I genuinely did not think that I’d ever look at a game of The Ground Itself that I’m using as a means of doing collaborative worldbuilding for a different game and think “this has clearly gone off the rails,” but that’s what I’ve found myself doing as I review the notes from my Sunday group’s latest session. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, mind you, just something that has gone far beyond all of my expectations about what we’d accomplish in a session or two (which will soon be three since we once again ran out of time without finishing our game). We’ve wound up more focused on individuals and their places in the area than the game is designed to be, but we’ve also gone from slowly developing an area over time to wildly inventing things. It’s honestly a great energy, even if I worry that we’ve lost the plot a bit. I’ll be able to weave it all into the world we’ve going to play in when we finally get to Heart: The City Beneath, but there’s just so much stuff happening and so many vague characters introduced that I’m not sure how I’m going to be able to include it all in any kind of interesting and meaningful way.

I have faith in my abilities to get it all covered eventually, especially since I understand that we’re probably going to play a few different campaigns of Heart given that one campaign or arc is going to run at about ten to sixteen sessions (or less, depending on how quickly my players pursue their advancements). It’s just going to be difficult to take all of this excellent and excessive work we’re doing and decide what to include initially and what has to wait. I mean, there’s so much good stuff here that I’m considering throwing out all of my plans about what this place was going to be and how we were going to play Heart. We’ve just done such a good job! I don’t know if I can wait for them to find this place. I want to start the game here and I want to start it now. There’s certainly plenty of stuff I can use for interesting plot hooks, campaign complications, and odd bits of fallout. I could run a few years of game in just this one spot, using just what we’ve already built and there’s only ever going to be more of it as we continue our co-authorship of this world. It is going to be stupendous and I am so excited to see us all work together to make it more than it already is.

The other upside to the massive variety of stuff we’ve introduced is that I can see ways in which this world could play host to any number of other games. I still want to get a game of some kind going for my off-weeks, once this one is a bit more underway than it currently is. It might not be another Sunday game, based on initial responses I’ve gotten from the place I’ve begun collecting possible players, but I’d definitely keep it to the weeks between the Sunday game. I’m still trying to avoid taking on too much stuff right now, after all, and it wouldn’t do to exhaust myself by filling all of my open time with stuff the way I used to. Plus, I want to give these games the time and attention they deserve. I’m working in a new system for Heart and I’d be working in another new system if I get a game going on the alternating weekends. It will be a while before I can achieve the same level of effortless proficiency that I had with Dungeons and Dragons Fifth Edition. It should be easier than learning a D&D version, thankfully, but it is no small amount of work to learn an entirely new set of mechanics such that I can run a whole session without cracking opn the rulebooks.

I was worried that I’d need to guide this group or urge them onward, but most of the time I’ve had to do the opposite. I’ve had to pull back on getting too specific about things, suggest that maybe we leave some questions unanswered, and try to keep people focused on what we’re doing (creating a place in the world rather than telling a story). It’s a fine line to walk, since I’m trying to avoid stifling anyone and I want to keep encouraging people to swing big so they can bring this energy into our game of Heart, so I’ve only really pulled back on the most egregious stuff. I’ve also jumped in with a few suggestions here or there, as people have struggled with a particular question or prompt from the game. I’ve also helped people take an idea and flesh it out into something a bit bigger than they were aiming for. The mundane has no place in this wild world we’ve been making and the few mundane things that have shown up wound up feeling incredibly out of place. They were breaking the suspension of disbelief rather than all of the wild stuff, since everything else had a narrative consistency we’ve actually done a great job of collectively maintaining, which just felt strange to realize as I tried to figure out why one player’s suggestion felt as off as it did.

I honestly can’t wait to see where we go from here. The last time I played The Ground Itself, there was a bit of a narrative that emerged from our game (though we’d explicitly shifted things so we were working with a population that included player characters from the D&D game we would be returning to once we’d finished the worldbuilding game). This time, there’s no narrative emerging at all (there’s bits of several being built, but not something that has emerged from the pieces we’re putting together), beyond the gradual degredation of the world. I don’t know if this is a reflection of the fact that we’re working in centuries this time, that we aren’t explicitly including a population that we expect to still be there when we’re done, or the fact that these games will always vary, even within a similar group of players. All things said and done, though, I’m just glad we’re all working together so well. Everyone is still more or less on the same page (even if each person’s work on that page is incredibly disconnected from everyone else’s work). Everyone has gotten into playing along together. Hell, everyone’s so enthusiastic that it’s actually a problem, sometimes, since we need to leave some gaps as we answer questions and not zoom in too far. I don’t know how many turns we’ve got left (we’re down to the last six cards in the deck, but who knows where the fourth 10 sits in that stack), but I’m excited to see exactly what comes of them. It’s entirely possible that the final ten will be at the bottom of the stack, which would mean everyone got exactly eight turns, which would be pretty dang wild, you know? Almost as wild as the setting we’ve made.