Campaign premises I've been mulling over

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Just some campaign premises I've been evaluating, in no particular order.

D&D, exploring a fantasy moon + the Star Frontiers aliens

In an old Mystara module I ran across the idea of a well that, once a year, extends a ladder up to the moon. The premise is the party climbs up and discovers a lunar world reminiscent of Sword and Sandal planetary romances. The gimmick is that there are no humans, elves, dwarves or any of the standard races up there - only the excellent core four alien races of the old Star Frontiers game: dralasites, yazirians, vrusk and sathar (I might replace the yazirians with the sesheyans from Alternity). Only a few natives have ever seen a human or anything like one, so sessions are likely to take on Star Trek first encounter vibes as well.

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The creepiest thing in town (system to be determined)

Intended for duet campaigns online (one player, one GM). In a pleasant fictional town of a fictional modern world, the player is a creepy supernatural thing of their choice: they choose their powers, needs and weaknesses. It could be something standard like a vampire, or some totally unique mythical nightstalker. The GM then swears never to bring another supernatural entity into the campaign unless the character seeks one out. This way the player can truly revel in being the coolest, scariest entity in the plot. They are not invincible however, as a team of humans will always be able to overcome them if they are not careful, and semi-covert monster hunting teams do roam the night.

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D&D, the Foolish Wishes of Pantagargo
In a standard D&D world, there exists an artifact that can reshape a region of reality into that which pleases its owner. Its current owner is the ogre war criminal Pantagargo, who acquired it through pure chance and has used it to turn a secluded valley into a personal paradise fitted to his brutish neuroses. The players will naturally want to take the artifact from the short-sighted tyrant and put it to better use. The goal here is to have a pretext for the players explore the sort of wacky environments that fill 2D platforming games: palaces made of candy filled with chocolate soldiers, mountains of giant sausages and tasty pig monsters, a labyrinth of oversized luxury bathtubs and interconnecting pipes, tropical islands floating on clouds, an endless portrait gallery dedicated to the ogre's magnificence, etc. Pantagargo himself is something of a Wario-like figure in this.

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Mini-6 based modern action campaign with telepaths, proteans, and a little mecha
Another fictional modern world, but this time something closer to the 1980s and the fun action movies we associate with the decade. Players can lean toward crazy gunslinger tricks or martial arts, but can also invest in being one of two types of publicly recognized mutants: telepaths (low level mind-reading and influencing), or proteans (low level body-horror style shapeshifting and regeneration). Toss in some small scale mecha and I guess it's leaning toward Metal Gear Solid, but slightly less absurd and more upbeat (so I guess GI Joe / X-Men cartoon).

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Wuxia, but in 16th Century France (stripped down 4th edition / 5th edition D&D hybrid)
I'm saddened by the paltry output of European swashbuckling in the past few decades compared to Asian martial arts stories, so how about some absolutely crazy, tactically challenging swordfights in my favorite period of French history? Every character would be a special 'Swordsman' class in a system that would be 5th edition D&D with some of the tactical mechanics and choices of of 4th edition (gasp!) mixed in. Each session would feature only one or two set-piece battles, but they would be doozies.

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The Moving Castle
(System unknown)

Inspired by the Miyazaki film (I've never read the book), the PCs are wizards who run a business in a mobile castle. There's a magic door that can open to four different locations (usually villages, towns or cities). The characters each have an alter ego with magical disguise who sells something particular in each town and also acquires odd jobs.

Each PC has ties to each settlement as well as a rival/trouble that will pester and pursue them.

Could happen in a variety of time periods too. I think it would be neat.
 
Given the continued disproportion between the accumulating rate of awesome inspiring material being released, and the inelastic availability of time to plan and run a game, these ideas have already been posted elsewhere in some form.

ACKS: Twilight of the Dragons. "A science fantasy Dragonlance where the bad guys won." Ubiquitous and mysterious dragon attacks all but wiped civilization a generation or two ago, the world claws its way back to normalcy from beneath ash, ruins, famine, zealots and warlords, all the while the dark forces that first set the cataclysm in motion stir.

