As a pen & paper rpg enthusiast that’s often saddled with GMing duties, it’s probably not really all that surprising to see me put up a post now and then about games or campaigns I’d love to play in. I know I’m subject to the GM Curse but that doesn’t mean I can’t dream, right? So, perhaps for the sake of venting, allow me to list games I’d love to play in (but probably never will.)
- A Supers game - Many of my players will laugh when they see this one. A supers game is a pipe dream for me, especially since none of the other GMs are really all that interested in running a true-blue superhero setting.
- An honest-to-goodness Vanilla Exalted game – Take Exalted, take it and run a campaign in one of its myriad of funky non-standard fantasy cities and nations. Run it without fear of the mature elements of the setting, and touch on the topics that don’t show up in your standard western fantasy. It’s a setting so ripe for exploring mature, non-standard themes… so why are we stuck playing bizarre anime rehash 120,657 times in a row? It’s not like I’m asking for La Blue Girl.
- A Sci-Fi game - Sci-Fi is terribly underrepresented in our gaming group. We’ve tried, but majority of the sci-fi games have floundered. Like exalted, Sci-Fi allows for you to ask big questions, and demand bigger answers about the human condition. Heck, we can even go for the Sense of Wonder angle… Dyson Spheres, Aliens made of Energy, Weapons that can kill someone from a galaxy away, where the target can do nothing but sit and wait out his last remaining fifty minutes praying to his gods.
- A Western - No kidding. I’d gladly play Deadlands… if I wasn’t always running it. Having played Red Dead Redemption doesn’t help me at all. There’s so much you can do in a western, but there’s not enough interest to get another game going if I’m not running it.
- Mage: the Awakening - Yes. Someone run this already. I will play. Also, don’t hold back. Tempt my character with Hubris, make him forget his morals and his ethics for the sake of doing “what’s right”.
- Spycraft - I’m not even sure if I can pull off modern action / espionage, but if someone runs this, consider me sold on the campaign. Give me James Bond, Solid Snake, the A-Team or the Expendables. I’ll be there in less than a heartbeat.
- Legend of the Five Rings – With the upcoming L5r 4th edition book, I’m really stoked about playing in another campaign, hopefully one that isn’t too far divorced from the baseline setting.
Technically Fantasy Craft is on this list, but there’s a strong probability that I’ll be playing it soon, so I’m not adding it to the list just yet. I find it kind of funny that the games I want to play are the ones I am most likely to end up running. How about you guys? What campaigns / games do you guys find yourselves wanting to play?
I think it is a fairly standard problem that as a GM you run the games you really want to play in. I’m lucky that right now in my life I have a solid and fairly large group of gamers in the area, with multiple games and multiple GMs. I’m currently running two games, am in two games run by another GM, and a fifth that is run by a third GM. With two new GMs waiting for their turn to take a crack at running things.
even with this though, the games I always wish I could be playing in are usually the ones that I am running.
Yeah, it tends to end up that way most of the time. I usually GM for the games that I am interested in (which happens to be all of the games that my group plays at the moment). Once in a while, one of my players takes up the GM hat and I just go along and play in his games. The last few games I played were a WoD Mortal game and Scion. Both were wonderful experiences.
I think right now, I’m really dying to try out Deadlands, Dark Heresy, Shadowrun and L5R. My Changeling game is on hold due to player commitments, so I’ll probably get that wrapped up soon and return to my WFRP3 campaign.
I totally agree that many of the systems I latch on to, I do so because I like to run them. Some of them I dug my heels in and insisted on not running so that I could play, but more often than not that meant that no one played soooo….
There are a bunch that I constantly wish I could join as a player, such as Wraith, Call of Cthulhu, Shadowrun, Aces&Eights, and Deadlands, but I’ve been fortunate in the last few years to be able to play Adventure! and Aberrant, and try Mutants and Masterminds, so I can cross those off my list… lightly… in pencil.
Well, you live in the Philippines, right? I think I may have some time in October for a 4-chapter NWoD game, either Changeling (I really want to use that expensive book I got) or Mage works.