Games I want to play

[jeregenest]

It’s a regular happening in my friend’s circle, the whimsical "Games I’d Like to Run”. I’ve done it myself, probably more than once.

This time around I’m not going to play. Not because I don’t have games I’d like to run, but because I’m rather sure any game concept I care about running will get run sooner or later (my ego knows no bounds) and instead I want to list the types of games I want to play in. because not enough people run games I want to play in and I demand they start doing so. As I said, my ego knows no bounds.

These are all games I want to play. Not run. I’ve tried to be as vague as possible to allow someone who wants to run the game for me as much latitude as possible. I considered saying names, but decided against it.

Time slowly slips backwards: This is a time travel game/SF game where the characters are a group of rebels from the future who are moving backwards in time trying to change the world enough so that they’re view of utopia happens. Time travel is one-way (backwards) so the characters are never sure that what they are doing is working and have to rely on their theoretical frameworks and models. Each story would have different antagonists as the new “future” tries to stop them from doing/making the changes they strive for to get to their view of Utopia. A game filled with memes and clio-workings, and nanotechnology. I’m not sure what the best system would be.

Bridge of a Thousand Flowers: Occult intrigue in Ming China. I love Ming China with its economic and social revolutions, a native dynasty and all the rest. And I’m sure one could tell an immensely creative occult game during this era. Basically I want Cabal but with Taoist inspirations instead of decanic.

In the Beginning there was the Word A story within a story within a story game, in the spirit of the Arabian Knights but set during a Mabinigion era (why, because I crave some Welsh craziness). The players are all scheming bard/druids working to change reality through their stories. Everyone would have a bard and then a character in each story and there would be mechanics to handle the webs between story-worlds.

Hunting for Relics: This is probably the closest to dungeon crawling I’ll ever get. I want to play Indiana Jones 1000 years after the collapse of a magic-based Transhuman society.

Thunder in the Skies: I want to play a game set in the 1920s were the characters are all barnstormers and their entourage traveling America. I want mystery. I want pulp. Maybe I want occult goings on. Okay maybe I always want occult goings on.

Comments

[bryant]

Hunting for Relics sounds a lot like what I had in mind for St. Cuthbert's Men of Action. Hm.

This is awesome. I want to see more posts like this.

[ivan23.livejournal.com]

Oh, I like this twist. A lot.

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

Dibs on the first one. Or the second. Hmm, maybe the fifth. The third and the fourth are good too.

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

When can you start?

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

Well, you don't have to give names for all of them, but... which one was meant for me? Come on, one of them was, surely?

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

The reason I decided not to name names was that I could easily see most of these games being run by differet folks in our circle and being very different. Your barnstorming occult game would be very different from Bryant's.

So if you were really oing to run ith one of these nuggets any would be cool. But, if I was to be pressed I'd say that the first one was originally developed with you in mind.

[shiffer.livejournal.com]

The first sounds really good.

Interestingly, tryscer once came very very close to running a campaign almost identical to the third. Only instead of Welsh there was Mongolia. Don't ask. And he didn't run it, because he sucks.

[unquietsoul5.livejournal.com]

Pulp can be fun, though a party of barnstormers sounds a bit limiting (G-8 and his battle aces after the great war?). I ran 1930s pulp a few years ago successfully, until the players hit a logical point where the party permanently would have split and not been back in contact with each other for years.... ending the storyline for them.

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

The thing is that the barnstormers did get togetehr for this big tours of 5 or 6 planes to hit all the county fairs, etc. Its just a natural party!

[chrislehrich.livejournal.com]

I have actually run something rather like Bridge of 1,000 Flowers, entitled (sorry about this) "Manifest Dynasty." It sort of worked, but it had certain problems:

1. Needs a MUCH better system to work with, that incorporates some genuinely serious Chinese weirdness into the mechanics, or else you end up with a facile imitation;

2. I had the problem that none of my players really knew the material well enough to fake it. I was trying essentially to run the Master Li and Number Ten Ox campaign, but in order to do that you have to be able to fake Chinese weird-talk and silliness. And nobody ever did that, because they didn't feel they knew the material well enough for comfort. I can't say that Age of Paranoia made me think immediately, "Hey, nobody here is going to give a good goddamn if they don't know what they're talking about and will just make up a lot of bullshit." In fact, there was a little friction about precisely this same problem at one point. So unless someone has a clever idea for how to run this sucker, I'd be wary.... On the other hand, if someone IS crazy enough to run this, God help you and can I be in it?