Monday Night Campaign Options

[gamedave]

The current campaign is not too far from its end (Jeremy, please correct me if I'm wrong). That being the case, we may want to discuss what we're doing next.

I'd personally love to run another campaign. In particular, a new edition of Savage Worlds was just released (PDF only right now), and I'd love to run a campaign with the new rules. I realize that some of you don't particularly care for Savage Worlds, but it's by far my favorite system to run a game in. I always have a LOT of campaign ideas running around in my head. Following are a number of campaign options that I have some notes and ideas for. I'm also very open to feedback and suggestions on any other type of campaign folks want to play.

Dracula Must Die!
In the late 19th Century, Dracula, the King of the Vampires, was defeated by a brave band of adventurers, seemingly destroyed. However, ancient evil is not so easily vanquished, and now, in the closing years of the century, he is back, and more powerful than ever. He schemes and plots, leaving a trail of evil across Europe. The Heroes are brave individuals who have suffered and lost at the hands of Dracula or his minions. They have banded together to combat Dracula's schemes, foil his plots, and track him down to destroy him once and for all. Dracula must die!
Inspirations: Dracula (novel), Dracula (movie), Dracula (movie), Dracula (mo...look, there have been a lot. The 1931 version starring Bela Lugosi, but moreso the Hammer films starring Christopher Lee), The Dracula Dossier RPG, Fury of Dracula board game, Rippers RPG

Masters of Hyperia
Hyperia is a strange world, located in an interdimensional Sargasso Sea. Beings and technology from across the multiverse have been falling into Hyperia for millennia, creating a bizarre, hybrid culture, mixing everything from swords and horses to alien hypertech. Air pirates operate antigrav skiffs with wind sails, fighting with cutlasses and blasters. A quasi-feudal system of nominally independent realms is ruled by the Hyperiarch, an evil tyrant whose lieutenants wield the terrible Control Gauntlets. Into this bizarre world are thrust the Heroes, who fight for the common folk and for freedom and justice against the Hyperiarch's tyranny.
Inspirations: He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, John Carter: Warlord of Mars, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, Thundarr the Barbarian, Thundercats

Savage Six Strings
In a far off age, the races of Mankind, Humans, Dwarves, Elves, and Wizards, are threatened by Sorcerers, evil minds that plot destruction. Only a few brave Heroes are able to stand against the War Machine of the Sorcerers, the Witches, Iron Generals, Storm Troopers, and War Pigs. And the only hope may be the fabled artifacts of a long gone age, the Six-String Axes...Heavy metal fantasy adventure!
Inspiration: Heavy Metal (magazine and animated movie), heavy metal (music), Brutal Legend (video game)

Savage Swords of Atlantis
Conan-esque Sword & Sorcery fantasy adventure. The Heroes are adventurers in a savage age, matching steel and a strong sword arm against foul sorcery. They are not crusading heroes, but reavers and rogues, opportunists with an eye on the main chance, willing to risk their lives and spill some blood for fortune and glory.
Inspiration: Conan, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Beastmaster, the Scorpion King, The Sword and The Sorcerer

Shadow Hunters
The world is not what it seems. Monsters walk among us, hidden by Shadow. The brutish serial killer is actually an Ogre. The gang of feral children are actually Goblins. The slimy televangelist is actually a Mind Flayer. Only a handful of individuals, such as the Heroes, are blessed, or cursed, with the Shadow Sight, which lets them pierce the veil of Shadow and see the monsters for what they truly are. And slay them.
Inspiration: d20 Modern RPG, Hellboy, urban fantasy fiction

Weird War II
The Heroes are an elite reconnaissance squad attached to the 1st Infantry Division, the Big Red One. They will participate in every major campaign in the European Theater of World War II, from the Operation Torch landings in North Africa, through the battles up the spine of Italy, to Operation Overlord and the D-Day landings, through the Battles of Normandy, and the Bulge, and on to Hitler's Last Redoubt in the Bavarian Alps. But they won't just be fighting human evil. The Nazis in Weird War II wield dark magics and mad science, and hurl mutants, undead, and fouler things agains the Allies.
Inspiration: Castle Wolfenstein, Hellboy, Overlord, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Weird War II RPG

