2017: A Better Year

Welcome to 2017 people.

It's going to be a weird year, I can tell that already. I'll take a weird year after last year. I could use a year of self improvement and upward progress. A year of learning from past mistakes and making whole new ones.

I'm still in a creative slump, for a number of reasons. Oddly, I'm role-playing as a player more than I am as a GM of late. I'm trying to bring Another Longshot to a close but am having difficulty scheduling the last few sessions between the two parties. But there's light and hope that I may be able to get these lined up to finish by the end of Spring.

Once that game sets, the question of "what next?" arises.  I've had a few campaign ideas kicking around my head:

• Trinity, or Whatever I'm Calling It -  I'd really hate for all the World Building work I did last October be for naught, but I'm having a hard time and little motivation to continue working on the setting. There are a few contributing factors, but ultimately it comes down to feeling rather unoriginal. I know that "there are no more original stories" and "every story under the sun has been told already" but that doesn't change the fact that it still feels like I took the parts of Starcraft, Babylon 5, Star Wars, Star Trek, Firefly, and a couple RPGs and tried to mash them together. And because of that, probably, it feels fake to me.

•  Earth 43 - I have ideas kicking around to run a game, maybe a year-long one, that the players are DC heroes but reimagined. Their own versions.  Or, maybe they don't get to choose and session one is the PCs suddenly discovering meta abilities of my choosing. Or something else entirely.  Again, it's only in the proto "this could be fun" stage.

• Justice Council (or "The Jedi League of the Republic") - Along a similar vein, I'm writing a module for GamernationCon 2017 where the Player Characters are all Jedi versions of the Justice League on a mission against a Sith "Legion of Doom".  The module is going to take 6-8 hours to play, but I'm somewhat inspired to run something with more depth. Have it be a few sessions, or maybe a bi-weekly endeavor over Roll20. Total "beer and pretzels" level of involvement, but it could be entertaining for a few sessions.

Not my artwork, but I like it...

• A Squadron of Rogues - Rogue One really got to me on a nostalgic level; it was everything I enjoyed about the Rebellion Era stories that didn't involve The Big Three (Luke, Han, and Leia). It reminded me of all the old WEG D6 Star Wars games I ran in High School and college. It reminded me of the "Special Forces Squadron" game I ran from 2005-2007. It tag-teamed with Fantasy Flight Games and the Rebels cartoon to triple body slam me into wanting to run a Rebellion game again. I really want to do something like a Rogue Squadron or Wraith Squadron game; the players are all pilots "and something else" (con men, mechanics, slicers, saboteurs, melee experts, etc).  Maybe that feels a little too much like "Team B" in my Another Longshot game, but hey the urge is there.
• Renegades - I also want to run a game where the PCs start off as Imperials. I've never run such a game, at least successfully. I think I made an attempt once or twice, but it never came to fruition. This could be that game, but then comes the problem of "everyone's a human".  With the exception of Thrawn, the occasional Inquisitor, and a few spies the Empire is all about the humans. My main issue here is whether or not to run it as a strict Imperial game or as a game where the Imperials will eventually go rogue and join the Rebellion. But if I have them go into it knowing that the point is for them to join the Rebellion, does that take away some of the fun and character development?
• Alternately, the game could start off "how far will you go", and have it be up to the PCs to decide how far they're willing to support the Empire in their iron grip of the galaxy. To make that work and be compelling, there would have to be some sort of benefit vs. consequences conflict going on; the longer they stay in the Empire the more they get "n", but the Consequences for that is a lot higher when they do eventually defect to the Alliance.
• This game could, of course, dovetail in to the aforementioned Rebel SpecOps Squadron game.

Next up is Convention madness! GamernationCon 2017 is coming, and I've got a few things lined up for that. I might be running games for FFG at Pax East this year, which may hopefully segue into more of the same at Gen Con 50 this year in Indianapolis. I may also try to get out to one of the local cons this year, TotalConfusion, but we'll have to see if that's in the cards.

That's pretty much it for now; back to working on the Justice Council module for GNC 2017.  Maybe I'll start posting up my thoughts and builds for the PCs.

May the dice be with you!

Oh; and thanks, Obama.