Entry 1: Setting and System Basics

In my view you cannot select a system until you know the setting you want to use and the style of game your aiming for. Standard d20 rules work very well for a tactical style of combat but have a hard time dealing with a fast pace action movie style combat. At the same time if one wanted a system that worked well for intrigue and a game with little physical combat the WoD system is really good, but not for a dungeon crawler game. Its basically the GSN concept, or Gamest, Simulation, and Narrative. There is no system that will properly do all three so you have to choose how much of each one you wish to focus on and the setting you choose has a large influence on that.

For this mini-campaign I was inspired by the Gamma World setting. Basically a near future post apocalyptic setting with mutants and a touch of craziness. The story is that somehow earths from various dimensions got merged together destroying pretty much everything and creating mutants, or at least that’s what I got out of it. That sounds pretty cool to me but I didn’t want to be tied to an established setting so I figured I would Ravenloft it up a bit as that was the last setting we played in. So it will still be a near future post apocalyptic setting where Earth from various dimensions are merging to create an Earth Prime. The players will arrive with as much knowledge of where they are from as they wish but Earth Prime will be very different from their Earth. It will also be in a state of flux in various areas as things are still settling. This gives me the option to place nearly anything that is desired into the setting. It will basically be an episodic dungeon crawler with a villain of the week so to speak.

For the system I’m going to use d20 as a base along with some of the subsystems/mechanics from star wars saga and dnd 4^th edition. But I’m also going to modify a lot of it. There are several reasons I chose d20. Its very modular allowing you to add and remove various subsystems. It provides a acceptable non combat rules for when they are needed and provides a lot of focus on interesting combat encounters. Also, most of the players are very familiar with it. When I’m done hitting it with a hammer though it won’t look like the two games that inspired it. This system will focus primarily upon the Gamist aspect. As far as the simulation aspect the campaign has little need of it and I do not want to go with a survival style of gameplay so it only needs to be internally consistent. As far as Narrative goes that will also be limited but I don’t feel its extremely important for the direction of this mini-campain.