A few weeks ago, a friend at our gaming table mentioned in an online post that he was having difficulty remembering all of the games we'd played over the past few years, and nudged me toward the idea of making a comprehensive list. I did, and it was both a humbling and invigorating experience looking back at all the games we'd played at our table over the past decade in London, Ontario. I sometimes say that as an adult gamer, I've played the best games of my life in the last few years, and here was actual proof.
There are an awful lot of games on that list, spanning 34 separate game systems (but a total of 52 games, if you include my online ones). That includes a lot of one-shots, but it also includes a substantial number of long, meaty campaigns (18!) that you may have read about in these pages. Of course, I was only one of several GMs who had his hand in making our table such an active one, because we are blessed with a number of players who have an interest in the "big chair".
I crunched the numbers, and my wife Megan went so far as to write up short "TV Guide teasers" for each of the campaigns we'd played, so I thought I'd share them here. They're listed in no particular order, except that was the order Megan wrote them up. I have some smaller-run campaigns in this list, but my meatier ones are later on -- again, not for any particular reason other than Megan wrote them up as a group. I haven't included my online games not because I am not proud of them, but because I don't have the time to write them up as my wonderful wife has done. Perhaps I will append this list in the future.
Please forgive some formatting wonkiness that came along with cutting-and-pasting the text.
Rob, enjoy the trip down memory lane. I did.
Tinseltown (System: Don't Rest Your Head / GM: Amanda)
1920s Hollywood. Full of glamour and parties. And land developers sacrificing people on the foundations of their buildings. Our group must stop him before one of their own is next....
1920s Hollywood. Full of glamour and parties. And land developers sacrificing people on the foundations of their buildings. Our group must stop him before one of their own is next....
A misfit band of superheroes in London, Ontario, try to keep the streets safe and the corporations accountable...well, some of the time.
Lost Pines (System: Lost Pines / GM: Bill)
A small town is the site of blackmail, disappearances, affairs, and...maybe something supernatural?
Monster of the Week (System: Monster of the Week / GM: Bill)
In Eastern Ontario, low-rent demon hunters track the supernatural, but sometimes end up in jail themselves.
Over the Edge (System: Over the Edge / GM: Bill)
On the island state of Al-Amarja, nothing is what it seems, everything might be for sale, spies might be anywhere...and so might Bat Boy?
Sherwood (System: Fate Accelerated / GM: Bill)
When the leader of the rebels on the forest planet of Sherwood dies, our crew might just have to step up and take on the mantle of the Green to fight the oppressive forces of the Crown.
Threshold (System: Fate Accelerated / GM: Bill)
Another group of spacefaring rebels battles an unrelated oppressive galactic empire in a sentient spacefaring tree.
D&D 4th Edition (System: D&D 4th Edition / GM: Colin)
The world is dying, and there's nothing to be done. But there are still adventures to be had.
Deadlands: Sutured Kansas (System: Primetime Adventures / GM: Colin)
The railroad approaches a small town, and the citizens are divided on whether or not that's a good thing. Sabotage, arson, and dropping someone off a roof and then tying them up in a leaky basement follow.
Round Midnight (System: Primetime Adventures / GM: Megan)
The world of Jazz Age Chicago mingles with that of the fae in tales of deals, drugs, betrayals, identity, and wanting to show up Louis Armstrong.
Shakespeare, VA (System: Primetime Adventures / GM: Megan)
A small-town Shakespearean festival puts on a production of Macbeth that threatens to tap into dark forces in the woods and minutes surrounding them.
Eberron (System: D&D 3.5 / GM: Phillip)
A culinary tour of the world leads to boiled dinosaur steaks - we don't recommend that place. (Also fights and adventures aplenty.)
Apocalypse World (System: Apocalypse World / GM: Rob)
A single road runs between islands on a drowned coast. Four Mothers control their territories along it, with the city of Mictlan at the end. Staying alive means surviving the psychic hurricanes that batter shoreline, but the encroaching armies from the North may be even more of a threat.
Cold City (System: Leverage / GM: Rob)
In post-war Berlin, a multi-national team investigates the supernatural side of the city. Memory and identity shift as the investigators try to figure out who to trust and who to kill.
Southern Rock Opera (System: DramaSystem / GM: Rob)
In the 1970s, rock band Whiskey Holler catapults to the top so quickly it seems like they made a deal with the Devil. Except they actually did, and the payment is coming, one casualty at a time.
T.H.E.M. (System: Primetime Adventures / GM: Rob)
Corporate superheroes keep us safe. But in the city, a group of villains fights them to expose the real evils perpetrated in their wake. As it turns out, heroism is a sliding scale, and nobody is blameless.
The following games are all ones that I ran, and they're longer, meatier runs than the ones listed above that I GMed.
American Nightmare (System: Cinematic Unisystem)
A roving band of demon hunters grapples with the supernatural incarnations of the dark side of the American Dream, from labour relations to racism to institutionalization to Disneynification and beyond.
Carnaby Street (System: Fate Accelerated)
In the swinging sixties in London, England, a group of magic users grapples with the idea that they might not be who they thought they were, and that their memories and loyalties may have been altered.
Deadlands: Hell on Earth (System: Cinematic Unisystem)
Years after ghost rock scoured the Earth, an unlikely band of heroes comes to town [which town?] and tries to protect it from the coming onslaught of military might, biker gangs, and the apocalypse as foretold by William Blake.
Firefly (System: Cinematic Unisystem)
The crew of the Fandango, made up of a travelling captain, a pacifist doctor, and a pregnant former war criminal, tries to uncover the secrets long hidden by the Alliance that threaten their fragile sense of family.
Not Fade Away (System: Fate Accelerated)
Reincarnated again and again, the Pilgrims lived to fight the Rakshasa. They won. What will they do with the prospect of eternal life and the loss of a purpose that sustained them for millennia?
Seven Stars of Atlantis (System: Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies)
Mummies and curses and Edgar Cayce, oh my! Our swashbuckling and bickering crew go on a globe-spanning adventure that pits them against the machinations of the Atlanteans and the uncontrollable urges of the heart.
Shadowrun: Disavowed (System: Fate)
Their corporation tried to kill an elite team of Shadowrunners without warning. Now they're back in Seattle, hellbent on discovering why before the fires consume them...literally.
Shadowrun: The Forks (System: Fate Accelerated)
In the beaten-down wreckages of London, Ontario, the needs to the body fight it out against the needs of the community. Assassins face off against hitmen, and no one is safe, including one character's grandmother.
Sunset Empire (System: Cinematic Unisystem)
The British Empire is protected by staunch men of honour...and those more often seen as disposable or even property. A Slayer, a golem, a werewolf, a fae, and a ghost-ridden doctor fight to save an Empire that may not deserve it, to forestall an alternative that might be worse.
Tianxia: The Book of Changes (System: Fate)
How do we become what we are? Tianxia moves back and forth in time in a mythical almost-China to discover how three people broke, and whether or not they could ever be healed. Add a lot of martial arts and heartache and stir.
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