The end of one journey...the beginning of another

On the 5th I ran the last session of my first campaign. Though I dreaded that session in some ways because I have run out of patience for one of the players in the group, it ended up playing out very well. I gave the players an insurmountable challenge at the end of the last session. Two demons with high damage resistance (DR) and low level regeneration (trust me in GURPS against 150 point characters that was a killer) they had to decide to not stand and fight. At the end of the last session, they just put the DR and regeneration together. This session, after a brief strategy discussion they decided to pull a page out of the book "Ender's Game". Rather than fight the demons guarding the magical gate, they just ran through the gate. So after facing that challenge of braun, they faced a much more cerebral challenge. In the first round one PC was frozen by a blue ray of magical energy, that character was immobilized (no saving throw) and asked a question (from the game Mindtrap) to test his worth. Then all the other PCs are told to roll initiative as they were attacked by animated clay statues. In the second round another character (higher in the initiative order) was immobilized and asked a question too. So now two of the four characters are immobilized, though even the immobilized characters are taking damage. The characters were really sweating. If they answered a question correctly, they jumped in the round after their question, just lower in the initiative order. If they didn't get their question answered they kept trying until the second round. If they still didn't get it they stopped being immobilized but took a penalty to Dexterity and a minimal damage penalty (which powers all physical skills in GURPS including weapons). The players loved the experience, thought it was creative, enjoyed flexing other muscles. They got through that, acquired the campaign goal (historical artifact) and then battled their way out of an enemy complex.

So last week I put out the first feelers to both groups to see who might be interested in my new campaign. I laid out some of the things that I'm interested in like frequency (every other week), tone ("we're the good guys"), game systems (FUDGE, GURPS, maybe d20), and structure (episodic style allowing people to miss one session without guilt). I also tried to leave a lot up for the players to decide like genre (sci-fi or low magic fantasy), formality (silly to serious), and game system (within the parameters of what I'm willing to run and with the caveat that they try FUDGE at least once). All the folks that I was hoping from both groups responded with interest. Now I'm just going to have to get some space and time in my life for the new campaign which I'm hoping to be Friday evenings every other week. Right now it looks like that might all come together in late September or October.