Howdy Folks!
As I’ve mentioned a couple times before, I’m GMing a new monthly GURPS Cyberpunk game over the meeting app Zoom… and it starts tomorrow! I’m still throwing a few things together for the first game, but I wanted to take a quick break and post some thoughts about it the way I do for the one-shots.
It’s actually been a few years now since I’ve GMed an ongoing campaign — all my gaming has been at conventions — so, I’m a bit anxious about shaking off the cobwebs. Hopefully it’ll all come flooding back, like riding a bike or shaving a Wookie. It doesn’t hurt that the players are all (Kimi, Tyler, Elspeth, Bill) top-shelf gamers I’ve been lucky enough to meet through the Happy Jacks RPG Podcast (which you should totally be listening to. Why aren’t you listening?! Subscribe!)
Once we had chatted a bit and decided to get together for a game, the obvious question was… What should we play? So, I sent out a short handout for everyone with three campaign options that seemed fun:
- Near Future Military (Aliens, Starship Troopers)
- Bunnies & Burrows (Watership Down, Secret of N.I.M.H.)
- The Zone/Cyberpunk (Sprawl trilogy, Ready Player One)
The vote was unanimous for The Zone.
I freely admit to a soft spot for the cyberpunk genre. “Neuromancer” was a mind-blower to a younger man, and one of my favorite campaigns of all time was cyberpunk (be kind if you follow the link, that material is ancient in Internet years). So there’s a lot of excitement mixed in with that anxiety! I really, really hope it kicks off well.
After that, I followed up with a (slowly growing) player document to give some sense of the world and ways the PCs might fit into it (along with a little on GURPS mechanics and character creation). Tomorrow’s “session zero” will give us a chance to discuss the setting, what we’re looking for out of the game, and get our little crew of cyber-criminals created. In their “absolutely embryonic and subject to change” state, so far we’ve got:
- A hacker, confined to a wheelchair in the real world, but whose avatar in the virtual Zone is a bad-ass infiltration specialist
- A corporate worker drone by day, virtual Zone gadgeteer and runner for hire by night
- A real world teacher who spends her off-time as a hugely armored warrior in the Zone
- A bratty teen fashion bug who rebels against her politician father by committing high-profile Zone theft
Clearly, much of the story will be taking place in The Zone, so the ideas have begun percolating. First, though… let’s get through character gen! Looking forward to tomorrow. Cyber-fingers crossed!
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So how does this Zoom app work? What do you have to do, buy, etc?
Hiya, Tom! Zoom is like everything else, just go to the website (https://zoom.us/) and sign up for a free account.
https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/201362033-Getting-Started-on-PC-and-Mac
It’s not marketed specifically to gamers — there’s no dice roller, no maps — but for this game we’re basically just playing a “regular” RPG and using Zoom as a hangout room. For dice rolling, just grab some dice, make the roll, and tell us what you got. 🙂
Thanks. I zoomed in on the word “pricing”
Looks great, Mook! Looking forward to keeping up with this!