I wound up going another session of my every-other-week Heart: The City Beneath campaign without playing Heart. We’re still in the throes of The Ground Itself and I regret nothing. I’m having a great time. Almost all of my players just so deeply understand what we’re doing that they’ve done half the moves I’d planned for myself, in terms of setting up the horrors of the world we’re going to play in. This means I’ve been able to focus on specifics and painting good images during my turns rather than introducing aspects of the world at large or adding to the tension of this downright awful bit of geography. I get to do things like talk, in detail, about a mysterious creature that emerged from a horrible sinkhole, described in stories as but a shadow on the horizon, that now wanders this world on some sort of mission that only it knows. Or describe how the dominant species (a froglike non-sentient creature that is incredibly long, flat, and known for hunting down everything in the area, including the people who used to live there) has been impacted by the force of decay called The Rot (which decays anything it touches/infests in every dimension and way, rather than being bound strictly to biological materials like we’re familiar with in meatspace) and how some of them have mushed together to form some kind of horrible beast that has been disappearing people for an unknown number of years. Or how a train, riding rails of limestone, bone, and metal over slowly dessicating dirt, emerged from the same pit that every horror has left behind in order to discorge its unknowable passengers upon the surface. It has been an absolute delight to play this game, even if it is, somewhat predictably, taking an incredibly long time to play.

It doesn’t help that I did a minor hack to The Ground Itself that gives me a “GM” turn at the start of each rotation of players. Rather than draw a card and be confined to the given questions or tempted by the various moves allowed in exchange for discarding your card (something my players have taken ample opportunity to do, much to my delight since they’re always Seeing Omens or Leaving The Frame so they can make sure the rest of the world is just as screwed up as our chosen location), the GM turn is just the “Discover Something New” move. I also worked out that I get a single interrupt per time period to insert a small thing such as naming a creature or adding additional details, just in case I need to quickly tack on something for me as one of my players creates something absolutely delight that I can’t wait to build ong. This hack is a fairly limited bit of power, at least compared to the usual amount a GM has when it comes to worldbuilding, but it allows me to help guide the general trajectory of the work we’re doing, provides me with levers I know I can pull on without upsetting anyone, and gives the players some juicy pieces to work with so they’re not operating in a vacuum. It’s honestly been a great experience, since it means that more cards are drawn by my players and we can flesh out the world a bit more than we would have if I’d been drawing cards as well.

We wound up stopping in the middle of our third time period since one of the players was worn out and we were almost out of time for the session anyway. I had hoped that, with four hours, we might be able to get through the whole thing in one sitting, but that was a false hope. We were even short a player, but it was still very slow going. Worldbuilding is a lot of work and it takes a lot of effort to communicate your vision to six other people, so I should have known better than to hope that we’d be done in a couple hours. I am hopeful that we’ll be able to wrap up next time with enough of our session time left to finish character creation, but I wouldn’t be super surprised if we wound up going through all out time in this session as well. We’ll have another player, this time, so we’ll need to catch him up, and then there’s always the possibility that the final ten we need to draw from the deck will be at the absolute bottom of it. As much as I think about the possibility of drawing all four of the 10 cards in rapid succession, part of me is convinced that it will literally never happen. There will never be a short game of The Ground Itself. Which isn’t a problem. I love this game. I just wish we moved through it a bit more quickly so we can get into playing Heart before September begins.

Still, I’m having a great time. My players are all very inventive. They’re all investing their time and attention in this world we’re making, building off each others’ ideas as we all work to create the nightmare realm we want to play this game in. There’s surprisingly few dangling threads at this point, though I’m sure we’ll add more in as we go, but most of them hardly count since they’re all great tools for me to use as we get into actually playing the game. There’s a cult, the aforementioned super hunter flat frogs, a semi-sentient type of silt that can fight off The Rot but also wants to digest people, weird statues, glowing moths, delicious sap drinks, massive megatrees, and so much more. I will not want for complicating factors when my players eventually make their way to this part of the world. In fact, I may be sorely tempted to start them here, rather than make them figure out where this place is and how to get there as their overarching narrative thread like we’d all planned in the beginning. It’s just such a cool place.

I can’t wait to play with them again in another week (well, almost two as of the day I’m writing this). I wish we played more frequently, but I’ve got other obligations for now and, to be honest, I’m still struggling to relax. I don’t need to take on more work at this point, though I imagine that I’ll eventually wind up with part of the group playing a different game during our open weeks if enough of them are interested. I’ve been considering the idea since June, when I realized we were going to be playing every-other-week with this campaign, so it’s just a matter of time until I make it happen. I’m not one to sit on ideas for too long and I will eventually run out of the will to rest and do nothing beyond what I’m already doing. Eventually, my drive will take over again and I’ll be ready to recklessly work on new projects. Until then, though, I’m just going to need to practice patience.