Live fire exercise...

I have two games per week. One on Wednesday nights from 4:30pm to 10:00-ish, and one on Thursday from 6:00pm to 1 or 2:00am. That sounds like a lot, but until last week I was playing in one and running the other. The one I played served as a quiet time with friends that I used to plot out the next days session. At any rate I had a 5-hour session once a week that I used for adventure prep time, and life was good.

Last Wednesday around noon-ish I received a call at the office from the regular DM, asking me if I can start a campaign later that night. Of course I said yes, and went back to my day. Quite like it always happens I started mulling about my scrapped ideas. My main campaign has a vast untapped potential for gaming material, but most of the players in one game are players in the other. On top of that I am sick of running fantasy (ancient magics and hokey religions are no match for a good blaster at your side).

At about 2:00pm I decided to run my pet project, a Mecha campaign. This particular brain child of mine has had several iterations, all of the priors failing in anticlimactic fizzles. But this time I have an idea. not that the last attempts did not have ideas, quite to the opposite in fact. Each time I ran this type of campaign I found what did not work. I wish I could say I also found what worked, however that is not the case.

The next step is deciding the system. Most of the players in the wednesday game are casual gamers: so Mekton requiring a new book (hard to find at that) is out, Gurps I have never played in let alone run, d20 is the clearcut choice. The downside is that the already built d20 mecha rules are trash, and my kit-bash is rough and ill equipped to be played in right?

At about 3:00 I arrived home with a new vigor to finish Mek20. I pounded out the armor rules in record time. That still does not leave me with a polished system, but its a hell of a start. A quick, and I do mean quick, hash out of the players Mobile Suits as well as the Mook Suits and slight conversion of the d20 modern SRD to a Kinkos friendly .pdf and a hexgrid overlay of normandy puts me at 4:30 and done with most of the prep I can do. So I'm going to be late sue me...

A rushed Print shop worker and a bit of speeding later and I'm at the local club house. Sliding in under the wire at 4:58. Alright lets get some gaming done.

After character creation I came out swinging. The play started with a quick bit of exposition on the world as it is now, promptly followed with a hard drop-pod into a hot LZ. Some high octane later and its time to wrap it up. All told It was a sweet session. I have a warm fuzzy feeling that this time I will go the distance!

P.S. I now have a real excuse to finish the Mek20 kit bash in double time. look out for it.