What is your gaming white whale?

[MichaelSomething]

Comedy answer:

AD&D; but ALL of the rules are used.

Actual answer:

Thirsty Sword Lesbians
D&D, but players travel to and from every edition

 

[Reynard]

D&D, but players travel to and from every edition

I developed a rough outline for a very meta campaign where each adventure/act was a different edition.

 

[aramis erak]

What is the game that you really want to play or run that you haven't had the opportunity? What convention or event do you desperately want to get to at least once? What campaign has eluded you thus far? What character idea have you never quite been able to bring to life?

FInally running it... Deadlands... at least for RPGs.

Now, I want to get meself a copy of Fortune and Glory... it's not quite an RPG, but it's got a wonderfully RPG tone.
I'd not mind Battlestations 2E and it's partner game, Dirtside...

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

Space: 1889 played from the anti-imperialist stance.

 

[ART!]

I want to be in a good superhero game that's just as much about the team drama as it is about bashing baddies. Back in the 80s and 90s I played a lot of Champions (now Hero System), but no one in my gaming groups seems to want to run supers. I am running Masks: A New Generation and loving it, even though ruleset wise you can't get further from Champions, but I want to actually play.

I identify with all of this: played a lot of Champions and Hero System back when that was all the rage, and I've run Masks and it's amazing.

I would never run a Hero game again, but I would play in one. I won't run Masks again, either, but I'd play.

As for my white whale:

Something I've had in my head to run for a while now was initially a Middle-earth game, but I've accepted that my group doesn't have the investment in that setting that I do. So, I've just taken the concepts and started thinking about how to develop from there. Thing is, I enjoy GMing less than I used to; I like the idea of GMing, and the development and tasks involved in prep, but actually running a game just stresses me out these days. The concept was: the PCs are any kind of character who would have a reason to be at the Last Alliance's siege of Mordor at the end of the Second Age. Things play out with Sauron and Isildur as they do in the books, but by this point the PCs have risen in importance or are there in those final moments to render aid, etc. They become important members of Isildur's court, retinue, or what-have-you. From there th egame would involve political and personal intrigue, and missions to go take care of remnants of Sauron's forces and things roused by his shadow. Ans they would have to deal with a king who is slowly losing it.

I'd like to run or play in a solid sword & sorcery game, but my group seems uninterested.

I'd like to play in a supers game.

An issue is that I don't do well in PbP games. By the time the game actually starts, there's been 100 posts and I've lost track of what's what and who's who, and/or I can't keep up with posts once the actual game starts.

 

[DammitVictor]

My lifelong White Whale, until I finally gave up on it a couple of years ago, was to get a comfortably large table-- 6-7 players-- with the same players running two concurrent games in the same system, but two different settings: Planescape and Star•Drive. On a slow burn, a real slow burn, the two settings start slowly merging as the players try to solve the mystery of why this is happening and the problem of how to keep it from tearing the Multiverse apart.

Last ten years or so, courtesy of a life-changing thread on RPG.net-- literally the project I consider my life's work came out of it-- I want to run an OSRish long-form campaign of starting level human PCs from Earth in an isekai setting based, serial numbers and all, on the Super Mario Bros games running from the kidnapping of Princess Peach to the apocalyptic war between the ancient Pipefitter's Union and the mighty Koopa Empire.

Much more recently... I want to run a Terminator RPG game set in the late 1990s-- early 1998-- where the player characters are the last surviving members of different Human Resistance cells sent back to the Los Angeles area at different times, from different times. They use their Resistance protocols to reach out to other time travelers to try to complete their missions. They literally meet in a bar.

 

[Reynard]

I have a few design "white whales" -- projects I really want to finish or find a home for -- but as for play my white whale is pretty mundane: a long running campaign (again). I got lucky with the right group and rana 20 year campaign (or trilogy of campaigns really). But it ultimately ended and that group dissolved pretty completely.

Since then I have really struggled to hold together a group and campaign. I don't know what happens but After 6 months or so I get pretty sever GM burnout -- both on the game I am running and with the people I am playing for, even when they are all good friends.

I want to run a solid 2 or 5 or 10 year campaign again.

 

[payn]

I have a few design "white whales" -- projects I really want to finish or find a home for -- but as for play my white whale is pretty mundane: a long running campaign (again). I got lucky with the right group and rana 20 year campaign (or trilogy of campaigns really). But it ultimately ended and that group dissolved pretty completely.

Since then I have really struggled to hold together a group and campaign. I don't know what happens but After 6 months or so I get pretty sever GM burnout -- both on the game I am running and with the people I am playing for, even when they are all good friends.

I want to run a solid 2 or 5 or 10 year campaign again.

I had a very good run in PF1 era. Bye weekly games and about two years to complete an AP. Went through many of them. Covid blew it all up. Now I try online gaming but my groups only last a few months maybe a year.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

For games I'd like to run or play, it's Pendragon and Ars Magica as games -- I have no campaign or character ideas, but I'm ready to go for either like right now. For a campaign I'd like to run, I'd love to run a Burning Wheel game based on Dwarf Fortress. It's a great starting situation and could go in a lot of interesting places, depending on the characters. For a con, my white whale is Gencon (I'm a simple man with straightforward desires). It's manageable, but I just have to plan for it.

 

[Voadam]

The Northlands Saga complete. An 11-adventure 1-20 D&D viking adventure path. I have not read it in-depth but it looks good and hits a lot of my interests.

Also pretty much any long adventure for Call of Cthulhu, converted to 5e D&D and my homebrew setting for a D&D pulp horror game. I used to run my Ravenloft games a lot like pulp CoC where you do investigations but are expected to fight some of the monsters.