I have no gaming group, and I must RP! - Or Game Brainstorming

I'm in the mood to try to run and set up a game, but while I've got a lot of systems on hand to choose from, I don't really have any concrete ideas of what I'd like to try to run.

Here's some basic information about me, that might be good to keep in mind for suggestions:

• I primarily run games on Roll20, through the chat only. I do not use the voice chat at all. Any game system that's recced needs to be able to play well online. I'm not entirely averse to running a game in the forum/Play-by-Post, but it'd need to be pretty rules light and not combat heavy for me to be willing for that.
• I'm most experienced with games like Apocalypse World and Dungeon World, as well as Legend of the Five Rings. I have some familiarity with Call of Cthulhu. I have next to no actual experience with Pathfinder or any of the D&D editions, but I do have some material for both of those now.
• Genre-wise, I'm mostly interested in High Fantasy, Science Fantasy, Space Operas, and Urban Paranormal. Not particularly interested in Superhero or Low Fantasy.

Outside of that, uh... I recently found out about Blades in the Dark (Link to the current Quickstart Draft), but I'm kinda put off by how much more important the countdown clocks seem to be in it. And also the fact that I'd rather actually be able to actually play it... >->;

Edited to include links to game systems mentioned that might be a bit more obscure.

Pinging @Wiwaxia

 

I too lack a gaming group. I haven't played any of the games you mentioned except D&D but I like learning new systems. Apocalypse World sounds like lots of fun, I've heard good things about L5R, and I could drop really easily into Dungeon World.

My schedule is kind of weird, but that's going to depend on time zones and stuff anyway.

 

*is ping*

I gotta go to sleep right now, but I'll be back around probably tomorrow.

 

I also lack a gaming group, and have basically every Pathfinder guide book ever languishing away on a bookshelf next to my hand-drawn maps.

 

Hm, lemme run through my slush pile for setting ideas:
- A fantasy world of two overlying planes, where what is land in one is ocean in the other, and vice versa
-

- CoC on the ISS
- It's summer vacation and all your players are kids running around playing make-beleive with monsters in the woods and treehouses and cardboard swords, a. la. Calvin and Hobbes, old Boys Own Adventure books, Gravity Falls maybe, Bridge to Terebethia I guess, although I never read that one, etc. Heavy on the nostalgia and slow golden summer light, omnipresent low-level creepy below the surface, with lots of meta-level ambiguity about what is real and what isn't, especially if one of the PCs gets eaten by an alligator in the sewers...
-

Spoiler: pic related

Cites in metal cases on legs wander the wildlands, returning to the stationary center called Ithaca.

Ithaca is shaped like a massive metallic mushroom, with docking ports for the wandering cities.

e. hey, I think this is my 1000th post!

 

Alternately, http://www.lotfp.com/RPG/products/carcosa.
(WARNING: link is p gory)

 

!!!!

 

IRS, prince of thieves.
NAACP (naa-sip), lady of freedom, slavers' bane
AAA, god of roads and travelers. Not to be confused with the masked lord of drunken revels.
SPCA (spee-cah), goddess of animals, consort of EPA
AARP, god of wisdom. His worshipers revere their ancestors and protect the aged.
SCOTUS, the nine muses of law and judges over mortal kings. Each SCOTU is said to watch over its own branch of law.

hee, that's fun.

The Ithaca thing and the dual-world idea both feel Final Fantasy-ish, which makes me more excited about a high fantasy game. And I could totally rock the summer vacation thing, I always play kids anyway and that pitch basically described my childhood.

 

Okay, I'm way too excited, as I always get when there is potential for RP. My brain's going to be spontaneously generating characters for a while. If we pick Apocalypse World or summer vacation I'm already set...

Meanwhile, I've remembered some setting and/or plot hooks I've had kicking around for a while.

A world with an internal power source instead of a star, habitable all through its volume instead of just on its surface, maintained by a dual ecology of plants/animals and self-replicating robots. Probably a reeeeeeally long term colony ship, but onboard civilization has collapsed a few times since it was launched (reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeallly long term) so the technology is effectively magic and/or nature now.

A group of pioneers colonize a distant land that turns out to be magical. As they learn to adapt and survive, they gradually discover that the magic is deeper and older and stranger than it seemed at first.

A sky world where clouds are terrain and people travel on sail-powered airships.

Also I have this really over-ambitious idea for a reincarnation/time travel/(and-or)/generation game, where one group in a post-apocalyptic future finds a way to send a warning back far enough in time to avoid the apocalypse, their ancestors/prior selves/random band of misfits who happen to get the message don't quite win but do well enough that in the new future the post-apoc group is better off and sends back a better warning, repeat until world-saved. In some versions I've brainstormed using three time periods for a past/present/future feel.

 

Does that mean there are 2 gods whose names involve screaming. Like "We pray now to AAAAAAA" or "Hail AAAAArp."

Also I am always up for joining more gaming groups.

 

I feel like AAA should have three faces

 

I've been reading the double A as a long A, so AAA sounds like the Spanish word "ella." EY-yah, basically. On the other hand, it is completely frigging hilarious that the proper prayer for when you're being ambushed by highway robbers is literally just "AAA!"

