Patriot Games

I'm just coming off an extraordinarily busy weekend of birthday parties for six-year old boys. One of those parties was for my son and his special pre-party birthday activity was to visit Mount Vernon, George Washington's beautiful estate on the banks of the Potomac River. Yes, my son is a history nerd, which warms my own nerdy heart.

Anyway, on a beautiful sunny day with the grounds swarming with reenactors, I was totally inspired by our visit to the 18th century. Predictably, my thoughts turned (one again) to the colonial era game that I've been wanting to run for years. For me, the appeal of the colonial era is that I can still imagine a more-or-less traditional D&D campaign, albeit one where characters have less distance historical distance. It the appeal of modern ideas with pre-modern trapping. Guns are slow, swords still matter, and yet you have the very beginning of weird science (hello Frankenstein!). On top of that, I dig 18th-century coats and tricorn hats. I think of Sleepy Hollow, Brotherhood of the Wolf, and Pirates of the Caribbean as the cinematic touchtones, mostly for their look and their style of action (leaning on Sleepy Hollow more heavily for its tone).

Alas, with two long-running games that aren't going away anytime soon, I need to dampen my enthusiasm a bit. My best hope is perhaps a mini-campaign that may land in our pick-up slot (currently occupied by Old School Hack - which is not incompatible with colonial settings). Or perhaps (if by some miracle my schedule clears) I can run a game on Google+. If had scheduled my DC Gameday events differently, I might have joined Kennon Bauman's Sons of Liberty Mutants & Masterminds game.

But it never hurts to plan for the future. I know my current Gurps game was sitting on the back burner for years before we had the opportunity to launch it. No harm is doing a little brainstorming now. It'll give me an excuse to gather inspirational images; collect genre-appropriate Dungeon Words and Weird Phrases; brush up on my PDQ# and FATE (likely system choices); and perhaps do a little mapping. The idea of mapping raises an interesting question that I would need to solve first: stick closely to actual history (and add weird stuff), or veer into a pseudo-historical fantasy world. The later is appealing if I have enough time, which it appears that I do. With enough time, I'd love to do something like Trey's Weird Adventures but in an earlier era.