This last week has been an exercise in stretching myself. I'm calling it a half success rather than a half-failure, so I can attempt to be more positive.
Three major things to mention. First, I'm developing a mighty hatred of meetings. Ever since I attended an evening session of the Synod, which is the ruling body for a branch of Christianity around here, my tolerance for legalistic proceedings has been shrinking. I suspect I will eventually foam at the mouth when the word "meeting" is said in my presence.
In the meantime, though, because I was unsatisfied with the quantity and quality of meetings we'd been having for the Self Advocates of Michigan Public Relations committee (part of the board I joined awhile ago), I took over the position of organizer. This meant a lot of pestering people, which I did, albeit reluctantly. I was mostly successful, 5/6 attendees showed up in the end, technical and user difficulties aside.
The meeting went reasonably well, and we set up another meeting before calling it quits, so with one exception, I'm off the hook for badgering people. Yayyy...
So that was one success. Which is naturally balanced by a (thus far) failure. I've been working on my time-management skills, but I had been wanting to add volunteer work for Autism Support of Kent County to my life for awhile, since I believe in putting your time where your mouth is.
So I succeeded at pestering the person whose job it would be to assign me work, and succeeded in meeting with her and receiving said work, but I have, thus far, failed to manage to find time to do a smidgen of that work. I'm annoyed with myself, but the problem is that I'm managing my blog, a D&D campaign (more on that below), my therapy, and my overall mental state and health. You would think the last one would be habit and easy by now, but it is nothing of the kind. Most of the time last week that I could have spent on the volunteer work was spent on prepping for the D&D campaign, because...
I was horrendously behind (I thought) for prepping the game, which runs every Monday evening. When I say "prepping," I mean essentially writing out where I think the players are likely to go, what they're likely to do, and how the entire world around them is likely to react. As well as any other, pre-planned events you might have in the world.
If that sounds difficult and time-intensive to you, that's because you're a perceptive person. It is. Like a huge derp, I keep letting myself run out of material, and wasn't planning far ahead and giving the world a life of its own. I'm pretty new to DMing (running the game), so it's perhaps understandable to be a huge derp. But I know I can do better.
So yesterday and a few days before, I've spent hours brainstorming world events and bad guys (team evil, the forces the party is up against). That's the far future stuff. I also spent some time building the immediate present stuff, ie: the next dungeon the party is likely to encounter, as well as supporting encounters.
That said, yesterday evening one of the party may have just fast-talked his way around doing that side quest, so I'm still trying to decide if I'll allow it. Probably not. As much as I favor player agency (ie: the ability of players to affect the world and change it in meaningful ways), they kind of need the adventuring experience here before they go on to the next thing. I can, however, flavor that failure in such a way that it incorporates the player's action as a driving force, which still at least acknowledges that the player did something clever.
So if you hadn't guessed, running D&D is a major exercise in creativity, flexibility, and ingenuity. Because the players are all my friends, I hate disappointing them, and so I prioritized my time that way instead of working ahead on my blog or working on the volunteer job. But the players didn't get nearly as far as I thought they would yesterday evening, so I now have a bit of work saved up. Like having a buffer on my blog, except much less predictable.
Hopefully this week I can do a bit better, now that I'm sure I've prepped far ahead of time, and can focus on other things.
Three major things to mention. First, I'm developing a mighty hatred of meetings. Ever since I attended an evening session of the Synod, which is the ruling body for a branch of Christianity around here, my tolerance for legalistic proceedings has been shrinking. I suspect I will eventually foam at the mouth when the word "meeting" is said in my presence.
In the meantime, though, because I was unsatisfied with the quantity and quality of meetings we'd been having for the Self Advocates of Michigan Public Relations committee (part of the board I joined awhile ago), I took over the position of organizer. This meant a lot of pestering people, which I did, albeit reluctantly. I was mostly successful, 5/6 attendees showed up in the end, technical and user difficulties aside.
The meeting went reasonably well, and we set up another meeting before calling it quits, so with one exception, I'm off the hook for badgering people. Yayyy...
So that was one success. Which is naturally balanced by a (thus far) failure. I've been working on my time-management skills, but I had been wanting to add volunteer work for Autism Support of Kent County to my life for awhile, since I believe in putting your time where your mouth is.
So I succeeded at pestering the person whose job it would be to assign me work, and succeeded in meeting with her and receiving said work, but I have, thus far, failed to manage to find time to do a smidgen of that work. I'm annoyed with myself, but the problem is that I'm managing my blog, a D&D campaign (more on that below), my therapy, and my overall mental state and health. You would think the last one would be habit and easy by now, but it is nothing of the kind. Most of the time last week that I could have spent on the volunteer work was spent on prepping for the D&D campaign, because...
I was horrendously behind (I thought) for prepping the game, which runs every Monday evening. When I say "prepping," I mean essentially writing out where I think the players are likely to go, what they're likely to do, and how the entire world around them is likely to react. As well as any other, pre-planned events you might have in the world.
If that sounds difficult and time-intensive to you, that's because you're a perceptive person. It is. Like a huge derp, I keep letting myself run out of material, and wasn't planning far ahead and giving the world a life of its own. I'm pretty new to DMing (running the game), so it's perhaps understandable to be a huge derp. But I know I can do better.
So yesterday and a few days before, I've spent hours brainstorming world events and bad guys (team evil, the forces the party is up against). That's the far future stuff. I also spent some time building the immediate present stuff, ie: the next dungeon the party is likely to encounter, as well as supporting encounters.
That said, yesterday evening one of the party may have just fast-talked his way around doing that side quest, so I'm still trying to decide if I'll allow it. Probably not. As much as I favor player agency (ie: the ability of players to affect the world and change it in meaningful ways), they kind of need the adventuring experience here before they go on to the next thing. I can, however, flavor that failure in such a way that it incorporates the player's action as a driving force, which still at least acknowledges that the player did something clever.
So if you hadn't guessed, running D&D is a major exercise in creativity, flexibility, and ingenuity. Because the players are all my friends, I hate disappointing them, and so I prioritized my time that way instead of working ahead on my blog or working on the volunteer job. But the players didn't get nearly as far as I thought they would yesterday evening, so I now have a bit of work saved up. Like having a buffer on my blog, except much less predictable.
Hopefully this week I can do a bit better, now that I'm sure I've prepped far ahead of time, and can focus on other things.
No comments:
Post a Comment