Ninjas & Superspies: Tournament of Shadows. "Bloodsport and Street Fighter meet Casino Royale." Hong Kong, the 1980s. The biggest, bloodiest and strangest underground, no-holds-barred martial arts tournament is about to begin. Fighters of every imaginable style gather from every corner of the globe to prove their superiority, to earn the million-pound prize and to settle old scores, all under the watchful eye of the wealthiest and most debauched businessmen of the Pacific Rim — including many dangerous and elusive criminals. PCs can be fighters or socialites, criminals, law enforcement or loose cannons; the Tournament of Shadows is what they make of it.

I'll certainly post more stuff later.
 
I have a strange advantage as a GM with my group in that my players are largely cinema-illiterate. The cop just never watches movies at all, beyond the occasional horror flick maybe once a year (last year he saw the Witch basically because I forced him to, the year before that he saw Human Centipede, I guess out of curiosity. To my knowledge he saw nothing else over that time period). The Engineer and her girlfriend have no knowledge of anything prior to the late 90s, and even then its solidly mainstream only. The dancer grew up in a home without a TV, and the only films she seems to have seen are family-orientated musicals. And so on. In contrast, I'm a huge zoephile, with a taste for the obscure.

In other words, I find I can plunder classic films for RPG premises quite liberally without concern. As such, there's a number of games I'd like to run based on classic films from my youth:

The Last Starfighters
The premise of the film, basically, but updated and extended to a group. A group of teenagers from a rural town beat a co-op videogame and are recruited to go into space and take part in an intergalactic war.

Time Bandits
(With or without Little People). Irascible rogues steal a map to the holes in reality from the Supreme Being and travel randomly through history and beyond attempting to get rich.

The Omega Men
A plague has turned the entire human population into vampiric mutants except for a single small group of survivors holed up in a skyscraper in the remnants of (insert city)
 
The Last Starfighters
The premise of the film, basically, but updated and extended to a group. A group of teenagers from a rural town beat a co-op videogame and are recruited to go into space and take part in an intergalactic war.

What system would you use for this?

The Butcher said:
Ninjas & Superspies: Tournament of Shadows. "Bloodsport and Street Fighter meet Casino Royale." Hong Kong, the 1980s. The biggest, bloodiest and strangest underground, no-holds-barred martial arts tournament is about to begin. Fighters of every imaginable style gather from every corner of the globe to prove their superiority, to earn the million-pound prize and to settle old scores, all under the watchful eye of the wealthiest and most debauched businessmen of the Pacific Rim — including many dangerous and elusive criminals. PCs can be fighters or socialites, criminals, law enforcement or loose cannons; the Tournament of Shadows is what they make of it

Sweet. That's the kind of thing I'd probably run as an arc in my Mini-6 premise.

Necrozius said:
The Moving Castle

I like this premise because I've had really positive experiences with PCs running a stable business as their homebase.
 
The Last Starfighters
The premise of the film, basically, but updated and extended to a group. A group of teenagers from a rural town beat a co-op videogame and are recruited to go into space and take part in an intergalactic war.

I've thought of doing that, but with mecha. It was sparked by seeing someone post material from their Mekton-game-inside-a-TFOS (Teenagers From Outer Space)-game. :grin:

Beacon Point (Fragged Empire)
The PCs, being salvagers, find themselves hitting the mother lode - and all the headaches that go along with it - when they discover and restart an abandoned navigational beacon/trade station. Can they make a go of it or will the Corp take over?

For the record, "The Lucky 13th" is a title I love because of the inherent contrariness, and I've used it for multiple campaign titles - none of which have seen the light of day...

The Lucky 13th (Savage Worlds/Weird War II/Achtung! Cthulhu!/Gear Krieg)
During World War II, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) recruited Americans from a variety of “eccentric” walks of life as well as members of the U.S. military into the Special Operations Group. Their mission: investigate, corroborate, and sabotage any and all occult and weird science activities undertaken by the Third Reich. Officially, the group did not exist. Unofficially, they were known as the “Lucky” 13th...

The Lucky 13th (Mekton Zeta)
When aliens invade the Earth, the fate of humankind lies in the hands of a band of misfit trainee mecha pilots. Those poor aliens don't stand a chance...

