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If you’re not sure what’s going on this week at Abulia Savant then you just plain haven’t been paying attention. Today’s pitch comes from left field and outside the comfort zone. I present to you, Shadowrun!

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Presuming you’ve followed the previous two days of campaign ideas, here is number three for this week’s pitch session. To regular readers of Abulia Savant this one will come as no surprise.

Out of the pages of Entertainment Weekly and a one year hiatus, the third season of the hit sci-fi series, Stargate SG-4!

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It’s the second day of the pitch list and, for purposes of this exercise, can you at least pretend to be surprised by the appearance of Star Trek on the list?

No? Okay then, read on anyway!

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All this week I am tossing out one gaming idea brewing in the background to pitch to the gaming group this coming weekend. The lead off hitter? You might be surprised: Dungeons & Dragons!

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Our gaming group is in the strange situation of no active games, having wrapped up the two existing campaigns recently. That means the upcoming weekend leads to the infamous “weighted list” decision-making session!

The weighted-list session is a bit of an inside joke but not entirely without a shred of truth. About four years ago — with a multifaceted group — I tossed out the idea of voting and stack raking our gaming ideas to choose the next game. Well, that tradition has lived on, although sometimes it can be pretty painful. We don’t always do it. But the intent of the session — weighted list or not — is to pitch and talk about game ideas and come up with the next game (or two). The last time I put any thought into this was quite some time ago. (Ironically, a year!)

Unfortunately 2008 was not a good gaming year for me. I didn’t run a game and solely as a player spent a good portion of that year frustrated. I acquiesced to try a Mage game where we spent a goodly amount of time infighting and not working together and after spending so many weeks on the road in 2008 and returning home to referee two small children the last thing I wanted to be doing was bickering, albeit in character, at the gaming table. The game was pretty complex and the rules fussy; it’s one of the few games where I sat through an encounter, entirely ineffective, having zero fun and wondering if there was a way to just stop playing the game. The other was the aforementioned two year Dungeons & Dragons game that I won’t belabor. Die, 3rd Edition, die!

So this time around I don’t intend on spending another year “taking one for the team.”

I don’t have to run a game but in light of the fact that I’m one of three GMs in the group it’s likely that I will. I’ve put a little thought into what I might pitch but I’ll readily admit that I’ve no great scheme hatching in the background of what to run. So in that vein — until reaching Sunday — I will toss up one campaign idea a day.

I’ve been re-reading the Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition rulebook and a curious thought struck me: somewhere along the way death became meaningless in my group’s games.

First, I’ve always been a proponent of risk versus reward and that for the purpose of dramatic tension there must be that element of danger. Without it victory seems hollow. And that has had me thinking that partly why our games the past several years have, at times, felt like hollow exercises, just going through the paces.

I believe the way it came to be is through entirely reasonable means: we’re all good friends who would hang out even if it weren’t to play a game and the (unspoken) social contract isn’t to fuck over the guy next to you or behind the screen running the game. And somewhere between trying to be a nice guy–and a good friend–we took death out of the equation. more…