RPG Blog Carnival: Mining Genres for a Campaign (part 2)

Here's my 2nd RPG Blog Carnival post on campaign prep. This one is about mining a specific property, as I'll tackle mining a sub-genre in a subsequent post.

I've occasionally posted about inspirations for campaign ideas, but the most developed analysis that I did of a specific property to date was with the comic book The Sixth Gun.


In this series of posts, I do several things:

In Inspiration: The Sixth Gun, I post in general about the property to give some background about it, and why I want to tackle it for the purposes of changing the tone of a fantasy RPG setting or inspiration;

In Mining the Sixth Gun: Weapons of Dark Purpose, I talk about the big McGuffins of the series -- the Guns -- and how they're applicable to a fantasy setting with slightly adjustments to the existents;

In Mining the Sixth Gun: Monstrous Men, I talk about the type of opposition that PCs can expect to confront, as seen in the comic, and as might be seen in the campaign;

In Mining the Sixth Gun: The Strange and the Familiar, I talk about how the rest of the world feels, what other difficulties might arise when PCs trying to achieve their goals, and what kind of visuals and elements might reinforce the desired tone.

In Mining the Sixth Gun: Friends and Posses, I talk about how the concept of friendship and adventuring groups can be given a different spin, in the light of the weird western.

Admittedly, I could have gone on -- just as the series did -- but I felt I'd tackled enough for the purposes of giving my fantasy RPG campaign a different feel, a western feel different from the typical hack & slash.

RPG Blog Carnival: Mining Genres for a Campaign (part 01)

This month's RPG Blog Carnival is about campaign creation. Since my blog occasionally tackles different entries into campaigns that never quite get run, I figured it was a good fit -- it'll help me revisit a lot of started-but-not-finished ideas for campaigns.

And believe me, there are a lot.

My first stop: genre mining.

Genre Mining

Even if you're very familiar with a particular genre, you'll find that -- as a GM -- you want to get in touch with what aspects of the genre you want to appear in your games. Likewise, you'll want to find out (or perhaps just assess in your mind) what your players may be expecting in your genre-inspired game.

There's no need to reinvent the wheel -- there are certainly a number of books from HERO and GURPS that tackle entire genres and the difficulties of translating them into games. I loved both GURPS Space and Star Hero not only as spectacular genre sourcebooks, often dealing with many Science Fiction subgenres and tropes along with the difficulties of implementing them in RPGS.

However, the exercise of writing down your own take may be worth your while, particularly if you see some unique concerns with regard to your proposed schedule of play, play style, and number of players.

This last bit actually came to the fore when I began thinking about an espionage campaign. Here are all the posts that I did on the issue of the 'adventuring party' size in an espionage game:

• Genre Mining: Solos & Super-spies
• Genre Mining: The Differentiated Duo
• Genre Mining: A Team of Specialists

Next: Mining a sub-genre

RPG Blog Carnival: A Quick Look at Kitchen Sink Settings

Well, look at that. End of the month already, and I've missed out on many posting opportunities.

So, for a last stab at Campaigns I'd like to run, I'll just quickly mention my series of posts on Kitchen Sink Settings, which is a term I use for RPGs and RPG settings that have been crafted in such a way as to allow the easy integration of many elements from books, TV shows, comics and movies in the same genre, and sometimes even across multiple genres.

The reason I want to run them? It's so easy to come up with adventure ideas!

Here are the three kitchen sink settings I've already done:

Lightspeed

Lightspeed was a Fuzion-powered RPG whose major setting elements seemed to be taken from a universe that held Star Trek, Star Wars, Aliens, Blade Runner, Cosmo Police Justy, Space Precinct and other science fiction properties in its core (with the numbers filed off, of course).

Rebel pilots, space police, exploration vessels, ultra-powered psychics, ship-to-ship battles and space marines all in the same universe! Plus a system that I could easily tweak or convert to D20 or Hero, depending on my mood. What's not to like?

