I own a lot of RPGs and I try to run and play as many as I can. I like to do this to get a better understanding of the different ways games can operate, the various solutions to the same problems. I like to see all the choices designers have made about what matters in their games and how they have gone about bringing that focus and exciting their players enough to replicate it.
The trouble is that I am really bad at actually getting around to running all of these games I buy. I was sitting in the virtual pub last week listening to other gamers discuss all the different games they’ve been playing and I couldn’t help feeling that I have been missing out. When it comes to my turn to describe my recent gaming though, I talk about the year-long D&D game I’m almost finished with, and the two year long Whitehack game I finished last year, and the other campaigns I run which just keep rolling on… Suddenly my pub friends are jealous of me and they (some of them anyway) are wishing that they could run a “proper” game of more than 4 sessions.
Now clearly this is a grass-is-always greener situation. People dwell on what they are missing out on more than appreciating all the gaming they are doing. Also I know that I enjoy long campaigns more than anything. I love seeing characters and friendships and rivalries slowly develop over weeks and months, missions and factions and societies changing with the impacts of the game and the choices of the players. Great stuff. So I’m not feeling hard done by at all, I know I’m lucky to have a reliable group of friends who will pretty much let me run whatever I want. Still, I am going to put some effort into increasing the variety of games I run. When this D&D campaign finishes I’m going to be starting an epic 13th Age game. It will be long, but I’m going to try and make it fast. Think fantasy Guardians of the Galaxy.
That’s just my Wednesday slot though. On Mondays, with a slightly smaller group, I want to try out new things. I’m going to start with the Trail of Cthulhu campaign The Final Revelation. I’ve never run this style of horror but for whatever reason (looking out of the window at the state of the world in 2021) I feel like giving it a try now, and this is such an interesting book that it is calling to me. I’ll be running with the Cthulhu Dark system as the minimalist nature of it should let me focus on the adventure, and again, it’s something I haven’t tried before. After that, who knows? Maybe a small RuneQuest sandbox. Maybe Monster of the Week or Blades In The Dark. I’ll ask my players.
I’ll let you know how it goes.
PS, I remembered an image this time. It is entirely unrelated to the text but it has a nice colour I thought.
Photo by Taryn Elliott from Pexels
Ominosity 