I played in the beta that a friend of mine ran for a congame one shot, and had a ridiculous amount of fun, although there were some system misbalances.

Sadly, Left Field hasn’t gotten beyond the planning stage. A few players were definitely interested, but there always seemed to be scheduling conflicts.

Heroes Will Rise: Midnight and D&D 4E. As you probably know, Midnight is a campaign setting like Middle Earth would be if Sauron won (or for you real geeks, before Earendil sailed to Valar, Angband was broken, and Morgoth defeated). The gods have been sealed off from the world, and the dark god Izrador has broken the human kingdoms, and is hunting down the non-humans. Literacy, money, trade, weapons, and magic are outlawed.

Enter the heroes, one from each of the surviving races, brought together for reasons of their own, but bound together by a bond (to be determined). Each knows (because the GM told the player) that there is a traitor in the group, and is highly suspicious of the others, but they must work together. Just like in Midnight 3.5, each character is granted a “Heroic Path” (additional set of abilities following a theme).

Eventually, the heroes will ascend to be the new gods in the world, and may directly confront Izrador. They will catch on to this concept, perhaps early, but the key is that they still have to make the tough decisions (like the Conventry raid that Churchill allegedly knew about).

This would take some good GMing, partly to reinterpret the heroes’ actions as folk tales and then legends, partly to maintain a balance between hope and despair, and partly to be a bloodthirsty bastard when he (or she) needs to. Before wife and child, I could have done this, but I don’t have the time to commit to this level of intensity these days.

D&D 4E looks like an excellent fit for this campaign, partly because the power level starts high (and climbs), partly because the approach it takes towards magic items can be easily modded to fit in with the Midnight setting (where magic items are exceedingly rare, but grow with you), and partly because Rituals can replace the spellcasting that wouldn’t necessarily exist in a Midnight campaign.

Of course, the serial numbers could be filed off, and the names changed to protect the guilty…

This is my thought for a 4e D&D “Points of Light” style game, where the heroes are not just heroes, but Rock Stars! Complete with managers, flashy chariots, stage shows and merchandise. I was going for the look of the glam rock era so rhinestone covered armor, platform shoes, absurd cloaks and impractical looking weapons.

So, rival bands of adventurers, competing for fans and adventures, traveling across the land, living the lives of rock star heroes.

The Scarlet Empress had made deals with the Salt Gods (over 100 of them) to accept a regular tribute that stabilized the price of salt throughout the empire. Thanks to this, the Salt Rate became the basic loan rate of the Empire (Think of it sort of like the Federal Reserve’s basic rate). When the Empress vanished, several of the Salt Gods decided to start acting up.

It’s now up to the PCs to save the day and the financial stability of the Realm. A campaign that can go from one end of creation to the other with over 100 gods to appease, each with their own peculiarities and some, no doubt, acting in concert. At stake is the use of jade as money. Opponents include persnickety Salt Gods and the Guild, the coalition of merchants that would rather see silver used for cash. The only problem with that? Using jade helps keep it out of the hands of supernatural creatures that want to erase Creation. Politics, Intrigue, Wide Travel, and lots and lots of Salt.

It’s a pity there isn’t a monty python RPG system. Then again, its probably there isn’t one.

As an experimental GM, I also have a laundry-list of game ideas. I’m sitting on two or three games I’ve never run (Dust Devils springs to mind), and a few more I’ve only run once and then aborted to try and get a better grip on the systems (Pendragon and With Great Power…).

It’s aggravated by the fact that everyone in my group likes to run games occasionally, but we all have different games we like, so Joe will want to run Scion, and Thomas will want to run Vampire, and Aaron will want to run D&D, and meanwhile I’ve made another indiepressrevolution.com order and have some new strangeness to bring to the table.

Like magpies, we are!