New Year, Old Game
Last year Gnome Stew ran a New Year, New Game challenge. I thought about taking part but other things kicked in and I missed the deadline. Fast forward and they’re doing it again. This time, I’m determined to take part. Of course, you’ve probably noticed the title of this post and also noticed that it doesn’t quite match up to the name of the challenge. That’s deliberate. You this, in the run-up to the end of 2012 I got chatting with the rest of the group and it transpired that we’re not really feeling it when it comes to the current crop of rules systems (although there are some notable exceptions). We also have a wealth of games on our shelves from years gone by – and fond memories of playing them – so I got to thinking. Maybe we should dust off some of these and give them another crack of the whip. Let’s see if our memories are accurate or whether we really need to take those rose-tinted spectacles off.
With that in mind, we seem to have narrowed down the choices to AD&D 2nd Edition, Star Wars 2nd Edition (Revised and Expanded) and Warhammer Fantasy Role Play (1st Edition). Of the three the one I’m most excited about is Warhammer. It was the game that defined my early roleplaying. Sure, we played other systems back then (after all, it wasn’t released until 1986) but none have stuck in my memory (well, aside from the games/sessions from Hell ;)). When you mention Warhammer to most people (of a certain age) they immediately associate it with The Enemy Within campaign. Funnily enough though, when we played we didn’t use it. Our GM had his own campaign which he ran for nearly 4 years on a twice-weekly basis (and sometimes more often – we were all young or unemployed with lots of time on our hands back then). As I later found out, he mixed in ideas and plots from a variety of sources but not The Enemy Within. It was a great campaign though and, even now, more than 20 years after it ended, I could quite happily bore you to tears with the exploits of my characters; the self-centred dwarf Nurak Nurtha and the swashbuckling elf Luthar Silvanestri.
Combine this with suitably sourced artwork that I can show the players on my tablet and using my netbook for campaign management and it’ll be an interesting mix of old and new I think.
First though I’ll be at Conception next week (and, you never know, may be able to pick up some spare copies of things on the Bring & Buy stand there) and then I’ll start prepping.
What about you? What do you think modern technology could help bring to a re-run of an old campaign?
Cross-posted from UK Role Players.