Advise Me on a Christmas Game

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devlin1
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Advise Me on a Christmas Game

Post by devlin1 »

DiceHouse Games up in Fullerton is doing a charity fundraiser event on the 18th-19th, and I'm going to run a one-shot as part of it (probably on the 19th). Players pay $5 to play, and there are supposed to be in-game incentives to get them to donate more. For example, in a D&D game, you might be able to pay $1 to reroll something. Anyway, I want to make it holiday-themed, but I'm torn between a couple different ideas for what game to run. Here are my two main ideas:

Mouse Guard: 'Twas the Night Before Frostyule
In the dead of winter, Gwendolyn charges a handful of Guardmice with delivering an important shipment to a small town that's been isolated by a recent blizzard. What's in the shipment? Mostly toys -- and they must reach their destination before the Frostyule celebration. It's a diplomatic mission to solidify ties between the town and Lockhaven, but really, it's just an excuse to run a game where the PCs have to play Santa Claus.

(Alternately, there's potential for a "How the Weasels Stole Yulefrost" game that'd just about write itself.)

D&D Essentials: Slay Ride
A much sillier game of Christmas-themed ass-kickery. Jack Frost giants, Christmas treants, a beholder in a Santa hat, that kind of thing. Maybe there's a vial of alchemical fire that's only supposed to burn for one round, but miraculously ends up burning for eight rounds. I just like the title, really, so to be consistent with that it'd probably have a similar plot to the other one: Get from one place to another before D&D Christmas happens. Or maybe the "ride" is a hunt to bag a dire goose for a baron. Regardless, it'd be, as I said, pretty silly.

There are a couple other completely nebulous ideas (more nebulous than that D&D idea, even!) that I'm not sure I'd be able to flesh out in time to run them, but I'll throw 'em out there:

Star Wars Saga Edition: Something About Lifeday
This has kinda been done to death, I'd imagine, but Lifeday's always good for a laugh.

Christmas Leftovers
Again, the title's great, but I'm not sure I want to know what a Christmas-themed Leftovers game would look like.

A Doctor Who Christmas Special
I'm probably not up to the task of running this, but I'm looking at my shelf here, and Who and Christmas is a pretty traditional geek pairing.

Spirit of the Season
Or I could punt.

What do people think of these? Or do you have some other awesome idea I could rip off?
Mike Olson
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Post by Cthulhu »

I like the sound of Slay Ride personally, but the Mouse Guard one looks pretty cool too. I'd go check it out myslef, but I have a Christmas Cthulhu game going on that weekend.
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Post by devlin1 »

Cthulhu wrote:I like the sound of Slay Ride personally, but the Mouse Guard one looks pretty cool too. I'd go check it out myslef, but I have a Christmas Cthulhu game going on that weekend.
So what's your Christmas Cthulhu game about? Are you playing or running?
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Post by cczernia »

I really enjoyed Spirit of the Season the time I played it. I also think Doctor Who Christmas Special would be fun. The Mouse Guard themed game would be cool except I'm not a fan of Mouse Guard.

Post Apoc Christmas would be fun, too. You could get some great imagery (barf forth Christmas apocalypta) and throw in some twists like a creature gang that terrorizes people called Santa and His Reindeer.

Star Wars and DnD would be my last choice as it would be my last choice as they don't really fit Christmas and I think would be more forced.
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Post by Skyman »

slayride
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Post by mordraine »

The ones that I would play are Star Wars and Leftovers. I could care less, really, about whether or not they work in to the Christmas theme. I've never gone in much for holiday themed RPG's. As long as the adventure is fun and interesting, it won't matter how close it hews to the theme.
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Post by devlin1 »

Cthulhu wrote:I like the sound of Slay Ride personally, but the Mouse Guard one looks pretty cool too.
cczernia wrote:I really enjoyed Spirit of the Season the time I played it. I also think Doctor Who Christmas Special would be fun. The Mouse Guard themed game would be cool except I'm not a fan of Mouse Guard.
Skyman wrote:slayride
mordraine wrote:The ones that I would play are Star Wars and Leftovers.
You guys are useless. Can't you even come to a consensus? What am I paying you for?

No, seriously though -- thanks for the feedback.

As for the Christmas/holiday theme, I'm not running something unless there's a gimmick I find interesting/funny, and since this is a seasonal charity fundraising event it makes sense to me to have that gimmick be the holiday season. I almost always go "gimmick --> system" when it comes to convention one-shots. So I'm sticking with that, regardless of the game.

Mouse Guard seems like the most interesting, but D&D seems more fun (both to plan and to run). I have but one Mouse Guard experience to my name, and it was run by a guy who doesn't even like Mouse Guard now! I don't have any Christmas-specific Leftovers ideas, and I don't want to force it. The Star Wars game seems like a lot of work for what's essentially a retelling of a 32-year-old joke.

There are certainly other games I'd be interested in running -- Barbarians of Lemuria is on its way, along with a few other Cyber Monday Lulu purchases, and I just got Realms of Cthulhu the other day in the mail -- but only a few are attractive to me for this particular occasion, for whatever reason. Y'know what else would probably be good is Gamma World, but I don't have it. (It's on my Christmas list, though -- my mom asked for a Christmas list, so I gave her one full of RPG stuff and Goldeneye for the Wii.)
Mike Olson
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Post by Cthulhu »

devlin1 wrote:So what's your Christmas Cthulhu game about? Are you playing or running?
Playing. I guess it's not really Christmas, but it takes place in winter in Russia. So there's that.
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Post by devlin1 »

I'm now seriously warming up to the idea of a Doctor Who game.

Did you know William the Conqueror was crowned King of England on Christmas Day in 1066? So... that one thing has spun out into a Doctor Who idea that seems totally workable.
Mike Olson
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Post by mrlost »

Go with Princess Stacey's idea from Rpg.net

http://forum.rpg.net/showpost.php?p=132 ... stcount=17

"There was a thread recently called "Santa Wants You Dead" That would give you a nice plot. On Xmas Eve, strange packages appear in houses all over England. A few of these are opened and they contain weird technology - ray guns and teleport-belts and what have you. After an incident or two our heros will try to gather up all of these strange "toys" - but there are way too many. And soon it will be Xmas morning and people all over england will wake up and open these mysterious presents. It could cause mass chaos!

Well, eventually our heros can trace the presents to their source - a weird starship orbiting the earth, and the mysterious Zanangi, who disrupt "lesser civilizations" with gifts. They consider it the ultimate form of warfare - they never attack (they are too sophisticated for violence) so they give away chaos-causing gifts. Their plan is to clear the "lesser races" out of this lovely part of space for their own expansion.

The Zanangi ship is defended by shapeshifting robots (who have taken the form of Santas, natch) and all our heros have to do is defeat the Zanangi in time to hit the "retrieve" button that will teleport all the presents back to the Zanangi ship. And they have to do it before dawn!

There might be many ways to defeat the Zanangi - but it would be very Xmas to simply teach them the joys of giving good presents instead of being such creeps all the time." --Princess Stacey
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Post by devlin1 »

Yeah, I don't want to do that. It's too campy for me to pull off. It's very Who; it's just not very me. I wouldn't have fun with it.
Mike Olson
‎"In this economy, it's not easy to feed a growing family. So we eat Haunkkah gelt for dinner and look at a picture of broccoli." --Paul F. Tompkins
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