I was never one to hesitate long once I’d made up my mind. Which is why, a week later, I’ve got just a bit over fourty-eight hours left before session pre-0 (or -1 as I’ve taken to calling them) with my group of players. Three new folks I’ve never run for before and one familiar constant. I know at least two of the three new folks share my passion for committing to things and taking those commitments seriously, so I am hopeful that I will be able to avoind the old follies of campaigns past. Which just means I’ll be open for all new follies in this campaign. One of the players, the boyfriend of one of the other new players, is not someone I’ve spoken to extensively, like I have with the other two players. I did a bit of a semi-formal interview, asking him a bunch of questions about his interests, experiences, and how he’d react to things, so I think he at least won’t be a bad fit for the group, but I usually want more reassurance than this that I’m bringing in a good, quality player who will mesh with the group’s dynamic. It makes it easier that we’ll have a few sessions of worldbuilding, ending, and protecting games before we get into the meat of things, so I should know by the day we do character building for our final game (so we know what to make in our penultimate game in order to arrive there by the time that final game begins) if he’s a good fit or not. If the whole group is a good fit or not. I’m a bit nervous that it’ll all fall apart before we get to the juicy stuff I’m most interested in, but all I can do is press onward and deal with that if it ever comes up.

In the meantime, I’ve finalized the set of games I’m going to run. First off will be a spot of world creation and map-making with “The Quiet Year” by Avery Alder followed immediately by “World-Ending Game” by Everest Pipkin because there’s nothing like making a world and then ending it. Following that, we’ll be moving into the duo of games called “Sanctuary & Sentinel” by Meghan Cross for a bit of group and then maybe solo play (still not exactly sure how I’m going to handle that, but I’ll be reading the books through again sometime soon to figure it out). Following that, we’ll make characters in Armour Astir: Advent and then create lesser, younger(?) versions of them in Dungeons & Dragons 5e (2014) with an eye toward turning them from their D&D versions into their Armour Astir versions by a certain point and/or after a sequence of events. I have more than a few ideas about how all this is going to go down, how it will all be connected, and why I’m choosing to do things the way I am, but one of my players definitely read the post that went up the day I’m writing this so I am feeling very validated in my decision to hold back that information for the moment. All things in their time and these things need to wait a bit before it will be their time.

I’ve been doing some research into self-sustaining ecosystems and the development of isolated societies, but I’m not sure those will be relevant. I plan to do a lot of adapting based on how our pre-campaign-gaming goes, to incorporate my fellow players ideas and instincts into the world I’m making, but there’s a sense of inevitability to some things. After all, I’m a player in these games as well and I will absolutely be using my turns to steer both of these games in the direction I want as long as it isn’t contradicting what my players are doing. I also don’t know how much time is going to ellapsed between all of these events, so even if I do manage to swing things perfectly my way, there’s no saying that any of it will wind up being relevant. If some of this stuff happens in the distant past, it will absolutely be useful to have my research already done. If it all happened fairly recently, in the last ten to twenty years, my research will not matter. It’ll still be useful to know that stuff, of course–it never hurts to learn something new that I can apply to future stories–but I’m trying to avoid leaning too far into the research until it becomes apparent if I’ll need it or not. I can always end a session early and get the time required to think stuff though if I wind up needing to prepare for it and lack the requisite knowledge to make it up as I go.

That said, I’m trying to avoid that kind of reactive play this time around. I want things to be more established, more concrete and resistant to my players as they move through an established world because I think that’ll be inmportant to the fiction this time around. I mean, a lot of my previous games and campaign worlds have been about possibility, potential, and opportunity. This time around, there’s a lot less of that. There’s still some, of course. I’m not going to take away player agency or prevent them from achieving their goals. I just want them to experience a bit more friction as we go. To feel the pull of inertia just as much as they feel the pull of adventure. I want them to have to make decisions with no right anwers, face down foes they can’t simply beat to death, and make choices in situations that seem impossible to determine the “correct” outcome. I generally try to make my games easier and more simple/enjoyable to play, rather than introduce this kind and amount of friction to them, so it will take some work on my part to actually nail this. Which feels fitting considering the group of people I’ve pulled together on short notice. Everyone’s going to be doing something new and stepping out of their comfort zone. Why should my experience be any different?