Plenty: an abundance especially of material things that permit a satisfactory life : a condition or time of abundance — Webster’s Dictionary

Role playing games present the players with an infinite number of stories to tell, an infinite number of universes to inhabit, an infinite number of characters to play. Want to be a space fighter pilot? There’s a game for that. A cybernetic cop working the streets of Ridleyville, where the streets are always wet and neon lights the night? Can do. A classy super spy fighting a cryptic organization dedicated to chaos, or communism, or terorism, or what have you? There’s a game to accommodate you. A heroic dwarf bent on avenging some ancient wrong done to your people? There’s an app for that. (No, seriously — the Fight Club 5 character creation app for D&D5 is excellent. )

There’s always a new bad guy, or maybe — like a comic book — your villains are never really dead. A village to rescue from banditos; better get together some of those gunslingers you know. Treasures to find, dragons or Borg or dinosaurs or corporations to fight.

The world can be your own — sprung like Athena from your head. It can be a licensed property you’ve always loved — just about every sci-fi TV show or movie series has or has had an RPG done for it. The rules aren’t always stellar, but the game’s out there. And the rules systems! There’s plenty. Fate can be tweaked easily and often on the fly to fit any universe you have in mind. It was designed as a pick up game system back when it was FUDGE, and that quick and dirty quality remains even in Evil Hat’s most polished work. There’s d20 in its myriad of forms, but usually it’s some form of 3.5 or 5th edition. It’s powered almost every genre you can think of. Want simple sci-fi rules? Get the old “black book” Traveler (and for whatever deities you hold dear, steer clear of the execrable new version.) You only want to roll 6 siders? There’s a system. Only percentile? Gotcha covered. Dice pool games where you roll a number of whatever die you prefer? They’re out there. I can recommend the old Star Wars game by West End…but if a Stardestroyer is involved in your fight, you might need plenty of dice (like a dump truck of ’em.) There’s at least four official Star Trek games out there. And the number of “indie” games…like grains of sand on a beach these days.

There’s so much to play!

I tend to run the games we play, simply because I have plenty of stories running about my head at any one time. When we finish a session, my brain is already leaping ahead to what I can do with the consequences and outcomes of the players’ actions. I love having to invent characters on the fly, and while my games usually involve some level of research and planning — I’m not the total sandbox sort of GM — there is a joy n having the decision trees the players create sprout in my imagination.

Sometimes there’s a new game out and we want to swap and play different games from time to time. It’s nice to have choice, isn’t it?