of Darkness – the Vietnam war with a weird twist. I have a complete campaign in the book plus lots of old Recon adventures to fill in the gaps between weird ToD adventures. They’d start out as ordinary grunts, and quickly move into a Long Range Reconaissance Patrol (which makes things easier, because then they’d be more or less operating on your own out in the middle of nowhere…).
Necessary Evil – Supervillians united against an alien invasion. This was my least favourite option… but I do have the book and it has a ready-made campaign… With new characters or the old ones that some of the players made when we tried it a number of years back…
Other Supers….? I suggested we could make a pile of Super-heroes for an on again off again of superhero one shots just to take a break and change the pace from time to time…. I have no particular campaign in mind… I just know some of the guys are keen on the supers…
Zombie Run – A mini-campaign of a road trip across a zombie infested America…
Twilight: 2000 – I have a pile of the original adventures. You generally play military types trapped in Europe after the third world war has more or less fizzled out. There has been a limited strategic nuclear exchange and infrastructure and order has completely gone out the window and it's every man for himself...
Sci-Fi – Traveller? Again I own the Savage Worlds Sci-fi tool kits (well… at least the Gear and Bestiary…) and PILES of old Traveller adventures that could be strung together in a universe trotting campaign of sorts…. Of course I was also thinking of figuring out how to build ‘Mechs using the Sci-fi Gear Toolkit for a military/mercenary type campaign… Mmmmmmm… Battlemechs….
Fantasy – lots of old D&D adventures floating around. Hundreds of free ones on the internet… I know I’ve tried running Fantasy campaigns in the past and they always seem to fizzle – I think the problem is I try to make them into sprawling tolkien-esque EPIC adventures, and then just can’t keep them going…. So I thought about a making up a new batch of low-lifes and going on a series of old school dungeon crawls, living hand to mouth on whatever treasures they can haul away…? We could bring back theirr old characters (that whole weird dream sequence thing…) or roll up new random ones – which is, of course, always a tonne of fun when using the Fantasy Character Generator toolkit (Seriously, just spend an evening rolling up random characters – there will be no end of laughs…!)
Pulp Adventure/Weird War Two – A group of intrepid heroes battle gangsters, weird cults, Nazis and their evil minions in the 20’s and 30’s. Again I think I still have some old characters some of them used in the past…
Call of Cthulhu
– a group of paranormal investigators delves into strange happenings and combat cosmic evil… Again, no end of books full of adventures…
Pirates of the Spanish Main – This was the most recent campaign we had been playing in when things fizzled out in the spring. We could more or less pick up where we left off…?
So… I don’t know, I was pretty much equally fired up about any of them right now… Actually the ones I’d be most interested in running right now are the ones I’m figured every one else would be LEAST interested in (Twilight:2000 and Tour of Darrkness)… So I asked if there were any one(s) the players would particularly like to play?
I also proposed that maybe we could make characters for a couple (or ALL!?) of them and jump back and forth depending on whatever suites my fancy on any particular evening.
I also proposed some “skirmish options” – straight up skirmish miniature wargames using Savage Worlds. I won’t bother going over those.
The players response was that they were interested mostly in Role-playing so the Skimish options were all immediately turfed. I can play most of those with the Monday night crew anyway…
It seemed most were willing to do just about anything. Rippers, Zombie Run, callof Cthulhu, Pirates, and Necessary Evil seemed to be the most popular.
Then I got a brainwave:
SPACE RIPPERS: 1889!
Werewolves on Mars, Vampires on Venus.... you don't want to know what's lurking in the tunnels of Mercury....
A special blend of the Rippers and Space:1889 settings. Still set in the height of the Victorian era, hunting monsters.... we'd just expand that a bit and include some Martians... Will the Cabal try and recruit the Red Martians...? Oh yeah baby! That definitely moved up on my list of things to play…!
So anyway our first session was last night and Lloyd, Andrej, and Amanda showed up and we made characters for a Savaged Twilight:2000 and started making characters for Zombie Run. Before getting the second batch of charcters done I ran a quick little introductory adventure for Twilight: 2000. More on that in a separate post!
Around mid-August I sent out notes to the lads suggesting that we get Savage Saturdays going again. The problem was what to play
WHAT TO PLAY….
I wasn’t really sure where to begin…. There are so many things I’d like to do! Campaigns I’d like to run… So many choices, so little time. I got my whole life ahead of me though and I’ll get to them all eventually…
So I threw a bunch of ideas out to the guys to see what they would be most interested in playing… What would inspire them to show up week after week? Here are some of the options (Note: while many of these are games themselves we would be using Savage Worlds and just make use of the worlds and adventures):
Space:1889 – the old GDW game set in the colonial era except with interplanetary travel through ether flyers. All the colonial powers have colonies on the various planets around the solar system – Mercury, Venus, and Mars. A little like ERB’s John Carter of Mars… But not really.
