Campaign prospectus time again

[RogerBW]

(Not stated because the group already knows it: these would be run under GURPS.)

A Very Distant Mirror

The setting: an alternate 14th-century Europe. Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror is not required reading, but will certainly inform my attitudes.

The characters: people who don't fit well into the standard societal roles. Minor knights with impoverished estates, mercenaries, junior priests and wizards, general ne'er-do-wells. Elves are most of the nobility (and, at best, whimsical and childish); dwarves who live in human society are generally looked down on.

The activities: go down holes in the ground, kill the monsters, take the treasure. For profit, or to defend the locals, or to recover items that wizards will pay for; ideally all three. If that's too safe for you, there's always war, or the royal court.

Notes: at least two popes, mystics and visionaries with influence at court, tremendous wastes of human life.

Passage Crew

The setting: the classic Traveller universe, specifically the Spinward Marches.

The characters: people with good starship operation skills who don't mind taking a long job away from home in return for uncertain pay.

The activities: take a second-hand starship from A to B. You'll get paid a small amount for doing this, but you get to keep any profit you make on the way, via trading, haulage, or informal opportunities.

Notes: an experimental take on the traditional Free Trader game, deemphasising the "keep ahead of the mortgage" aspect, giving you an explicit goal (and deadline), but allowing for a reasonable amount of choice about where to go and what to do. This is a campaign that has a defined conclusion.

Hurricane Season

The setting: Florida, modern day, with supernatural monsters on the rise.

The characters: people who don't really deal well with authority, but do have cool monster-fighting powers. (GURPS Monster Hunters templates.)

The activities: investigate problems that will often have monsters behind them; deal with the monsters, usually by fighting them. There will of course be a bigger problem to be uncovered.

Notes: I'll probably do this with a TV season structure, so after some number of monster-of-the-week adventures you'll be in a position to confront the major threat. After which there might well be another major threat for the next season. Not every problem will necessarily lead to a monster fight; sometimes it'll be human strangeness, and sometimes you may find yourselves in sympathy with the monsters. The authorities will not be sympathetic; you'll need to stay under their radar.

Carl Hiaasen and Tim Dorsey will be major influences on the mundane-life side (this is Weird Florida, where every second car has a trunk full of cocaine and/or automatic weapons, and the police are mostly just the biggest gang in town). For the supernatural, I've been watching Wynonna Earp and Lost Girl.