It’s August and that means that the annual #RPGaDAY ‘question a day’ is here to celebrate “everything cool, memorable and amazing about our hobby.” This year we’ve decided to join in the fun and will be canvassing answers from the ENWorld crew, columnists and friends in the industry to bring you some of our answers. We hope you’ll join in, in the comments section, and share your thoughts with us too… So, without further ado, here’s Day 6 of #RPGaDAY 2017!
#RPGaDAY Question 6: You can game every day for a week. Describe what you’d do!
Darryl Mott: Sunday: Shadowrun 3rd Edition but a 1st Edition adventure, like Mercurial or Missing Blood. Monday: Ravenloft to fight the monsters. Tuesday: Vampire: The Masquerade 20th Anniversary to BE the monsters. Wednesday: Star Wars, because moral ambiguity gets tired and sometimes you want the good guys to wear white and the bad guys to wear black. Thursday: Something tactical like BattleTech. Friday: Marathon traditional Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition or Pathfinder, straightforward standard type campaign or a classic old module updated. Saturday: By this point, everyone’s brainfried. So instead of trying to fight the sillies, embrace them with some Paranoia.
Morrus: I’d run a series of linked one-shot adventures, each using a different edition of D&D starting with OD&D working through 1E, 2E, 3.x, 4E, then finally 5E. Each would be set a decade after the last and form a long, ongoing story spanning many years.
Michael J Tresca: I do this now with my son. We set up 40+ page rules for a D&D 5E Gamma World conversion, which was made for hexcrawling. We've thrown in quite a few Minecraft-style rules as well (for mining and crafting) and then some D20 Apocalypse for scavenging. Then we just roam the wasteland day by day, and stop when we get bored or it's time to do something else. It's a much easier pick-up game than the sprawling amount of narrative work I do for say, my Welstar or Star Wars games.
Angus Abranson: As it’s #RPGaDAY and not #BOARDGAMEaDAY I’ll ignore my shelves of board and card games and just concentrate on my book shelves instead. I’d be torn between taking the time to play one single campaign over the week or playing a lot of different games. I’d imagine I’d probably be away at a convention though if I got a full week to game in so let’s go with a range of one-off games… Two games a day (give me some time to rest!) so 14 games… I’d be looking to play/GM the following if I could… TSR’s Marvel Superheroes, Deadlands, TORG, Tales From The Loop, Retrofutur Vampire: The Masquerade, Manners & Monstrosities, Call of Cthulhu, LexOccultum, Hollow Earth Expedition, Victoriana, SLA Industries, Coriolis, Polaris, Cyberpunk 2020/Vurt, Space: 1889. Ok, so that’s 16 – I guess I’m trying to squeeze a couple of extra sessions in their somewhere proving that a single week obviously isn’t long enough…
Mike Lafferty (BAMF Podcast; Fainting Goat Games): I’ve been on a bit of a Sentinels of the Multiverse kick lately. I could do that easily for seven days.
But – we’re talking RPGs. If you get the old gaming group back together, I’d love to go retro and do seven days of the Werewolf: The Apocalypse campaign that I was playing in back in the late 90s.
Dennis Detwiller (Creator of Delta Green, Arc Dream Publishing): I’m already doing it! I play Delta Green (I’m the Handler) and AD&D (I’m the DM). It’s marvelous!
Stephanie McAlea (Stygian Fox Publishing, The Things We Leave Behind) : RPG mini-campaign for 3 days, possibly Adventures in Middle-Earth, and then board war games like RISK, Axis & Allies, Diplomacy, or Quartermaster General 1914 for the other 4 days.
Ed Jowett (Shades of Vengeance; Era: The Consortium): If I had games and people for a week, I know exactly what I would do: I would run a 2-3 session campaign each day featuring a campaign from each of Era: The Consortium, Era: Cyberpunk, Era: Survival, Era: The Chosen, Era: The Empowered and Era: "High Fantasy" (yes, it needs a better name. I am working on it!).
The final day would be a campaign where the surviving characters from all of the campaigns came together in the promised crossover between universes, combining their powers, abilities and experience to defeat a foe which threatened the entire universe!
I have been planning that one for quite a while...!
Martin Greening (Azure Keep, Ruma: Dawn of Empire): Play a marathon session of D&D, from level 1 to max level. Sleep optional.
Eran Aviram (Up to Four Players; City of Mist): Among the many mega-dungeons I'd love to play someday, 13th Age's Eyes of the Stone Thief jump out at me as the best "Let's cram this into a single week" experience. It's a living mega-dungeon that sort of interweaves itself into your campaign; or the other way around, gives the basis for a campaign while requiring a few more adventures to fill in the gapes. 13th Age is super story-oriented, and we’ll be inventing a lot of details as we go along, so I feel it's best played as a quickly as possible, so as not to forget what happened at the beginning.