NovaGeneX (Mekton Zeta/CP2020/CG2.0)
The Starblade Battalion was an MZ campaign setting meant to tie into CP2020, and I found it much more palatable than CP3.0 (*urk*). But what stuck out in my mind was - what happened to the CyberEvolved? So, I came up with a campaign idea that tied CP2020, CG2.0, and Starblade Batallion (SB) together. The Carbon Plague had been released by AIs working with a number of revolutionary types. By 2060, the CorpGov had found out the truth and initiated a technocidal agenda against AIs. After a century of living in the shadows online and in real life, the cyberevolved and AIs flee Earth in several arks and find refuge beyond the Pleiades. With the cyberevolved now a "myth", NovaGeneX (a subsidiary of Solingen), has created a new super soldier program utilizing a refined version of the Carbon Plague. Unfortunately, they didn't count on their new weapons having minds of their own. The PCs have to find a way out of the corporate worlds to refuge with the Starblade Batallion, or even beyond the Pleiades...

Harl
 
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I've thought of doing that, but with mecha. It was sparked by seeing someone post material from their Mekton-game-inside-a-TFOS (Teenagers From Outer Space)-game. :grin:

Harl


Ha, I pitched TFOS, basically using the premise for the Galaxy High cartoon, but it was a no-go for my group, they dont have the appreciation for 80s sillyness that I do, unfortunately.
 
Ha, I pitched TFOS, basically using the premise for the Galaxy High cartoon, but it was a no-go for my group, they dont have the appreciation for 80s sillyness that I do, unfortunately.
My version would have been strictly Mekton Zeta with the Relationship With Parents (RWP) stat tacked on. :smile:

Speaking of TFOS, that reminds me of my sole campaign idea for the game. Please pardon the wall of text...

Superdimensional High School-13 (SDHS-13; Teenagers From Outer Space)
In the year 1999, humanity made first contact with another alien species. Not really by accident but not entirely on purpose, Terran astronauts discovered the Garalians in what could best be described as a "cosmic fender-bender." Although it has yet to be proven who was at fault (something which has given both Garalian and Terran insurance companies massive headaches), the incident heralded a new age for both species.

Members of the Interstel Federation, the Garalians reported their findings to the Council of Sentients. And so, a diplomatic team composed of the Interstel Federation's brightest and most renowned beings were sent to Earth. Unfortunately, what they failed to tell Earth was that they were TEENAGERS! After a full semester of wreaking cultural and technological havoc, the young diplomats reported their findings -- Earth was cool and most likely to become the Interstel Federation's next member. The resulting influx of alien families filled Earth's schools to the brim and it appeared there was no end in sight to the flood. To control the influx of aliens and the cultural havoc they (knowingly or unknowingly) wreaked, the governments of Earth worked together to create the Alien Control Officers. The ACOs were made responsible for immigration and education of the new residents and they did their jobs very well.

The classroom problem was later solved by the Parnathian scientist Gragakakakakatak. Utilizing his knowledge of tesseracts and dimensional travel and his fondness for Earth anime, Gragakakakakatak designed the world's first superdimensional high school. Using bent space generators, he could take a regular-sized high school and expand its capacity infinitely. As the space problem was finally eased, the flood of newcomers to Earth dwindled. As a result, the ACOs got bored and started looking for any excuse to deport an alien. At the same time, old Grag disappeared during an experiment involving his bent-space generators and somehow managed to take every single BSG owner's manual with him.

With the number of incoming alien students hitting a plateau, some schools were forced to lay off teachers and stop offering some classes. Unfortunately, because they couldn't modulate how much space the BSGs provided, not everybody got the message. Now, deep in the bowels of SDHS-13, some teachers still await their classes while others lurk the halls seeking someone or something to teach (be afraid, be very afraid). Meanwhile, old science projects run amok, creating new and unusual forms of life...


Harl
 
I'm googling Starhawks RPG but getting unsatisfactory results. What is it?
Maybe Tristram meant Star Frontiers: Knight Hawks? I know when Zebulon's Guide came out they moved Star Frontiers over to the same system as Marvel Super Heroes (FASERIP)...

