The situation is pretty simple: I am moving to a new location. I have no gaming group, no acquaintances, and no sense of the local gaming community.

Add to that the fact that for the first several months I will have limited living space meaning little space for books, miniatures, terrain, etc.

The first part of my plan is to get into the micro solo wargame Demonship, which can be played in an hour with a gaming space of only a six inch square. That allows me a chance to do some game playing with little space and time allocations.

The second part is to look at Two Hour Wargames‘ more roleplaying products, like 5150 New Beginnings. Those can be played with a battle board, which is the size of a normal piece of paper.

The third part addresses the issue of wanting to meet people and start to build a circle of friends from the gaming community, and that is starting a campaign and soliciting players.

One way to make the third part happen is by creating an open table campaign, one that is created to accommodate a large number of irregular players and an irregular gaming schedule. Unlike the more typical gaming model of having a dedicated group commit to a long-term plot-driven campaign, an open table has a different structure. There are several common options for open table games:

A megadungeon. As someone said, a megadungeon doesn’t care who is wandering in its tunnels. It also has the benefit of having a built-in home base (the nearby settlement to the dungeon), a motivation for play (killing monsters and stealing their stuff), and a way for new players to cycle in and out (different expeditions into the depths of the dungeon). A megadungeon as an open table option works well when the location is fairly dynamic and responsive to the players’ actions, restocking rooms, etc. This option has a lot of appeal to me.

A hexcrawl. Similar to a megadungeon, but a hexcrawl is a little more open as the players can roam around a location rather than wander the flowchart of a megadungeon. This also has appeal.

A series of one-shot adventures. A familiar structure to this sort of campaign would be the Five Room Dungeon, which I have been using frequently in my previous D&D campaign. With rotating cast of PC’s a little finessing would have to be done to explain why the group is constantly getting together, although a common patron NPC would be an obvious choice. The downside is that you have to make sure the adventure is completed by the end of the gaming session because the cast really can not reasonably change mid-adventure. This may be my least appealing option, despite the simplicity of the structure.

The first two options lend themselves to the fantasy genre, which has the benefit of being a popular option these days. It would be possible to do different genres, like post-apocalyptic or supernatural Wild West. I could see post-apocalyptic survivors wandering the countryside or a bunker full of horrors, or intrepid scouts exploring a fast unknown territory (we can set aside the problematic politics of that notion for the time being).

One shot adventures could have members of the Rebellion doing missions in the Star Wars universe, or away teams in the Star Trek universe. The most compelling and perhaps innovative idea is to do a series of one-shot open-table superhero games, with an internal concept like Justice League Unlimited where different heroes from across the globe are “on call” at the time the adventure begins. The real challenge to this particular format is character creation; superheroes are so diverse in concept that having a fast-build option maybe be tricky, not to mention a simple rules system. A possible answer would be to borrow from Mutants & Masterminds their archetype model, e.g. Paragons, Mystics, Martial Artists, Gadgeteers, etc. I could pre-build the archetypical characters and have the player provide the details, like the name and background. So you could have Superman, Supergirl, and Powergirl all roughly built the same way. Or the Human Torch, Firestar, or Fire (from the Global Guardians and Justice League International). Or the upteen dozen Spider-related superheroes.

That option has a lot of appeal to me, but represents one of the biggest challenges. I have a bit of time to figure this all out, though.

Comments welcome.