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A Campaign Proposal: When Freedom Calls...

Posted: Wed Feb 14, 2007 3:23 pm
by NukeHavoc
So we've got two new D&D campaigns ramping up, but we've also got some Mutants & Masterminds playtests under our belts, a bunch of the rule books, and a desire to play.

How do we do that without bumping one of the other campaigns? I was thinking about this at the gym the other day, (after having written up some notes on our "gaming in the round" approach to Dark City during lunch) when an idea occurred to me: we could take a Dark City-like approach to playing Mutants & Masterminds, reworked somewhat to run in the "pre-gaming" time slot.

Here's what I'm thinking: everyone could create their M&M characters, and give them a reason to be in Freedom City. Then, like Dark City, we allow things to unfold -- characters investigate strange happenings, go about their thrilling day jobs, stumble across street crimes, etc. Each M&M session would have to be short -- say about an hour -- and would probably give us enough time to have two or three characters do something (including a quick combat or two).

As the campaign unfolds, characters might team up, and go on adventures together, occasionally splitting up (again, like in Dark City) for their own adventures.

This approach would take some work on my part, trying to figure out how to run short, quick sessions that can get done in time to start the main game, but I think that comic books themselves provide inspiration for this: most ongoing titles don't try and tell you an entire self-contained story, instead it's part of an 3 or 4 part arc.

So in this model, each session becomes an "issue". The occasional full-size, 4-hour Friday or Saturday night game might be a special while a NukemCon event could be an annual.

Now Dark City did consume a huge amount of my time, thus leading to its hiatus, but Mutants & Masterminds is different -- I already have the Freedom City source book which is packed with locations, story ideas and (most importantly) villains. Putting together an ongoing series of short adventures should be pretty simple.

What do you think?

Posted: Wed Feb 14, 2007 5:43 pm
by setanta14
Sounds good

Posted: Thu Feb 15, 2007 10:44 am
by NukeHavoc
Anyone else interested? Or should we just try and run some one shots?

Posted: Thu Feb 15, 2007 11:15 am
by EvilGenius
Yes, I'm definitely in. I don't know if I'll be able to do a lot of pre-gaming.

Posted: Thu Feb 15, 2007 11:40 am
by Hardcorhobbs
I'll have to shift stuff around to make it out there earlier but I'm interested!

Posted: Thu Feb 15, 2007 11:52 am
by Lars Porsenna
Yes!

Damon.

Posted: Thu Feb 15, 2007 1:01 pm
by NukeHavoc
EvilGenius wrote:Yes, I'm definitely in. I don't know if I'll be able to do a lot of pre-gaming.
I've been mulling options for those who can't easily do pre-gaming. Specifically, I was thinking of setting up a WordPress blog for the campaign with two categories of game play posts:

* Issues: For real-world, pre-gaming game play notes, with perhaps a few follow-up game play posts as replies.

* One Shots: For individual play-by-posts. You'd have an initial post describing the setup, then all subsequent online game play would be through replies to that post.

This way, everyone gets to do something with their characters, and the beauty of the single-player One Shots is that you don't have the normal bog downs of play by post; it's just the GM and the player.

Can you tell I've been spending a lot of time organizing my comics lately? :)

Posted: Thu Feb 15, 2007 1:07 pm
by EvilGenius
Hmmm, play by post. Not my fav, but I'll give it a shot.

I'd really be up for full session 1 shots every month or so.

Posted: Thu Feb 15, 2007 1:45 pm
by erilar
Missed this post the first time around. Very interested. I have a character mostly created already.

I might need a "character creation / wrapup / arena combat practice" session to help me button up my char since I wasn't in on the playtests.

Posted: Thu Feb 15, 2007 2:44 pm
by NukeHavoc
erilar wrote:Missed this post the first time around. Very interested. I have a character mostly created already.

I might need a "character creation / wrapup / arena combat practice" session to help me button up my char since I wasn't in on the playtests.
Sue will be away the weekend of Feb 24/25, so we could have a character creation / playtest / whatever that weekend. I'd have the kids, but Luke naps and Jordan likes superheroes. :)

Ken

Posted: Thu Feb 15, 2007 2:46 pm
by NukeHavoc
EvilGenius wrote:Hmmm, play by post. Not my fav, but I'll give it a shot. I'd really be up for full session 1 shots every month or so.
Yeah, play-by-post isn't ideal, but it might work in this context. Swapping out one D&D session a month (or every other month) for M&M would also work for me. I'd just really like to play the game. :)