Yashima’s comment on “Your current RPG campaigns” started me thinking about campaigns I proposed in the past, but never got enough player interest in to justify running them. Here’s a sampler, from my past list of game choices:
___Heartland: During the era of Prohibition, the United States sees a secret war between two factions: the Mafia, covertly allied with the Roman Catholic Church, and the vampire-dominated nativists of the Ku Klux Klan. Player characters will be anti-vampire agents of the Mafia. High combat with lots of blood shed, in more senses than one. Rules system: GURPS, Big Eyes Small Mouth, or Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
–––Ashes, Ashes: Ghosts of 21st century people haunting the ruins of human civilization try to inspire the survivors to rebuild. Characters will have supernatural powers fitting their existence among the restless dead. Play will emphasize their struggle with despair, both as a force within their own minds and as a feature of their environment. Each player will assume the role both of a ghost and of the self-destructive shadow aspect of another player’s character. The environment will be created largely by the players’ choices. Rules system: Wraith: The Oblivion.
___Heaven’s Pearl. The ‘verse isn’t all hardscrabble colonies and tramp spaceships. The Pearl of Great Price is a luxury spaceliner travelling between the core worlds and whatever less developed worlds have sights worth looking at. Each player will have two characters: A ship’s officer, and one of the subcontractors who keep the passengers entertained out in the black. There won’t be much fighting, but lots of minor crises and intrigues; technical and especially social skills will count for more than combat. Source material: Firefly and Serenity ; Starman Jones ; The Wreck of The River of Stars. Rules system: Big Eyes Small Mouth.
____ Mad Science High: Students at a magnet school for weird science study things that man was not meant to know, invent radical new devices, and try to cope with eccentric teachers and scheming classmates. Storylines will mix action/adventure with personal relationships; style will be light but not absurdist. Rules system: Big Eyes Small Mouth.
____ And Tell the Truth: Adventures in a land where men are taught to ride well, shoot straight, and tell the truth: Ancient Persia. A campaign of the frontier, where landowners have to guard their livestock against predatory beasts and wild Scythians, and uphold the Zoroastrian values of truth and justice. The supernatural will be present and will operate according to Zoroastrian dualism, with practitioners having to choose magia (based on truth) or goetia (based on illusion). Rules system: GURPS.
_____ Omicron Polypi. Hard science fiction. Big Eyes Small Mouth. Slower-than-light interstellar travel brought colonists to a remote solar system, eighty years ago. Their descendants have spread out over five planets, linked by a small fleet of spacecraft. On the original ship, now an orbital habitat, young people come together for training as “truck drivers”—operators for space vehicles. Play will focus partly on the ongoing accumulation of skills and work experience, which will provide dramatic incidents; and partly on personal relationships among students and the cultural divergences and political tensions that surround them. Source material: Space Cadet and The Rolling Stones, by Robert Heinlein; Jupiter Project, by Gregory Benford; Learning the World, by Ken MacLeod; Planetes.
___ Blows against the Empire. Martial arts fantasy. Run in GURPS. The armies of the king of Qin are threatening all the other kingdoms with conquest—but defenders of freedom have sprung up to resist him. Player characters will be knightly warriors, masters of mysterious elemental powers, and practitioners of advanced science and technology in an alternative early China where Taoist natural philosophy is scientifically accurate. Play will focus on action and adventure, cinematically presented, but will be framed in Chinese cultural and ethical ideas of the Superior Man (or Woman). Mechanics will include the material I worked out for GURPS Thaumatology: Chinese Elemental Powers —which I hope will be out by the time the campaign starts!
___ Fronteira. Naturalist science fiction. Run in GURPS. In the mid-23rd century, humanity has colonized and begun terraforming Mars. Player characters will be residents of one of Mars’s largest cities, at the base of the orbital elevator on Pavonis Mons, built and operated by a Brazilian megacorporation. All characters will be human colonists with no more than minor genetic or cybernetic upgrades; the setting will be somewhat conservative technologically, with no prospect of a Singularity. Play will not be scenario-based but will make up one continuing storyline, exploring the physical and cultural setting and the relationships among the characters as they work to survive, prosper, and cope with emergencies in a sometimes lethally hostile environment.
(I’ve had a lot of other ideas, but (a) I remain fond of these and (b) I’ve never gotten to run them.)
So what are campaign ideas the rest of you have played with but not been able to run?