We forecasted a six month break and would have achieved that but for the bard getting sick, so I consider that pretty reasonable adherence to plan.
Once we got things kicked off there was a fair bit of 'this was the plan we agreed back then, cannot recall why we chose that, but let us execute it rather than relitigate the whys and hows' - and so they set off via teleportation to their most northerly familiar location, the Temple of Kord upon the Plateau of Jor, then windwalked onwards from there. They spotted and messed with some harpies carrying a chest, then became ensnared in the 'Spirit Snare' (see room 47 of The Guest Stars compiled by The First Gokun for GLÅUGUST 2026.
As I punched in the session numbers I was struck by how there seems to have been three eras to the campaign going by gaming intensity
Era #1 - up to session 57, where we ran an average 3.5 sessions a month, getting 20 hours of gaming in
Era #2 - across the first campaign hiatus and up to session 142, getting ~ 7 hours a month in over 2 sessions
Era #3 - from 143 to now, getting just over a game a month on average, 4.5 hours
What this means is that I need to tighten up my game style for the shape of the sessions we can expect to have or otherwise things are likely to drift in an unsatisfying manner.
Thinking back to the different game phases - the initial phase was super roleplay focussed. With lots of relationships, lots of direct 1:1 RP and direct interactions with NPCs. Chewing the scenery, interacting with everybody, splitting up, lots of spotlight shifting around and so on. This was typical for the first 57 sessions, concentrated in Thenya. That ran from start in March '20 up to July '21.
The second block was questing basically - two big cycles, what became The Dukes Last Quest and then recovering the sword of the forgotten god. The first encompassed the journey to the Plateau of Jor, negotiations with the Giants, searching for Lost Conchordia and venturing into the Temple of Annam. After a brief time back in Thenya to bury the Duke, they set off again, this time to the Land of the Dead to retrieve the artefact sword and then slay that gods last avatar with it. This was much more high impact wilderness adventuring. We skipped over the real crawl adventuring because they had access to mobility through the Spelljamming Saddle so it was mega point crawl, site to site, dropping in on whatever seemed interesting and avoiding much of the slog inbetween. That ran from August '21 to August '25.
The end of the second part was more or less after they had come back and finished tidying up - done the beach episode, took a side trip to the Moon just because and were more or less gearing up to take a swing at their next big problem. Since then until now has been gathering information and deciding a strategy to go after the DodKong. This also encompassed a second hiatus and now we are back again - will there be another inflection or a continuation of this trend?
Looking at the time ahead, we are looking at fairly restricted gaming time - it is always going to be in the evening, always going to be a short slot. Two hours if a weeknight, three hours if it is a weekend. We will be doing well if we get in five hours a month which is well down on the glory days of five hour sessions multiple times a month. This is a campaign that has a deep tradition of discussing and noodling about which I am not sure will be as sustainable if anything is to get done. Given that we are now two cancellations due to illness in three attempts, planning for one short session a month seems realistic.
I think given the difficulty in recapping when significant time passes and the large quantity of information being juggled, I will need to crack the whip as a DM bit more and drive decision making - not what the decision is but that a decision be made. Scenes need to become less characterful and more action oriented, to close out threads and reduce the loose ends being dealt with. I should probably look up how to make NPCs stand out quickly and boldly - I read someone pointing to thinking about what that NPC wants in a scene. Have them turn up once, burn brightly and then exit. Where the conversation does not just get elided into a montage, that is.
For the same reasons I am looking at a whole set of short sessions and if I am potentially also looking at pretty constrained prep. What I might need to do is almost pre-write a whole block ahead of time and then just execute the major scene elements. I have let the players follow their noses a lot but with short sessions, I need to steer things harder - get one or two concrete things done every session, otherwise it will begin to feel like a swamp where no progress is made or traction achieved.
Feels like do everything I typically do for the open table games but on an even tighter timeline.
No comments:
Post a Comment