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100% GMing
Treasure Tables is dedicated to game masters, offering GMing advice and ideas since 2005. I'm Martin Ralya, and I've been GMing since 1989 and writing for the RPG industry since 2004.
Keep a Backup RPG on Deck
Sun. February 18, 2007
Along the lines of Write a Backup Adventure, I’ve recently started keeping a fallback RPG ready to go for “gaming emergencies.”
Right now, I have the fabulous new edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, along with an entire three-book published campaign, just sitting on the shelf waiting to be run for my group. I’m familiar with the rules, and I’ve skimmed the adventures — I could easily start GMing a WFRP campaign on short (or no) notice.
I also know that my group, while they’d prefer a more customized campaign (rather than the “slot in your characters” approach that goes along with published modules), likes WFRP: we’ve played it once before, and everyone had a good time.
Those are the main criteria I recommend when choosing a backup game: familiarity with the system, adventures ready to go, pre-approved (at least to some extent) by your group and easy to run without any notice. There’s one more optional criterion, too, which depends on your group’s tastes: it’s a change of pace, as WFRP isn’t one of the games we’re currently playing.
So if either of our current GMs burns out or needs a break, or if we need a change of pace, WFRP is ready and waiting. I haven’t needed to Break Glass in Case of Gaming Emergency yet, but if I ever do I know that WFRP will be there.
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16 Responses to “Keep a Backup RPG on Deck”
The Sons of Kryos call it a spare tire RPG but yes, we’ve taken to doing the same thing.
These past few months, it has been Spirit of the Century but lately it has been a Burning Wheel game call Elves Illustrated.
Er, I’ve got a copy of Munchkin, a copy of Redneck Life, and the Gamers DVD… anything but Catan. Tons of RPGs on the shelf, none actually prepped and ready.
Does it have to be an RPG? And why anything but Catan?
It may be just becasue we’re not a ‘hardcore’ RP group but I keep a bunch of board and card games just in case, including some 2-players and some Magic decks in case we get the “only one guy showed” scenario.
Very rarely have we needed to resort to them on specific time Settlers of Catan was brought out and it was a blast all night long.
All I’m saying is you don’t need to put RPG-blinders on, when you want a change of pace, there are many other things you can bring in.
Catan is fine on its own; I’ve had fun playing it as well. I just know a few gamers who have all the odds calculated, strategies figured out, etc… It’s like playing poker with a pro. Agreed that alternatives need not be RPGs.
Oh, and I just got a Wii. It’s the ultimate party videogame system. Everyone in the room has fun, not just the player.
Whoa, my bad, we DO have a backup RPG (among the other games) that performed fantastically well one time: Mythic RPG.
We just layered its DM Emulator along with some really simple True20 rules for the combat and skill-monkeying, and BOOM instant RPG goodness: A cooperative little egyptian pyramid-crawl with some mysterious NPCs wandering around inside, everyone playing as a player, no GM, no prep, no effort or stress on anyone’s part. It was awesome. Now that I thought about it, I actually wanna play it again. On purpose this time
For a good backup, I recommend Universalis. (http://www.ramshead.indie-rpgs.com/) It’s GM-less and and making up the setting and adventure is part of the game, so it’s prep time is zero.
–Victor
I’ve got a copy of a BESM game called Advanced Dimensional Green Ninja-Educational Preparatory Super-Elementary Fortress 555. It’s an Anime themed chaos driven game, and it is good for a laugh. I’ve also got a ninja burger adventure, a set of Axis and Allies Miniatures, and my room-mate has a load of Heroclix strewn about.
Currently, Dogs in the Vineyard is our backup game. I always have a town or two rolling around the back of my head anyway, plus it is not hard to find them online in a pinch. It also works really well with a small number of players, so we can play it no matter how many show up.
Our group handles this alot like Harry does above. My players and I are avid Magic players, so 95% of the time we have our decks with us. If we dont feel up to it, I’ll keep a one shot adventure or a preconstructed adventure handy.
Paranoia was always my designated backup, but I don’t think I ever needed it.
Traveller.
Totally. It’s become my go-to game. If I don’t have enough players for my regular campaign, I bust out the LBBs and reprints and fire it up.
WuShu is my new backup game. My players and I watch enough over the top movies to have fun no matter what setting I make up.
It’s also simple enough that I’ve memorized the rules, I don’t even have to have meterials!
I guess I put boardgames and cardgames in a different category as backup activities — more of a default backup, really.
We’re all friends, we love games and movies — we can always find something to do. But if we can’t game and that’s what we really want to do, that’s where the backup RPG comes in.
I’m proposing Spirit of the Century as our backup game– after everyone makes characters, I’ll run it the weeks when we’re one person short. After Saturday’s success running with strangers, I think it’ll work great for our group.
A backup RPG seldom works for me, because our whole group really prefers long campaigns. It’s hard to do a quick backup for a long time. Even when we do one-shots, we try to work them into some campaign–even if only another system.
The closest we come to a backup is Toon. It’s not always the tone we want, but you really would be hard pressed to find a game that old that picks up that easy. The first time I ran it, very successfully, I’d owned the game for less than an hour, and most of that was driving back to the dorm.
No backup game, but I do have a backup campaign: Maure Castle, from Dungeon Magazine #112. We’ve been running it on and off for the last two years as a filler when the other DMs need a break, or when things suddenly fall apart and one of them can’t make.
It’s an old school dungeon crawl, filled with lots of nasty traps, spells and guardians, and it makes a good alternative to our more-role-playing oriented regular campaigns.