Campaign Planning

The campaign's wrapping up, so that means I need to start thinking about the next one.

I won't actually need to have a campaign ready for at least another couple of months, maybe more. I don't plan on doing another one this summer, and it may take some time after that to get a group together. There's always the possibility of an internet campaign, but that brings up its own set of considerations.

Like how I want to run a supers campaign, and no one in the current group is really into that. I, of course, think it's just because they're not giving it a chance; if they'd just try it, they'd see how awesome superheroes are. But if they're not interested, they're not interested, and it'd be a lot less hassle to find some people who are interested in supers and teach them roleplaying games. Preferably something freewheeling and snappy, like what I've heard Truth and Justice is like, because that's how superpowers are handled in the comics books. It's not a science, it's "wouldn't it be awesome if?" I could, I suppose, use Mutants and Masterminds, which might be easier to convince people to play as it's mostly d20, but it just isn't quite as intriguing.

I don't really want to run Arcana Evolved or Dungeons and Dragons again. Not for a while. I may feel different after the GURPS campaign, but for now I want to get away from the combat, the number crunching, and especially the magic. If I do end up running a d20 campaign, it'll be either Iron Heroes or d20 Modern. Both mean no magic to deal with, and both reduce the number crunching. (Iron Heroes has nifty villain classes; Modern has zillions of pre-made stat blocks.)

Of course, seeing as I mostly play D&D, and that's what I have books for, my planning tends to run along those lines. Superhero stuff is different, of course, but when I think fantasy I tend to think, "How would this work with D&D?" (Or Arcana Evolved, or Iron Heroes.) So I have a couple of potential campaigns that I've developed for D&D. I could go back, take the concepts, and rework them for another system, but that just seems like unnecessary work. One revolves around an arcane aristocracy and the infernal and celestial powers meddling with it, drawing mostly on Girl Genius and Dune. The other has less material for it, but it's mostly my latest version of this ancient kingdoms in the desert idea I've always liked, built around Iron Heroes. And that wacky-crazy megadungeon I want to do.

Then there's Eberron. Which I'd really rather play than DM. (There aren't many things that fall in this category, but they are there.) Elves in Eberron really rock, and, of course, there's the warforged. Unfortunately, I often get frustrated playing, because there's an element of "that's not how I would do that."

Probably when it comes time to actual run a game, I'll have some completely different idea of what I want to do, based on whatever weird obsession I've just developed.