Reality Incursion

 Ah what a January! Grim flu ripping through the family (I was out for a whole week), lots of work catch-up, and no shortage of micro emergencies mixed in. The usual fun times.

I got a reprieve from my Wednesday group for a bit. My son ran two sessions of the Alien RPG using the Chariot of the Gods module, and it was pretty dang fun. He is 13, but already appears to be a chip off the old GM block, having acquired his dad's talent for improvisation and storytelling. It was a glorious adventure and everyone died by the end of session two, which is ironic as that mirrors the way many of my early scenarios went when I was the same age. TPKs were just a thing that happened back in the day, and while its arguable that Alien RPG's approach can make those more readily obvious, I would also argue that not having a TPK in The Caves of Chaos was fairly unusual....TPK was the usual default, especially the first round in.

I haven't been away from GMing exactly; I have now run two sessions of a Savage Worlds Supers campaign, using a blend of classic Supers rules with the Horror Companion for a more "Dark Horse/JLA Dark" style campaign, although in truth I found myself feeling less interested in restricting myself thematically in actual play and the scenario ended up feeling more heavily influenced by the likes of The Titans, Suicide Squad, Nemesis and other thematic elements. I'm not really trying to plot too hard on this one, I decided. Better to just let it all go where it will.

For returning to Wednesday I rapidly ploughed through all my dreams and visions of breaking away from D&D and have accepted that Dragonbane and Mythras are both game systems I would like to tackle, but I still don't reside in the right timeline or frame of mind to accomplish this at the moment. To do justice to either I need to find personal time to invest my energy in the systems,* teasing out what is needed to make them comprehensive campaigns catering to each system's strengths, and be ready to act as tutor to the players, and to do battle with the rules lawyer. I just ain't got that sort of energy anymore. Maybe at some point, or with the right sort of group (the nostalgic one I remember having 25 years ago would be a fine set of test subjects for such a game) but today? Today I need the thing that I already know too well. And even that thing, D&D, requires I spend a bit more time with it to learn the new incongruities and alterations to its recent botox treatment. 

Monster Manual 2025 will be out in like 2 weeks, anyway. Going to be interesting to see how or if it is a game changer for the play experience. 

*The problem is, I have some X amount of free time, but I have 25 things vying for control of it. When I sit down these days to use that precious 2-3 hours a night I have to enjoy something, the time ends up going to a mix of book reading, comic reading, maybe a video or two, and more recently some sessions in World of Warcraft Classic or Path of Exile 2 with my wife. The interest I once had in obsessively sitting down and crafting NPCs and materials for a game system like mythras while building out a campaign that leans in to the unique developmental ethos of the game world of the system just no longer grabs me like it once did. I don't believe this is even a case of "other things are easier," anymore, because I can easily spend hours crafting a campaign setting and scenario set for D&D; it's because I no longer crave that sort of synergetic interaction with rules systems anymore, I find it tedious and uninteresting. It is okay for me, I have accepted, to admit that maybe I have done this hobby too much for too long, and some of it now feels a bit old hat to me, a bit less interesting. That could change with time, or not. But my strength of interest lies in the world building and the storytelling, and the game system which lets me do that with the least amount of fuss is what I must roll with for now, even if I do find the "old me" occasionally surfacing and eyeing Mythras of Dragonbane hungrily, even for but a moment.