Ken Spencer (Rocket Age; Why Not Games): If I could game every day of the week, I would look for a mix of running games and being a player. Probably a 4/3 split as I prefer to be the GM most of the time. Here is what it would look like, Monday to Sunday, with who would GM: Spelljammer homebrew 5e (me), Legends of the Five Rings (Glena Murray), Why Not Games Playtest (me), Call of Cthulhu 7e (Sam Parish), Planet Akbar Homebrew 5e (me), Star Trek Adventures (Brian Eads), and Barbarians of Lemuria One-Shots (me).
Marc Langworthy (Modiphius; Red Scar): Finish my current Pathfinder campaign (Carrion Crown) so I can put it to bed and move on!
Simon Brake (Stygian Fox): I’d love to run the Tatters of the King campaign for Call of Cthulhu. I don’t know if I could get players to sit down for a week to do it, but I’ve pretty much given up the likelihood of tackling Masks of Nyarlathotep, whilst Tatters is a little more manageable and, being largely based in the UK, more familiar a setting. Also, well, I’m a King in Yellow fan, so it goes without saying.
Paul Mitchener (Age of Arthur; Hunters of Alexandria): I quite fancy two complete campaigns in a week, one playing and one running, seven sessions of each. For the one I'm running I'll choose Mindjammer, for some far future exploration, moral dilemmas, and occasional bursts of action. When it comes to playing, at the moment I fancy playing the new Monkey from d101, with immortals thrown out of Heaven for being naughty earning their way back with good deeds and kung fu.
Darren Pearce (EN Publishing; Savage Mojo): I’d run Shadow of the Demon Lord, 13th Age, Savage Worlds and 7th Sea 2 if I had the chance to game every day of the week again.
Federico Sohns (Nibiru RPG): Being a games designer, I find that the process of playing and testing out new stuff is one of the most enjoyable ways of going about the hobby. I'd probably spend two to three days playtesting my own game. Then, I'd have a day dedicated to playing a game from almost any of the New World of Darkness lines. On the fourth or fifth day, I'd play the third edition of the Warhammer Fantasy RPG, which holds a very special place in my heart. On the fifth day, I'd pick a more indie game to bring to the table, probably something like Fiasco or Ten Candles. And on the last two days, I'd probably try to come up with a new game to playtest!
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Originally created by Dave Chapman (Doctor Who: Adventures in Time & Space; Conspiracy X) #RPGaDAY os now being caretakered by the crew over at RPGBrigade. We hope you’ll join in, in the comments section, and share your thoughts with us too!
#RPGaDAY Question 6: You can game every day for a week. Describe what you’d do!
Darryl Mott: Sunday: Shadowrun 3rd Edition but a 1st Edition adventure, like Mercurial or Missing Blood. Monday: Ravenloft to fight the monsters. Tuesday: Vampire: The Masquerade 20th Anniversary to BE the monsters. Wednesday: Star Wars, because moral ambiguity gets tired and sometimes you want the good guys to wear white and the bad guys to wear black. Thursday: Something tactical like BattleTech. Friday: Marathon traditional Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition or Pathfinder, straightforward standard type campaign or a classic old module updated. Saturday: By this point, everyone’s brainfried. So instead of trying to fight the sillies, embrace them with some Paranoia.
Morrus: I’d run a series of linked one-shot adventures, each using a different edition of D&D starting with OD&D working through 1E, 2E, 3.x, 4E, then finally 5E. Each would be set a decade after the last and form a long, ongoing story spanning many years.
Michael J Tresca: I do this now with my son. We set up 40+ page rules for a D&D 5E Gamma World conversion, which was made for hexcrawling. We've thrown in quite a few Minecraft-style rules as well (for mining and crafting) and then some D20 Apocalypse for scavenging. Then we just roam the wasteland day by day, and stop when we get bored or it's time to do something else. It's a much easier pick-up game than the sprawling amount of narrative work I do for say, my Welstar or Star Wars games.
Angus Abranson: As it’s #RPGaDAY and not #BOARDGAMEaDAY I’ll ignore my shelves of board and card games and just concentrate on my book shelves instead. I’d be torn between taking the time to play one single campaign over the week or playing a lot of different games. I’d imagine I’d probably be away at a convention though if I got a full week to game in so let’s go with a range of one-off games… Two games a day (give me some time to rest!) so 14 games… I’d be looking to play/GM the following if I could… TSR’s Marvel Superheroes, Deadlands, TORG, Tales From The Loop, Retrofutur Vampire: The Masquerade, Manners & Monstrosities, Call of Cthulhu, LexOccultum, Hollow Earth Expedition, Victoriana, SLA Industries, Coriolis, Polaris, Cyberpunk 2020/Vurt, Space: 1889. Ok, so that’s 16 – I guess I’m trying to squeeze a couple of extra sessions in their somewhere proving that a single week obviously isn’t long enough…
Mike Lafferty (BAMF Podcast; Fainting Goat Games): I’ve been on a bit of a Sentinels of the Multiverse kick lately. I could do that easily for seven days.
