Games for Next Year

It being nearly September, I'm starting to give some thought to next year, and specifically to the RPGs for next year.

My current campaign, "The Eberron Code" has now passed the halfway mark, and whereas it took a long break from December to May this year, next year it is my intent to take a shorter break in December and January (just long enough to properly get over the Christmas/New Year rush). That means that the campaign should wrap up some time in May of next year, all being well.

That being the case, and allowing for a break of several months between campaigns (generally a good idea), I'll be looking to start up a new campaign around October of next year. And the chosen campaign is "Star Wars: Imperial Fist", a Dark Times campaign in which the PCs are members of a crack Imperial unit, sent to investigate and eliminate threats to the nascent Empire.

In addition to having an ongoing campaign, I generally also like to run a handful of one-shot events during the year. This allows me to try some other games, and also allows us to involve some of our more 'fringe' members in the group, hopefully avoiding them just drifting away. Specifically, I aim to run four such events in the year, which I feel provides a decent representation without tying up too much time.

(Although it's important to note that this frequency may well change. Since the wedding, we're yet to host one of these one-shot events. They may prove too much of a stressor to continue. I'm working on the premise that things won't change, but...)

In which case, the first of next year's One-shot Showcase events will also be "Star Wars: Imperial Fist". I'm planning to run this as a one-shot, both the test the concept, but also to give people who can't commit to a full campaign a chance to play. Besides, Star Wars Saga Edition is loads of fun, so running more of it is hardly a bad thing!

The second One-shot Showcase will, I think, be "Au Service Especial de la Reine", which I described here some months ago. It looks like the system for this will most likely be Savage Worlds, with an appropriate world book added. Although there are a couple of other possibilities I'm toying with.

For the third One-shot Showcase, I'm inclined to go for "Prometheus", a Vampire: Victorian Age game I was inspired to run a little while ago. Either that or yesterday's "The Razing of James Connor's Barn", but my feeling is that the latter will keep a bit better - if I don't run Prometheus next year, I doubt I'll run it at all.

And, finally, there is the now-traditional Christmas Game. To be honest, I think it might be quite nice if someone else were to run one, but assuming there are no takers then it will be the equally-traditional Serenity RPG (it's a recent tradition, but it's a tradition nonetheless). I don't currently have any great ideas tucked up my sleeve, but I'm sure something will present itself - it is more than a year away!

All of which would leave me with two unused ideas for the year after (the Terminator game and the Pirates game). And there are a handful of systems I would very much like to run more one-shots using: "Black Crusade", "Serenity", "Hunter: the Vigil"/"World of Darkness", "Mutants & Masterminds", and, of course, "Star Wars Saga Edition".

(I'm sure I should have many more games than that. But somehow, it's those ones I keep coming back to. I guess those massive shelves of gamebooks I have are mostly filled with D&D supplements, Star Wars editions, and Vampire: the Masquerade stuff. Once you eliminate those, much of what's left tends to be either flawed, of limited appeal, or something that I'm leaving for others to run. Still, perhaps I'll do an inventory - maybe there's something I've overlooked?)