Thinking Ahead

[subplotkudzu]

 I know I still owe myself a GURPS character, but prep work for yesterday's Hufflepuff & Ravenclaw gave plus some crises at work took up too much time. I have noodled around with it, making some attempt to merge the Techo and Kinetic templates from GURPS Supers under the "where No Man Has Gone Before" lens, but GURPS is always so damn intimidating because of the breadth of unique options making me afraid I'll miss something vital. 

This post isn't about that, however. I just want to share a campaign concept for my next prospectus, which is still some long time away (I already know that after I finish the current six month stint it's back to Emirikol and, quite probably, Old Lives, Old Civilizations). But after reading the disappointing Two O'Clock Eastern Wartime I wanted to steal the setting, but no aspect of the story: 

Gone To Soldiers, Every One: It's a hard time for WBG, the coastal Maine radio station, but in 1942 it's a hard time for everyone. All the men of combat age have joined the army and the station is struggling to get by with a staff of older men, teens and women. It's a hardship that is crushing some but letting others blossom, and the station owner is audaciously trying to expand its offerings to keep creditors at bay. News has to be broken, radio dramas written and performed, and the airtime filled. Lurking in the background are spies and saboteurs, gangsters and gunmen, and the every present threats of a country at war. 

I love the idea on a conceptual level, but I'm not sure I have enough to really fill a 6 -9 episode arc. Part of it is that it's just not a story that is usually told in an RPG. I have a strong suspicion that it will take no more than a session or so for it to turn into a nazi-agent hunting expedition with little to no radio content, just because that's a more standard adventure/mystery format. 

Has anyone had real luck with smaller, more personal stories of business and personal growth as the core of a campaign rather than the frosting on an adventure/mystery cake? And if not, why is it that such stories work so well for other serial fiction but are tackled so seldom in this one? 

Comments

[brianrogers.livejournal.com]

On to the RPG aspects, there are some good ideas here, but I'm noticing how the traiditiona gaming modes are reconfiguring the idea: I'm not overly thrilled with my inclusion of the spies aspect of the prospectus entry, but it's included because of my belief that the PCs would need somethign to investigate or fight, those being the classic RPG modes. Exploration, self exploration and building something are almost always secondary.

This is not to say that the Radio Heroes campaign skeleton doesn't have legs, but in many ways the PCs become a Private Detective agency with a twist, a radio equivalent of Jessica Fletcher. There's nothing wrong with this per se - and I agree that we could also use more games with Average Joes as the heroes - but it's not quite what I had in mind. Surely there's room in RPGs for the sort of personal triumph of a woman becoming a master radio-play writer or a borderline retired station mananger trying to go from penury to fame in his last shot at the brass ring. We just don't often do that.