Design a campaign in 24 hours.
I don’t know which blog I ran across this. The way the blog that mentioned this described it was a new campaign in 24 hours.
As I look at the website it looks like it was only active for 2003, 2004, and 2005. I’m not sure why the owner of the domain would keep paying for the domain name and web hosting if it was not an active contest.
At one point their was a Yahoo Group, but it no longer exists.
Looking at the 2005 entries, it looks like people designed whole new games and rules instead of campaigns based around existing rules. Looking at their rules it is about designing a whole new RPG.
24 hours to design a new RPG? We need more RPGs? What niche does not have rules? The basic mechanics of dice for character stats and dice to do stuff and lists of equipment for the genre, and mechanics for how it all works can easily be done by taking what you like from existing games you have and make your own homebrew game. My brother and I and our gaming group did that in high school 30+ years ago.
Are any of these RPGs doing a new take for rules? Are stats different? If you have stats, can you come up with names that are not synonyms for stats in existing games?
For me, I don’t need another game. I wouldn’t put time to develop another game, unless I thought I had an idea I could market and sell.
Designing a campaign in 24 hours, I can see the value in that. Whether we do a 24 hour marathon, or 24 one-hour sprints, it could be a way to force oneself to focus on designing a new campaign, or new area of an existing campaign. I can see having different categories: 24 hour marathon, 24 1-hour sprints, 12 2-hour sprints. Set a timer for those sprints and an alarm for the marathon. There would be a total honor system.
I know that I have the ability to pull an all-nighter, but my thinking gets fuzzy after awhile and I would lose the ability to focus. It is not the same as running a game session that runs all night. There are notes to guide and ad-lib is not the same as designing a campaign that makes sense/fits together.
The idea of a 24 Hour Campaign Design sounds like a monumental contest to organize. I know I don’t have the time to run a contest. I know I wouldn’t pull an all-nighter for this. With one or two hour sprints it could still take a couple weeks to do this. Perhaps a 24 hour sandbox design using one of the sandbox design structures from Bat in The Attic or West Marches would be a way to structure it.
For all I know, there has already been some sort of 24 hour campaign or sandbox design blogathon or contest in the past.
Interesting ideas. Not sure any of them are my thing.
I wonder what other’s think about these ideas?
