Dream Games You May Never Get to Play or Run

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Þorkell

I have read that sentence several times now and I don't get it. I get that there's a French Colonel who defects. But other than that, dunno...

I think it should say "That French officer, who is now a Colonel due to demonstrated hyper-competence, defects …"

[David Johnston2]

One game I'll never do is the long run espionage campaign that runs from the start to the end of the Cold War as viewed through a James Bond/Man From UNCLE lens. They wouldn't just be smuggling out a spy with information about Russia's nuclear weapon's program via the Berlin Airlift, they also be fighting schemes by the Nazis to take control of the Argentine government and freeing Howard Hughes from his imprisonment by agents of the nefarious Third Way.

[Stripe]

All three of mine are all pretty generic.

I've written about my first one before, in 2013. It's called "Phantom Star" for a couple reasons and is inspired by Star Trek: Voyager, specifically the episode "Living Witness."

Basically, the players are crew and/or passengers aboard a super-powerful battleship (a TL 11^, 1 million ton strike dreadnought) that's somehow been transported some 70,000 light years from home territory to a part of the galaxy that's far less advanced; TL 9 for the first couple decades, TL 10 later. The ship's vastly superior technologies isn't terribly offset by its short-range nature—but getting home will take more than 30 years and the Enterprise it ain't.

The ship's captain is a hardened war vet hell bent on returning to the empire no matter the cost. The genocide of an entire planet would be a small price to pay. There are rumors among the crew that he's a psychopathic war criminal.


The next campaign I'd like to run is basically a zombie apocalypse on Mars. I've written about it before as well, in 2009 it appears.

Originally Posted by Sharpe

The planet, Cortan 3, was once a burgeoning mining world on the outskirts of interstellar civilization with hundreds of bubble cities and underground populations spread thinly across the surface. For some reason, the largest of these cities -- easily 10 times bigger than it's nearest rival -- was destroyed, nuked from orbit. A blockade was formed so that no one could leave the world, and no one could enter.

Soon after the holocaust, surviving populations formed clandestine city states. The scattered cities began warring for resources and territory. Bandits pirate the wasteland between them.

That's where the PC's come in.

It'll be like Mad Max crossed with Tatooine from Star Wars.

My third idea for a campaign is about as cliche as possible. Low-point fantasy where the PC's are young teenagers of likely mundane origin. The starting location is your bog standard rural farming village on the frontier. Monsters attack. Town burned. Adults killed. You know the drill.

I'd play this one straight, too. No mysterious, seemingly-omniscient being to guide the teens. No magic weapons of power. No prophecy of hope. No GM PC. Just kids against the world.

[aaron819]

After the End. Most of my friends either don't play GURPS (I'm working on fixing that) or don't like post-apocalypse stories.

[Jinumon]

A relatively straight-forward Firefly-esque Tramp Freighter Space Opera/Sci-Western game. Just play a crew trying to keep flying.

I'm big into micromanagement of resources and fighting tooth and nail for every XP and G$ I get, but my friends aren't especially interested. I'd end up having to run the game and do all the bookkeeping for it, which kind of defeats the purpose. They used to refer to the old Battletech RPG as "Space Accounting," and apparently I'm the only one interested in being a Space Accountant.

Jinumon

[Minuteman37]

Originally Posted by johndallman

I think it should say "That French officer, who is now a Colonel due to demonstrated hyper-competence, defects …"

Yeah, I made this threat at 5am. Surprised I was self aware enough to label them ramblings.

[PTTG]

Age of Aquarius:

Strange new forces are at work in this modern world. New resources, new tactics, new threats, all lie hidden beneath a veil of normalcy. Aliens or the supernatural, either way it's an earth-shaking secret bearing down on the entire campaign. The players control two kinds of characters: Agents and Commanders. Agents are essentially replaceable, thought as they grow in power the GOI (Group Of Interest) they work for will likely see gradually better results. The Commanders are the heart and soul of their GOI, and are definitely not replaceable.

In option 1, the players are the officers of a single GOI, one being chief scientist, another in charge of SECOPS, and so on. They work together against a few minor rivals, only to discover partway through that (spoilers) one or more of the PCs and a large portion of the GOI they command is mutinous, and the internal schism brings the game through the mid-term. It finally wraps up with the revelation of the Secret and the transformation of the world -- either shattered by the chaos, ruled by the mutinous faction's dark council, or somehow preserved into the glorious new era.

In option 2, the players are each the chief executive officer of a GOI; they define the direction and nature of the GOI, deal with internal units on their own, and generally send much smaller groups (2-3 agents, only one a PC) in attacks that frequently see them face up against similarly-sized teams from other PC GOIs.

The early game should convince each player and PC that there is no price too high to protect humanity from this threat AND the other factions. Major threats, lots of opportunities to strike dangerous deals and dabble in dark arts.

The midgame focuses on alliances and networking, and growing specialization and tensions. When the Hidden War finally breaks, each PC's organization will hopefully backstab at least one other on their own; if not, keep a few NPC organizations to offer deals in exchange for betrayal. Then the conclusion comes in once the Hidden War is in full swing and a few terrible prices have been paid, as an overwhelming force breaks in and forces the warring factions to unite against it.

The denoument of both focuses on the transformations that human civilization -- and humanity itself -- has undergone to survive the cataclysm, and what life is like on Earth in this new era.

[kirbwarrior]

I have some more generic ones that I don't think I'll ever do;

Scifi with a focus away from "supernatural" such as a "hard" scifi. I've come close with settings with supernatural effects, but they don't have quite the "bite" of focusing on the tech that does exist... that I, of course, don't know about yet.

A sadistic character. I would love to explore that mentality, but there's never quite the right campaign for it.

Any alternate Modern Day setting. I've come up with many, but I often feel like I'm missing something that will make it "click"

As for specifics;

Ivalice, with specific regards to FFTA2. I love the setting, but I don't quite know how I'd run it.

Dragon Quest VII has fantastic potential for any party, since the events are largely affected by player choice while they chase down what is going on. This is more accurately that I don't know if I'll find a party of people who want to do it.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by kirbwarrior

Scifi with a focus away from "supernatural" such as a "hard" scifi.

I don't quite follow. In my mind, by default "scifi" focuses away from the supernatural, though many settings throw in psionics. Do you mean a setting with scifi trappings (spaceships, riveted metal, blasters) that also includes explicitly supernatural elements, though ones dominated by the tech? Or a setting where there are apparently supernatural elements which are in fact just sufficiently advanced tech emulating magic?

[whswhs]

In terms of GURPS, I'd like to run the following someday:

A campaign set in the 1930s, somewhere along the Mississippi Valley, where heroic mafiosi defend Catholic immigrants against the vampire lords of the Ku Klux Klan.

A campaign set in China during the rise of Qin, with xia (martial artists), masters of elemental magic, and Taoist scientists banding together to lead the resistance.

A campaign set in the Brazilian colony at the base of the Martian space elevator two or three centuries from now (I wrote this up as an example city in GURPS City-Stats). Well over toward the hard end of the sf spectrum, with human aspects including family saga, frontier, and noir.

A campaign based on Götterdämmerung, my article for Pyramid 102, where I sketched out a world where four colliding subducted timelines gave rise to human reality shards in the form of superbeings, with 14 different possible power modifiers, not including Super.