Al Tolino Must Die

Last night's Mob War game went well. The players all went along with my desire to break up the party and structure the first half of the game in a non-standard way. We had Molotov cocktails, faked deaths, betrayals, cold-blooded retribution, and a heap load of general mayhem. The O'Connor-Tolino Mob War of 1921 is about to reach its crescendo'd peak. Next session the PCs have one goal: Kill Big Al and end this war. I'm really looking forward to having under my belt a mini-campaign that actually played out as I plan from beginning to end. My Home Team project was supposed to be that feather in my cap, but lack of a consistent schedule seems to have killed that particular campaign. Or at least sent it into a deep coma. Maybe someday Home Team will awaken from that coma and return with a kung-fu vengeance, like Steven Seagal in Hard to Kill. Until then, I don't plan to do any more work on it.

It looks like the enthusiasm our group had for the forthcoming Necessary Evil has waned. I blame the continued production delays. At least three different people at the pancake place showed at least some interest in running it at one point or another. We could have maybe had both tables running this campaign at one time. Now, everyone has sorta gone cold. Too many sessions of "not out yet, but soon!" has taken the edge of our desire to play NE. I'm not one of those folks who whines about "those bastards" at [game company] delaying [game product] again. I'm sure game companies generally prefer publishing new stuff to not publishing new stuff. I'm just observing what has happened. It's unfortunate.

My game ended a little early, so we sat around and shot the shit about what to do next. It looks like Joe might run something. And, fool that I am, I volunteered to run another mini-campaign. Both of these games would start after Dennis finishes his Everknight campaign, which looks to be about 4 sessions or so from completion. I tried to pin down what everyone wanted to play, but the responses were mostly "I dunno, what do you want to run?" So far all I got is that straight fantasy is out, kewl powerz are in, no horror please, and maybe a modern or futuristic setting. On the way home Pat and I talked about an "agents against occult horrors" sort of game. Like Delta Green or Call of Cthulhu except that the PCs get to kick monster ass instead of going insane or dying. Maybe with a Ghostbusters theme, instead of secret agents, but not *quite* as jokey and containing more senseless violence. Another idea I had was to do a supers mini-campaign, a "four issue limited series", using the supers rules at Savage Heroes. I don't really want to tackle Home Team again, so I would need a different thematic framework to build the game on.

An then today I had another idea. For the Mob War game all I really did was port the old TSR rpg Gangbusters over to the new-fangled Savage Worlds rules, then I tightened the focus a bit and structured the narrative for speed campaigning. Presto! Instant micro-campaign. I own a metric assload of games I could do the same thing to. We could play the Ancients Quadrilogy from Classic Traveller. Or "The Taming of Brimstone", a great Boot Hill module from Dragon magazine. We could run Excursion into the Bizarre, with furries and fantasy PCs trying to escape a world they never made. Or Savage Gamma World. Or Savage World of Synnibarr!