The Game I’m Itching to Run

I want, I want, I want. Here’s my post-GenCon hype:

I want to run a spy game, maybe something black ops, maybe more political intrigue-y, maybe rogue agents, maybe agents with all the resources of an agency behind them, perhaps even something with more of a crime heist flavor. The exact details I want to leave open until the players sit down and start hashing out characters. Though I do want to avoid campy spy stories. More Bourne than Bond. Or at least more Daniel Craig than Sean Connery.

I want to keep the number of players small. Three or four, all playing experts or specialists in a team. Maybe their all bad-ass, international hitmen. Maybe one’s an infiltrator, another a mastermind, and another a cleaner. Maybe they’re all deep undercover, have been for years, and their only tangible connection with their real identities is each other.

I want to try it using the Solar System, which can be purchased through IPR for the obnoxiously low price of five bucks. There are a number of reasons I want to use this system, foremost of which is simply because I do. I picked it up at GenCon and it’s weaseled its way into my brain. There are things in this system which I think can be fun, and I want to try them out. I’ll go a little bit more into the system in another post. For now, I just want to plant the seeds.

Fates Worse Than Death

With all due respect to Gary Gygax, but the Tomb of Horrors is a real bitch. Saif has been running some of us through an updated 3.5 version of the infamous dungeon and I have to say that we’ve been doing quite well. It doesn’t hurt that the party includes a robot that is immune to almost everything and a death priestess.

However, the other night, we had our first real setbacks. It started when a mummy lord cast slay living on our ogre mage monk, played by Andrew. There were at least three chances for that spell to fail, but fate had other things in store. Luckily, we had a druid who could reincarnate him! Well, sort of. The net result of that fight was that we traded our flying, regenerating, spellcasting ogre mage for a human. A plain, ordinary human.

Then, my lockpicking, trap dodging wererat though that he had discovered a way into the dungeon’s final chamber. Nope. I got it slightly wrong, which, of course, meant that he was teleported back to the surface. Minus all of his gear. ALL of it. Naked.

Frankly, I imagine that both Andrew and I wish that that dungeon had killed our characters.