Harl
 
I'm googling Starhawks RPG but getting unsatisfactory results. What is it?

Maybe Tristram meant Star Frontiers: Knight Hawks? I know when Zebulon's Guide came out they moved Star Frontiers over to the same system as Marvel Super Heroes (FASERIP)...

Knight Hawks is what I meant. Zebulon's guide added the resolution chart, but I dont think it was otherwise the FASERIP system, just part of the same family of games such as Conan and 2nd or 3rd edition Gammaworld.

Knight Hawks is sort of a standalone starship combat game presented as a supplement for Star Frontiers but really its own thing. I've always admired it.
 
I have a strange advantage as a GM with my group in that my players are largely cinema-illiterate. The cop just never watches movies at all, beyond the occasional horror flick maybe once a year (last year he saw the Witch basically because I forced him to, the year before that he saw Human Centipede, I guess out of curiosity. To my knowledge he saw nothing else over that time period). The Engineer and her girlfriend have no knowledge of anything prior to the late 90s, and even then its solidly mainstream only. The dancer grew up in a home without a TV, and the only films she seems to have seen are family-orientated musicals. And so on. In contrast, I'm a huge zoephile, with a taste for the obscure.

In other words, I find I can plunder classic films for RPG premises quite liberally without concern.

Spoiled! :mad:

Well, you know what you have to do now, don't you? You have to make a pastische of all their media familiarities into one bizzaro nightmare game. This way each theme one member can take the table lead and explain what's expected of them!

Something like they start off as the sitcom "Friends," everyone act like they are in Rogers & Hammerstein musicals a la "King & I" or "Sound of Music," and then delve into the horror of arthouse surrealism like "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari," :eek: (preferably with them towards the end in pantomime to keep with the silent film aesthetic, as you blare Malice Mizer harpsichord rock).

o_O You must offer the best to your victi... er, I mean, players, yes? ;)
 
I wish I had the specific player talent to pull off a musical RPG session.
 
Been thinking about a lot of different type campaign/games. At this very moment if I was to pick one it would probably be something along the lines of Hawaiian Dick.
 
It's been a while since I last homebrewed a fantasy setting from the ground up, yet each of the fantasy games on my to-run shortlist seems to beg for one that plays to their particulat strengths.

I already have one for ACKS — the draconic apocalypse thing that begun as a joke in Dragonlance's expense and sort of took a life of its own. Basically a setting that is to Dragonlance as FFG's classic Midnight is to LotR.

For Mythras I want a sword-and-sorcery setting with Conanesque and Antiquity overtones that would allow me to showcase every magic subsystem in the book. Bits and pieces from Monster Island, Xoth (XP series of Mongoose Legend modules) and +Jeff Talanian's Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea are bound to make their way into it.

Savage Worlds is the trickiest of them all. It's such a carefree and handwavey system that I want to use it for something colorful, over-the-top and frankly videogamey. I want steampunk and/or magitech elements. Black powder, airships, steam- or magic-powered mecha, the works. Influences include WoW's Azeroth and D&D's Eberron.

For Zweihänder what I want is pretty much The Old World 2.0 with influences from ASoIaF/GoT, Dragon Warriors, Shadow of the Demon Lord, Diablo, The Witcher and of course the original WFRP Old World. You gotta have Medieval caricature (complete with droit de seigneur and other Enlightenment myths about the "Dark Ages") and you gotta have one or more potentially apocalyptic threats brewing in the background.

Good thing I have published adventures to plug into most of these games (Dwimmermount and Sakkara for ACKS, Monster Island for Mythras, WFRP1 modules for Zweihänder) in case I fail to come through by the end of my tabletop gaming leave (likely given my lack of focus).
 
I know the feeling, wanting to do something big but constantly changing your mind as to what, then compromising when time runs out and pining for what could have been.

I just have too much freedom.

I'm with you. I've had the urge to run D&D again, so starting with my B/X set as a base, I have been building my own custom edition and setting. There are just so many possibilities though, and I can't use them all. Everytime I get a piece of my rules or setting finalized, I find or have another idea that make me want to revise what I have already done.

