01544: Taking My Gaming to the Next Level

Saturday. Hello weekend!

We have a full dance card all set - although in our case the dance card involves two separate gaming sessions with two different groups. While somewhat tiring, it's definitely going to be a lot of fun too, as long as we can navigate the various plot twists and the like without getting ourselves killed. In weeks past the groups sort of alternated but since there were other events that got in the way last time, not the schedules of both our Saturday and Sunday groups have fallen on the same weekend.

This is rather exciting.

Tonight can mean one of two possible games - one being the on-going Houses of the Blooded chronicle. This is a game of tragedy, intrigue, and a heck of a lot of drama, which does may for fun role-playing. The other would be something like Lacuna, which has a on-going story of sorts but it is told in a manner that it doesn't quite matter which players are involved every time we run a Lacuna game, we never quite know what to expect. It is one of the most immersive games that I've ever played.

Tobie introduced me to the world of tabletop gaming when we first got together in 2009. Since then, I've had the pleasure of playing a wide variety of game systems while also experimenting with many different characters. But the one thing that I have yet to do is to actually run a game - which is something that I've been thinking about more and more in recent times.

Over lunch, Tobie and I spent some time talking about my ideas for a possible game to run and what system we might use to tell the story. There are just so many different game systems to choose from that at times the prospects of having so many choices can make it a lot harder to actually come to a decision. But you can't have a better guide in the world of gaming than Tobie so naturally he walked me through the process of trying to determine what might work best and how to establish the story.

As for the story, well, that's actually the easier part.

Back in 1996, some classmates of mine got together and came up with a universe to set a story in. It was such a compelling story for me at the time that I sort of hung on to the idea and would repeatedly visit the universe to see if I could flesh it out. In high school. I got as far as writing over 100 pages of a novel set in that universe but eventually junked the whole thing since I was not happy with how things were flowing. Crazy, I know.

This story has come a long way from the original tale that we came up with in grade school. It has gone through so many different twists and turns and even complete shifts in the genre and feel that I feel like I've done almost everything to this story. And thus it seems a great choice for a story to use to run my first game since (1) I know all the possible plot points like the back of my hand, (2) I never firmly wrote down the exact story and thus it remains highly flexible and open to player intervention and (3) I really think it has decent shot of being a pretty good adventure.

Plus I feel that once I break this barrier between me and the possibility of running games instead of just playing them, I think it'll go a long way towards helping with my creative efforts and maybe kick start my writing again. And maybe I'm getting a little ahead of myself, but I seriously feel this is an important next step in my creative journey.

It's really just a question of finding the right time for this game and of course the right mix of players. Naturally, I already have a few folks in mind...