Where next? Musing on future campaigns.

I'm enjoying running Curse of Strahd, although I never really imagined I'd be nearly two years into running a Dungeons & Dragons campaign. I blame Dr. Mitch for this; he's the one who asked me nicely to run the campaign and things snowballed from there.

A discussion with First Age about a|state 2nd edition (or a||state as I like to think about this) set me thinking about what I want to run next. Of course, a|state (on Kickstarter at the moment) is one of the games. I've run the demo - Nicely, Done - of the new 'Forged in the Dark' edition twice at different conventions and really enjoyed it. Both times, the characters started to feel like they were part of a community, and, both times, I'd have happily run a follow-up mini-campaign. The game mechanics now really support the fiction of the game.

However, I've also agreed in principle to run Delta Green: Impossible Landscapes for Dr. Mitch. Delta Green has always had my heart (even more so with the new edition, which I tried out with a Stranger Things hack at North Star) and the Yellow King mythos has always drawn me much more than the core Lovecraftian stories. Night Floors (the DG scenario that really opened people back up to a broader interpretation of Chamber's material) is a classic, and this campaign draws on that. However, I can see that sliding in when we get to the end of Eternal Lies or The Yellow King mini-campaign, as the players I know who like this kind of thing are all tied up with those games.

I also want to run Blue Planet: Recontact as a mini-campaign. I ran the quickstart demo as a playtest at North Star and it went brilliantly. Again, it had that feel of the pilot for a TV series that the a|state demo achieved, and that vibe landed with the players as well. Dr. Mitch has also asked me to run this! I suspect that Dr. Bob may be interested if I offer on a VTT, so I think I could land the players. The game seems to be much more focused in its new edition around what kind of story you're going to tell, which is a good thing.

The final mini-campaign I'd like to run is Mutant Year Zero: Elysium. I originally picked up Mechatron (self-aware robots emerging into a post-apocalyptic world) but this caught my imagination much more. This is set in a deep bunker where part of humanity tried to hide out from the apocalypse. Different Houses sit in an uneasy balance of power as the world around them starts to fail. The players take the role of characters from different houses working together as investigators who are trying to hold a lid on things. However, they're also expected to vie for power between each other by their sponsors. This adds an element of PVP; the most explicit way this manifests is when the players all vote on who the team leader is in their group of Judicators.

It's going to be interesting to see what actually happens. I could also see another D&D game appearing after we conclude Curse of Strahd, which could be a curveball. Only time will tell.

27 July 2021