The Burden of the Undead.

I had an interesting weekend. Three friends and I spent the weekend in a camper watching geeky movies (Real Genius, Legend and Ghostbusters) and playing D&D. It was a blast.

Where I ran aground was the subject matter of the D&D game. Early in the game it was clear what was going on. The town we met up in was being attacked by skeletons and zombies. We went to the local cemetery to discover a cleric conducting necromantic rituals.

This isn't a bad scenario, however, it's starting to get a little common. One of the guys with us this weekend ran a D&D game that we played a few years ago. He started the game in a small town with a big set of catacombs. Lots of undead. We didn't stay in those catacombs for long, some doofus cleric destroyed the catacombs. I was the doof, but that's a story for another day.

A while back, I got nostalgic about D&D, right after Gary Gygax died. I started running a game. My game is, wait for it, a small town with a near-by necromancer cleric sending undead to attack the small town.

With a few minor differences, the scenario my friend ran this weekend and my scenario were basically the same. He and I played in the Catacombs mentioned above, but he didn't play in my Small-Town-Undead-Panic game.

Where I'm going with this is that the undead thing seems to be a very common theme and maybe it pops into people's minds a little too easily. I feel like I let my group down and maybe that's why, yet again, interest has waned on a game I was running.

Last night when all of this came to me, I was running around in WoW - I was playing a quest involving creatures that were essentially plants that grew from seeds. It occurred to me that that would be a cool way to transport an army. Show up near a town, scatter your seeds, call up a storm, then call up some sun - maybe even sun that lasted into the night! Then, blam! Little, violent plant guys running around eating each other and growing more powerful by the second! Cast some spell that allows you to control plants and you have a hell of a magic army that only required one wizard and a cart of plant seed.

SO, the point of this post: the next time you decide to run a game, let the dead rest. Try something a little different.