Mainstream & Indy Scene

Whenever I start thinking about my next game projects, whether for WinterWar or just my next campaign, I always end up torn between two extremes. The devilangel on my right shoulder wants me to stick with good, accessible, well-supported mainstream games that I can find players for with relative ease. You know, Dungeons & Dragons and shit like that. I'm still a huge fan of kicking down doors and killing orcs. My recent fling with Savage Worlds is basically in the same vein, since it is locally quite popular at the moment and is basically the same sort of rpg. My as-yet-embryonic plans for the Six Islands Campaign fall into this categoiry as well. I have no intentions of doing anything particularly innovative in that game, I just want the usual D&D craziness turned up to '11'.

Meanwhile, the angeldevil on my left shoulder urges me to quit screwing around with this kidding stuff and move on to some hardcore indie roleplaying. I've got a metric assload of indie games, mostly internet freebies but also a few I've paid real US currency for, notably Sorcerer (and the most kickass of rpg supplements, Sorcerer & Sword) and kill puppies for satan. I could easily name a bunch of other great indie games I'd like to try: Final Stand, My Life With Master, With Great Power, The Mountain Witch, Lost Gods, Puppetland. It would only take a flip through my big pile of PDF printouts to stumble over five or ten more. My earlier Experimental Games Group idea was basically a structure designed to feed this need, (Incidentally, that name has already been taken by another group.) as was running QAGS, Wuthering Heights, and Bad Attitudes at a previous Winter War.

Frankly, I think I won't be completely happy with my gaming unless I have it both ways. I want to run or play in a straight rock-em sock-em traditional RPG campaign AND have some crazy indie stuff, with both operations running parallel to each other. I don't know if I could pull that off, but I think it should be my overall gaming goal.