GM backlog

My master plan

This is about TRPG adventures I am willing to GM, any time I am not busy GMing or being sick of GMing. This isn’t television, so if you want to play, don’t wait for me to come calling. Tell me what you’re into and help round up players. Most of my regular players are Swedish, but descriptions are in English for wider recruitment.

I try to keep this up to date.

The Enemy Within

Pitch	Uprooted Renaissance-German low-lives discover a truly nefarious plot against the realm.
Genre	Action, investigation, horror, black comedy.
Setting	Warhammer, the fantasy version. Call of Cthulhu meets D&D with a sense of humour. Sounds bad. Is good.
System	Unsure. Both of the official Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (WFRP) systems are pretty boring.
Author	Phil Gallagher, Graeme Davis, Jim Bambra and others.
Script status	Complete since 1989. I have both that original version in physical form and the Cubicle 7 Collector’s Edition in electronic form.

I want to run The Enemy Within for two reasons: It’s one of the most lauded RPG campaigns ever published, and I have a soft spot for the dirty, superstitious, dog-eat-underdog world of WFRP.

Warhammer 40,000

Pitch	First contact with humankind.
Genre	Science fantasy, gothic horror, action.
Setting	Warhammer 40,000, interpreted with an eye to moral ambiguity and not-too-soft SF. A bit like Star Wars, but with the darkness of William Hope Hodgson’s The Night Land.
System	Perhaps ORE or a modified Adventures on Dungeon Planet (2013).
Author	Various.
Script status	There are prefabs. I have lots of ideas, but nothing complete.

Rogue Trader (1987) was the first publication for Warhammer 40,000, and the first 40K RPG, though it was primarily a skirmish game for miniatures. Inquisitor (2001) is a more finely detailed 40K skirmish system. Since 2007, there have been five official RPGs published for 40K, including a remake of Rogue Trader, all using a mediocre, splat-driven d100 system loosely based off of WFRP2. None of these systems are terrible, but none of them are very good.

As of 2015-09, the main stumbling block is the lack of a player group that already understands 40K. This is why I’ve planned a one-off taster with Tau PCs. To most Swedish SF fans, the non-human Tau are probably less alien than the human Imperium of Man.

Rains of Felonis

Pitch	Explorers briefly set down on a planet for the first time.
Genre	SF horror sandbox.
Setting	Across a Thousand Dead Worlds (2023).
System	Probably the official one but hand-waving a lot of the crunch.
Author	Donn Stroud.
Script status	Complete as published. Needs some work on the back end.

I like Across a Thousand Dead Worlds for two reasons: It’s a loose adaptation of Gateway (1977) without the Freudianism, and it pitches boredom as a feature. That’s because it sets up space exploration as a metaphor for wage slavery, which is the real theme of the game. Here’s an official pitch:

Across a Thousand Dead Worlds is a game of risk-taking, constant dread, a dash of boredom coupled with stress, sheer violence, bright moments and casual brutality. It is a game for exploring the insignificance of humanity, how its greed, wants and desires come to bear in the face of a cold, unknowable universe.

This artistic intent is interesting to me. Unfortunately, it is implemented mainly in an old school, as low-prep randomness. Even in the published one-shot “Rains of Felonis”, there is little worldbuilding behind the vision. If you don’t mind that, I think the themes and vignettes can carry the one-shot.

Dårarnas ö / Maniac Isle

Pitch	Freelancers troubleshoot high-tech theft in a city where convicts are exiled to reclaimed land in Tokyo Bay.
Genre	Cyberpunk, action.
Setting	Mutant (1989).
System	Probably Mutant (1989). It’s a simple BRP-like affair.
Author	Gunilla Jonsson.
Script status	Complete.

Sekundus befrielse / The Liberation of Secundus

Pitch	Mech pilots reshape a hitherto peaceful world.
Genre	Soft SF, action adventure.
Setting	Homebrew.
System	Probably the One-Roll Engine Mecha rules by Kevin Pezzano.
Author	Me.
Script status	Incomplete.

Bizarra Campaign

Pitch	Magically trained explorers and diplomats rediscover their islands after cataclysmic change.
Genre	Fantasy with surrealist elements.
Setting	Bizarra, a homebrew.
System	Bizarra.
Author	Me.
Script status	Incomplete. The setting is meant for sand-box play and has been playtested successfully, but doesn’t have all the detail it needs for a campaign.

Other

I would be interested in running, but have not adequately prepared for, the following:

The zombie apocalypse. Most likely something in the vein of Monster Island (2004) using Red Markets (2016).
Torchbearer (2013).
Microscope (2011). No GM.
Something like Twilight 2000 but perhaps more optimistic, starring dirt-poor Russian soldiers stranded in an apocalyptic hellscape with a chance to rebuild. The notion is based mainly on this “Ruski Roadtrip” rescoring of clips from AFGAN: The Soviet Experience (1989) with the music of Drive (2011), and echoes of what the Swedish TRPG Partisan might have been. (Partisan spent 38 years in development hell, starting at Äventyrsspel in 1986 and finally coming out through Eloso Förlag in 2024.)

On the level of only mild curiosity:

Moderne, a homebrew that is now a retrofuture. Reasonably hard extrapolative science fiction, ca. 2050.
A brutally colourful 1970s/-80s street gang chronicle of urban decline, à la The Warriors (1979).
Continuum (1999). People say it’s very hard and very smart.
White Wolf’s Trinity.
Sorcerer (1996 with later revisions). Every PC is a mage but can only summon demons. It’s so indie that Ron Edwards wrote it.
Universalis, no-GM low-prep system where the participants are not expected to agree.
The Shadow of Yesterday (2004), indie sword and sorcery.