Thoughts about my Saturday Game

I’d do this just as a message in discord, but I can’t write there at work, and it’s going to be long as I’m just going to be SoCing this.

Eberron Campagin

I’m not feeling Eberron, ATM. I’m not sure what it is. There’s a lot of thing about it that’s giving me pause. First, still haven’t heard from Ryan and Katie. I’m not assuming anything bad, life happens and at really bad times. When the chips are down, D&D isn’t a priority. Ideally, they’ll let us know what up when they have time to think about it.

Katie being the one in charge is also unfortunate.

I don’t like being down 2 players. I have to psyche myself up a LOT to run a game for less than 3 players.  I can always run for 3, although 5 is probably my desired max for an online game.

Speaking of online, it’s just not the same to run games online vs in person. That could be another thing. I’m not looking forward to trying to run some of the Eberron things I’m hoping to do with this campaign on a VTT. Maybe it could work, but I’ve honed my in-person theater of the mind combat until you can tell it’s supposed to be knife shaped. Not all of those skills transfer over.

And, probably the most important thing, I’m out of practice. I had balls in the air and they’ve fallen at this point in time. I got a good investigation out of the Arena arc, so that went well for me. Depending on what we decide on, I might jump to the end of the King’s Clash when we resume (maybe with comics in-between?)

I would like to point out that this is not me deciding things. I’m just complaining atm, and we can figure out a plan. My big compliant and the purpose for all of this is: I haven’t felt like preparing the Eberron Campaign.

Hexcrawl

The Isle of Dread hexcrawl has been a great experiment for me. I’m learning a lot, and I’m building up my personal ruleset for hexcrawling into a complete set of rules that get better each time I run. But, while it’s nice to have the Isle of Dread as a fall back, I’m not enamored of the place. It’s great practice, but if we made the Hexcrawl a focus of the Saturday games instead of Matt panicking for content, I’d want to build a ‘crawl of my own. That would involve all sorts of work and session 0 and stuff, but it could be rewarding.

And, FYI, the things I don’t like about the Isle of dread ARE fixable. I just haven’t yet, because I’ve seen it as a temporary game, and I’m trying to do long term work, like writing 16 pages of Hexcrawl rules, rather than fix how a giant works into the island.

D&D… In SPACE!!!

I read The Martian recently, and now I’m jonesing for a Sci-Fi game. I have no idea of what that will entail, as Sci-Fi has a lot broader range of potential than fantasy. Either that, or fantasy is just super comfortable to slip into and I can make assumptions that everyone will just go with. I’ve tried to run sci-fi games, though, and I NEED to have everyone on the same page before I start. And that’s not just “start running the game,” but rather “Start building the system.” I’m not promising that the system will be entirely bespoke, but there is a LOT of sci-fi and variations out there, and I might have to search a bunch of systems to find something that works for all of us.

Other systems

I have a lot of other systems I might be interested in running. I haven’t run most of them, but if there is some weird itch that D&D hasn’t scratched for you, I might be able to satiate that. I’ve recently done a rebuild of how AcqInc works that I’m still play testing, which includes an interesting system for basically being venture capitalists and starting businesses. I have a system called Pendragon I did a write up for recently that I was really excited about for a while (I even wrote another thing about inspirations for that type of play). I have Monster of the Week, Masks, Mousegard, The OSR bug has been nibbling me as I read old Dungeon magazines. I picked up a system called 5 Torches Deep, which is a 5e OSR mashup.

I have rules somewhere for a 5e Modern that I was hacking together for Ryan, I have a bunch of interesting ideas for weird gameplays, like what if the party was all dragons.

There’s also all sorts of worlds and playstyles. We did an Arabian Nights a year or so ago. I have some half finished notes for a Viking game somewhere. And there is a Level 20 game that I could build a new setting for.

I also have an idea for a D&D apocalypse, where all spells become one level cheaper. (Fire ball becomes a level 2 spell, cure wounds is a cantrip, etc.) I have no idea what that would mean entirely, but I bet it’s not great for the world.

I also have some high level dungeons, like Dead in Thay, a megadungeon which seems really hard to run at a table, but could work very well on R20.

Pass the Seat

I love being a DM, but if someone wanted to take the hot seat for practice or training, I make a pretty good assistant DM.

Skraz

This is about opening a dialogue. I have a lot of potential that ain’t doing much, so let’s get that moving.

One note, though, I’m going to get furious if someone says “I don’t care what we do.” Because, A, it’s not true, and B, it doesn’t help the discussion. Tell me something you like, or don’t like. Help shape what we do. Saying “I don’t care” or “I’ll play whatever” is shifting the work for creating the game to others. That can work for AL, where you’re just a seat warmer and the DM is running whatever, but I need higher buy-in than that. Even if it is to say “I don’t want to deal with Fey entities anymore” (Which 6/6 of my Tuesday night players did in their survey, btw.)

If you don’t want to complain in pubic, shoot me a PM.

If you have any ideas of what we should do, drop them here or in the discord.