Some thoughts on the RPG campaigns that I want to run in the future. But first a quick look at my first two real campaigns. The BattleTech campaign I started because I wanted to play BattleTech. It was also a chance to run a full-length campaign in a timeslot with few players (and less pressure). It gave me the excuse for creating a web site and to implement my own quirky campaign concepts such as player-character continuity.

The Star Trek campaign implements my theory of running a game to a larger group of players. GM controlled, arbitrary rulings, going for effect rather than realism, are all elements of my style, such as it is. The intention for this campaign was also an opportunity to write stories based on the adventures that I ran. I also introduced GM-controlled character sheets and a more obvious episodic format than what we've had before. I don't actually think my style is better than others, but it's better for me.

After Star Trek I'll probably take a break to write the Star Trek stories. Meanwhile someone else can run a game. My next planned campaign will be DC Heroes, a superhero RPG published by Mayfair Games. I have like every module and supplement for the game, so plenty of material. It's a quirky exponential- based system where being one better in a characteristic means you're about twice as good.

It'll be a short campaign, styled after a comic book 12-issue maxi-series. Two reasons why I want to run it. I like superhero games and I've never played one with this group, and I don't think my guys think it's a good genre so I want to prove them wrong. Once again it'll be very GM-controlled and I'll increase that control by making the characters for the players, based on their vision. Mostly this should solve the "find the loopholes to make a munchkin character" that is a big problem in every superhero game and one that even our group has trouble not doing. I'm not sure what the overall plot is going to be yet.

After that I want to get back to BattleTech, using third edition Mechwarrior rules. This one may be harder to pull off since Shannon and Pickering deal badly with the boardgame aspects. So I'm thinking of making the characters special-ops agents for the Near Earth Defense Association, which they founded at the end of the last campaign. It'll be set right after the War of 3039, some ten years after the last campaign. Mostly off-mech action with the occassional mech fight to break things up. This one will probably be similarly paced to the last campaign. One month passes every real week and running for a few years game time. A chance to see how the old characters are doing ten years down the road.

After the second BattleTech campaign, another Star Trek campaign. This time using the FASA rules and set in the TOS era. More gunfights and general mayhem than the current Star Trek campaign. FASA uses a percentile system and has a better starship combat model, which I'm sure we'll use at least once. Mostly I want to run this one because I have almost all the FASATrek material and it's yet another RPG system to run. And I like Star Trek.

After that (yeah, I'm getting way ahead now; I doubt I'll stick to this plan since it'll take a decade to do), another superhero RPG. This time using the Hero System, which I have most of the old books for, not much of the newer stuff put out in the last five years. It'll give me a reason to catch up on my Hero collection and it'll be yet another RPG system that's substantially different than anything we've done before.

After that I sort of run out of game systems that I own. I'm thinking of doing short GURPS campaigns. A half dozen or so adventures each with a wide variety of stories. Obviously Car Wars and Traveller will be two settings as they have multiple GURPS books. But other intriguing settings are the various worlds I've been reading: Witch World, Humanx, Wild Cards, War Against the Chtorr, etc. Or maybe it'll be time for a third BattleTech campaign set during the Clan Invasion. Who knows, I am talking about a decade into the future, and the closest thing to a long-term plan that I've ever come up with.