Having watched both The Blues Brothers and Still Crazy, I realize that the most frightening words a person can say are “We’re getting the band back together.”

Okay, having acknowledged that, I want to start roleplaying again. And I would like to welcome back some of the people I played with back in the 20th Century.

Let me be honest. Since I moved to California almost 18 years ago, I have only played in a few campaigns that lasted any more than a session or two.

One was a long-running Call Call of Cthulhu game that lasted for years; it was run by a legendary GM whose credentials are impressive. More importantly, the game itself was detailed, plausible, and forced the characters to make choices that would occasionally come back to bite them. In short, really good stuff.

Another was a GURPS-based campaign based on the old “Pirates of Volturnus” adventure from Star Frontiers. It was a great series of sessions; Dustin, the GM, took a fairly pedestrian published adventure as his jumping off place and made it really plausible and exciting. Good stuff, again. That went into some sort of hiatus, and that was that. I moved, and I wonder if they appreciated me as a players or a person all that much—there was not too much effort to stay in touch with me. I have come off annoying to many; I know this about myself. It hurts, but how can I blame people? (1)

There have been a few others, but nothing quite like the fun I used to have…

So, here’s what I want to do. I want to start up a new gaming group, and run games regularly, but on a schedule that will work with the lives of middle-aged adults without being so infrequent that no one can remember what happened in the last episode.

I have a list of things I want to do. Mind you, this is just a list of things I’d like to try. Nothing here is set in concrete. And it’s not all going to happen at the same time. Obviously.

  • I’d like to try out the new Dungeons and Dragons Fifth Edition rules. It seems like this version is very similar to what we played back in the day, minus the guesswork and the fudging. It promises to work very well; I want to see if it makes good on that promise.
  • I like a lot of the ideas in FATE. I have both FATE Core and FATE Accelerated. I like the system, especially the way the game allows the players and GM to add detail and make the situations more dramatic. It seems to me that the best times I ever had roleplaying incorporated a lot of this sort of thing; I am intrigued by the possibilities and really want to try the FATE System. It seems like it would make for a pulpier, less “realistic” game, but I’m fine with that. There are many fames based on the Core System, and I am convinced that one could do anything with it; Spirit of the Century is just one excellent example of what can be done with FATE.
  • I have been running 1978-vintage RuneQuest (RQ) with my daughter. It’s a sound game system, and it’s brothers like the Basic Roleplaying System (BRP), Legends from Mongoose Press, OpenQuest, and some of the more recent iterations of the basic RQ are all mutually comprehensible to anyone versed in any of them. They are like dialects of the same language, and I like the simplicity and clean function they all have in common.
  • Firefly. I like Firefly and Serenity and I want to game in that world.
  • I’d like to include my daughter. She’s 14; we’ve been roleplaying together for a few years and she gets it. She has never played with other player characters, but I think she’ll be good to play with.
  • I want swashbucklers on steampunk airships. And Green Martians.
  • And I want you to come and help make this happen. I want to alternate with another GM, and I want lots of ideas from other players. You are someone I’d like to play with.

Let’s start the conversation to make all this happen!