Halloween Games and FG Con7

To celebrate Halloween this month I decided to run as many horror-themed games in October as possible.

It all starts with some Deadlands Reloaded Saturday October 3rd on Fantasy Grounds. It's free for everybody and there are still a few seats left.

It's also FG Con7 on October 16-18th and since we themed it Fright Night to celebrate Halloween I'll be running some more games there. I kick off the celebrations with some Savage Ghostbusters on Friday night followed by Beasts & Barbarians on Saturday. There are a few seats open for these also so come on in! Again, it's free (trying to kill the myth that you always have to pay money to play on Fantasy Grounds -- is it working? hehe). Check out the other events as well. There's some Pathfinder Society, Savage Worlds, D&D 5e, Call of Cthulhu, Trail of Cthulhu and more.

There is room for more games as well. I really want to run Chickens in the Mist and tie it in with ETU. I should probably run some Trail of Cthulhu as well but I only have the Murderer of Thomas Fell and Ritual Pursuits ready.

I also plan on purchasing the Savage Tales of Horror this week and if I can find a tale short enough to accommodate a three or four hours time slot I'll probably run some of that as well.

And of course, with the new season of The Walking Dead starting this month I should probably dig out my War of the Dead game.

What are you running or playing this Halloween?

Top 5 campaigns I'd like to run next

Besides all the one-shot games I run over the weekend and for online RPG conventions I run two campaigns. 

Every other Tuesday morning we play the Savage World of Solomon Kane. This started over the summer and after five sessions we just passed the introduction to the Path of Kane plot point campaign. I've been using mostly my own tales and we're having fun with the episode/comic book format where every story is one game session or two long at the most.

On Friday evenings it's Beasts & Barbarians. What started out as a series of one-shots a year ago has become a very steady campaign driven by character story arcs. The players are comfortable with their characters, the group has gelled well and our games are filled with laughter and cheers. We've just completed what I call season one so we're on a hiatus until the beginning of November where we'll play season two set in Jalizar, city of thieves, flower of the north. The group is mostly comprised of Heroic rank characters and, despite running Savage Worlds for many years, I've rarely had to challenge groups above Seasoned. This should be interesting.

But as you know, a GM's heart is often one step ahead when it comes to planning or at least day-dreaming a campaign and I'm no different.

Here are the campaigns I'd like to run in the near future in no particular order.

1. The Dracula Dossier: Super spies vs Dracula for Night's Black Agents. A giant sandbox, collaborative campaign with gorgeous handouts that looks totally epic. This would be very challenging for me. I would need to prepare for this like I've never prepared before. As a GM always willing to improve, I'd love to be part of this.

2. Apocalypse World: I've wanted to run a successful post-apocalyptic campaign for a while. The prep sessions using Fate Core were a very interesting and engaging experience but the actual play didn't go so well mainly because of everybody inexperience with the Fate engine. I'm still contemplating sticking to Savage Worlds and using material from Deadlands Hell on Earth Reloaded, Broken Earth and World of the Dead but since I really want to try out a Powered by the Apocalypse game, the one that started it all sound like something my Beasts & Barbarians group would rock to no end because we thrive on bouncing ideas off of each other.

3. Achtung! Cthulhu: The Mythos, Nazis, Indiana Jones, World War II, 'nuff said!

4. Primeval Thule: I don't even have the D&D 5e books from the Kickstarter yet. I have very little experience with 5e but I like the system as far as class-based systems go. The Forgotten Realms don't inspire me at all. Every time I hear elven ranger, dwarven cleric or wizard I throw up in my mouth a little bit. Primeval Thule on the other hand is a sword & sorcery setting of Conan vs Cthulhu. It feels fresh and exciting to me. And if you can't tell yet, I love sword & sorcery and horror genre campaigns. This seems like a good match for me.

5. Savage Barsoom: Like I said, I love the sword & sorcery tropes, this just takes them to Mars. Space 1889 looks great but I'm not really into the whole Victorian thing, I loved Princess of Mars, it really moved me and I think this could be a very engaging campaign. With the Mars books from Adamant Entertainment, ship rules from 50 Fathoms and Pirates of the Spanish Main, the Science Fiction Companion and a bit of elbow grease I think I could get this airship up an flying.

What do you think? If you could play in my next campaign, which one would you prefer and why? If you've played in one or more of those already, what was it like?