In a recent episode of the Bedrock Podcast, Brendan mentioned GMs that prepare and prepare for games they never finish. I had to laugh and say that I was worried that I was turning into one at the moment. While I have been playing in games, I haven't run one session this year. I need to just set a deadline for myself.

In fact, I will do that now. I have to have this in some playable form by August 6th and start recruiting players. Now I have some pressure to force choices rather than spending hours browsing OSR blogs and pretending that counts as working on my campaign.
 
In a recent episode of the Bedrock Podcast, Brendan mentioned GMs that prepare and prepare for games they never finish. I had to laugh and say that I was worried that I was turning into one at the moment. While I have been playing in games, I haven't run one session this year. I need to just set a deadline for myself.
Oh, I'm definitely one of those. I put together campaign folders on OneDrive of half-realized ideas, or some mostly-fleshed-out plans, and only a fraction of them reach the gaming table. If I'm not actively running a campaign, my attention drifts around. Sometimes back and forth between campaign ideas.

What helps me get on track is having a deadline. A session has been scheduled and I've got x-weeks to get a campaign prepared. Then I'll keep my focus and get shit done. Without structure I kind of flail around.
 
Mage: the Awakening: Pax Britannica. What happens when the Seers tap into a nation's nightmare? Totalitarian dystopias have long been the UK's recurring nightmare, with London as its focal point. Today, the venerable Consilium of London comes under attack from all sides, as stuffy Diamond greybeards and slick Libertines alike fall before a renewed offensive led by Mammon, who ruthlessly commoditizes every nook and cranny of London, and Panopticon, more powerful than ever with cameras in every corner and smartphones on everyone's hands. Yet the latter also stirs the dystopic terrors of London's subconscious and coalesces them into a new, and maybe unstoppable Abyssal intelligence — the Annunaki known as Pax Britannica.
 
Been reading about Geist: The Sin Eaters and Beast: The Primordial, thinking about how those games failed and succeeded. Came up with a sort of synthesis for a 1-on-1 campaign:

You were a decent, ordinary person until someone murdered you in act of appalling injustice. As your soul was on the verge of departing for some otherworldly fate, a vague entity, a personification of vigilantism both frightening and comforting, offered you a chance for revenge. Enraged by your horrid fate, you accepted.

One week later you rose from the dead as a monster built from your own nightmares. You hunted down your killer, terrified them into a total breakdown, butchered their body, and consumed what you thought was their wicked soul. You figured that was the end of it, time to move on. That had been the deal offered by the entity, right? It was kind of hard to remember...

But you didn't 'move on'. You became human again. Mostly human. You still had the ability to turn into a horror movie creature, and you discovered to your distress that you were hungry for... something. After a jarring encounter with someone who knew you before, you fled from your hometown, anyone who could identify you as a supposedly dead person.

During your wandering period you realized you could 'see' through people who had committed awful acts of injustice. Their wickedness was like a sickly purple aura beneath their skin. You had the urge to transform, slay them, rip them open to consume that aura. The first time you gave in to that urge you saw something else: your victim's soul departing this world, apparently unconnected to the wickedness you had just gorged on.

As you built a new life you fancied yourself a superhero, eater of the wretched, perhaps even the liberator of their polluted souls. But then you realized the wicked aura you craved sometimes manifested before the person had committed any crimes. Was it right to kill them then? Were they beyond redemption, fated to commit injustice? You tried to observe the lives of these 'innocents', to determine if their fates were sealed. You haven't reached any satisfactory conclusions. Meanwhile, you still hunger.

Two more things. First, now when you hear myths about regional monsters and haunted places, you wonder if you are alone in your condition. If there are others, maybe you could figure out the mystery together?

Second, a group of well-armed people tried to kill you recently, saying they could 'see' your true monstrosity while rejecting your attempts to explain your murders as unverifiable excuses. You dealt with them in self defense, but then another stranger 'saw' through you just last week. Are you becoming prey as well as predator?
 
Just some campaign premises I've been evaluating, in no particular order.

The creepiest thing in town (system to be determined)

Intended for duet campaigns online (one player, one GM). In a pleasant fictional town of a fictional modern world, the player is a creepy supernatural thing of their choice: they choose their powers, needs and weaknesses.

