Campaigns I Won't Run This Summer

The rest of my group and I have different tastes. At some points, they overlap, and those are the games that we play. This leaves me with a number of games that I'd like to play, but have to put off until I find the right group; I assume it leaves them in a similiar situation occasionally. (Though it's possible that I take these things a tad more seriously than the rest of them, seeing as I'm the only one of us who blogs about games.) That's the case this summer.

Promethean: the Created. This one, I crossed of my "possibles" list almost immediately. I had a number of reasons for that, but first and foremost was that I didn't think the group would take it "seriously." When I showed a couple of them the book, their immediate response was to sit down and start designing character builds -- which is normally a tendency I like, or at least don't mind, but in this case I feel like that's missing the point. There are other games that encourage that style of play, no need to go grafting it on to a game with a different intent. Add in that my serious "character drama" players don't seem particularly enthused about the specific themes that Promethean handles, and you've got a game for another day. (And a game I'd rather play than run, anyway. But only with a perfect GM.)

Encounter Critical. I threw this one out as a possible game, but they all seem to hate it. Apparently it's too silly for a "real campaign." Even though we've had a lot of fun with our goofy-ass one-shots, they want (or claim to want) something more serious for an on-going game. Ah, well. I have high hopes for my college group, some of whom have shown signs of understanding that stupid and awesome go together like peanut butter and jelly.

Feng Shui. This is one that my group would like to play again, but that I have no interest in GMing. I'm the de-facto GM this summer, for various reasons, so it's off the list. We've had fun with it in the past, but once my initial excitement wore off I realized that I really dislike the shots sytem, and a couple of the other more fiddly elements it contains. There's another guy who does still like it but who's out of town this summer, so I'll leave it up to him to run when it's his turn.

There are a couple of games that are still on the "possibles" list, but just barely. Superheroes and Megadungeon in particular both face heavy resistance from a couple of the other people playing this summer. I suspect that resistance is based on prejudice more than experience, and that I could convince the objectors to at least give it a try, but I've got other games in the line-up that wouldn't require such efforts.

The Year in Gaming

This was sort of the year of the one shot, for me. I didn't as much gaming done as I would have liked, but what I did do was pretty fun. Pretty much all new systems, too; besides three sessions of a tragically doomed D&D 3.5 game, I don't think I played any of my old standbys. Here's the break down:

The Aforementioned Tragically Doomed D&D 3.5 Game: Four brand new players, one of whom never showed up after the first session and another who I'd kind of dragged into it and spent most of his time playing mah jong. Theoretically wilderness exploration, except for some reason I'd dumbed most of the hex map I worked up in September and replaced it with a really terrible random encounter chart. The play environment wasn't great either; we used a college provided study room, and the white board was handy, but the big glass window, terrible fluorescent lighting, and total lack of snacks just didn't set the right tone. Despite some really great play from the two players who wanted to be there, I just couldn't muster any enthusiasm for the thing, and stopped scheduling the games after a couple of weeks.

Feng Shui: In a trend that will continue, I got very excited about this on the train home from New York, played a single session that had a satisfyingly level of Nazi punching and general ludicrosity, and promptly forgot about the whole thing. Despite the fun we had with it, I haven't had the urge to play it again since.

4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons: Obsessed over it for, oh, a good eight months before it came out, ran a mostly successful short campaign using Keep on the Shadowfell over the summer, and decided it wasn't for me. Fun, yes, but a little too slick, and a little too streamlined.

Traveller: Mongoose Traveller gave me an excuse to get the book and see what all the fuss was about. Very impressed, spent a month or two rolling up a subsector. Never got around to playing it, though a couple members of my home group have expressed interest in it, and it's still top contender for games next semester and over the summer.

Swords & Wizardry: Finally started paying attention when the PDF version came out (especially since it's available for free at the official website) and proceeded to get very excited and spend a month and a half working on a crazy sandbox setting, which I still haven't run, and might not ever. I had fun putting it together, but it's still an irritating pattern.

Paranoia: A game my home group has been talking about for years, we picked it up on a whim and went home to play a crazy late night session. We managed to get in another game, and have some vague plans for a session next year, so this one may end up being a regular part of our college diaspora gaming landscape. It's been fun, and nice to be a player for once.

Vampire: the Requiem: Developed a bizarre fixation on the line, then got the book and became thoroughly confused. That's one to sort out in the New Year.

So I kind of got distracted every five freaking minutes, but I had fun doing it all so I'm not too unhappy with it. Hopefully I'll be able to run an actual campaign next year, but I'll tackle that when I blatantly rip off Amityville Mike's Gaming New Year's Resolutions.

The Compleat Strategist, and Awesome Therein

I just went to the New York location of The Compleat Strategist.

It is awesome.

My local store is pretty good, but it mostly sticks to d20, White Wolf, and GURPS. It might have a smattering of other systems, but I haven't check in a while.

The Compleat Strategist, on the other hand . . .

Wow.

Shelves full of d20 books I'd never heard of, systems I'd only read about only, and others I'd never even fathomed. Most of it I probably could have gotten online, but I can't browse online. I'm not surrounded by books, can't pick them up and flip through them, can't walk out with a book I only heard about today.

They even had a copy of the Stargate SG-1 book--the one that's out of print, because Sony revoked the license. I very, very badly wanted to get it, but a $50 price tag and a drought of acquaintances who both like gaming and would care that they were playing Stargate stayed my hand.

Instead, I'm now the proud owner of Feng Shui.

A tough choice, between that and d6 Space, (or perhaps Adventure, haven't heard as much about it but it looked cool) and I would have considered Savage Worlds if they'd had it. Something about it being out of print. I dunno.

(Amusingly, none of these were on the list of systems I want. Ah, well.)

So far, I'm happy with Feng Shui. Prep on both sides of the screen is fast a simple, since it encourages everyone to lean on action movie cliches, so it may fill that "one-shot system" hole I've had in my game line-up for a while. I need to get a chance to run it (I've got at least one weekend free before 4e hits . . .) but it looks like it fits my natural style pretty well. Fast, loose, a fair amount of action, but not nothing but fights, and encouraging cool ideas from the players.

We'll see how it goes.