Sunday, March 6, 2016

Seven Free Nights




I consider myself extremely fortunate in that I'm pretty much able to play games whenever I can find the time.  Although it took fourteen years, I converted my wife +Jennifer Walls into a full gamer geek back in 2011, and I can feel the power of the dorkness growing ever stronger within her soul.  I have three children who are down to roll dice well past bedtime.  I've got a crew of gamers, both in person and online who are always ready for a role-playing session.  Finally I have the Norwin Game Knights, our local game club that meets monthly here in the Pittsburgh area.  

I can definitely game whenever I have time... but what if I had all the time?

While in the shower today I started dreaming about time, and how I'd like more of it, but most importantly what I could do if I could just run games every day of the week.  Wow, that would rule!  I started putting together a schedule, and I've been thinking about it all day.  

Since this is such an impossibility (both logistically and financially) I thought if I just wrote out the schedule it would help me come to terms that spending up to twenty-eight or more hours per week role-playing is never going to happen.  

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Let's start my week on Monday, usually the worst day of the week.  But not in this special fantasy!  I'd really like to get back to playing Dungeons & Dragons again... just not any of the current editions.  I've got this D&D Rules Cyclopedia ready to go, along with a screen and a ton of adventures.  Rather than converting these adventures to other systems, which I so often do, I'd kick off my week of gaming with a good old fashioned D&D Basic campaign.

Tuesday night in our house already means Cypher System!  This tradition began two years ago when I formed a group to playtest The Strange, and since then we've been doing "something Cypher" fairly regularly.  The Cyphering would certainly continue, perhaps tackling a Cypher System hack of Dark Sun (AD&D 2nd Ed.) after we finish Ardeyn: Land of the Curse.  

There's no reason that you can't have more miniatures at the table, so on Wednesday everyone would come to my house for some of my favorites.  Old classics like Battletech and Crimson Skies, and certainly some X-Wing Miniatures.  Maybe I could even dust off my Mordheim figures and get a weekly campaign going.  

A guy has to play sometimes, so on Thursday I'd save room for +Marc Plourde's Shadow of the Demon Lord campaign.  Buckets the Goblin would be back and ready for action!  Of course in my fantasy world Marc would be forced to GM every Thursday!  I'm liking this week so far.

On Friday we unleash the weird dice.  I'd keep running Dungeon Crawl Classics with the Norwin Game Knights once a month, since that group of kids keeps me on my toes.  But on the off weeks I'd play DCC with the grownups, smashing through the giant pile of modules that I purchased through the 4th Reprinting Kickstarter.  I've yet to run Doom of the Savage Kings, so we'd start there, but I'm pretty sure we'd end up on a certain "Purple Planet" in a few months time.   

Imagine a Savage Saturday night every week!  If I could run Savage Worlds fifty-two times per year we'd put a huge dent into that growing pile of books taking over my shelves.  My Rippers Resurrected books are coming soon, so we'd start there.  I'd probably inject a bit more steampunk from Space 1889, perhaps mixing the two settings together completely, like I did back in my old Clockwork mash-up.   

There would be no better way to relax on Sunday than to continue our family's tradition of Dunkin' Donuts and Dragons!  While we'd expect the kiddos to join in during some of our other sessions throughout the week, Sunday would remain as a day for the family.  We keep talking about a Star Wars: Edge of the Empire campaign based on the Disney Hollywood Studios "Star Tours" ride.  The player characters could take various Star Wars saga personalities on adventures all across the galaxy, getting into all kinds of trouble.  I know Cooper would definitely enjoy this kind of campaign, even though he has a few years to go until he learns how to read those narrative dice.  Come to think of it, I have a few years to go as well!    

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This is a sample of my "perfect week" for role-playing.  Obviously if you were to ask me at a different time of the year some of the games would change, but not by much.  But until I become independently wealthy, either through winning the lottery or becoming a professional game master (about as likely as winning the lottery), I'll keep dreaming.  

How about you?

If you had seven nights a week to run or play just about anything you want, what would you play?

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