A Window, A Light...

I feel like I've been talking too much, recently, and crowding everyone else out on LiveJournal - I don't know how talkative the rest of your friends are, though. But, well, I've been brainstorming for future games and working towards the one that I've got going now. The one I'm running I keep putting off, but it's on the to-do list and I can't actually start anything new that's fun without knocking that thing down for good, so it's inevitable.

The project names are obviously just me screwing around before I come up with real campaign names. I've wanted to run games for a group for a while, partially because the pressure from multiple people is cumulative and gets me off my ass and partially because I miss multiple person collaboration at a table (real or virtual). Deep Thought is the city-wide D&D game, and the deal with that is simply that the idea is too much fun for me not to try to tackle at all. Uneasy Sunrise is my hopeful plans for an Exalted game, which may end up being run over Skype.

I got an email from the Kickstarter for the Exalted 3e project that, even though the schedule shows Exalted being released in October, it's not likely to actually happen because the Charms still need work. I'm willing to wait for a good book. The problem with Exalted is that I have only the meanest idea of where I'm going on that. I have some Infernals in the works, and that's going to be iffy because there isn't going to be an Infernals book and I'm going to need to see how much legwork I'll need to do with the support offered to me right out of the box. I have some Wyld Hunt ideas, some ronin Dragon-Blooded, and some home-brew stuff that I've never seen support for in earlier editions that I've already mentioned. (I had e-mailed the Exalted team about that just before and just after the news about 3rd Ed and new Exalt types, and none of them are what I had proposed either, which means that I may or may not get an e-mail in the far future. But probably not.) My project notes for Exalted is literally just a list of things that could be in a game. I could always run 2.5...

Deep Thought is a lot of work. I have no idea at all when something like that is going to be ready for prime time. I don't think I've said much about it here - I haven't talked about my love and hard work with D&D from 2nd Ed. on up until now for quite a long time. If anything, surely I just dropped it out here as a vague idea and went on my way, but plenty of my friends have heard all about it in person. The idea that someone has stumbled onto a mega-dungeon is not a new one, but I've never been much for simple dungeons-for-dungeons sake.

I had, for a long time, been interested in this idea of a D&D game that held to the rules really scrupulously. Like, on how to find new spells or research them, use of downtime, encumberance and movement rates, spell components, stuff like that. I don't think I've ever played a game - even a one shot - where we used all those rules. Back in the past, they always seemed like a headache. My friends don't even particularly care for rules in a general sort of way and D&D has always been at the root of that. But I found them interesting; how much does the play experience change when you're using this stuff? What if there's an actual dungeon-like thing, or you're in the field for an extended amount of time?

So I wondered, what if, instead of a normal dungeon, the characters are raiding a ruined, now-mostly-underground arcology? The prizes dredged up aren't just gold and gems (which would still weigh plenty) but trinkets and items long forgotten. Ancient bottles of intact wine, books and journals - not items of power but items of scholarly worth, art objects and old pottery, children's toys and weapons both mundane and bearing unusual enchantments? How much do you keep for yourself and how much do you try to sell and find a buyer for? Which of this stuff is actually priceless and which of it is just old junk? Instead of traps, there are environmental issues that are trap-like (and also, sometimes, still traps) - weak ground, rock falls, dangerous walls, unseen pits that go stories.

The PCs would come from different parts of the kingdom - the little town on the edge of the empire becomes a boom town, like if there were a gold rush. The PCs get in early and rent rooms, but gradually come to be almost like minor nobility. Crime comes to the town. Claim jumpers wait outside the entrance for exhausted arcology raiders to come up for air. People from home send aid or ask for money. There's a civil war brewing in the capitol. The game would be patterned around four different seasons, as they plan their expedition - planning and laying in supplies, actual raiding, finding buyers and determining worth (dealing with the town's issues), and dealing with circumstances from home.

I'll probably be moving to Pathfinder to run that one, though, providing I can get it off the ground. 

I'm not sticking around here long, and I really don't have it in me to go over the whole weekend, anyhow. I really didn't get to bed at reasonable hours these last few days, or anything. Friday was D&D and then playing games until daylight started to creep over the horizon. If yesterday was an earlier night, it was only by a little, resulting in 3 AM eggs, hashbrowns, and a cup of coffee at the local Waffle House. Today was a lot of unexpected fun when I was invited to a last minute outdoor grill with friends from college and one friends roommates. They'd been friends for years, but I'd never met them.

It's really nice to meet new people; I guess it happens when you don't expect it.

I don't know if we're going to be playing another D&D game with the general group. It was supposed to be 4 sessions, then it was whittled down to 3, and complications seem to imply no additional games. I don't know why, and I don't know if it really matters all that much. I was exceptionally curious to see how the game would go with a bunch of people suddenly vaulted to level 15, and possessing the means to succeed at nearly any end. I'm unlikely to see that in the near future - however, I'm still playing in the Warcraft D&D game, so even though we gain much slower, it may be consistent enough to eventually get to that level cap.

Now to bed.

There are a list of things that I need to do today, again, and some of them are things I ought to have done over the weekend. I'm set to two games a week, which is almost too much. I agreed to write AP for Matt's one-a-decade game because nobody else wanted to and I'm trying to write AP for my Changeling game, but because that one's already wrapped up, it gets a back burner to keep it warm. I went to Wednesday's Warcraft D20 game and actually closed the game down early by virtue of having to leave at about 10:30 in order to get home by 11:00 and go to bed. Frank ended up getting a ride with someone else on the way back, and came in at around 2:30 AM, which I know because they woke me up.

I feel like I'm making the right calls, here, but still kind of begrudge that all my friends seem to be able to stay up however late they want and I'm ending games in the middle of an adventure because I want to go to bed 'early'. That really is just whining though. Besides, it's a virtue that I'm able to say 'Regardless of what you all are doing, I have my own requirements.'

Every now and then, something obviously weird hits the pipe, like me waking up this morning and seeing an invitation to samurai movie night starting at 7:30, this Thursday. And I'm like, yeah, if I didn't have laundry and the apartment didn't need cleaning, and I didn't have to write this before tomorrow, and if I didn't really have other people I knew or have work in the morning, I'd love to go. It's important not to read that as snark, because it's actually all legit. That's just the MO of the crew.

I don't know how long the Warcraft game will last. Standard D&D is four sessions and a wrap, so after that, I'll set a new schedule.