A little background first. I am a nerd with very few peers. I called myself the king of the nerds decades before the show existed. When confronted by a fellow nerd who stated that he did vote for me, I replied "you don't vote for king". Putting the question of my sovereignty aside for a moment, the reason I tell you that is so you aren't surprised when I tell you that I used to play a good deal of Dungeons & Dragons. I developed a disdain for scripted campaigns that persists to this day. Even though D&D is a role playing game, the player character has no real ability to effect the story. Of course this is true of PC and console RPGs as well. I went as far as to write an entirely new system that was focused on allowing the players to drive the story.

Where the heck is this going? Scenario games, as far as I can tell, suffer from the same problem. The players really only effect one variable; who wins. I have to admit that there isn't likely to be a more important variable in play. Wouldn't it be more fun though, if instead of just logging points, teams could effect the actually story and determine what game is played next by the outcome of the game they are playing? Like a paintball "Choose Your Own Adventure"!

I even went as far as to write all the branches of a game based on this concept. It was titled "Someone Set Us Up The Bomb". I got mixed reviews from people I discussed it with in person. They fell into one of two camps: "Awesome! Camp" and "Why Bother? Camp". I figure that people who play scenario games might find the idea more interesting.

So what camp are you in?