labcats | Comic Book Analogy

I have found that long running rpg campaigns tend to be a bit like comic books.

mnemex says that this is because, like long running comics, long running rpgs must reinvent themselves periodically to stay fresh. Could be.

nrivkis once ran a somewhat atypical session of her Altclair game when

ebartley was visiting, and I referred to it as special annual issue, somewhat outside the usual chronology. She agreed with the terminology.

Recently, I purchased and read Tatters of the King for CoC Classic. It has some flaws, notably in the extremely forced links between set pieces (as a psychaiatrist, I take along my fellow non-medical PC friends for a professional visit to an asylum where I know nothing about what I'm going to see? Why? It makes no sense.) -- but some of the set pieces are gems. And, I'm tempted to try to run parts of it for

ebartley and

mnemex as a Cthulhupunk time travel adventure. Why are the 2020 PCs back in the 1920s? Er, we can handwave that. The dizzying number of languages mean that ebartley could have a ball saying, "Why, yes, my genius linguist PC does speak both Nepales and Hindustani."

And, I'm currently reading the Chaosium monograph Playing with Humans, which has a 1970s adventure that I'd not mind throwing in. Hm, maybe the PCs kind of work their way a bit slowly back to the 21st century -- and I could try to throw in some Dark Ages, Victorian Ages, and maybe an Elizabethan adventure.

So, I'm thinking all of these silly thoughts, and realizing that Swamp Thing did this years ago.

And, well, I never did get to use the Tribe 8 setting. I could just work in an alternate timeline...

Should I do all this? Maybe. If it's fun for all concerned.

Is this desire a sign that I should put the whole campaign firmly on the shelf? Maybe. Maybe not. It is a sign that this is a game I've been running for a long time, even if I do have more, ah, orthodox ideas for adventures. It is also a sign that I have a lot of published gaming scenarios begging me, "Play me! It'll be great! You'll see." I've done a few pieces on running commercially published scenarios successfully for my group. I'd love to give a seminar on that.

But, mostly, I'm musing just now that rpgs that run for a while start to resemble comic books that have run for a while.