In one final session that took three hours (which is two more than I hoped it would take and one more than I expected it to take), we wrapped up our game of The Quiet Year with a much more detailed map than we started with and an idea of what the world looked like after that year of relative peace. We’ve got a fully underground society, a mysterious Labyrinth that defies mapping and contains seemingly limitless treasure, and a yearly pass of horrific monsters that will kill or infect any being unfortunate enough to be caught outside by their organized sweep with The Rot. It was a lot of cool stuff that has left the group in a situation where they’re well-off as adventurers but maybe not super well-off as a society. Sure, they’ve got a decent amount of food and livestock, not to mention more water than they could need, but their population isn’t super big and they only have enough food because their population is small. There’ll be a lot of problems facing this community thirty years down the road, when we start up the Dungeons and Dragons campaign side of things, but I think it’s well-within the group’s ability to handle them or die trying. Not sure which is more likely at this point, given that I’m starting them at level one and this world’s rough on characters of all levels, but I’m interested to find out!

As we move from prologue to worldbuilding to the full game, I find myself preoccupied mostly with matters of group dynamic. I don’t think there will be any issues with this group. We’ve certainly played enough games together to play nicely with each other, but half of what I’m trying in this game is to see if we can achieve a level of focused play and roleplaying depth by limiting the number of players. I’m more used to running larger groups and needing to manage too many voices than needing to prompt and lead a smaller group of quieter voices, but I’ve had a lot of practice in the last few years of running a game for a smaller group of people. I think I can manage it just fine, I’m just not sure if I’ll get the results I’m hoping for with this small group. It’s not that they’re not creative (far from it), it just takes a lot more work to prompt them, to get them talking and creating, than I think I can maintain in the long term. If this is just the fumbling, uncomfortable first steps of starting to run, then I can handle it. If I have to put in this amount of effort every session, I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to sustain it. If it starts to become an issue, I’ll talk with my players to see what they think, but I have to admit I’m really not up for the older style of Dungeons and Dragons games I used to run, where I was driving the whole thing and my players were more passive participants. I’ve finally experienced how great it is to have a group that is not only bought in but actively driving things without me needing to prompt them and I’m not sure I can enjoy going back to being the sole storyteller. If I can’t get something similar out of this group, I’m not sure I’ll be able to keep the campaign going.

Beyond that, I’m mostly just running through scenarios and figuring out how much of the labyrinth I want to build out. I watched Delicious in Dungeon this year, so the temptation to make it a truly massive thing is super strong. I’ve love to build it out, explore dungeon ecology, and see how my players handle a huge, confusing place with maps they have to draw themselves. It’s been a while since I had reason to do a full dungeon build and while making them digitally is a much bigger pain in the ass than drawing them by hand, it could be fun to build something again. I do love creating inventive and open-ended puzzles or traps. I built an entire tower of “test” traps for one campaign and loved seeing my players stumble through them until they figured out the secret behind all the traps. I had one room that actually created an illusion of the exterior of the tower inside it and that projected an illusion of whatever entered the room outside the tower. It took my players a while to figure that one out and then roll well enough to see through it. I also had a fancy bathing room with mirrors that unlocked the doors only when there were no creatures reflected in them and then another room that had a series of pillars and jars, which is what prompted the barbarian to just try breaking down the wall. Turns out the walls were super thin and all they had to do was make an easy Strength check to completely bypass all the traps and puzzles, which is how they got through the rest of the tower. It was great. Those player characters even stopped in the refreshments chamber and left reviews of the tower and its traps for the person who made the tower. It was great.

Still, this upcoming game is about building and protecting a community, so I either need to go all-in on the labyrinth being a renewing source of important materials or keep my players moving around the surface of the world to find whatever it is their community needs. It’s entirely possible the game would pivot and become just about exploring this labyrinth if I could make it interesting enough, but the players were very clear about their interest in community building and I can probably figure out a way to combine them in a way that will get me at least a few to a dozen fun levels of dungeon design. Or maybe I’ll just break it up and put a bunch of them around the world. The problem is that the community they’re building already has all the metal and adventurer rewards the community could ever need! What it really needs is food or a way to attract new community members without compromising the safety of their underground Sylum. Things that are notoriously difficult to come by in a dungeon. Maybe I’ll just make some Rot-resistant creatures that are still good to hunt, have them locate a herd the community can manage or domesticate, and then move on to fun dungeon stuff. OR maybe I should just keep my focus on the next session or two, see where it all goes, and not get ahead of myself. I shouldn’t be planning that far ahead, given that I’m not sure how long this group will be playing together. Scheduling has already been a bit of a struggle, so who know how it’ll all end up…