I’ve slowly begun the process of restoring my Tabletop Roleplaying Game schedule. Sure, none of it will start for another week or two at earliest since I’ve still got a move coming up, but it feels nice to have begun the process of making plans. I’ve got a Pathfinder Second Edition game I’m going to be joining with a bunch of people I’ve never met (I got referred to them by a mutual friend) and I’m working on setting up a group in a fun, rot-themed world I made for a different group (whose game is still slowly happening). There’s no reason I can’t have two games happening in this same world, after all. It’s a huge place and some of the underlying stuff I’ve built into it means that it can support a bunch of concurrent games without running into continuity issues. I dunno if my players in either group will every know they’re playing in the same world (all the ones who read my blog will know as a result of this post, of course), but it’s fun for me to consider this. It’s also very unlikely that anything they do with impact each other since I’m trying to keep the games in this world on a smaller scope than I usually do.

It feels nice to be working on stuff again. It also feels nice (and a bit hectic!) to be trying to learn an entirely new system for a game I’ll be playing with people I’ve never met and whose company I don’t know if I’ll enjoy. I mean, the person I’ve spoken to seems nice enough, but I’ve literally never met them. I can’t even put a face to a name. Which is mostly true for the game I play with on Thursdays, sometimes. I haven’t met most of those people, though I’ve seen some pictures. The difference is the Thursday group came with character references and includes people I’ve been getting to know. The Sunday group is one hundred percent strangers since I only know one person’s name.

I’m trying to keep myself open to having a positive first experience with a new group of people, but I’ll admit I’m a little shy and nervous about whether or not I’ll get along with them. After all, as a non-binary person, I’ve got a few pretty hard lines when it comes to some stuff most people in geek or nerd spheres are pretty attached to. Meeting any new group of people makes me nervous these days, and I’ll be roleplaying with these people in a system I’m unfamiliar with. Lots of pressure. Lots that could go wrong.

Still, it is important to push myself. It is important to keep trying new things. It is important to try to meet new people. And it is REALLY important to get back to more TTRPG session in my day-to-day life. I need this, for a lot of reasons. So I’m going to try it. I’m going to meet new people. And I’m absolutely going to bail if it doesn’t work out because I respect myself too much to spend that much time on something I’m not actually enjoying. Life’s too short to spend more than four hours a week on something that should be fun but isn’t.

I’m still working out the details for the group I’m going to run a game for. I don’t know what system we’ll be using (I originally wrote it for D&D and as a custom world for Heart: The City Beneath), but I’ve got ideas on how I can adjust the setting or the scope of the setting to fit just about any game system I care to play. I’ve actually got a great idea for how to use it with the Blades in the Dark system and I kind of hope we pick that one since I’ve spent so much time learning the system and preparing for a campaign that never materialized. It would be a really fun way to explore some of the underlying themes that I probably won’t get to do much with in my other campaign.

Honestly, it’s just really nice to have all this stuff to think about. I miss having TTRPGs on the brain constantly and it’s been really pleasant to be able to turn my mind to this stuff whenever I need a distraction or have some spare time. I’ve really needed something pleasant, lately, since I’ve been so busy and so stressed, so this could not have come up at a more opportune time. It remains to be seen, of course, if I’ll be able to balance working on this stuff with all the packing, moving, and settling-in I’ve still got to do over the next few weeks, but I’m optimistic about it. I can always just not prepare for these games if I need to. It would not be the first time I’ve gone into something like this wholly unprepared and I’ve had decent success with just making it all up and figuring it all out as I go along. Why would this time be any different?