Friday, May 27, 2022

Concept Pitch: The DCC/MCC Holiday Advent(ure) Calendar?

You ever have an idea for a project that just tickles the back of your brain for days and weeks and months and years upon end? This is that project for me.

For several years, I've thought about producing an RPG Holiday Advent(ure) Calendar. (See what I did there?) This would be a collection of 25 one-page adventures that would be released one each day from Dec. 1 through 25, much like an advent calendar. Each day of the holiday season - YAY - new adventure! And on the last day, all 25 would be bundled up into one compilation and made available to everyone. I always though this would be a neat little holiday "gift" that would be fun to produce and to have.

So why haven't I jumped on the horse and started this project? Several reasons:

1. I usually remember it around mid-November, when it's faaaar too late to try to get something like this written and in hands by Dec. 1.

2. I produced a similar project titled One Year in The Savage AfterWorld, which is a collection of 52 micro-adventures for Mutant Future and, honestly, it'd be tough from me to crank out 25 brand-new concepts that don't repeat a few within that tome.

3. Writing 25 one-pagers for one system would be overkill, because what if someone doesn't play that specific RPG? Or worse, what if I tried to write 25 one-pagers for 25 different systems? Then I'd have at least one of interest for everyone, but 24 other adventures they could care less about.

However, with the DCC/MCC system, there's enough similarity - yet variety - to make this work. There could be one-page encounters for DCC; some for MCC; some for the Shudder Mountains; some for Dark Frontiers; and Lahnkmar and Empire of the East and Dying Earth and Purple Planet and Umerica and I'm missing a TON of other settings. And all of these are compatible with each other, as mixing and matching is what it's all about.

I haven't decided yet whether this is the year or not, but what would be easiest for me would be to put out the clarion call for folks who wanted to contribute. I envision "drop-in" single encounters rather than multiple room dungeon crawls. (For what I envision, check out any of my Dangerous Encounter posts here at TSAW.) I hope that this post will both prompt me to put pen to paper and get started and/or that others who are interested in contributing might toss their hat into the ring.



2 comments:

  1. Put together an ad hoc board of people whose opinions you trust and have everyone freely submit adventures to get on the calendar and I think you'll be avalanche with both judge volunteers and volunteer writers. Just start it now. I'm already trying to think of an adventure to submit. I'd love to do something likthis as a strict amateur at this point.

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