As part of getting my life back together following the dual function of working antidepressants and some rest, finally, I’ve begun the slow, laborious process of getting my two tabletop campaigns up and running again. One has met already, to talk through things, and the other failed to achieve sufficient player availability, so we’re going to try again in a couple weeks. It’s been so long since I really thought about my two campaigns that I genuinely struggled to get back into the right headspace for them. I was able to do it, thanks to extensive preparation and a review of my notes, but I was still picking up the pieces of it all as we sat down to review what had been going on, refresh ourselves as to what the plan was, and ultimately decide how we wanted to proceed in and out of character. I plan to do something similar for the other one, but that campaign spun up in the middle of my worst brain fog and depression this past year, so trying to pick up those pieces feels a lot like groping around in the dark for something that might cut me if I’m not careful. I’m not worried about remembering something that would upset me or anything, but there’s a certain gingerness I feel when thinking back to that period of time because it’s one of only a few blurry periods in my memory and all the other ones are minefields of forgotten/potentially-repressed trauma. It’s difficult to fight the feelings of nervousness such periods of forgetfulness inspire in me while also trying to actually remember what was going on and what I was thinking at that time.

The one campaign, The Rotten Labyrinth, was easy enough to pick up. I’ve got a map and extensive notes for that campaign because it’s very nature requires a degree of meticulous record-keeping. Figuring out what was going on, what the status of every character was, who had what items, what everyone was thinking, and who had what curses or enchantments was a matter of just reading my notes and reviewing the map. Everything I needed to know was there because I knew, from the very beginning, that trying to remember it all was going to turn my brain into a puddle of goop. There was too much happening and potentially happening and happening off-camera for me to have any change of remembering things. So all my GM notes in Role20 and in my session notes/prep document did a great job of filling me in except for the stuff that didn’t. The problem with having a largely context-based system of note-taking is that if you stop playing long enough or have a significant amount of brainfog when you’re taking those notes, context has this habit of disappearing. Thankfully, in talking through it all with five of my six players, I was able to fill in the gaps and remind myself what I was doing, what I had planned, and what all the weird little marginalia meant.

It was a bit more work to remember where I was going with all of it, though, but that was eventually handled by talking out the future of our game with my players. It can be difficult, as the GM, to talk through some of these things because it inevitably feels like I’m thumbing the scales. We talked about how the party was trying to 100% the labyrinth, how they were all accruing effects, and what they wanted to do in future sessions. When I commented that I didn’t expect them to fully explore the labyrinth, adding that so much of it exists as potential only rather than something prescriptive and written-out ahead of time, I emphasized that they would find things wherever they went and that solving the labyrinth meant driving toward it’s center more than just exploring the whole thing, especially because this was only the first floor (a thing many of them had apparently forgotten). When they fixated on getting to the middle immediately, I tried to back off and remind them that this is about what they want to do. If they want to explore every nook and cranny, then we can do that, but there’s a cap on how much power they can accrue on this floor alone. They weren’t going to get to level twenty by just wandering around the entry layer. When one of the players suggested putting some kind of in-game timer on them, I explained that I wasn’t interested in timers but in the accumulation of consequences, a thing I’ve already talked about with them since they’re slowly building up quite a pile of on-going effects. Eventually, they’d accumulate enough consequences that they couldn’t go on, which could happen faster than they might think given that one of the player characters has been petrified.

We talked about it a bit longer and I’ve got my work cut out for me now. I’ve got a lot of maze and more floors to work on, since I have absolutely no idea how much they’re going to try to rush or explore around. I need to be prepared for them to do anything and right now there’s enough blank spots on the map I uploaded that I really need to get working before it becomes a problem. I don’t expect them to get through enough in the next session or two to cause me any problems or require me to end the session early, but it’s best to get working ahead of time on big projects like this. Which is why I’m also trying to recover as much of my memory as I can of my other campaign. I remember the general idea behind The Demigods of Daelen, but I don’t remember most of the specifics since I was trying to come up with them during my brain fog period of this past Spring. I might not have come up with anything, since I can’t find any records or notes, but instead of feeling freed by not having something solid to adhere to, I actually feel a little adrift because I don’t even have the vague hint of a direction to pick back up from. Our last session ended with everyone returning to the hub city and I cannot, for the life of me, remember why I made some of the choices I did during that last session. I’ll have to figure something out that builds off of all that, so that’s probably why I feel off-put and restrained. Still, that’s a problem I can fix with enough focus and work, so I’m sure I’ll get there eventually. Or we’ll go back to the other campaign. I don’t know. We’ll see what everyone is up for, if anything, when we finally get back together.