Lightspeed Post List:

Kitchen Sink Expeditions: Lightspeed -- Part I (Background & Broad Strokes)
Kitchen Sink Expeditions: Lightspeed -- Part II (Federation, Empire, & Old Earth)
Kitchen Sink Expeditions: Lightspeed -- Part III (Espers, Races, & Ships)
Kitchen Sink Expeditions: Lightspeed -- Part IV (Default Campaigns & Strange Brews)

Code: Black

This is a horror genre RPG that calls to mind X-files, Call of Cthulhu, Silent Hill, Kolchak the Nightstalker, Supernatural, and perhaps even Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. The genius of the setting -- the interlocking extradimensional prisons that make up our Earth reality -- allows for multiple horror sub-genres to be tackled within the same consistent setting. Think Delta Green meets Esoterrorists meets Chill meets Kult meets The Laundry meets Wonderland, and you have a good starting point. The game system is EABA, but there's no reason you can't use the core source material and then finally crib from all the other Horror RPGs you've been meaning to play!

Code Black Post List:

Setting Expeditions: Code Black -- Part I (Overview & Inspirations)
Setting Expeditions: Code Black -- Part II (Good, Evil, The Brotherhood, & the Flawed Prison)
Setting Expeditions: Code Black -- Part IIIa (Inspirations, Adventure Spine, & Name that Movie)
Setting Expeditions: Code Black -- Part IIIb (Monster Hunters, Mythos, & True Reality)

The Hero System Universe

Did you know that the Hero System has / had its own universe setting? And we're not just talking superheroics and pulp heroes here.

There was a time & place for pirates and consulting detectives, for sword-swinging barbarians and blaster-shooting space mercenaries, and everything around and between -- starting from the dawn of time, all the way to the distant future and beyond! And there was an overarching meta-history (very much reminiscent of the DC / Marvel Universe histories mixed in with some good Wold Newton, and a mish-mash of Future SF timelines) that you may want to pick and choose from -- or just have ready when your players want to jaunt across time & space!

It was the grand vision of Steve Long, who actually came out with a multi-page document outlining this grand span of history, which I used, updated, and added to with my own ideas for campaigns and little slices of fictional gaming opportunities.

Hero System Universe Post List:

Setting Expeditions: The Hero Universe, Part I -- Pre-Cataclysm
Setting Expeditions: The Hero Universe, Part II -- Post-Cataclysm to the Medieval Era
Setting Expeditions: The Hero Universe, Part III -- Musketeers, Pirates, and Revolutions
Setting Expeditions: The Hero Universe, Part IV -- Cowboys and Victorians
Setting Expeditions: The Hero Universe, Part V -- Mystery Men and Super-heroes
Setting Expeditions: The Hero Universe, Part VI -- The Future

I'm a little bit sad to see this RPG Blog Carnival go -- but then again, it turns out that I've been posting about campaigns I'd like to run for a long while!

RPG Blog Carnival: "Give Chance To Others"

There was a Filipino saying -- in English words, but not necessarily English grammar (we're funny that way as a bilingual country) -- that advocates letting everyone have a chance. When a child has been monopolizing a swing or a see-saw, parents will say: "Give chance to others." When someone in class tends to have all the answers, the teachers will say: "Give chance to others." When someone doesn't have a college degree, or the requisite experience for a political office like the office of Senator or President, the people say: "Give chance to others."

In that spirit, and in the spirit of the RPG Blog Carnival theme Campaigns I'd Like To Run, here's a list of  some of the RPGs out there that I'd love to "give chance" to -- primarily because even if I'd get a chance to run these games, the niched nature of these would make the players agreeing to it a long shot! But I'd really like to try out these particular systems or settings, because the interest me in particular.

EABA by BTRC

EABA is one of those Universal Roleplaying Systems that can handle multiple genres. It has game system elements similar to the DC Heroes / MEGS exponential scale table and the D6 system. And it's got a number of interesting settings to its name.