I don't know how well it would work for a 1-on-1 campaign, as relationship webs are built into the core mechanics, but this is basically Monsterhearts.

Mini-6 based modern action campaign with telepaths, proteans, and a little mecha
Another fictional modern world, but this time something closer to the 1980s and the fun action movies we associate with the decade. Players can lean toward crazy gunslinger tricks or martial arts, but can also invest in being one of two types of publicly recognized mutants: telepaths (low level mind-reading and influencing), or proteans (low level body-horror style shapeshifting and regeneration). Toss in some small scale mecha and I guess it's leaning toward Metal Gear Solid, but slightly less absurd and more upbeat (so I guess GI Joe / X-Men cartoon).

There was a D20/Savage Worlds sourcebook that was basically G.I. Joe: the RPG, called Strike Force 7. It really nails the feel (but IIRC there was some controversy about some misused art)

Wuxia, but in 16th Century France (stripped down 4th edition / 5th edition D&D hybrid)
I'm saddened by the paltry output of European swashbuckling in the past few decades compared to Asian martial arts stories

Three seasons of The Musketeers, two of Black Sails, at least one Three Musketeers movie, a couple of Peter Pan derivatives, and all of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise? We've had more European swashbuckling in the last ten years than there's been in the last seventy.

That said, check out The Musketeer, which is the Three Musketeers with fight choreography by Xin-Xin Xiong.

The Moving Castle
Inspired by the Miyazaki film (I've never read the book), the PCs are wizards who run a business in a mobile castle. There's a magic door that can open to four different locations (usually villages, towns or cities).

I want to run an anthology game set in the world of John deChancie's Castle Perilous.


The Last Starfighters
The premise of the film, basically, but updated and extended to a group. A group of teenagers from a rural town beat a co-op videogame and are recruited to go into space and take part in an intergalactic war.

Ah! Somewhere I have the trailer script I wrote for The Next Starfighters, which was about a bunch of kids from Earth joining the Star League's Starfighter division and trying to prove themselves despite being from a primitive backwater planet that people only know about because Flight Commander Rogan came from there.
 
My next game is Mythras, slightly inspired by the Angus McBride Rolemaster covers and a dash of Earthdawn. It's a supernatural post apocalyptic game of survival, exploration and discovery. (Found that inspiration :grin:)

Prior to that I was working on a multi generational pseudo Celtic/Norse sandbox heavily inspired by a combination of the Deverry Cycle and the Rjurik highlands. Also Mythras.

As mentioned in a previous thread I'm forever tweaking a Smallville based game about a town called Valhalla Falls and the gods who find themselves living in it.
 
As mentioned in a previous thread I'm forever tweaking a Smallville based game about a town called Valhalla Falls and the gods who find themselves living in it.

I found the biggest weakness in Smallville is that it absolutely assumes every character in the group knows each other and has a well-defined relationship before play begins. It doesn't support develop-in-play at all. If you have players that can jump right into that improv style then you're golden but IME this is very rare.

If I were to run Smallville again I would steal the character generation rule from Hillfolk where every character must have at least one other character that they need something from and a reason they can't have it.
 
I assume it's an artifact of the license, but there should have at least been a bit in the Watchtower Guide on "what if nobody knows each other at the start". Even if the concept is perfectly doable in Smallville, a campaign frame like Heroes is tough to get started.
 
So I've been mulling over/poking at a few ideas.

First up, a sort of Fantasy Dark Ages Britain for either GURPS or RQIII. Depending on what day it is. I found a map online and I've been gradually attaching a setting to it, customising as I go.

Next would be a Cyberpunk 2020 game drawing heavily on RoboCop 3, bits of Star Trek and some vintage (as 2020 is now) modules. All seasoned with the usual 2020 hijinks.

Stormbringer is another one I keep coming back to. With a campaign drawing on the music of Iron Maiden for ideas. Particularly the setlist for when I saw them a few months back.

I'd really like to have a go at mixing GURPS Black Ops with GURPS CthulhuPunk and GURPS Voodoo: The Shadow War. I think that could be a spectacular success or failure, depending how it played out.
 