Rippers – Victorian Monster hunters track down evil across the globe. Not only do I have all the adventures in the book – I also picked up the Rippers’ Companion a while back – which has more that I haven’t even LOOKED at yet… I still have most of their old characters kicking around somewhere… October is apparently Rippers Month at PEG
Tour of Darkness – the Vietnam war with a weird twist. I have a complete campaign in the book plus lots of old Recon adventures to fill in the gaps between weird ToD adventures. They’d start out as ordinary grunts, and quickly move into a Long Range Reconaissance Patrol (which makes things easier, because then they’d be more or less operating on your own out in the middle of nowhere…).
Necessary Evil – Supervillians united against an alien invasion. This was my least favourite option… but I do have the book and it has a ready-made campaign… With new characters or the old ones that some of the players made when we tried it a number of years back…
Other Supers….? I suggested we could make a pile of Super-heroes for an on again off again of superhero one shots just to take a break and change the pace from time to time…. I have no particular campaign in mind… I just know some of the guys are keen on the supers…
Zombie Run – A mini-campaign of a road trip across a zombie infested America…
Twilight: 2000 – I have a pile of the original adventures. You generally play military types trapped in Europe after the third world war has more or less fizzled out. There has been a limited strategic nuclear exchange and infrastructure and order has completely gone out the window and it's every man for himself...
Sci-Fi – Traveller? Again I own the Savage Worlds Sci-fi tool kits (well… at least the Gear and Bestiary…) and PILES of old Traveller adventures that could be strung together in a universe trotting campaign of sorts…. Of course I was also thinking of figuring out how to build ‘Mechs using the Sci-fi Gear Toolkit for a military/mercenary type campaign… Mmmmmmm… Battlemechs….
Fantasy – lots of old D&D adventures floating around. Hundreds of free ones on the internet… I know I’ve tried running Fantasy campaigns in the past and they always seem to fizzle – I think the problem is I try to make them into sprawling tolkien-esque EPIC adventures, and then just can’t keep them going…. So I thought about a making up a new batch of low-lifes and going on a series of old school dungeon crawls, living hand to mouth on whatever treasures they can haul away…? We could bring back theirr old characters (that whole weird dream sequence thing…) or roll up new random ones – which is, of course, always a tonne of fun when using the Fantasy Character Generator toolkit (Seriously, just spend an evening rolling up random characters – there will be no end of laughs…!)
Pulp Adventure/Weird War Two – A group of intrepid heroes battle gangsters, weird cults, Nazis and their evil minions in the 20’s and 30’s. Again I think I still have some old characters some of them used in the past…
Call of Cthulhu
– a group of paranormal investigators delves into strange happenings and combat cosmic evil… Again, no end of books full of adventures…
Pirates of the Spanish Main – This was the most recent campaign we had been playing in when things fizzled out in the spring. We could more or less pick up where we left off…?
So… I don’t know, I was pretty much equally fired up about any of them right now… Actually the ones I’d be most interested in running right now are the ones I’m figured every one else would be LEAST interested in (Twilight:2000 and Tour of Darrkness)… So I asked if there were any one(s) the players would particularly like to play?
I also proposed that maybe we could make characters for a couple (or ALL!?) of them and jump back and forth depending on whatever suites my fancy on any particular evening.
I also proposed some “skirmish options” – straight up skirmish miniature wargames using Savage Worlds. I won’t bother going over those.
The players response was that they were interested mostly in Role-playing so the Skimish options were all immediately turfed. I can play most of those with the Monday night crew anyway…
It seemed most were willing to do just about anything. Rippers, Zombie Run, callof Cthulhu, Pirates, and Necessary Evil seemed to be the most popular.
Then I got a brainwave:
SPACE RIPPERS: 1889!
Werewolves on Mars, Vampires on Venus.... you don't want to know what's lurking in the tunnels of Mercury....
A special blend of the Rippers and Space:1889 settings. Still set in the height of the Victorian era, hunting monsters.... we'd just expand that a bit and include some Martians... Will the Cabal try and recruit the Red Martians...? Oh yeah baby! That definitely moved up on my list of things to play…!
So anyway our first session was last night and Lloyd, Andrej, and Amanda showed up and we made characters for a Savaged Twilight:2000 and started making characters for Zombie Run. Before getting the second batch of charcters done I ran a quick little introductory adventure for Twilight: 2000. More on that in a separate post!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
