As I get more and more rest and gradually recover from my extreme burnout (and probably wind up back at just “bad” burnout instead of “extreme”), the idea I had for a TTRPG campaign just won’t leave me alone, so I’m going to start working on development (well, I already have been, to be completely honest). It might yet go nowhere, it might go somewhere fun, or it might follow the course of all of my campaigns by starting out with promise that slowly dwindles as I burn out and my less-than-engaged players stop putting in any effort. I don’t know. I’m definitely not getting my hopes up about being able to play out the idea I had in its entirety. I just… I WANT to be doing this again. I cut out so much of my day to day life and the one thing I miss the most, that still fires me up the most, that I only ever think of along the lines of “I wish I hadn’t had to end this,” is running games. I want to get back in the storyteller’s chair. I have such an interesting idea that I’ve been letting cook for a while and I really want to do something with it. I mean, I could write a story about it, but I really miss collaborative storytelling. I really miss looking at friends as I run a game and roleplay through whatever situations we wind up in. Dipping my toes back into D&D as a player has also whet my appetite for this kind of storytelling, so it’s all kind of coming together. I’ve got an interesting story, the world is practically building itself, and I think I’ve got four people who would be just as committed to playing this game (and doing their homework for it) as I am.

The biggest development I’ve had so far is the thought that maybe it doesn’t need to be a Dungeons & Dragons game. I originally conceived of the idea as such, but the longer the idea has sat in my head, the less appropriate D&D has felt for what I want to do and the more appropriate Armour Astir: Advent feels. I know the D&D well enough that I could easily make it work for what I want, but the kind of tone I’m going for is probably better served by a game where the weight, imbalance, and scope of what I want to bring to bear are actually built into the game. I need the danger and imbalance of power to be near at hand and that really puts D&D in a bit of a bind because then I have to come up with reasons that the danger and power doesn’t just make good on their threats and take out the gnats biting at them. Good ones, preferably, and those are really difficult to do. But if the game had all that baked into it? If it mechanized some of the reasons why the power–the authority, perhaps–didn’t just stamp out the plucky up-and-comers? Then worldbuilding and game play from day to day literally handle that stuff for me! I couple probably pull those systems out of the game I’m planning to run and stick them into Dungeons & Dragons somehow, but I haven’t stopped wanting to play games other than D&D. So why stick to that if I don’t have to? Why not treat it like any other of my collected games: playing it when it makes sense for the portion of the story being told and then moving on to something else when we’re done? Honestly, I can see it working as an interesting “character building” game rather than world building one.

At this point, I’ve got a lot of the influences sorted out: Gurren Lagann; Promare; some of the setting and city-building of Kill La Kill; a touch of Trigun because I can’t not include it; a little bit of the feelings of outside menace from early Attack on Titan; elements of all my favorite old D&D campaign ideas; and then my current interest in post-collapse/war/disaster societal recovery. I can picture all of the parts I’m taking from each of those influences but I want to save some of the visuals for in-game and at least one of my potential players might read this blog so I’ll keep them to myself. I’ll just say I’m going full cinematic mode. I’ve even got a series of world building and world ending games picked out for getting the tone built and the world set up so it’s familiar to my players. The biggest challenge will be getting all of them through this wide variety of games in a timely manner since only one of them really has much experience or expressed interest in non-D&D games. The second biggest challenge will be not enthusiastically gushing about it to them such that all my secrets are revealed. I’ve got so many ideas already and the more time I spend thinking about them, the more new ideas I get.

Now I just need to get my players together, get through the scheduling hurdles, figure out how often to play, and see if my chosen players will be able to stick with it. Three of them seem enthusiastic currently, though one has a game scheduled at the desired time already, but I’m trying to encourage her to leave it because it really seems like it’s not a great game to be playing in. I know I’m only getting the complaints and that the real image of things might be different, but the things she describes are so shitty that I almost want to come up with a game just to get her out of that one. Almost. I’m still doing this for me because I’ve got a story I want to tell. I’ve got a slowly building vision of what I want and I need people who are also interested in it to help me bring it to fruition. After all, the best stories are the ones we tell together. I’ve got hopes for this group. Not necessarily high ones, but that’s not because my players lack potential. That’s just me being reserved because I can’t afford to get super invested in something yet. I need to keep myself focused on maintaining a sustainable pace. I need to reign in my impulse to go wild and create recklessly. I mean, I’ve got got my Final Fantasy 14 roleplaying stuff going on–Wrestling federation and small group or one-on-one stuff–so I can’t invest everything in this project. I gotta save some space for myself and for some time for rest for a while yet.