Wednesday, December 03, 2008

Vampire? Seriously?

I've been struck lately, in between working on my sandbox thing, by a weird interest in all things World of Darkness. These things come and go--at one point I was fascinated by Promethean, and I even went through a brief period where I was into Exalted--but lately I've been wanting to get a couple of those big old shiny hardbacks and play some Vampire or some Mage or even some Werewolf. (The new World of Darkness versions at least, since they seem a little less heavy on teenage specialness angst and random technology hate.)

"Play," of course, is the strange part. I usually get kind of grumpy if I'm not running the game, or at least a game. I've gotten better about that recently, but I haven't played in a long campaign for a while. If the Battlestar game had gone on longer, I might have gotten less puzzled and more irritated when the GM started talking about "writing a campaign." Or at least started itching to run my own game, though that's less of an issue now that I don't have one and only one regular group.

But at least for now, there's something about those new World of Darkness books that tells me to make a character and start messing around in someone else's world. Sure, I could run a game, probably happily. Flipping through the Vampire corebook did give me some ideas for my usual side of the screen, and I've come up with a couple of interesting things I could do with Mage, but mostly I want someone else to do the story work and let me get on with the wacky adventures.

Could be that I've already got enough game master side projects going. I'd very much like to have that Swords & Wizardry game running by January, and that won't happen if I start thinking too hard about exactly what kind of Indiana Jones hijinks a bunch mages could get up to. And if it were just Promethean, that'd be easy enough to work out. I've got a thing for the robot/humanity/angst thing that game is built around. But other than that? All I know is I've got this sudden urge to be a vampire (or whatever) and knock some stuff over. Sometimes my gaming interests just don't make sense.

5 comments:

  1. Man, I am right there with you. Tons of GM side projects? Check. Not really a huge WoD fan but strangely fascinated by the new books? Check. Wanting to play rather than GM, even though I'm usually too much of a campaign control freak to enjoy being a player? Check.

    I mean, I've been bugging my girlfriend--who is both a total novice GM and writing her thesis this winter--to run some nWoD for me. What's the appeal, I wonder?

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  2. I say WE open up a support group.

    Same problem, uber-picky about DM. Usually chase him out and take over myself. Or subconsciously ruin the game with a sociopathic NE Fighter/
    Ranger or something.

    Or maybe I'm just a dick :)

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  3. Amen to the support group. I *think* I've mostly gotten over it, but I once massively sabotaged a friends Star Wars game because I wanted to be GMing. Got another group, started playing the character sane, and everything got a lot more fun. I figure I have enough sense not to do it again, but . . . yeah.

    I doubt I'll actually ever get to play WW, since I'm the only GM around right now and I'm still committed to running my Swords & Wizardry game. I might be able to talk my home group into doing something with it, but that won't really be possible until the summer, and the interest will probably have passed by then. And a couple of them still want me to run a sequel to the game I ran two years ago.

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  4. Yeah, I just don't think I understand the players side anymore. Been GMing way to long. People around me never wanted to GM and now they have created a monster.

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  5. I don't get the "never want to GM" thing. I know people who feel that way, but I've never been able to understand why. GMing is the fun part!

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