Convention Fever

So it’s been a few days since I came back from Gencon (side note, the last Gencon podcast will go up Monday) and I’ve caught the Con fever. No, not Con Crud, I’ve gotten it into my brain that I should run a game at next year’s GenCon. If you don’t count D&D Encounters at the store I’ve never run a con game, and I’m having trouble deciding what I would want to run. I have a few ideas and I’m gonna’ squeeze a blog post out of them. Most of the following would need to be fleshed out in order to be any good, but I have a about a year to come up with something.

Ghostbusters: London vs. Madam Tussauds’ House of Wax

System: d20 modern

This is the first and so far strongest idea that I’ve had for a con game. It’s a scenario that I ran during my first Ghostbusters game and it wouldn’t be too difficult to adapt it to a convention environment. I’d need to create a few pregens (about 8 to give people some options) and a good one-sheet to cover the way that the proton packs work. For ease of gameplay I’d most likely be running it under d20 modern like I did the first time around (My “GURPSbusters” still need far too much work to expose them to people outside of my gaming group) and I’d have the opportunity to prestat all the wax characters encountered this time around instead of having to wing it.

Nintendo All-Stars

System: Mutants & Masterminds 2e

This is an idea that I’ve had for a while now. It started as a discussion as to how you would build Mario, Samus, Link (the easy one, btw) and other characters in a d20 system and which roles they would have in a party. After an overly long, overly nerdy discussion (the best kind of RPG discussion) ended with the decision that a more superhero based system would be better suited to the mashup (even though we ended up with some really sweet magic items that I’ve been keeping in my pocket for a rainy day) I wanted to work on the idea, but I haven’t done a lot with it because I could never come up with a the time/player interest but as a one shot it could work. The basic idea is that the heroes from the various Nentendo games would come together Justice League style to save a world from the combined forces of Gannon, Motherbrain and Bowser. I love the idea of all-stars of Nentendo together in one party battling their way to the flaying castle/mother ship/command center to do epic battle with the three great Nintendo villains.

Knight of the Living Dead

System: any I’m comfortable with, most likely GURPS

I’ve never understood how you could run a zombie apocalypse as anything more than a two or three session game, and to be honest a straight zombie survival game really doesn’t sound like a game that would work for more than a one-shot without mixing it with something else. The idea would be that a group of knights (I’m leaning towards them being Arthur and the Round Table knights) are escorting some Evil MacGuffin of Evil to be destroyed in the holy [noun] of [placename] when they’re forced to take refuge in the night by a massed army of the dead intent on capturing the MacGuffin. They must deal with the army outside and the people inside slowly being affected by the MacGuffin’s evil.

The rest of the ideas I have haven’t developed farther than simple plot seeds.

• A group of wizard apprentices (one of each magic specialization) must flea for their lives when an enemy of arcane magic attacks and destroys a ceremonial meeting of the greatest mages of the land.
  • I’m not sure where I would want to go with this one. It could be a race to the safety of an Arcane freindly kingdom. The apprentices could be looking for a weapon that could defeate the whatever that destroyed their masters.
• A kidnapper is taking people from around the city and the PCs are the investigators trying to unravel the clues to stop him. Then weirdness starts.
  • I have a good twist in mind that I want to flesh out a little more, and surprisingly it’s not “the kidnapper is a monster/Lovecraftian horror”.
• Hercules and other great heroes must restore justice to a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
  • I really haven’t gone much farther than the high concept on that one.
• Where in the world is Carmen SanDiego
  • Exactly what it says on the tin. I loved the game as a kid, I loved both the cartoon and the quiz show. I would love to run this as a one shot. Truth be told I would love to run a campaign, but it would involve a lot more prep work.

That’s about it. I’d love to hear anyone’s thoughts.