I’m a bit behind on these “Dev Logs,” but Sifting Through The Ashes has finished its second and third full sessions. We got through Spring of The Quiet Year in our first full session, Our second session saw us through Summer and Fall, and now our third session got us through a rather quick Winter and the entirety of World Ending Game (by Everest Pipkin). We had a lot of good world development, got to add some interesting tidbits, and even my players helped me build in the direction I’d indicated we were going to travel, so I was able to get more stuff done on my turns that wasn’t just strictly advancing the worldbuilding required to set up the vision I’d pitched. I was also able to get a little free-form with it. We expanded the bird cult, found some magic crystals, learned about a geothermal plant, saw a volcano cool, failed to cure a rampant disease, catalogued a lot of plants, discovered a crystal-powered mech, and even learned about some cool anti-gravity rocks. We had a pretty good run before the stars fell, the war ended, and the world began to get coated in the ash of disintegrating space debree. And then we even had five killer scenes as we turned the arrival of the “frost shepherds” (the undefined force that brings an end to The Quiet Year’s gameplay that, in our world, was drifting boats carrying refuges from all over the world) into the gradual end of the world in which we’d built our small slice of continued life. It was good. And incredibly melancholy.
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Sifting Through The Ashes: Off To The Races
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.
Continue readingSifting Through The Ashes: Starting A TTRPG Campaign Development Log
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.
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