Favorite campaign that you NEVER played/ran.

[Reynard]

I can get that you don't like GUMSHOE, but you are rather flying in the face of public opinion. How much of it have you played? Did you DNF Dracula Dossier or just run a shorter campaign?

The Director’s Handbook (part of the Dracula Dossier campaign) won the Ennie Awards for both Product of the Year and Best Writing, and was the runner-up for Adventure of the Year. The Hawkins Papers, a collection of PDF handouts for use in a Dracula Dossier game, also won the Ennie Award for Best Supplement

Night's Black Agents is, as I have experienced it, an excellent fit for highly competent agents when you want to mix investigation and action. I have run over two dozen multi-year campaigns, and Dracula Dossier may have been the most fun. I actually prefer the Gumshoe system for spy campaigns than for traditional horror campaigns, because the ability to spend points to make a spectacular result is great for NBA, but takes some of the suspense out of trad horror games.

I think lots of us have run up against the reality that the combat rules for KBA are nowhere near as tight as the investigation rules. We can love a game and think it isn't 10/10.

 

[kigmatzomat]

I've got an Eclipse Phase campaign where the PCs are Firewall, do a few missions, then, midway through a long starship cryosleep transit, wake up in their "real" bodies, on a Jovian outpost where its time for a debrief.

They are part of "Firebreak", volunteers who agree to exile themselves in this outpost and never rejoin Jovian society as there's too much risk of contamination, given how forks are soulless mind-clones inhabiting the bodies of the dead that could bring back TITAN-based memetic infections.

Firewall was a covert Jovian anti-TITAN op that wound up getting too many non-Jovian "helpers" to stay Jovian but was too useful to dismantle. The "them" they thought they were are actually edited forks who are occasionally reintegrated with their real selves, who spend most of their lives in cryosleep.

....or maybe not.....

 

[Gorgon Zee]

I think lots of us have run up against the reality that the combat rules for KBA are nowhere near as tight as the investigation rules. We can love a game and think it isn't 10/10.

Oh absolutely (although I found that DOUBLE TAP added a lot more combat fun to NBA). I’m not arguing that it is perfect; I just find the position that it is the worst possible game more than a little silly. The post I was replying to essentially said it’s a 0/10 — I’m just saying that seems an outlier opinion given it won multiple awards. Definitely not going to argue it has to be a 10/10.

 

[Committed Hero]

A friend of mine ran a Kids on Bikes campaign inspired by the book A NIGHT IN LONESOME OCTOBER, by Roger Zelazny. A large percentage of the adults in our town (including some of our parents) were cultists either trying to open the gates and have magic return, or trying to close the gates. Not that we knew this until much later or even were sure who was on whose side.

The openers/closers aspect of the book is a specific part of the Cthulhu City campaign.

 

[Committed Hero]

Oh absolutely (although I found that DOUBLE TAP added a lot more combat fun to NBA). I’m not arguing that it is perfect; I just find the position that it is the worst possible game more than a little silly. The post I was replying to essentially said it’s a 0/10 — I’m just saying that seems an outlier opinion given it won multiple awards. Definitely not going to argue it has to be a 10/10.

Gumshoe combat differs from most other games' combat, and Night's Black Agents doesn't specifically call this out; it was largely identified by piratecat and writernextdoor here on this forum. Identifying the difference and changing what is effectively generations of play is no small feat - I think this is part of the frustration a lot of gamers have with Gumshoe. But the exaggeration doesn't help either.

 

[Gorgon Zee]

Gumshoe combat differs from most other games' combat, and Night's Black Agents doesn't specifically call this out;

It seems pretty standard to me:

• You set an initiative order and all combatants take turns using that order
• You use one of a set of combat skills (shoot, melee, etc) to attack
• The GM sets a target number for you to roll to hit
• You can spend meta points from your skill pool to improve the roll
• Weapons do damage based on their type
• Damage is subtracted from hit points
• Armor reduces damage taken
• Called shots increase the target number
• Lucky rolls cause critical damage

If you’ve never played a game with meta currency there might be one item from this list that’s unusual, but compared to Numenéra (you spend your stats, not a meta currency), Pendragon (all actions resolved at once, partial successes, etc.) or a host of indie games that use cards or narrative techniques I think it’s pretty vanilla.

The fun thing about combat is that there are a host of extra actions you can take as you get better. I found my players needed no help at all understanding combat and as their characters improved they learned and started using the additional rules.

Again, I’m not saying NBA is the best system ever 10/10 for combat. But it does allow a lot of fun shenanigans and the base rules are easy to understand and work with. I certainly would not say that it is an outlier in terms of weirdness. It honestly feels pretty normal.

 

[Committed Hero]

The difference is not in the mechanics but in averting risk. For 50 years players have been trained to hoard resources until the right time to use them, and in that spirit, allow for misses in combat. That mindset gets you killed fast in NBA against lucky mooks, let alone supernatural opposition. You always spend to hit - which is also a requirement for a critical hit - and you always tilt the battle space in your favor. When your pool runs out, switch to another (my PC did this in the back of a car, switching from her knife to Athletics to wrap the seatbelt around a foe. This fight was the most cinematic one I've ever played).

 

[Edgar Ironpelt]

A campaign I'd like to run is a "Dawn of Creation" game. The PCs are elder deities in their callow youth. The world-tree is a sapling. Earth, Sky, the sapling World-Tree, and the PCs exist. Everything else - the Sun, the Moon, the Stars, rivers, lakes, oceans, mountains, forests, creatures, peoples, etc. - must all be created by the PCs (with some possible additions by NPC peers and antagonists of the PCs).

 

[Reynard]

A campaign I'd like to run is a "Dawn of Creation" game. The PCs are elder deities in their callow youth. The world-tree is a sapling. Earth, Sky, the sapling World-Tree, and the PCs exist. Everything else - the Sun, the Moon, the Stars, rivers, lakes, oceans, mountains, forests, creatures, peoples, etc. - must all be created by the PCs (with some possible additions by NPC peers and antagonists of the PCs).

This sounds very interesting but I don't know how one would run it. It might be fun if the PCs were all rival deities, each trying to gain favor with the All Mother or whatever. Make it Games of (Heavenly) Thronesy?

 

[Jacob Lewis]

My initial response to this post was simply "Too many to discuss." Then I really thought about it, and came to a sudden realization: In almost 50 years, I have NEVER been in a campaign of substantial length or breadth from start to finish. Not as a player. Not as a DM.

And now, I most likely never will.

...

Damn. I don't remember where I was going with this. "Nowhere" seems like the most apparent direction.