Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Tell me what you think of this Campaign idea

Summer approaches, and while I'll be working (probably washing dishes so that's awesome) the lack of school means my friends and I should have a lot more free time and thus more time to game.

James is working on a post-apocalyptic psy-GURPS campaign that is partly based off of the webcomic Freakangels. It sounds really cool, I'm excited about it. And if you don't know what Freakangels is you need to.

There might be a few orgies.

I think some of my other friends are considering possible D&D campaigns, which is great. I of course have a lot of fun with that game. But I also have a current D&D campaign going, and while I love the world I've been building I can't help but think things would be better with a little more variety in our gaming selection.

So I'm looking at other options, but I don't want to half-ass this and I really want to get some feedback.

There's an idea I've had for a while for an urban fantasy setting. The time period is contemporary but the characters would be dealing with the supernatural. They players would be free to create wizards, sorcerers, or any other type of spellcaster but they could also be pretty much any supernatural race. It would be to their benefit to play something that can easily blend in with normal humans, but If they want to just be a winged serpent or some giant sentient beetle or something I'm cool with that.

Here's the twist, if you want to call it that, the campaign is going to be tied to a restaurant all of the pc's work at. So in addition to being a devilish fireslinger, they'd also be a part-time fry cook, or something like that. But they're far from the only restaurant in town and I'm thinking they might spend a lot of time dealing with their competition.



If they want to do this legitimately that's fine, they're are adventures for that. Questing for rare ingredients is a staple for any fantasy adventure. But I'm guessing things are going to get underhanded. Sabotage, kidnapping, curses, illusions, maybe even outright murder all seem like some excellent fun.

I'm sort of in love with this idea. Mixing the mundane with the fantastic is to me the heart of urban fantasy. These wizards, selkies, and demons are all trying to just earn a buck and live like the rest of us but they do so with magic, and that's fun.

I'm sure there's game systems out their that are built for this type of role playing and if you know of any of any feel free to let me know along with why you think it's good. But I'd prefer not having to buy or learn something new. So right now I'm looking at Villains and Vigilantes.

It's a superhero rpg and it has sort of vague, rather underdeveloped rules for spellcasting characters like Dr. Strange. But my group has used it for supernatural campaigns before and it works well. Mechanically there is no real difference between pyrokinesis as a super power or as magic so using the regular super powers would work fine for our purposes.

V&V offers some serious variety. Most of it is developed randomly, but from that entropy you can really develop any theme and it will work in game fairly well. Plus the benefit of playing with your friends is often trust. I trust my group enough to forget about acquiring their powers randomly. If they really want to play an ice mage I'm okay with just giving them ice powers instead of them having to roll for ice powers.

But if you think there's something that is going to work better, let me know. I'm open to trying something new.