The Delightful Problem
New Campaign!
In addition to my weekly Knave game, I’ve been given the opportunity to start a new monthly game with some old friends. There is probably no better feeling of anticipation for a Game Master than the prospect of a new campaign. What system? What kind of campaign? Which adventures? It’s a kind of brain teaser that can waste hours of my time, a daydream pleasure ballasted only by the nagging worry that I might pick the wrong one. So while I have you here, let me run down my choices, why I like them, and why I don’t.
Choice 1: Painted Wastelands/Troika!
I’ve been a fan of Agamemmnon Press’ weird dreamlands since it came out. I grew up in the American West, and the psychedelic desert-scapes and hippie weirdos of the Painted Wastelands speak to my aesthetic sensibilities in ways that even fantasy does not. The book is written for Old School Essentials, but I’m going to use Troika (stupid exclamation point) because I think it fits the setting better. I love this for several reasons; it let’s me play something outside of traditional fantasy, it gives me a chance to play a game I don’t know well, and it’s an easy system to learn.
On the other hand, it is really weird, perhaps too weird for some tastes, further, it places a good deal of of ‘world building’ in the hands of the players, since they are responsible for filling out the background of their little weirdos. Finally, for some in my group, the rules will be too light: they will crave a more intricate ruleset.
Choice 2: Black Sword Hack
I see that Professor DM has a huge crowdfunding campaign for his Deathbringer game. I appreciate the desire to brink back a pulp fantasy sensibility to RPGs, but I already have Black Sword Hack and I think it does pulp fantasy amazingly well. I played it briefly, but I want to give it another go. BSH also gives me a chance to test the idea that you don’t need a GM for narrative games and that you might be better off without them. Pulp stories are not about exploration, they’re about adventure and derring-do. In BSH the players do all the rolls anyway, so I think you could probably just do the whole thing with an oracle. This is an experiment I would very much like to try out.
Obviously, this is the drawback as well. I would not only be attempting a new kind of RPG experience myself, but asking my fellow players to go along on the experiment with me. Many of them are old hands, so they might be willing to go out on a limb, but others are new to the game and this might be too much for them. Honestly, it might be too much for me. I’ve played several different varieties of RPG over the years, but I’ve never tried a game with no GM. Of course, I would get to actually play a character. That’s a pretty big draw.
Choice 3: Against the DarkMaster
Hoo boy. This one is a doozy. It’s essentially a hack of Middle Earth Role Playing (MERP) from back in the day when the Tolkien estate would just let any old little start-up game company get a license deal. MERP used the RoleMaster rules, but never really adapted them well to the setting. What they did do well was produce a bunch of setting material, some of it really quite good, to fill out the details of Tolkien’s world. MERP was my second RPG, and I’ve always wanted to get back to playing it. This ruleset maps better to the setting, and I can play in Middle Earth without dropping a mint on an out-of-print game on eBay. (Yes, I know I could play Free League’s One Ring, but I already have this game.)
But it does weigh in on the crunchier side of things. We will probably spend a good solid chunk of our first session making characters. I’ve been wanting to play something with a bit more crunch, but this may be swinging the pendulum back too far. Some players will love all the numbers, but not all of them. There will definitely be a learning curve, but will the campaign last long enough to get past it? This is always the challenge with heftier rulesets. I can play a satisfying game of Mothership tonight. Against the DarkMaster? Gonna have to let this one ride a bit.
Signs Point To…
So what do you think? Which one would you choose and why? When have you been in this situation and how did you resolve it? I’ve got some time, so the decision doesn’t have to be made immediately. And, of course, there’s plenty of time for the whole thing to be destroyed by scheduling issues, making all of this moot.
What a hobby.