Mini-Post: Shamus' new game

Yesterday, Shamus Young posted about concluding his D&D campaign and starting a new one.

One of his key challenges was that everybody in his large group (8 players) wanted to play a different style/theme than the rest.

D&D was chosen last time because it’s the default game that his group seems to have agreed to. And it that’s what he might go for again.

Now I don’t want to dwell on his list of player specs for rules of the perfect RPG, that’s his personal Player’s Creed and I’m cool with that even if I don’t share his views.

I also don’t want to suggest he takes on a new game system as many on his site proposed. I believe this would send his group into unneeded storming again and I don’t think that’s what he wants.

But since he has limited RPG resources and the whole group knows D&D 3,5 here’s a few tips I suggest for his next game:

First, go with D&D 3.5 but open it up to allow the other players a bit of what they want:

Mech Warrior guy seems to be a Brilliant Tactician, so play with a battlemap and figurines (or stand-ins) at least once in a while.

To truly make his day, make one adventure arc about ‘giant steampunk mechas’ by making some D&D monsters into drivable constructs (The Bulette is my favorite) and using D20 Vehicle rules. Have at least one adventure where a battle is fought with them.

Let the other players who don’t care about this stuff play the battle by jumping from Mecha to Gigantic monster.

Rules Aside: Yes I read the strip where Legolas wants to do things the rule disallow, but I suggest you have your own version of the Rule of Cool handy and allow jumping around, ignoring failure so the non-mecha players can have fun focusing on getting the bad guy sitting on the Dinosaurs!

Allow players to play Vampires and Werewolf PCs (for 5 bucks I suggest Sean K. Reynolds’ Curse of the Moon as an alternate) . Depending on starting level, you can even disregard ECLs.

Set the game on an ocean world where an evil Island-spanning Empire fights against rebel Pirates! Set ocean-gates that allow faster travel from island to island.

Star Destroyers become Behemoth Floating Dungeons with Magic Siege Engines! The Death Star is a Flying Aircraft-Carrier!

And use all those Steampunk StarWars pictures on the web as props for fluff.

All this can be done with core books and stuff borrowed legally from the net.

Damn, I want to play that game now!

What about you, dear readers, do you  have any other hints that don’t entail buying a new game?