Three Game Fortnight

Tomorrow marks the start of a Three Game Fortnight for me, wherein I shall run three games within two weeks.  It's actually, strictly speaking, only 8 days and not a fortnight, but that has less of a ring to it.

First up will be Reign Last Rest: Episode 6: Tough Times in Tribute, the rough midway point of that campaign.  I'm excited because I've gotten a couple of the players to knowingly or unknowingly agree to some "Devil Deals", a concept that I stole from my friend Tavis, who is one of the best GMs I've had the pleasure to know.  In a "Devil Deal" a Player/PC accepts something awesome or enticing for their character knowing that it will have strings attached that the GM will call in later.  I have very little planned for the Sixth Episode, other than the Players arriving in Tribute.  I was going to showcase the Reign Company rolls/challenges and advance time 3-6 months and have the PCs face a number of Company Challenges, but that is now dependent on if I have all my players as family emergencies may call a couple away from the table.  Other than that, tomorrow night will be pure Sandbox.  I've got some ideas for what the PCs might encounter, but mostly my goal is to loosely set up and let the PCs choose from the half-dozen possible campaign climaxes so I can start steering plot in that direction.  In theory the campaign will be wrapping up around the end of April/beginning of May, leaving the door open for a new season of Reign set in Last Rest or for a new campaign in a different setting/system.  Watch the Last Rest blog today for a character journal spelling out one of my favorite Devil Deals that took several days of negotiation...



Then on Saturday the 19th, I'm running a One-Shot Vampire the Masquerade Sabbat introduction for Citizen Ben, as the D&D game he runs that I play Uwain in had to be pushed back from that date to February and I jumped on the day knowing it was free, so that Ben could get a chance to play a game.  I used to be the assistant storyteller of a local Sabbat LARP before I got burnt out on OOC drama of running/playing in a LARP that was part of a certain Organization, and I'm really looking forward to returning to the setting.  I've always loved the Giovanni and Sabbat much, much more than the Camarilla and a part of me hopes that I can infect the players of this one shot with a little of that love, as I secretly dream of running an infrequent tabletop Sabbat game.  The setting lends itself well to an introductory one-shot, as the premise of the game is that all the PCs are new inductees into the Sabbat who have just been embraced by the same Pack and now will be competing in a big Game of Instinct where the winners get to survive and become part of the Sabbat.  It will be nice because the Players won't need a shred of setting knowledge and I'll still get to showcase a lot of the setting flavor that I love, for instance, starting the session and Game of Instinct with a Sermon of Caine by the Bishop.  I'm writing the sheets, but letting players pick out the character they want to play and choose their Nature and Demeanor and other personality things, like Derangements.  Other than making sheets, I'm doing very minimal prep for the game, which is extra nice on a short notice One Shot, as I am stealing an idea I always wanted to run for the LARP and feel very comfortable with the setting so I have no problems running it off the cuff.

Lastly, on Monday the 21st I'll be running the Second session of my Fading Suns game.  It's been a long time in the making and the first session was split in twain by an unexpected Rollerderby injury, but I finished running the first session last Monday and had a blast.  It's the core players of the 4E D&D group I ran and it's been excellent to seem them stretch a bit and have a chance to move out of the regimented combat encounter rut the D&D game fell into.  One of the things I love about the Fading Suns setting is that it can be used for almost any kind of SF game you want to run.  The first episode featured the PCs waking up in a storage closet of a space station with a duffel bag full of cash, space heroin and a thumb, and I'm looking forward to building on the Noir feeling when they arrive on Pandemonium and have to search the mean streets of the Hub to find crooked artifacts dealers and their shady customers.