I put our Traveller campaign on hiatus until June. Just a short two month hold. I’m just so tired of being at my computer, in my home office, all the time these days I need a break. The idea of spending 3 or 4 hours pretty much “working” for fun at GM was making me sort of anxious. I love being the game master (or Referee in Traveller), but let’s face it. GMing is intense. It is performance. You have to really be “on”, and to do a good job you have to not only be prepared with your game materials, but you have to be physically and emotionally geared up as well. The last 14 months have taken their toll. I just need a short break. I’m glad my gaming group is all so cool and understanding. It helps that we’ve known each other since we were kids.
This break, however, is giving me a good chance to write new material for our campaign. I’m trying to spend 30 minutes to an hour a day working on stuff. I find that for each session I come up with an idea, and then over the course of development it changes tremendously. The team is currently on an ice planet, exploring a wrecked freighter, waaaaaay out in unexplored space. How did it get there? What happened to the crew? How long has it been there? So many questions to be answered. I watched a really interesting documentary last week. After we play the session I’ll discuss the documentary here and how it has influenced the session, but tonight I came up with what I think will be a very fun, super weird trajectory for this next session to take, all based on stuff from this documentary. Had nothing to do with space. I’m enjoying coming up with the rest of this stuff.
A challenge for me, now, is to make sure the session has things for each PC to really be engaged in during the session. It can’t all be about “my great idea.” That idea is to provide the challenges for the players, so I need to make sure each PC has a chance to shine. Since players are unpredictable, I need to make sure I have two or three chances for each PC to do his thing and have his time of greatness!
Tomorrow, officially, is Mayday!, a special day in the life of Traveller players. This year Jeff (my podcasting partner on SAFCOcast) and I are playing in an online game as part of the online Traveller celebration organized by Virtual Traveller, Cyborg Prime, and Two Brothers Gaming. Beside the games, there are online talks and interviews all day. Looking forward to all of it!
Speaking of SAFCOcast, yes, Jeff and I will be creating a new episode after this game. We’ll be reporting on the online Mayday activities, and of course will have some internet finds and other Traveller talk. With the pause in our campaign, and each of us starting new jobs, we’ve been a bit preoccupied with “life” recently, but rest assured the podcast shall go on. We both love doing it.
I’ve been fantasizing about running two groups in our campaign. Christopher Rice, GURPS-master and Lord of Ravens N’ Pennies, does that. There are other people I really want to have in the game. My old college roommate for one. He’s the best GM ever, and he needs to be in our game. Since we went virtual it’s totally possible now. And there are a couple more players I’d like to involve. The problem is once a group gets over three or four players I don’t feel like I can give each PC the attention they deserve. I really like to shine the spotlight on each player, during each game, and once I pass four players in a session it gets tough. Right now we have 5 players in the came, and one occasional player. That’s about as many as I can handle. So running teams A and B would be really fun. The reality is that it will be tough to do that until I’m retired. I just can’t put enough time into gaming right now to make this happen. But…I might try anyway. Having teams A and B would open up some really fascinating possibilities to see how each’s actions might affect the other. Would they ever meet? Would they be allies? I need to do this.
Finally, I bought more 99 cent one-page adventures by Michael Brown. I love his work. So, so good.
I actually have three games going at once and I’m contemplating a fourth that is monthly for some UK folks I like. My advice? Don’t have more than six players per group and don’t do more than 2.5 groups. It becomes a second job at two and like constant overtime at 3 or more. But it can be very rewarding – especially if you do like I do and have crossovers with all groups in the same campaign setting.
Thanks for the advice, Christopher. I will heed it.