The setting I'd like to try is Verne, which is a Victorian Steampunk & Science Fiction setting (as you may have surmised from the title). Here's a bit of the blurb:

Battle dirigibles, Cavorite, steamtroops, dinosaurs, Martians, Selenites, mad scientists, clacking Babbage engines, the works. Verne starts off with the historical Victorian Era and then merges it with the fiction of Jules Verne, H.G.Wells, Edgar Rice Burroughs and others to create a seamless alternate history that the adventurers get to shape and be part of. Verne can be as stiff-upper-lip fictional or Victorian Era grimy as you like, with detailed historical and cultural information, half a dozen adventures and numerous plot-centered NPC's and gadgets. 

Verne is nearly 220 pages of steampunk with the traditional BTRC attention to detail. Also available for Verne: A free interactive character creator for Verne, and a map pack with nearly 20 adventure locations, including an annotated interactive map of London.

Oh yes, it should be fun!

Traveller Hero

Yeah, these two books are out of print, but I'd still like to get my hand on a second-hand copy of both books and run them using the HERO System. It's the system I'm most comfortable with for modern and future settings, to be honest. One of my favorite SF campaigns was a Star Hero campaign, so Traveller with HERO is a logical leap. Boy, was I bummed when I found it it'd gone out of print (the license had been revoked) and I hadn't been able to buy it!


Pathfinder + NeoExodus: A House Divided

The setting is interesting enough for me to pick up Pathfinder, which I wouldn't normally do due to my allergy to the escalation of Feats that annoyed me about D&D 3.5. But with the OSR house rules and other things I've learned, I'm willing to make a streamlined run of the game to explore this interesting melange of concepts.

I did an Armchair Review of this particular book. Check out the link for more information on NeoExodus.

RPG Blog Carnival: Mystara Mash-up

Starting off the Campaigns I'd Like to Run theme for May's RPG Blog Carnival is a Mystara Mash-up campaign.

Rationale: When I first started gaming, the B/X  and BECMI D&D world was my first exposure to the hobby. Of course, I didn't know that T1: The Village of Hommlet was an AD&D module, and thought that Advanced D&D was what you played once you were done with Basic and Expert D&D. Also, I thought that D&D was all one world (hence my own fascination with the series of Mystoerth posts by Timothy Brannan).

But the modules and the Gazetteers didn't always match up to one another (the word I would later use is canon), and I was always trying to learn about the world so it could be portrayed properly, because -- as a kid -- I didn't know I could make it up on my own.

The Mystara Mash-up campaign, therefore, would be a romp through the world of Mystara -- geared at showing the breadth of the world through a series of strung together adventures based on the classic D&D and AD&D modules that are shoehorned into my own take on the mythology of the world of Mystara.

Key Posts: I've made a number of Mystara-oriented posts over the years; these are the ones relevant to this particular campaign.

