The CP Crew Multi-System Campaign Experiment

As the Canon Puncture Crew sat down to discuss what we wanted to play this year, we looked at our Gamer Resolutions and talked about what games we could fit in.

One of my resolutions was to play something a bit longer lasting, a mini-campaign.  I’m not talk about a multi-year game, but I would like something over a few months, something that allows for slow builds, character development and multiple plotlines.

We’re currently working on a plan to run one overarching campaign with a stable group of characters but using different game systems every couple weeks.  The way I think of it is like a long-running comic book where the writer and artists change over different story arcs.  Or, like a TV show where different writers and directors head up different episodes, but the show has generally the same cast.

I have a couple goals to accomplish with this experiment

1. We play as many games on our 09 Gamer Resolutions list as we can fit in this mold
2. We build a common experience so we can compare and contrast a few indie game systems against some of their more conventional peer games to see how things stack up

As you can probably tell, I’m quite excited about this project!  We will most likely kick this off in June and run it weekly up to GenCon in August (I’m not sure what we’ll do after that).

One aspect of this experiment that I’m still noodling on is:

Should we generate characters for every system ahead of time to avoid a hiccup before each transition, or should we re-generate the PCs before we switch each system in order to give a sense of character growth while also allowing us to familiarize ourselves with the systems?  I think option one is quicker and more seamless, but option two will make sure we’re comfy with the next system and give that feel of PC growth or change. 

How would you handle PC chargen in this experiment?  Why?