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:

1. Star Trek (Fate or 2d6) — You are The Original Series era Starfleet officers who explore strange new worlds and boldly go where no one has gone before.
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. Firefly (Fate or 2d6) — A Post-Unification War series of adventures where the heroes get a ship, find a job, and try to keep flyin’.
4. 50 Fathoms (Fate or 2d6) — Pirates of the Caribbean-inspired fantasy world.
5. Star Wars (Fate or 2d6) — 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.
6. The Mecha Hack (Mecha Hack system) — For a face-to-face group, this would use MechWarrior minis and 6mm scale terrain.

Top 10 Other Campaign Ideas

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

1. Mage Cops (Fate or 2d6) — 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, 2d6 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 or 2d6) — 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 (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 (Cinematic Fate, 24XX or 2d6)
2. Blake’s 7 (Cinematic Fate, 24XX or 2d6)
3. Doctor Who (Cinematic Fate or 2d6)
4. Star Trek (Cinematic Fate, 24XX or 2d6)
5. Traveller (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.

24XX, 2d6, and Fate all have their pros and cons. 24XX is excellent to reliably build your characters in < 30 minutes, so I like to roll up characters at the table. 2d6 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 (24XX or 2d6)
2. Firefly (Cinematic Fate, 24XX or 2d6)
3. Blake’s 7 (Cinematic Fate, 24XX or 2d6)
4. Doctor Who (Cinematic Fate, 24XX or 2d6)
5. Star Trek (Cinematic Fate, 24XX or 2d6)
6. Traveller (2d6)
7. BX D&D