Bitten by the GM Bug: Savage Worlds Horror, Obsidian Twilight and Dragon Age

It’s been a long time since I’ve been behind the screen. But the GM’ing bug is gnawing away at my brain and it’s time to start crafting a new campaign. I know it won’t till this fall before there’s an opening for a new campaign but I like to take my time and plan things. I’ve pitched a couple of ideas to the Friday Gang and my big three ideas are a Savage Worlds Horror campaign, the Dragon Age RPG and something with Pathfinder. No matter what ends up being selected, my random thoughts through the campaign creation process are going to end up here.
Since most folks end up here looking for Savage Worlds Stuff, I’ll start with some thoughts about that. It’s been so long since I’ve ran a horror game. And I have fond memories of playing and running in such campaigns. Savage Worlds hits the sweet spot for what I’m looking for. In this case, light and flexible rules to bend to my vision and easily be able to accept conversions of adventures from different rules. A combat system that can be deadly and cinematic at the same time. And plenty of source material (both professional and fan created) to draw from. I’ve got stacks of old Chill, Kult, Call of Cthulhu, Nemesis and Pinebox Adventures (from 12 to Midnight) ready as spring boards. For a tone, I’m looking at a little bit more cinematic than Supernatural but less so than Buffy/Angel.
I have to admit. I have not ran a D&D game since AD&D. I’ve played Second and Third Edition and Fourth is just gathering dust on my shelf. I’ve ran plenty of other games and played through most of Paizo’s Adventure Paths. My group likes Pathfinder and so I just might throw my butt into the DM chair and see how it goes. For this I wanted something different and not exactly of Paizo’s universe. Nothing against them but I didn’t feel anything that I came up was going to measure up to one of their Adventure Paths. After a little searching, I came upon Obsidian Twilight by LPJ Designs. The quick pitch is that it’s a cross between Ravenloft and Darksun or a post apocalyptic survival horror setting. I’ve downloaded what is available and it’s pretty darned good. I had liked some other things that I’ve gotten from LPJ Designs (like Haven: City of Violence). This is a relatively new setting so everything isn’t out yet which leaves my Old School imagination run wild filling in the blanks. I plan to tweak the setting, of course, since I just can’t seem to leave things alone. For this I want a more pragmatic tone and play down the survival and horror aspects. Sure undead run the place and there are angels and demons wandering around. That’s just the way things are. Deal with it. There will be a little resistance fighting against the undead lords but I really don’t plan on having it be the real meat of the campaign.
Then there’s the Dragon Age RPG from Green Ronin. I did review of Set 1 a few weeks back and I liked it. But it suffers from the exact opposite problem as Obsidian Twilight. While not all of the fluff has been released for Obsidian Twilight, there’s plenty of other sources to pull the crunchy bits to build up a campaign. For Dragon Age, there’s more fluff than you can shake a stick at out there but we’re going to have to wait for the other sets to get a good idea on how the higher level rules operate.
So that’s it. Those are the little gaming projects that I’m working on in my copious free time. I’ll keep y’all update as interesting ideas pass through my head. And, yep, I really didn’t bother to proofread this post.