My offline campaign exploded two weeks ago and the fallout has been absolute. I have no more offline campaign. Before that had happened, I was planning on going on a vacation at the end of May, and then that didn't seem to be working out ... and then I made an arrangement with my work and I've been slaving at that since, oh, Thursday last week, and now I can breathe and I'm going on a six-day break.
I wrote a couple of posts last week that caught my feelings for then, which I thought I'd continue but now there's nothing left to say except that I disagree with some who say that the being in the present can only prepare you for the past. I don't think that's true. We can't know what's going to happen in the future, but the present, and the past, helps up build a better seat-belt for it.
The last time I had a game blow up on me, I was 29. Less than half the age I am now. That seems incomprehensible to me ... that all the chaos and confusion of those first years of D&D, between 1979 and 1993, represent less than a quarter of my lifetime. It's easy, when you're 29, to assume that when your players walk out (they had a meeting among themselves and then I was informed), that obviously you're going to keep playing the game, obviously you're going to find another party, obviously it's no big deal, because as people age into their 30s, they often think they should stop doing the things they did when they were kids.
But here I am, not quite actually 60, and it really isn't so obvious that there's going to be another game party in my future, or even that I want one. This is a sobering thought. I have thoughts of the game, which I love, and the concept of the wiki, which I love, and the maps, which I love ... and the cold, stark, inflexible reality that for the present, for this moment, I have no immediate application for any of these things.
So. I'm thinking.
I came to a conclusion last Christmas that it would be stupid to stop writing this blog, so I'm not going to do that. The Streetvendor's Guide is a brilliant book, which has to be written, so I am going to continue writing that. The wiki is the conduit of the experience I've accumulated through years of living and playing D&D, so that's not going away and deserves my attention. Making the maps just feels good, in a way I've tried to explain, but which I know many cannot understand. Nonetheless, I've found an outlet in that direction for a consciousness I like owning, so I'll continue to make maps.
But for the present, I'm in limbo. What do you do with a dungeon master when he stops being a dungeon master; what can you do with a dungeon master who retires? Who's got a game for a dungeon master, when he stops being a dungeon master ...
There are always ways to keep busy, of course, and I'll follow them. Patreon has invented a chat room, which I've pitched here before. There are just four or five of us altogether, from the much larger number that support me to the tune of $3 a month. It would be a better format for running an online game than either a blog or a wiki, but I can't say I'm interested. Somehow, the online process has left me cold. I assume that presently, after some time has gone by, that I'll get itchy for a game ... but there's always some public club, if I want to let a bunch of 5e players boss me around. Gawd, I'll have to be pretty hard up before I jones that hard.
Sorry. "Jonesing." To have a strong desire or craving for something. I'm very old.
And so are you, if you didn't need the definition.
Still, I'm here for the weekend. I figure I've written some 28,000 words in the last 6 days, and edited about 40,000 more. I may take a couple of days and do a jigsaw puzzle or something.
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