But – we’re talking RPGs. If you get the old gaming group back together, I’d love to go retro and do seven days of the Werewolf: The Apocalypse campaign that I was playing in back in the late 90s.
Dennis Detwiller (Creator of Delta Green, Arc Dream Publishing): I’m already doing it! I play Delta Green (I’m the Handler) and AD&D (I’m the DM). It’s marvelous!
Stephanie McAlea (Stygian Fox Publishing, The Things We Leave Behind) : RPG mini-campaign for 3 days, possibly Adventures in Middle-Earth, and then board war games like RISK, Axis & Allies, Diplomacy, or Quartermaster General 1914 for the other 4 days.
Ed Jowett (Shades of Vengeance; Era: The Consortium): If I had games and people for a week, I know exactly what I would do: I would run a 2-3 session campaign each day featuring a campaign from each of Era: The Consortium, Era: Cyberpunk, Era: Survival, Era: The Chosen, Era: The Empowered and Era: "High Fantasy" (yes, it needs a better name. I am working on it!).
The final day would be a campaign where the surviving characters from all of the campaigns came together in the promised crossover between universes, combining their powers, abilities and experience to defeat a foe which threatened the entire universe!
I have been planning that one for quite a while...!
Martin Greening (Azure Keep, Ruma: Dawn of Empire): Play a marathon session of D&D, from level 1 to max level. Sleep optional.
Eran Aviram (Up to Four Players; City of Mist): Among the many mega-dungeons I'd love to play someday, 13th Age's Eyes of the Stone Thief jump out at me as the best "Let's cram this into a single week" experience. It's a living mega-dungeon that sort of interweaves itself into your campaign; or the other way around, gives the basis for a campaign while requiring a few more adventures to fill in the gapes. 13th Age is super story-oriented, and we’ll be inventing a lot of details as we go along, so I feel it's best played as a quickly as possible, so as not to forget what happened at the beginning.
Ken Spencer (Rocket Age; Why Not Games): If I could game every day of the week, I would look for a mix of running games and being a player. Probably a 4/3 split as I prefer to be the GM most of the time. Here is what it would look like, Monday to Sunday, with who would GM: Spelljammer homebrew 5e (me), Legends of the Five Rings (Glena Murray), Why Not Games Playtest (me), Call of Cthulhu 7e (Sam Parish), Planet Akbar Homebrew 5e (me), Star Trek Adventures (Brian Eads), and Barbarians of Lemuria One-Shots (me).
Marc Langworthy (Modiphius; Red Scar): Finish my current Pathfinder campaign (Carrion Crown) so I can put it to bed and move on!
Simon Brake (Stygian Fox): I’d love to run the Tatters of the King campaign for Call of Cthulhu. I don’t know if I could get players to sit down for a week to do it, but I’ve pretty much given up the likelihood of tackling Masks of Nyarlathotep, whilst Tatters is a little more manageable and, being largely based in the UK, more familiar a setting. Also, well, I’m a King in Yellow fan, so it goes without saying.
Paul Mitchener (Age of Arthur; Hunters of Alexandria): I quite fancy two complete campaigns in a week, one playing and one running, seven sessions of each. For the one I'm running I'll choose Mindjammer, for some far future exploration, moral dilemmas, and occasional bursts of action. When it comes to playing, at the moment I fancy playing the new Monkey from d101, with immortals thrown out of Heaven for being naughty earning their way back with good deeds and kung fu.
Darren Pearce (EN Publishing; Savage Mojo): I’d run Shadow of the Demon Lord, 13th Age, Savage Worlds and 7th Sea 2 if I had the chance to game every day of the week again.
Federico Sohns (Nibiru RPG): Being a games designer, I find that the process of playing and testing out new stuff is one of the most enjoyable ways of going about the hobby. I'd probably spend two to three days playtesting my own game. Then, I'd have a day dedicated to playing a game from almost any of the New World of Darkness lines. On the fourth or fifth day, I'd play the third edition of the Warhammer Fantasy RPG, which holds a very special place in my heart. On the fifth day, I'd pick a more indie game to bring to the table, probably something like Fiasco or Ten Candles. And on the last two days, I'd probably try to come up with a new game to playtest!
****
Originally created by Dave Chapman (Doctor Who: Adventures in Time & Space; Conspiracy X) #RPGaDAY os now being caretakered by the crew over at RPGBrigade. We hope you’ll join in, in the comments section, and share your thoughts with us too!
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