There’s nothing quite like that post-D&D Session high. It’s like exhaustion, a headache, and a stomach bug all rolled into one. Basically a hangover. So incredibly unpleasant, but a sign of great times now over.

I don’t really drink much these days, so maybe that’s me romanticizing my early to mid twenties than a reflection of how I feel about hangovers, so maybe don’t drink to excess.

Anyway. I’m writing this right after a Dungeons and Dragons session because I forgot to do it earlier and I feel just kind of languidly strung out. Ready to maybe enjoy a nice popsicle, plenty of water, and some Pokemon Unite to relax. Ranked, even. Pretty much anything is less tension and stress than D&D when the party does super unexpected stuff in unexpected ways that involve me needing to invent and entire constabulary and memorable NPCs like Jim The Guard, Brent Whose Wife Died in a Random Land-Based Shark Attack, and Sam Crimes (because no fantasy constabulary is completed with out a Discworld reference).

I really had to pull out all the stops to make it fun, believable(ish), and then entirely dramatic when some bad guys showed up and killed fifty or so “just a normal guard” people while retrieving the person the Players had captured that was then recaptured by the constabulary when the party’s druid was arrested.

It was an intense mess. The “interrogation” started out with humor and the pink panther theme song in the background, and then all hell broke loose. The building shook, the players were alerted, and fireball exploded somewhere, and everything dithered for a moment before leaping into action (everyone but the druid literally leaping off a building to dash into the guardhouse to help out).

I love these moments. I love tone-shifts, drama, and some unexpected consequences as the players act and react. All this happened because of choices they made and dice rolls everyone else made. Some bad stuff went missing, chaos ensued, and then the constables are getting blown up by some awfully powerful mages with weird symbols in place of their faces. I actually made them and this organization for a different game that never made it far enough to run into them properly, so I’m glad I can recycle this stuff.

Now, as the players choose to pursue their original course or maybe run down the people who stole stuff from them and killed a bunch of innocent city guards, they can wonder and ponder why they were chosen and why this trouble seems to have sought them out. Maybe it’s an old enemy returning in a new form or maybe its an entirely new enemy and the party just got incredibly unlucky. Only time and more sessions will tell!

After a bunch of very lore and knowledge-heavy sessions, it feels nice to get back to the drama, action, and plot movement. Even if we do spend two hours hanging out at the scene of a crime trying to figure out what to do with the dead body and how to disguise all of the magical plant growth that messed up the city streets.