I've never been a long time fan of almost anything. I am the eternal system butterfly, one week pouring over rules for a D&D game and the next trying to plagiarize an old film for a Monsters and Other Childish Things one-off. And next week, maybe Spycraft. I'm also a big fan of games that have the ability of adapting to different settings...and seeing how they manage them.
The problem of course is getting to experience these games instead of merely contemplating the hypothetical situations as I sadly read over their core books.
I am blessed with a local RP society with a multitude of members, and a group of friends with whom I RP (semi) regularly. But the first are often busy and the second are roleplaying-inept (but they bring coke and chips...and I love'em to bits).
My solution:
I will host a random session every two weeks, every time running a different combination of rules and settings.
And the rules are very simple:
- Never must the same combination be used.
- Never must the same setting or ruleset be used in consecutive sessions.
- I will not pay for the coke and you will pick up your trash afterwards if it's at my place. :P
How I see it (Ideally):
Set a day and time where everyone can sit around and play for around 6 hours.
Six hours should allow for chargen, basic rules explanations and eating (why is it food always seems to happen just before a game?) and still allow for a four to five hour session of gaming.
Whoever is running the game gets to decide what is going to be run and doesn't have to share with anyone if he doesn't feel like it until the day of the game. Although if the game is particularly rules cumbersome (which might not be ideal for this idea) giving a head start is probably a good idea.
Of course depending on the game/GM characters can be pregenned or generated ahead of the session by the players, the rules might need to be looked at ahead of time, but it should generally work like originally stated.
And one last detail: the session will be recorded.
A few friends have hosted a couple of live and pre-recorded audio shows (these newfangled podcasts and such) and I've been feeling an itch to do something similar. I've also greatly enjoyed the ones posted on Actual Play and the filmed one of the guys from Robot Chicken.
I'm still not completely sure about the logistics of this endeavour, but that is what this blog is for. So if you're interested, keep coming back :)
Carlos "Sucky GM" Martín
