Games I Hope To Run Someday
As a grown-ass adult with a job and a family I consider myself wealthy by many measures. Unfortunately spare time is not counted among those metrics.
I'm currently playing in a short-form campaign run by one of my dearest TTRPG friends. It's a somewhat cursed campaign: this is the second time he's tried to run it, and both attempts were plagued with difficulties. The first time we ran it one of the players kept falling asleep (due to a ridiculous work schedule, not because of the content of the game) and we eventually pulled the plug. This time has been delayed through sickness and family emergencies. I know this is a setting he's very invested in and it's KILLING him to have to wait so long to wrap it up. I really only have time to participate in one campaign at a time as a player or a GM so I want to wait before kicking off my own next adventure.
That being said, I'm also absolutely dying to run something. I can't start anything, but at the very least I can blather a bit on here about some games I'd like to run some day.
The Twisted City
The city wasn't always this way: maps worked here, years ago. The narrow alleys didn't always shift when you weren't looking. The vampire lord who once sat upon the throne turned this city dark and opulent. His back-stabbing spymaster kept the darkness but traded the opulence for something more sinister when he took his master's seat.
This game takes place in a supernatural city which is infused with the personality of whoever rules it. Currently that is the previous administration's unscrupulous spymaster. Consequently the city has become disposed towards secrecy and violence. It boxes you in, steers you farther from home, and funnels enemies together.
The city is divided into districts. Traversing the districts is done by tracking a progress score (I also experimented with this in my Scorpion King encounter). As your successfully navigate encounters you increase your progress score for that region, unlocking new areas. Narratively this represents your increasing familiarity with the district and your ability to overcome the city's tendency to thwart your progress.
Narratively the game is meant to be about trying to put someone better on the throne. My intention would be to introduce several possible candidates and let the players decide what to do. But of course they aren't the only people interested in taking the throne, so there could be a time pressure there.
Return to Dark Sun
My first ever campaign was set in Dark Sun. It was a terrible railroad of an adventure in which I indulged my worst newbie GMing habits, but for whatever reason the game struck a chord with my players.
A bunch of cheesy, regrettable plot points were unleashed upon my players, but two in particular have very clearly set the stage for us should we ever return to the setting:
- The players met a band of dashing pirates out in the wastes and befriended them.
- One of my backstabbing NPCs framed them and made them wanted criminals their home city. My players made it very clear that they'd simply become pirates if we ever went back. Screw clearing their names, they decided it's time to steal a silt-skimmer and do some crimes. I'd love to some day give them the opportunity.
The Borrowers
This thought is fairly recent, resulting from a conversation with my brother over the holidays. There's something charming and whimsical about living in a world of giants and making do with tiny pilfered items.
I don't really know of many games that do this: Mouseguard springs to mind but even that isn't QUITE what I'd choose. I might consider a Tinyd6, FATE, or OSR game for this and then massage in some custom rules for things like traversal and being spotted by humans.
Similarly I've always wanted to run a bug-rider game where you pair up with a bonded bug mount. Perhaps you stick with a standard beetle for its durability, or buy a grasshopper from the daring wranglers. Maybe you opt for a specialized bug like a waterskimmer for journeys up-river, or visit the cordyceps labs where they tame more fearsome creatures through unorthodox methods. It's a slightly different tone in that it could easily bypass the element of living among regular sized humans, but I still love the idea of exploring our world in miniature.
The Parish in Peril
The players are agents of the church in a traditional fantasy setting who have been dispatched in response to an S.O.S. from a remote parish. They arrive to find the whole town barricaded inside the church while some kind of zombies roam around outside. It becomes their job to discover what happened here and try to set things right again.
I'd only choose to run this campaign for specific people: it's a dour, spooky mystery with no good ending, and not all of my players would be interested in that. I also am interested in a game where the players are acting on behalf of a larger organization.
Falling Tide
Finally, I will forever carry a torch for my piratey West Marches game. I don't think it's a bad design (though it had flaws when I ran it, to be sure). However I lay the blame on player mismatch more than anything else. With the right group I think it could be very successful.