Casting Shadows

The prompt for Day 6 of #RPGaDay asks us to imagine a situation wherein we have a full week free and can fill that week with roleplaying games. It asks us to describe how we would use that time.

I would love to be in that situation, and there are a few ways that I would love to use a block of time like that. The first that leapt to mind was to run a series of one-shots, two a day, for different games. It would be a blast to get introductory sessions for 14 systems done, possibly recorded to share and discuss on my channel at some point. The second thing to take root and sprout into a fully-formed idea was to take Aces&Eights down, and to run a wild and sprawling sandbox in the Crucible with marathon sessions, incredible food, and dreams of becoming barons of the Old West. The strength of that feeling took my mind back a lot of years to the last time such things were a regular part of my gaming… before themes other than forms of conquest took hold of my gaming. That mental journey caused a third thing to leap to mind: to consider flying back to Canada, getting my university group back together, and trying Masks of Nyarlathotep again. Despite what is going to be described after this, that would be the thing I would go for except too much time would be lost to travel, and that campaign is as immense as it is amazing. A week might not be enough time…unless the players had even more time and all came here to Korea to play…

With my mind on running printed campaigns I of course thought about the loose campaign in Parallel Lines which would be a fantastic challenge to try to complete given its variety and scope – even for Luther Arkwright, but that very thought led me to what has been what I have understood to be my answer right up until the point that I sat down to write these words: Mythic Britain.

I fully expected to use Mythic Britain and Logres as my answer. A solid week of all-day gaming to explore the setting, get embroiled in the subtle and compelling scenarios provided by Lawrence Whitaker and Paul Mitchener, and branch off from there into perils of our own devising would be a superb way to spend a week with a beloved system, a setting close to my heart, and good friends who can appreciate both.

Then, as I began to compose this response, a funny thing happened. My eyes fell across three books sitting on my desk, Qin, Yggdrasil, and Keltia, and I decided to put them back in their places on the shelf. In doing so, my eyes fell across the cover of Living Legends, the superhero RPG by Monkey House Games released while waiting for the outcome of the long battle over their rights to the venerable Villains & Vigilantes. That led me to V&V, and that led me through Aberrant and Heroes Unlimited onto my hard drive where even more supers games, like Superworld and Marvel Super Heroes spend their time, waiting the chance to spawn dreams of standing up to impossible odds, opposing villainy, and being strong in the face of internal and external weakness.

Spinning with ideas, my head rolled around the room a bit then came to rest on one final and ultimately chosen idea. This is an idea which owes its existence to a series of blog posts on the Comics Madness blog, without a doubt.

If I had a week in which I had nothing I had to do, and could be free to do nothing but gaming. I think it would be satisfying on many levels to take a journey through superhero gaming as a generation game, but with a slight difference. Not only would the game focus on heroes of different eras, it would involve playing different heroes in different systems, not only for the fun, but maybe as a not-so-subtle metaphor for the great changes in circumstance, but not in trouble-making our species causes~

That, I think, would be an entertaining and novel way to spend a week of full-on gaming. Working our way through generations of heroes from genesis to maturity and ultimate retirement, with new waves of vigilantes facing a world that seems alien and different to the masked eyes of older heroes – each new generation being conceived and run in a different system.

What would you do with your week?

Question 7: Describe your most impactful roleplaying session.