Summer Hiatus, Autumn Plans

Summer is here. My gaming group and I are all busy doing summery, outdoorsy things. I’ve thought about the next gaming season and things I want to try out. Maybe you’ll find some of my ideas interesting too!

Ideas for game play

• Joint character creation — the players create characters together and know about each others characters
• Players declare attacks — all attacks must be described, but not in detail (how do you attack that bugbear?)
• Players narrate their own failures — when a player fails a skill check he decides how he failed, and tells the group
• Flashbacks, flash forward, in media res and dream sequences for storytelling
• Players decide on character and party goals
• Strategic D&D — meta-gaming is encouraged, it’s all about doing max damage and getting through challenging combat encounters, with little time spent on other things

D&D campaign ideas

• Start at level 0 – the players are all peasants with minimal combat training and in over their heads trying to rescue their village
• Start at 4th level, use powers, classes, feats and so from the new books
• The players are all tribal characters
• The players are all gnomes
• The players are all monks
• A setting where religion doesn’t exist
• A setting where animals have rights, possibly all animals can talk
• Vampire hunters campaign
• A campaign where dreams are important, including dream combat like in Changeling: The Lost

Try campaigns in these RPGs

• Werewolf: The Forsaken
• Mage: The Awakening
• Vampire: The Requiem
• Changeling: The Lost
• Cthulhu (d20)
• Cthulhu (Chaosium)
• Pathfinder
• Warhammer Quest (a combination of board game and RPG)
• The GUMSHOE System

Other ideas

• Try some store-bought adventures
• Use the D&D Insider Encounter Builder Tool for building good combat encounters
• Do more playtests, and post reviews to rpgmonks.com
• Do a podcast, possibly with actual play recordings
• A game in the humor genre
• A courtroom drama
• D&D game in the horror genre
• D&D game in detective genre