Remember how last month I told you I was going to to try the #dungeon23 Challenge? Yeah, well, I am already giving up on that!
Blame It On Vacation
The wife and I went on vacation a couple weeks ago, and despite my best intentions, I did not get any work done on my version of the #dungeon23 Challenge. I really had the best intentions of working on it, even getting ahead of schedule during the long flight over the Atlantic (we went to Italy).
The reality is that I slept during the trans-Atlantic flight (both ways). We were also so busy during our time in Italy that I was just flat out tired by the time I got to bed. We had 13 hour days, and were taking in sights and information faster than we could process them.
That being said, I did get TONS of ideas walking around Rome, Florence and Venice. There is just nothing to match physically touching medieval cities and towns to get your gaming juices going!
Well, There’s More To It Than That
And, yes, I wish I could just blame my surrender on the vacation–and it is a surrender. The root problem I found is that there are just too many other things I need to flesh out to get gaming in solo campaign in the Middle Lands.
I have really tried to separate the worldbuilding I want to do for myself from what I really need to do to start no-kidding gaming in that setting. I circled back to my effort to complete a Gygax75 Challenge on the Middle Lands, and found that there was still a number of things I had to complete to get to that point.
There is that basic conflict between the #dungeon23 needs (I was doing a point of interest a day) and Gygax75 needs, that I just could not get around. In the end, the Gygax75 needs won out: I’m finishing up the tasks from that challenge, and getting my characters ready to play. If I want to do some real gaming, that work has to take priority.
Still Creating, Every Day
In the end, though, I wonder if I am still meeting the intent of the #dungeon23 Challenge… I am creating for the setting and campaign every day, just not constrained to a specific kind of item. I’m working on places of interest, yes, but also NPCs, places in the city that is the party’s base of operations and even beasts for that world.
This may not fit the exact definition of the Challenge, but it definitely fits my needs. If I need to add some detail to an NPC to fit my party’s needs, I do it. If I need to flesh out a new creature for an upcoming adventure, I do it. If I need to work out the basic economics for costs of living… well, you get the idea.
As long as I can stay focused on creating items that I really need for my campaign, I’ll be golden. If I find myself trying to flesh out the details of a religion in the southern Middle Lands (that my characters will never see), then I probably need to stop that and re-vector back onto useful things.
I think THAT is where the #dungeon23 Challenge is truly useful: focusing a Referee on creating content that is needed at the table, for gaming. And now that I have recovered from our fantastic vacation, I think I will keep trying to do just…
Marko ∞
“If I find myself trying to flesh out the details of a religion in the southern Middle Lands (that my characters will never see), then I probably need to stop that and re-vector back onto useful things.”
That’s pretty much the challenge every GM and world creator faces, isn’t it? Back a few years ago, when I was really focused on creating a world of my own, I kept finding myself going down weird rabbit-holes and focusing on all the wrong things that no one would ever know or see. I’d get fascinated by some little aspect, and spend a bunch of time writing it up even though I KNEW no one would ever see or find that information. When what I really needed to be doing was getting that mountain range figured out, or drafting a few points of interest for the city the characters would be using as their home base. The REAL challenge for most GMs, I think, isn’t so much being creative, but rather being CONSTRUCTIVELY creative!