So I've been mulling over/poking at a few ideas.

First up, a sort of Fantasy Dark Ages Britain for either GURPS or RQIII. Depending on what day it is. I found a map online and I've been gradually attaching a setting to it, customising as I go.

Next would be a Cyberpunk 2020 game drawing heavily on RoboCop 3, bits of Star Trek and some vintage (as 2020 is now) modules. All seasoned with the usual 2020 hijinks.

Stormbringer is another one I keep coming back to. With a campaign drawing on the music of Iron Maiden for ideas. Particularly the setlist for when I saw them a few months back.

I'd really like to have a go at mixing GURPS Black Ops with GURPS CthulhuPunk and GURPS Voodoo: The Shadow War. I think that could be a spectacular success or failure, depending how it played out.

Even though it's not your system of choice you could check out Mythic Britain by TDM.

Love the Stormbringer idea though.
 
Even though it's not your system of choice you could check out Mythic Britain by TDM.

Love the Stormbringer idea though.
I've got Mythic Britain. There's a lot of good stuff in there, but I'm reaching more to the Mabinogion and Prydain by way of Slaine. Seasoned with songs like Emerald and Roisin Dubh by Thin Lizzy. It's not great art or any of that kind of aspirational pretentiousness. More like a love letter to the kind of books and comics I was reading as a kid. As well as the imagery of bands like Thin Lizzy and Led Zeppelin.
 
If you like Slaine it's the Red Branch Cycle not the Mabinogion you want to be reading lol :smile:

I'd love to see someone do a new Slaine RPG.

Sorry it's called the Ulster Cycle now.
 
If you like Slaine it's the Red Branch Cycle not the Mabinogion you want to be reading lol :smile:

I'd love to see someone do a new Slaine RPG.

Sorry it's called the Ulster Cycle now.
I'm Welsh, so it's the Mabinogion for me. And Slaine for me isn't the full colour Simon Bisley art. It's the early madness drawn by Massimo Bellardinelli and Glenn Fabry in the 80s.
 
When and if my players and I wind down my current campaign or I can get another time slot going I am going to run in the setting by Paul Edwin Zimmer called The Dark Border. The books are out of print (I blame the covers) but the readers in my campaign know them and Mary Ellen won't care.

The premise is that there is this expanding area of darkness that is eating the world but it isn't close to taking over the whole world yet. Beyond the Border is a dark, almost Lovecraftian, land where every sapient being lusts to be the Last Survivor but they cooperate to make the rest of the world miserable and expand the Dark Border.

Meanwhile, the human world continually fights about "Who gets to be King now?" and "I don't like your face, let's fight." (I know it sounds a lot like Game of Thrones but it was written years earlier and Zimmer is a better writer.) but the God-like Hastur and some humans keep their eyes on the main problem. There's much less scope for human magicians than in most fantasy but the number of cultures and the warriors they produce are brilliant. There are Elves but few other familiar non-humans from fantasy.

I'm editing the magic and creating new character and monster types for my Glory Road Roleplay system and could start a campaign with a couple of weeks notice.
 
I'm Welsh, so it's the Mabinogion for me. And Slaine for me isn't the full colour Simon Bisley art. It's the early madness drawn by Massimo Bellardinelli and Glenn Fabry in the 80s.
Me too :grin: Cymru am Byth.

I love the Mabinogion but Slaine is so obviously a Cú Chulainn rip off (a bloody good one) I had to recommend the Cycle in case you hadn't read it.
 
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Me too :grin: Cymru am Byth.

I love the Mabinogion but Slaine is so obviously a Cú Chulainn rip off (a bloody good one) I had to recommend the Cycle in case you hadn't read it.
Cymru am Byth!

Which reminds me that I need to get up to Comwy castle and see the dragons while they're still on their summer tour.

I haven't read the Irish myth cycles in so long that I keep getting bits mixed up with Slaine. Which I also haven't read in *mumblemumble* years. I need to go back and revisit that stuff.I stopped reading 2000AD around the time Slaine went from gonzo proto-Celt with a big axe into something more drawn from myth and legend. And in colour.
 
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