 

@Carcosa? I'm not trying to put pressure on, but is this still a thing you're interested in doing? If so, great, and if you've got things going on and can't get into it just now I'm happy to wait. But if you decide you're not feeling it, well, there's a bunch of ideas in this thread I'd be thrilled to run myself.

Or, is there anything we/I can do to help you, with brainstorming or organization or whatever?

 

I've kinda been a bit overloaded this week due to work picking up for me. :\ I've been working for days to write out a response to what's been posted plus a few older abandoned ideas I re-found when I went looking through some old files.

That said, if you want to run something, go ahead and do it. While the ideas are interesting, none of them have really sparked too much inspiration outside of really basic premises that I haven't had the focus to develop into anything I'd consider worthwhile.

 

Well, I don't want to steal your group if you still want to run something. I know I don't have the spoons for more than one group at a time. On the other hand, I've got inspiration coming out my ears, and there might well be more than one group's worth of potential players lurking around. If you say "go" again, I'll go.

Edit: To clarify, @Carcosa, if you're sure you're okay with me running a game using one of the ideas described here, please say so again. I'm double-checking to make sure I didn't misread a social cue or anything.

 

I'm cool with it. I am more than okay with you running a game.

I am also more than okay with potentially playing in your game (once I know what it is.) >:3c

 

Awesome!

I like groups of 3-5 players. @Carcosa, @Aviari, and @KarrinBlue already mentioned they wanted to play, and @Wiwaxia technically didn't but they contributed so many of the campaign ideas I'm interested in that I'm definitely holding them a spot if they want it. If someone wants the last slot, sing out. If there's more than one, I'll take the first to post and the rest can be a reserve in case someone changes their mind or something.

Roll20 via text-chat looks good to me, though I haven't used it before. As far as the interesting stuff goes, I've got three campaign ideas that I can't really decide between, so I'm going to throw them out there and see which one the group is most excited about. Tell me things like which one you're most excited about, or if there's one you definitely wouldn't play, or if one would be really cool if I just [suggestion].



The Summer Country

It’s summer vacation, and you and the other kids are running around in the woods. Wooden swords, treehouse towers, trapper-keeper spellbooks, and the kind of monsters that grownups don’t know about. “Heavy on the nostalgia and slow golden summer light, omnipresent low-level creepy below the surface, with lots of meta-level ambiguity about what is real and what isn't.”

Inspirations: Chronicles of Narnia (the fantasy part not the religion), Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Calvin & Hobbes, my childhood.

Warnings: Childhood is not always as nice as grownups pretend it is. Also, these are not the happy singing Tolkien elves.

System: Something light, probably a tweaked Dungeon World.



Final Odyssey

The Wild has won. The green surface of the world is ruled by beasts and monsters. Civilization has fled to other places: the sky, the sea, the deep places of the earth, and of course the Poleis Planetes, the great walking cities. The cities wander for years at a time, but the citizens atop them live in luxury and need not know or care about the world below. But something goes wrong, and you flee or you fall, and now a handful of you are alone, standing on the dirt, with a secret you weren’t meant to have and no choice but to find your own way back to Ithaca.

Inspirations: Final Fantasy, Greek myth (because I can get a classical reference, eventually), action movies with really epic landscape shots

Warnings: Dystopias, shameless mixing of tech-levels, battles you are supposed to run away from. Also sky whales, because I’m the GM that’s why.

System: It’s too bad the Final Fantasy RPG system sucked so much. I’ll probably hack something together in d20 to use FF-type mechanics.



Tales of Ages

It is the 14th Age, called by some the Age of Ruin, and the forces of the Light are in rout and retreat. The former strong places of elves and dwarves are now lairs for great dragons, and the Orc Lord fights the Lich King for scraps in what was once humanity’s heartland. There is no hope in this Age. But there may be a way – there is a legend, a rumor, of an artifact that can send messages back in time. If you could send a warning far enough back, back even before the Troubles… well, there were heroes in those days. Maybe they can do what your fallen peoples cannot, and save the world.

Inspirations: Chrono Trigger, Greek Myth again but it’s the Iliad this time, and 13th Age, because this one actually uses a setting from an RPG book.

Warnings: The game will cycle among three different Ages, each with its own party, so eventually each player will need at least three characters, barring extreme longevity or other shenanigans.

System: 13th Age – it’s a streamlined d20 fantasy system. If you’ve played D&D or Pathfinder you’ll find it familiar.


Thanks to Wiwaxia, who gave me most of the first idea and a lot of the second.

 

Oh, those all sound like fun ideas... If I had to rank them I'd say Tales of Ages, Final Odyssey, then Summer Country, but it's a close decision.

 

Tales of Ages or Summer Country.

I'm also up for resurrecting my Pathfinder homebrew for a group of 3-5 or just "Eh, I'm bored and wanna punch a monster in the junk." It's very loosely arranged. Think Skyrim. Lots of exploring, lots of random encounters.

 

Tales of Ages sounds interesting!