Hi,

I'm going to be GMing a game of AW for my regular group this Thursday. I've run plenty of one shots, but this might be my first campaign. Eek. We're going to do the first session, and if it's a horrible train wreck, our regular GM will take over.

Speaking of train wrecks, one of the players wants to play a driver. With a train. I really dig the idea, it's cool as hell and I want to run with it. But I'm worried about making it work.

The other thing about our campaign is the other players. We have a core group, but every so often something will come up and someone will have to miss a session. It's not as often as some groups I've played with, but life does happen sometimes. Sometimes we get a new player who will be there for maybe a session or 2, then disappear. I need to make a setting that can incorporate this. Without the driver, I'd just anchor things to a single setting or area. Absences are explained by the character off doing their own thing for that session. Having a very mobile train kinda throws that into whack.

I'm thinking of setting it in post apocalyptic midwest USA or central Europe, severely depopulated. There's a lot of big ol diesel trains around there that could still work. Plenty of places to go and things for the driver to do without it being too overwhelming for me. Maybe japan, but I don't really think I could give the players a Shinkansen at chargen! If the population is severely limited, to little island hardholds between vast stretches of badland wilderness you need a train to get around, that would be cool.

Does anyone have suggestions on how I could run this? Block the player and ask him to just make a truck instead? Seems a bit of a cop out.