OD&D Campaign
The project requiring my immediate attention is my upcoming OD&D campaign. A bunch of people I work with at my new job have asked me to DM for them, and of course I'll be bringing in some of my other friends as well. Looks like it's going to be a 10+ person campaign, with different people showing up each time. Very old school, very Great Lakes era style. With that in mind, I'm planning on doing a sort of episodic sand box campaign, as per the way I've heard the original campaigns went.
This time I'm going for more of a Blackmoor feel. I mean, my campaigns have never been too generic, I've always let people play odd races, and I love including strange creatures like Air Sharks (I love Air Sharks!, from Arduin I believe). The idea this time though is to turn it up to 11. Not in any sort of ridiculous way, but definitely a sort of He-Man/Masters of the Universe type game. I mean, I've heard that's the way Blackmoor was, but I haven't read any of the actual Blackmoor material yet, having been more in favor of Gygaxian D&D. Though I'll definitely be reading up on it now, I'm finding I like Arneson's play style and advice much more than Gary's.
Anyway, I'm also doing this because I should be able to prep in a way that I'm used to, and is easy. I don't intend to make any sort of megadungeon, maybe a few "five room" dungeons, scattered about. Instead it's going to be very much "You're hanging out at the castle, when news of <insert event> reaches you!". I want there to be options, so of course they can wander the castle halls chatting with friendly NPCs for quest ideas, such as "Orko lost his magic amulet in the swamp, you should go fetch it for him... Watch out for Dinosaurs though!". To necessitate easy travel I'm going to give all the players a special mount, that can't fight (at first), and let them pick something fun or crazy to set the mood (Tiger Griffins!).
AD&D Rules Compilation
My next project is an AD&D rules compilation. I'm thinking initially this will be a Microlite20 style reference document. However eventually I want to compile rules and advice from a few sources verbatim. I obviously won't be sharing this. It has two real purposes. The first being a play document, so I can give my 80's copies of AD&D books a break. I mean, they are really robust for being older than me, and I love them, but I don't want clumsy players destroying my books. The second reason, is simply to put all the good AD&D (not just from AD&D) advice and options into one place.
I'm not playing on doing much house ruling with this. The biggest house rule would be a Bard that casts Illusionists spells, and maybe using Castles & Crusades Attribute Saving Throws. Other than that I just want to be able to run old school D&D dungeon crawls, megadungeons, and maybe some classic modules. A side project for this as a super campaign, Basically a giant, completely (as much as possible) detailed campaign setting, filled in with material from old school modules (like Temple of Elemental Evil), and any material I can convert/lift from old school Computer RPGs. An all around classic and generic fantasy setting.
Great Medieval Campaign
This is the project I've been wanting to do for the longest time, but seems to have the least interest from anyone else. I'll be doing this purely for myself, regardless of whether I ever get to run it. I would say it's an exercise in world building, but it would be more of a compilation than creation. It wouldn't be straight historical, but anachronistic. The main idea is to provide a fully detailed medieval world to explore, complete with Knights, Castles, Dungeons, and so forth. I would use real life locales, as well as some taken from the more medieval leaning sources, such as Lord of the Rings, Elder Scrolls, etc.
For rules I would mostly use AD&D, with some ideas taken from Runequest, and Pendragon. Other than that, the main portion of work would be in detailing towns (NPC lists, some minor sites to explore), and quests that can be issued from the towns, as well as a decent amount of wilderness locales and encounters found between towns. Most combats would be against other knights, brigands, and so forth, but I would definitely include classic medieval and mythical beasts such as Dragons, and Chimeras, and of course wild animals. Just nothing that's overtly fantasy or weird, like no Orcs or Elves. Classes would obviously be limited to Fighters, Rangers, and so forth. I'm debating Clerics.
Fantasy Gaming Commonplace Books
This is the biggest project, and most useful I hope. If you're not familiar with commonplace books, do a quick google search, ,they are fantastic. I've been in the habit of keeping one for some time now, in regards to just general reading and interests. They are invaluable. Essentially a notebook full of random interesting facts.
The idea behind this would be to simply keep an ongoing notebook full of ideas for D&D; monsters, encounters, challenges, puzzles, locales, quests, etc. Anything really. I'm thinking I'm going to separate it into at least four parts for now: Adventure Ideas (quests, challenges, locales), Bestiary, Spells & Magic, and finally Referee Advice. I think each is self explanatory. Spells & Magic, though, will not be just player spells. Literally any magic I come across, as I can use that against players, should I so choose. The Monster book will probably only contain the stats of Armor Class, Hit Dice, Damage, and whatever physical description is provided with any special abilities (not the full mechanics for them, but possibly). No full stat blocks, and no six paragraph explanation of history and mating habits.
Fantasy Board Game
Essentially a revamp of my tabletop roguelike idea. I've waxed on about this idea for a long time, and I think the hardest problem I've had with it is trying to keep it a role playing game in some capacity. What I've come to realize lately, is that I've never really had a problem with rules from any RPG, I've just been experiencing DM burnout. The worst part of it is, whenever I don't DM, we don't play. I want to take a break from DMing, but not tabletop. When I don't play at all (DMing included) I get restless, because I want to do something fantasy gaming related. In the end I always end up running another game, just to do something, and I end up more burn out than last time.
What I want to make with this, is something that can give me a break from DMing, but still let my play some fantasy gaming. I recently read a post from one of my favorite blogs that inspired me further with this: Arena Xagyg. I may end up trying to play Pathfinder this way. I actually had a similar idea a while ago, run a Pathfinder 3E game that was just a sort of Battlespire rip off. Players are tested by some Mad Wizard/Warlord to compete in his "Game of Death". It would be easy to prep because it would just be a selection of monsters, and maybe some sort of environmental interactions. I may still do this, but it's more just given me some ideas for how I could handle my roguelike board game.
I have much more to say about all of the above projects, so hopefully I'll post some stuff soon.
Stay Zen my Friends.
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