The possibility of an on-going roleplaying campaign has come to light. I’m psyched enough about this to start thinking about any number of campaign premises I’ve been hit by over the years. Here are a few that are the top of my brain at the moment. Some are new; others I’ve had in mind for a few years now.
Which would you like to play, given the choice? Vote in the poll behind the jump; feed readers will need to click through to PollDaddy.com. Continue reading
The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society is a group dedicated to the Cthulhu Lives live action roleplaying game — LARP for short — which itself is a thematic, if not direct, cousin of the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game, wherein investigators brush up against great and terrible beings with a frightening regularity. Their motto, Ludo Fore Putavimus, translates as “we thought it would be fun.”
Among the various resources the HPLHS offers to people interested in putting on LARPs are a number of PDFs of printable props. When outfitting oneself to take the role of an adjunct faculty member of Miskatonic University, you can go forth with Massachusetts driver’s license, Miskatonic Library card and the telegram from your reclusive Uncle Boris all in your hip pocket.
My particular favorite is the Miskatonic Library Conversion Kit. You can turn any book into a tome from the restricted collection. Snag some spine band-aids from your local public library for hardcore verisimilitude.
Even if you’re not a LARPer, a few well-placed props to pull out at the game table can do wonders. When the players come across the bloated corpse in the well, the first thing they’ll do, after choking down the bile, will be to check the poor soul’s wallet. Now you can throw one down on the table.
And this stuff isn’t good just for period Cthulhu games. Typewritten driver’s licenses and library cards will fit in anywhere from the late nineteenth century up to well into the 1980s, at least, depending on locale. (Until 2002, my own license was typewritten with no photo, albeit on a flexible piece of plastic.)
Flashback! This was originally posted to RPG.net in March of 2006, recounting my experiences running an Adventure! one-shot as part of a series of “RPG try-out” games at the local game store, Quarterstaff Games. Once a month for three or four months running, one member of the group would run a one-shot of a game they wanted to teach and other people in the group wanted to learn.
All told, we played five sessions before mud season / spring arrived and everyone realized, “Hey, we can do stuff outside in the evening now!” We began with a two part Iron Heroes session — two parts because it ran way over-long and everyone liked how the system worked enough to keep going — Shadowrun 4th Edition, a homebrewed fairy tale game and, to close it out, Adventure!
This was, for me, a very singular moment in my experience as a GM. Everybody was on and, after a little encouragement, got into the feeling of a pulpy, Indiana Jones-style adventure. It helped me realize that yes, I could run games and yes, people did enjoy them. This was a huge boost to my ego after spending time on various convention scenarios that wound up attracting no players whatsoever.
Held Action 