Top Stuff I Want To Run Someday (Late 2023 Edition)

In a traditional dating back nine years, I like to inventory the ‘games I’m itching to run someday’. Interesting how things evolve: see my posts in early 2023, early 2022, late 2020, early 2020,  early 2019, 2017, 2016 and 2014 of things I was itching to run in prior years.

The big change this year is that I recently (for the first time ever!) came up with a list of my favorite game engines to use for campaigns I run. With a couple of exceptions (The One Ring and Pendragon) where there’s an amazing campaign tied to a particular ruleset, I will, for the most part, target to run my favorite systems, which at the moment are story games (Fate, QuestWorlds, and Kids on Brooms), D&D (BX D&D and D&D 5e), and d100 (either Chaosium’s BRP or d00Lite).

Top 5 Near-Term Campaign Ideas

In no particular order, here are the top games I’d be willing to run in the near term:

Narrative Games

1. Star Trek (d6 Fate) — You are The Original Series era Starfleet officers who explore strange new worlds and boldly go where no one has gone before.
2. 50 Fathoms (d6 Fate) — Pirates of the Caribbean-inspired fantasy world, run without minis. (This also appears under Tactical games).
3. Firefly (d6 Fate) — A Post-Unification War series of adventures where the heroes get a ship, find a job, and try to keep flyin’. Would continue the series story post-Serenity movie.

Tactical Games with Minis

1. 50 Fathoms (2d6) — Pirates of the Caribbean-inspired fantasy world. Run with d6 / Traveller-inspired tactical rules. (This also appears under Narrative games).
2. Traveller (Traveller) — Classic, hard sci-fi space adventures. Characters have a ship and deal with various threats while taking odd jobs in the Galactic Imperium.
3. Star Wars (WEG D6) — Characters start as low-level, small-fry free traders, but over time, exposed to the evil of the Empire, they join the Rebellion and become embroiled in events on a grander scale. Or perhaps we’d use the Dawn of Defiance campaign, converting the Saga d20 rules to WEG D6.
4. The Mecha Hack (Mecha Hack system) — For a face-to-face group, this would use MechWarrior minis and 6mm scale terrain.

Of the above, games that would require heavy prep are: 50 Fathoms (a rules conversion plus maybe minis), Star Wars (rules upgrades to Mini Six, more minis, campaign adventure conversions), and The Mecha Hack (lots of minis conversions).

Top 10 Other Campaign Ideas

In no particular order, here are other games I’d be happy running.

1. Mage Cops (Fate or D6) — Wizard constables tackle crimes of the week in NYC or Boston.
2. Magic Academy (Kids on Brooms) — You are young adults studying magic and dealing with magical threats in a Harry Potter-inspired setting.
3. Trinity (Fate, Cinematic 24XX, D6 or Masks) — A Smallville-inspired superhero setting set in the small town in Texas named Trinity, probably in the 80s, back in the days before cell phones. Includes relationships and school drama.
4. Redmark (D&D 1e) — A classic D&D campaign in Stan’s homebrew world of Thrëa where Orthodox Christianity, Catholicism, and other medieval connections exist due to a crossing of planes after a mystic apocalypse.
5. Steamrunner (Fate, Cinematic 24XX or D6) — Post-apocalyptic steampunk Firefly-style setting. You play scoundrels with good consciences who do heists and missions in big neo-victorian cities, floating air cities, and the sky lanes with airships.
6. Middle-earth: Moria Campaign (The One Ring 2e) — You are adventurers braving the labyrinthine depths of the Moria. Would use the upcoming campaign setting by Gareth Ryder.
7. Wuxia (The Art of Wuxia d100 system) — Battle corrupt Asian overlords, kung fu masters, dragons, and unique evil oriental monsters, while perfecting your martial arts.
8. The Secrets of Cats (d6 Fate) — You play intelligent cats who try to protect their ‘burdens’ (their human masters) from paranormal threats.
9. Eberron (D&D 5e) — A steam-punk feeling fantasy noir setting with airships, floating cities, and a variety of interesting magical races.
10. Gangbusters (BRP/d100) — A murder-board mystery arc in 1920s Chicago.

Other Long-Term Campaign Ideas

I am also interested in the following systems, but they depend on either miniatures or unreleased products, so this would be further out.

1. Axios (BRP/d100) — Greek heroes battle mythic monsters and deal with the forces of Chaos that threaten the worlds both mortal and immortal.
2. Pendragon (Pendragon) — A multi-generational Arthurian era saga using ‘The Great Pendragon Campaign’, promised by Chaosium but with no release dates.

Con Games

I like to run games at conventions like NTRPGCon, The Long Con, and Lone Star Game Expo. Top games I’d like to run in those venues are:

1. Firefly (d6 Fate, Cinematic 24XX or D6)
2. Blake’s 7 (d6 Fate, Cinematic 24XX or D6)
3. Doctor Who (d6 Fate or Cinematic 24XX)
4. Star Trek (d6 Fate, Cinematic 24XX or D6)
5. Traveller (LLB 2d6)
6. BX D&D

Organized Play

I also like to have a ‘B’ campaign which is a light-weight organized play set of adventures we hop over to when our main campaign game doesn’t make.

Cinematic 24XX, D6, and Fate all have their pros and cons. Cinematic 24XX is excellent to reliably build your characters in < 30 minutes, so I like to roll up characters at the table. D6 and BX character generation can take longer so I tend to have pre-gens when running that for a con game. For Fate, I would use pregens; Fate is my favorite game system but it also a very story oriented game which might not be as well received with old-school audiences.

1. Conan (Cinematic 24XX or D6)
2. Firefly (d6 Fate, Cinematic 24XX or D6)
3. Blake’s 7 (d6 Fate, Cinematic 24XX or D6)
4. Doctor Who (d6 Fate, Cinematic 24XX or D6)
5. Star Trek (d6 Fate, Cinematic 24XX or D6)
6. Traveller (Mongoose 2e 2d6)
7. BX D&D