Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Lorded Over

The siren call of which I spoke almost a year ago is something I'm hearing again. Back then, it spurred me to set up a Dragon Warriors play-by-post, which has been a lot of fun to run, but has its own problems.

With my recent acquisition of quality old-school style products like Labyrinth Lord, Stonehell Dungeon, and The Dungeon Alphabet, I'm back to seriously considering running a Dungeons & Dragons campaign again, but this time using the Labyrinth Lord rules (based on the "basic" version of the game) rather than 4e. Specifically, I want to run a game focused on a megadungeon, the boomtown surrounding it, and rivalries among the bands of adventurers delving into its depths. I have some neat little ideas that I think will give my own spin on an well-worn concept.

What I'm currently trying to figure out is how to do it. I could try running it at the local comics and games shop, but I'm about to start playtesting something that will take at least a few weeks (that's literally all I can say regarding that subject), and I also want to give the new Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space game a fair shot. I wouldn't be running Who, but it's difficult to see how I could finagle running a game on one night and playing on another in the week. Players have enough difficulty pulling off one night a week, myself included, and that's assuming they'd even be willing to give something so old and crusty a shot. I doubt they'd be interested for even a short game, let alone a setup that would require as much long-term investment as I'd hope to be able to get.

What to do...?

3 comments:

  1. Sounds like a fine pickle you've gotten yourself into! I have a hard time gaming more than every other week.

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  2. I keep getting the idea for a campaign where the PCs are in a more adversarial role. Each running there on team. Exploring the mega-dungeon for there own goals/ends. PC teams may "team-up" then go their separate ways again (or they might try and kill each other).

    Don't know how well it would work from a gameplay stand-point. Might work better for PBP since there would be less direct player interaction.

    Might just be a bad idea.

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  3. @ elhijo:

    I think it's an awesome idea. It'd be difficult (or impossible) to do as a tabletop RPG with all the players able to see what the others were doing, though. PBP would work better, but would still be work-intensive as hell for the referee and would require a lot of heavily invested players.

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