Your "In a Perfect World, I'd be playing X" Roleplaying Campaign

[innerdude]

Let's say you wake up this morning in possession of a magic djinni lamp, and the djinn has but one wish to give.

However, the power of the wish is limited to just your own personal roleplaying experience. Our djinn can't make you rich or a rock star, but can grant you the opportunity to play the "One Great RPG Campaign of a Lifetime"---the one life-altering campaign you'd always secretly hoped would come to pass.

You can choose any game system, and the djinn's powers are such that it will be GM'd with exceptional skill (by you or someone else), and the players will be absolutely ideal for the experience (yourself and/or others).

The campaign is guaranteed to have weekly sessions for exactly 18 months, and no longer.

What is that campaign?

For me, it would be a game of fantasy intrigue, a game of vying for political influence in a dangerous world of deceit and hidden motives. In tone it would feel much like Guy Gavriel Kay's Sarantium novels.

Character growth would be slow and linear, but characters would begin as competent to competent+.

The setting could be nearly anything --- Golarion, FR, Terrinoth, Known World, homebrew, doesn't matter, as long as it hits the right tone and thematics.

And if we're choosing a system, at this moment I'd have to go with Genesys. It sits right at the nexus of trad + narrative style gaming, such that it would allow for nuance in play in ways that I enjoy. My usual group has taken to it and really enjoys it.

That said, I would be sorely tempted to go with Burning Wheel or a Forged in the Dark variant, but I just don't know enough about them in actual play to be certain it would work the way I envision. And as much as I love Ironsworn, I'm just not sure it would have enough staying power for a weekly 18-month run.

 

[Yora]

My answer to that is the same thing as the campaign I am currently setting up:

An Old-School Essentials West Marches campaign set in a homebrew setting about a giant forest full of giant reptiles and pleistocene animals, filled with ruins of fey, serpentmen, and a necromancer empire.
Strongly inspired by the wacky sandbox videogame Kenshi, except as high fantasy in a dense forest instead of post-apocalpytic desert wastelands.

 

[payn]

Yesterday I would have said PF1 War for the Crown AP, but somebody answered my hail Mary attempt to find a game and now I'm in it.

 

[Reynard]

As a GM: a big open table "Strike Force" level super hero campaign city where much is don in the downtime/over Discord/Bluebooking and heroes come together to deal with threats during session time.

As a Player: a fantasy campaign built around carving a kingdom out of the wild per BECMI/RC D&D.

 

[Teo Twawki]

With the caveat that my choice is one that--via the physical laws of our consensually hallucinated real world cannot happen--I would say I wish we could play our homebrewed multi-era campaign based on Blue Öyster Cult's Imaginos using the English-translation of Nephilim.

I say it cannot ever happen in this world because the homebrew author, gm, and friend took his homecoming 13 years ago. We're left with notes and ideas, but our forays into small scenarios of it has been good, but not great. He had this mapped out in his head to a far greater degree than mere scribbling on paper can convey.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

Great thread idea!

My pick would be Delta Green, using either DG's default system, Gumshoe or something insanely detailed, like GURPS.

Play would alternate every so often between PC groups in two or three different eras, where actions in one era impact the other(s).

And I'd need to play it, since I don't have the stomach to properly run Delta Green myself, in all its nihilistic, PC-ravaging glory.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

That said, I would be sorely tempted to go with Burning Wheel or a Forged in the Dark variant, but I just don't know enough about them in actual play to be certain it would work the way I envision. And as much as I love Ironsworn, I'm just not sure it would have enough staying power for a weekly 18-month run.

I know we're in hypothetical territory, but Forged in the Dark games aren't really made to run for that many sessions, unless you continue the campaign with new character groups. Characters tend to max out somewhere between 12 and 20 sessions.

 

[GuyBoy]

An interesting question and I’m going to stretch the djinn’s Powers a bit with my answer:
I’d choose to play the G and D series of modules. I really wouldn’t mind if we played using 1E or 5e rules but I’d want to “get the band back together” of all the old friends from high school that I played with back in the late 1970s into 1980s. Not going back in time of course; just the djinn using their powers to get us together once a month in someone’s house to play through the game. We’d all be 59/60 now, so lots to catch up on as well as giants to defeat.

 

[HaroldTheHobbit]

I may be boring, but as a forever GM with a fun table of perma-players I don't have any visions of unattainable dream campaigns. Since I GM and we mostly home-brew, I make campaigns that I want to run, often with some success.

With that said, and despite not having a rpg-djinn, I have very high hopes for a sci-fi campaign I plan to start around a year from now and that has potential to be a great one (campaign, not a lovecraftian godlike being). Savage Worlds, semi-sandbox and Travelleresque premisses to start with, but with politics, intrigue, conspiracy and ancient secrets to be unveiled.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I expect my answer would change at times, but I'd like a campaign that takes place over a great span of time in the fiction, with the cast of characters changing periodically due to time passing, but the story continuing on through the ages.

That said, I would be sorely tempted to go with Burning Wheel or a Forged in the Dark variant, but I just don't know enough about them in actual play to be certain it would work the way I envision.

You may want to check out either Court of Blades or Rebel Crown. Both are FitD with a focuson intrigue and courtly espionage.