Weird War X
Humanity has made First Contact. And they ain't friendly. Earth has been invaded by sinister aliens who abduct humans for weird and horrific experiments, almost casually destroying anything that gets in their way, while xenoforming large areas into a hostile and alien landscape. Against them stands humanity's last, desperate alliance, the XDF, the Extraterrestrial Defense Force. The Heroes are members of a SPECTRE (SPECial Tasks and Reconnaissance) Squad, the XDF's special operations forces. The elite of the elite - and the weirdos that don't fit in anywhere else. Commandos, spies, and survivors of Xeno experiments - they are Earth's last, best hope to fight the aliens on their own terms.
Inspiration: Battle: Lost Angeles, Battleship, Falling Skies, Transformers (live action movies), X-COM, The X-Files

[gamedave]

Here's another possible option:

site.pelgranepress.com/index.php/swords-of-the-serpentine-whats-in-that-playtest/

The playtest rules are going to be released next week sometime. I'd be interested in running a playtest campaign for this.

[gamedave]

Here are the three main options I'd be interested in running:

Swords of the Serpentine

The Heroes are adventurers in a savage age, matching steel and a strong sword arm against foul sorcery. They are not crusading heroes, but reavers and rogues, opportunists with an eye on the main chance, willing to risk their lives and spill some blood for fortune and glory.

Adventures would focus on daring heists of corrupt temples, investigations of strange ruins, explorations of savage wildernesses, and brutal fights against even more brutal enemies. For players interested in deeper play, characters would be able to pursue long-term goals of building empires, accumulating sorcerous power, and so on during downtimes between adventures in a more abstract manner.

The game would use the playtest rules of Pelgrane Press's new swords & sorcery game, linked above.

I don't actually like the default campaign setting. If I ran this, the campaign would be oriented more towards wandering adventurers and episodic adventures in a savage, vaguely Iron Age world, ala Conan, rather than the urban fantasy of the default Eversink setting.

Inspiration: Conan, Kull the Conqueror, Beastmaster, the Scorpion King, The Sword and The Sorcerer

Shadow Hunters

The world is not what it seems. Monsters walk among us, hidden by Shadow. The brutish serial killer is actually an Ogre. The gang of feral children are actually Goblins. The slimy televangelist is actually a Mind Flayer. Only a handful of individuals, such as the Heroes, are blessed, or cursed, with the Shadow Sight, which lets them pierce the veil of Shadow and see the monsters for what they truly are. And slay them.

I'd be using the FATE game system, incorporating elements of the Dresden Files Accelerated and Monster of the Week RPGs. The game setting would be The City, a deliberately vague major urban center somewhere in North America, but Filmed in Vancouver.


Inspiration: d20 Modern RPG, Hellboy, Supernatural, The Dresden Files

The Agency

The Heroes are agents of a mysterious agency that deal with High Strangeness. Cryptids, aliens, psychics, ghosts, ultraterrestrials, mad science, metahumans, and just plain weird stuff. This would be a game that includes both careful investigations of strange mysteries and action packed fights against bizarre menaces, where the Heroes are agents of a shadowy conspiracy that fights even more shadowy and sinister conspiracies, but with some moments of pure innocent wonder. The Heroes could range from staid, by-the-book, mundane investigators of the supernatural, to weird quasi-humans that are at least as strange as the cases they investigate.

For this game I'd be using the Cypher System Core Rulebook.

Inspiration: Planetary comic book series (and really pretty much anything written by Warren Ellis), d20 Modern RPG, The Strange RPG, The X-Files, Fringe, Heroes, Hellboy, Atomic Robo