Update? Question? Rambling?

 I'm running a lot of games right now. Well, I'm running two. Kind of:

Phaedra is what I've been calling the campaign I have been running, named after the barely-faux-ancient-greece region the game has taken place in. 

I am running for two different stable groups, with about 8 sessions with one group and 3 sessions with the other. I've been calling them one 'campaign' since I'm using the same world for both and technically keeping track of both on the same calendar but they've massively diverted in when each is taking place and neither has affected the other (outside of very minor details) so considering them all one big thing is a big of a stretch.

But this brings me to what I wanted to ask about. I have two other games I am looking at getting going:

New Game One: An open-table-ish Halls of Arden Vul game

I like running for my two groups now but scheduling with them is inconsistent and, in particular with one of the groups, usually if any player can't make it, we don't play. This is kind of a big ol' bummer for me every time it happens, because I am keeping myself pretty isolated since I am immuno-compromised and one of my main social avenues is rpgs (it is the main reason that I run a lot of games. That and I don't have a job.)

I want to have a game going that I can schedule with little prep and run with whoever is available, on whatever days I have free (or when I have a canceled session). 

(The Shattered Coast glog server served this purpose for me for a bit, but I grew out of love with the server and how it was organized, also GLOGs in general at this point, and officially left it a month or two ago.)

I chose Halls of Arden Vul because I assumed it was large enough that I could just prep whatever area the group was considering going into, and because I was a fool and was taken in by the promises of it being just really fucking big.

I've done a lot of reading the adventure already, and some prep in distilling some house rules for OSE (I might try running it with OSRIC though? Idk, not an important point right now). 

I'm not here to harp on Arden Vul though, although I'll talk about it more in a moment.

New Game Two: ADND for my dad

I might have mentioned this in my Holiday DND post, but playing with my dad over Christmas re-kindled his interest in playing rpgs. I've also read too much of Anthony Huso's blog and want to try my hand with 1e. He played ADND back in the day, and I want to run some of the old adventures he would recognize (and possibly have played already, but that will be fine honestly, it was 40ish years ago). 

You said you had a question?

Right, so the intention with both of these games is to minimize the type of churn I get stuck on with rpgs. I have a lot of free time and spent too much time writing shit that didn't get to see play. A lot of rules churn and setting churn and campaign churn and I want to avoid getting stuck in that morass again. One of the better things I did for my sanity was just stop writing stuff for my Phaedra games over the holiday break.

 Even though there's hypothetically a lot of little things I want to do for the Phaedra games (everything in this post, for example), I just don't have the energy for it. Spending time in from of screens gives me migraines and I just end up spinning my wheels anyway. It wouldn't feel so bad if it didn't feel extremely masturbatory. I love actually playing games and sharing what I've made with others, but time spending creating something that will never reach anyone else just feels like time spent poorly. Maybe this is the protestant in me, Idk.

I have still not reached my question, yikes.

So, one thought I had to minimize prep was to stick everything I am running into the same world. I wouldn't try to keep a matching calendar for everything, given it wouldn't really matter. I've been toying with using Worlds Without Number for giving factions something to do.

Can I minimize the time I spend on the stuff I find uninteresting (making a complete world) if I just jam everything into one world map? Do I need to worry about this shit? 

This is probably the type of question that is more just asking for permission to do something.

I'm kind of tired of writing, but I have like 20 drafts at this point so Imma just going to post this. 

Happy Friday! 

Family DnD - Highlights

Highlights of a dnd game we played on Christmas day at my family holiday:

- That we played at all! My older brother and I had our plane tickets purchased by our dad a few weeks prior, mostly spontaneously. My younger brother had joked about us playing ‘family dnd’ when we were all home. I had assumed my older brother wouldn’t have enough time to play since he was there much less time, but one of the first things he asked when we picked him up from the airport was ‘so, family dnd?’

We played Tomb Robbers of the Crystal Frontier with OSE: AF. 

- I played an Elf named ‘Marry-no-Man’ (thanks Dolmenwood for that baller name), my older brother played a druid, and my dad played a paladin. Once food was prepared (lasagna I think, it was a Kirkland Christmas this year), we rolled up a Fighter with pretty decent stats for my step-mom. 

Man, elves in B/X are wild. 4000 xp for the first level, and they get to cast in armor and wield any weapons? My character was a blast to play.

- There was a revolving door of hirelings who just kept dying. A group of triplets (Sammy, Samuel, and Sam (F)) I think all ate it due to the poisoning that the crystals in the dungeons can cause. 

- I liked the module, we played it *very fast*, and I’m sure it would have felt different spread over a few more sessions. We didn’t finish because I eventually got a migraine near the end of the night, but I really liked what I played. I enjoyed how much of the dungeon was about interacting with itself, rather than just generic solutions. Like this hallway seem dangerous because of all the crystals, but you can find armor that makes someone immune to the crystal poison and etc. 

- It was a pain in the ass to map accurately though. My brother recommended I do it as a flow chart and that was a much better plan.

- God playing with my step-mom was so fun. The highlight of the whole day for me, for sure. She’s played some video games (will play like diablo with my dad sometimes) and was really distracted but just killed it when she was fully present. She asked the best questions, like ‘what part of this is something you wrote and which parts are you making up?’ and all these other cutting questions. She was not happy with my dad asked to borrow her magic sword. She did a cheer when I burned a bunch of zombies in a pit ‘Give me an F! Give me an I! Give me and R E! What does that spell?’

- My younger brother did an admirable job dm-ing. He was trying to get us through the whole dungeon (I assume at least), so we played some parts pretty fast/loose. Barely any combat, which was neat, it was mostly exploring.

- One thing he did that made me reflect on my own dm-ing experiences was tell us some info that we probably would have gleaned after we killed ourselves doing a dangerous thing. I don’t remember the specific examples, but it’s a tough dungeon to run quickly, given how important it is to communicate some little details, like what exactly is made of the dangerous crystal and what isn’t.

I just…I had a really good holiday. No family was in town besides us, which was a really nice change of pace. Playing dnd was a small part of why my whole holiday was so special, but it was lovely to spend a cold midwestern Christmas inside and just play games with my family.

Sometimes I get caught up in the between-sessions bullshit when dm-ing. Making lists and writing setting info and doing all this unnecessary work, when really just having a reason to play make-believe with your family and friends is the real reason to do any of this. I forget that a lot of the time.