Renewed Enthusiasm

Last year I mentioned how my trip to GaelCon XIX had greatly renewed my interest in gaming in general, but particularly in RPGs. Having just returned from GaelCon XX this evening, I find myself in a similar situation.

Since this time last year, I have ran a very successful campaign that lasted an astonishing 14 sessions, I've bought a lot more card games and board games, and I continue to look for ways to increase my time spent at this hobby, enjoying Monday Night Gaming, and trying to play board games with friends more often.

Now, I find myself contemplating the idea of maybe, possibly giving LARPing a chance, and stranger still, giving Vampire LARPing a chance!! That is not something I would have written, spoken or even thought three days ago, but GaelCon changes me, in ways that frighten and disgust me some times...

However, not everything is bad. On the drive home from Dublin to Cork, I wrote not one, but one-and-a-half once-off, convention-friendly RPG scenarios! How did I manage to write one-and-a-half? Simple. While the first one I came up with was entirely new, the second was a development on one of the sessions from my own Spirit of the Century campaign, so I already had that one worked out. I just spent some time tweaking it. Both are potentially for WarpCon 19, in January 2009. And both will be written using FATE 3.0, the Spirit of the Century system. Here are the blurbs, in reverse order, so the second one is my brand-new idea (subject to change):

Murder On The Orient Express
Welcome aboard the luxury trans-Europe train, the Orient Express. Sit back, relax, enjoy the company of the other passengers and prepare for a peaceful trip across Europe, stress-free and without any incidences of ritual murder... Oh, who are we kidding. The title is a dead give-away!

The Robo-Techs
✔ The Space Defence Force Omega is the last line of defence against a possible attack by the evil alien forces of the (Insert name here) on the planet Earth.
✔ As crew members of the S.D.F. Ω, you are invaluable to the continued defence of Earth.
✘ After all, without you, who would fix the 32 coffee machines in the canteen, or ensure hot showers for the 3,200 ship's company.
✘ Who would unblock any of the 237 toilets on board, or crawl through miles of air vents to find a loose wire?
✔ Yes, as S.D.F. Ω engineers, you're pretty important crew...
✔ Luckily, you and your friends have clocked up over 1,000 hours of combat apiece in TONKs, the 12 meter tall elite combat mechs of the S.D.F.
✘ But only through Hyper TONK Simulator eX 2, the latest installment in the TONK Simulator game series for ViaSofts home console, the Z-1080G.
✔ But your clan, The Robo-Techs, is one of the top 10 in the game. And you have a game scheduled against your biggest rivals, Xentraidee, tonight.
Five ✔'s against three ✘'s. Life isn't all bad, right?

The first blurb is a proper, convention brochure style blurb. The second is far too long, but I just started having too much fun writing it. Sorry. And I know it's full of terrible, terrible gags, but I'll probably change all of them before the final draft. Probably.