I have a couple of things simmering. One-that I recently sent to the back burner because it keeps oozing into “huh, how am I going to write that?” directions is a take on your classic domed city/everyone is out to get you vibe.

The other, much closer to final form, is a time travel hex-crawl thing. More of a bolt-on for your game that suddenly needs that than a fully-formed game od its own.

I’m not working on anything, I’m playing with a theory. The core of the idea is that people to their best, most free-flowing, most imaginative GMing when they don’t really know what they’re doing. When they’ve first taken up the hobby, when they are running a new game that they don’t really know well, or when the player characters go so far off the prepared plot that the GM has to improvise wildly.

This is outside a lot of people’s comfort zone—but I think there’s an element of truth to it. What if, the more you study how to GM, the more you work at it, the harder it gets?

Were this to be the case, it might explain why many GMs are in an endless quest to discover that cool new system/background/adventure that’ll REALLY create an immersive experience.

Again, were it to be the case, what would be the best rules system to get back to the improvisatory state of gaming naivety that makes the magic happen?

I’m toying with the idea of running a campaign with no game system at all—to force me, as the GM, to improvise on the spot!