Sunday, February 06, 2011

High Concept vs. Longevity

(An interruption to your regular DCUO exploration, as my PC seems incapable of running the bloody thing!)

I have been considering a number of roleplaying related issues of late. I have my eye on the future gaming slots and also a deep seated itch that I have been wanting to scratch of late. I have been considering how to combine a few things that are incident at the same time.

- I want something that I can run consistently
- I want something that is not 'big concept'
- I want something with little or no prep
- I want something that speaks to the type of game we play.

The first one is a departure for me, but it is also something that I have become painfully aware of over the years. I am a method GM. When I am preparing and running a game I will submerge myself in the media associated with the game. Movies, comics, books, music - everything. It becomes the soundtrack to my life while I am running the game. With our schedule being quite sparse when it comes to gaming, this means that I have found myself weakening in concentration as a game progresses. I run out of steam, almost. I want something that I can run without the need for this intervention to my life. That would seem to suggest D&H (as I am pretty much in perma-research mode) but I am leaning towards fantasy or even superheroes.

The second one actually plays off the first. I'd like to run something a little more sandbox than normal. My games tend to be quite grandiose affairs. I'm coming to think that there is some charm in something akin to the older style of games. I'm not saying a straight-up dungeon bash, but something with a little less Hollywood Blockbuster and a little more TV serial.

The third regards the type of game I need to run. If I am going to do something, it has to be something I can do off the cuff or with minimal prep. That means I might quite like something that comes as a pre-prepped module (shock!) or some game that has an accessible monster manual style affair. I don't have the time to generate stat blocks or any such nonsense.

And, of course, I need some of that story-based gaming action, but we know that, right? Of course, we also know that I am a firm believer that nowadays with my group there are gaming ideas that we transpose across systems regardless.

Now all I need to do is find a solution to this ....hmmmmm. Any suggestions?

3 comments:

Fandomlife said...

A superhero game.

You can do it in your sleep, so it involves little prep.

ICONS is simple. It also gives enough flags to riff the little prep off.

Go for an older school episodic comic rather than grand trade paperback.

We can create the setting as a group.

If it should slowly grow into something more big concept then it will have appeared organically rather than via 'the big GM idea' - so it'd probably be fine.

Heh, I have to try!

Fandomlife said...

And you're playing DCUO so you're already 'living the idea' :)

Vodkashok said...

ICONS is definitely a possibility. It even has written adventures - cheap written adventures at that. I was even inspired by the watching Hawaii 5-0 last night. The simple, unquestioningly cheesy way that they brought the team together was cleansing. It was literally 'the man whose father has been killed, the man investigating the murder, the man who was trained by the murdered father and that man's cousin, who is also a police trainee' Nothing complex really and no underlying need to explore anything complex. Accept it and move on. I like.