As much as I am enjoying the DCC campaign - and being a player for a change - I did commit to running NE as the next big game so it's time to start digging into it. I have tried to run it twice before - my notes say 2010 and 2014 - though we did not finish it either time.
The first one we made it maybe halfway through. It was a lot of fun with an interesting mix of characters and encounters. The concept is glorious and everyone was enthusiastically on board with it with the brutes going around bashing objects and aliens and the vampire charming everything in sight. Most of them went into City of Heroes and made character portraits . This was one of our earlier runs with Savage Worlds for a longer term campaign and it worked really well. We eventually had too many schedule interruptions and had to put it on hold.
The second run was shorter and I was distracted trying to adapt it to Paragon City, the City of Heroes MMORPG setting, as we had all played it and had a ton of screenshots and would give us a reason to revisit something we all loved after its shutdown in 2012. Most of the players were the same and we carried over a few of the same characters but generally treated it as a reboot of the campaign. Looking back through my notes had me tempted to try the same thing for this new run but I'm going to hold off, run this one in its original setting, and see how it goes. If I get a chance to run this another time with a different mix of players then I might give that option a try. Plus with the game back online screenshots would be easy to work in as needed.
For this run though I am going to focus mainly on the adventure in the book and in the setting as it is written. Now the core of the campaign is the set of 11 Plot Point adventures that form the links that connect the whole thing together. You need to work them in as they are the spine of the game. Beyond that there are 25 other "Savage Tales" that can be worked in during the campaign to really flesh it out. Then of course there are whatever side adventures or shenanigans you cook up for your players or that they cook up for themselves. I don't feel the need to use all of them so I will pick out 10-12 that I like and start figuring out how to work them in - some might fit better in a certain sequence, others might be useful as a reaction to something else in the campaign. Assuming we're looking at each of these taking around one session then I'd like to start with around 25 sessions worth of material reviewed and ready - a rough outline for how the game might go. If the players are really into it then I can always work in more and if it starts to drag I can drop some side chapters and focus in on the main event.
Action-wise the PCs start off being "recruited" to join a resistance movement against alien invaders in Star City, an island city with some unusual qualities off the east coast of the U.S. As things progress they get more deeply involved, make some friends and some enemies, and become more and more of a concern to the local alien warlord. There is a lot of freedom in that middle part of the campaign. They are super-villains so things can get pretty ridiculous but trying not to pull down the entire alien invasion force gives an incentive to keep some of it quiet at least. Eventually things come together and a confrontation is inevitable.
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| I'm going to be running low on "generic superhero art" before I even start this campaign ... |
Now I will say here that I do not like the official finale of the campaign. I never have and part of what I will be noodling on is coming up with some other options for it that I like better - we will just have to see how that goes.
So as I finish up reading back through the material I need to put together an initial outline, get the bad guy stats printed out, look at my cheat-sheet options, review my properly themed Savage Worlds assets*, get the players minds rolling on their characters, and think about how I want to kick things off. Also have to think about doing an online recap or not like Obsidian Poral.
Anyway, more to come here.
*I'm not a big "props" guy with my RPGs but Savage Worlds does draw me in a bit with the trappings built into the game system itself just begging to be themed for a campaign. Plus cards and bennie-type trinkets are cheap and widely available.
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