New year, new campaign

I finished up my long-running D&D campaign in 2017, creating a gap of several months where I haven't been running a tabletop game. Gradually the urge built up and up, until finally I broke down. This is the start of an intermittent ongoing project log for the game I intend to run.

In this post, I'm going to lay out the basics of the plan:

1. Not my usual gaming group

My wife's going to be in this one, because she is the love of my life and we live in the same house and all that. But other than that, my goal is to include only players I haven't played with before. I've been playing with the same people all the time, and they're good people to play with, but I want to push myself a little bit and adapt more. Plus, you know, gaming with new people is fun in its own right.

2. A post-apocalyptic setting

I seem to have the urge to run something post-apocalyptic, on a level of whimsy somewhere between Mad Max and Gamma World. I guess the term for that is Fallout. I don't mean the Fallout setting specifically, I mean a game where there are serious emotional relationships and political and social questions but also where the specific details of the setting are absurd.

3. A simple system

I'm going to be using Sine Nomine's Other Dust. The core system is very simple and should be accessible for the players, but its membership in the broader family of D&D descendants makes it easy to adapt material from other games. I've got the Stars Without Number second edition Kickstarter as well, so that'll come in handy, I hope.

I'm going to be incorporating some elements of D&D 5th, including the bonds, ideals, flaws, and inspiration mechanics, which I feel will fit pretty neatly with the simplicity of the Other Dust system.

4. Miniatures for looks

I'm going to be trying to make use of my pretty extensive post-apocalyptic and science-fantasy miniatures collections, but the goal isn't to use miniatures as a basis for tactical combat. They'll help with things like ranges and proximity, but they're mainly all about looks and visualisation.

5. Regular updates

I want to write about the process of creating and running the game on this blog, partly to stop the blog from being just photos of miniatures and partly to keep myself thinking further in advance than I sometimes do. I think this will be good for the way I think about the game, although we'll see how it develops.

So that's the idea. Stand by for future updates relating to this game in the new year.