• A Mad God in the Machine - how to have a campaign premise that allows for multiple PCs coming and going, but still retaining continuity, and allowing PCs to rub elbows with gods and kings early on in their careers; just have to be careful that they don't get overshadowed by the mad god who runs into them once in a while. 
• Dark Corners of Mystara: Strange Waters - when they're being sent on missions by the Mad God, they may not be traveling overland exclusively. This is, of course, inspired by the river-based campaign from WFRP's Enemy Within campaign. Speaking of WFRP...
• Stealing From WFRP: Roadwardens - and yet another campaign premise for the PCs when they've finished their river adventures.
• Some Geography is in order - taking from my Enigmundia posts, I underscore the key elements that I'd like to emphasize for the setting.
• Enigmundia: A List of Ingredients 1 - some talk about getting the essence of Karameikos experience right
• Enigmundia: A List of Ingredients 2 - the major nations of the world that I'd like to focus on, with some substitutions from other sources. Ierendi, in particular, might make a nice place to stick the new Razor Coast material.
• Enigmundia: A List of Ingredients 3 - similar to part 2, but with emphasis on the big leagues of nations.
• Fate, Fortune, and the Adventurer - my own rationale for things like hit points and levels and the movers and shakers of the world being so powerful compared to the normals of the world.
• Gods, Magic, and the World - a series of posts that deal with my take on the cosmology of Mystara's universe
• Spheres, Magical Fields, and Outsiders - the gods and the magical field they created and maintain protects reality from things outside it.
• Dark Corners of Mystara: Dwarves & the Hounds of Tindalos - highlights my preference for a slightly stranger feel for the campaign, preferably lurking just beneath the surface of a normal (albeit tumultuous) campaign world. I like the idea of Old Ones and Ancient Things being something that the Immortals keep at bay while they pursue their own twisted schemes of power.
• Pagan Magic-Users: Pythagorean Mathemagicians - how the magic of the world is skinned, based on a given pantheon. Yes, it assumes that magicians invoke the names of gods in their spells, and 'pagan' ones at that.
• Pagan Spells of Mercury - A sample listing and rationale of several 1st level magic spells attributed to Mercury.
• Pagan Spells of Apollo - A sample listing and rationale of several 1st level magic spells attributed to Apollo.
• Pflarr and Hermanubis - an attempt to merge the Pflarr of Mystara with an actual Jackal-headed Roman god (with a picture of the statue in a museum).
• Cults of Orcus - an attempt to merge the Orcus of myth with his portrayal in D&D's pantheon.
• Sleep, Dream, Fantasy, and Nightmare - the gods of the underworld, where many an adventure spends time, are stranger and more powerful than you think
• Additions and Expansions
• Add: Ravenloft - adding to the mystery of the powers of the Outsiders and the corruption of the Sphere of Entropy, I wanted to mix little of the Demi-plane of Dread
• Add: Spartacus - to really push the decadence and the skill of the Thyatian gladiator class, some liberal lifting from this show.

Must-Include Modules

I'd like to have in the mix some classic modules for the Mystara experience, and I'm sure this will grow in the future. Off the top of my head:

• T1: The Village of Hommlet - I'd transplant it to Mystara, place it near the Black Eagle Barony and suggest that perhaps the Baron was under the sway of the Temple of Elemental Evil.
• B2: Keep on the Borderlands + B5: Horror on the Hill - both part of the Roadwarden experience, where they players must help the local militia and military presence clear out increasing monstrous aggresssion.
• DA1 through DA3 - The Mad God in the Machine will send them to Blackmoor to retrieve something he needs in the past.
• X1: The Isle of Dread - a place 'near' the Razor Coast, as well? Or perhaps a place that the PCs hear about when sharing stories over a drink. May hold some secrets of the Mad God as well.
• X2: Chateau d'Amberville - not all the 'Timelords' are necessarily good or evil, yes? Some of them are just curious about new sources of Immortality.

As with many things on this blog, this is a work in progress. More to come!

RPG Blog Carnival for May: Campaigns I'd Like to Run -- Overview

This month's RPG Blog Carnival is something close to my heart: Campaigns I'd Like to Run.

Longtime followers of my blog know that most of my posts are about campaigns (long or short) that I'd like to run, but rarely get a chance to (hence, the Armchair Gamer moniker).

I'll have several posts on this, of course. They are:

• A brief tour of the broad settings that I'd to like to explore as long term campaigns (check out the links at the top of my blog for a hint).
• A return to my Kitchen Sink Settings of the past. 
• Some interesting RPGs that I'd like to run like a TV mini-series (because I don't think I could sustain the tone and the escalation in stories necessary to retain plausibility), where you get to make major changes at the end and then possibly shake things up in the next mini-series.

I'll try to tackle why I'm drawn to these, as well. I'd like to throw out there to other GMs why certain RPGs appeal to me, and why I feel I can sustain certain campaigns for a year or more -- and why others must necessarily be a shorter engagement.