Nobody seems to know what life is going to be like for them. This is actually a good aspect of reality, if it was predictable to any real extent nobody would play. The unexpected is just a byproduct of our limitations, no matter how much experience we get, no matter how educated, or compassionate, or centered, or wise, life is just too much to keep track of in any meaningful way and a lot of the really important information is hidden. So if you are a control freak, maybe work on giving that up.

I have been struggling with the notion of control. I play a fair bit of Dungeons & Dragons, and I DM a lot. I used to think that this was just because nobody else would and I really wanted to play, but after...wow. Ok after a LOT of years playing off and on in different editions as schedules and location and friends availability allowed, I may just have to accept that I DM because I prefer it to being a player. 

I have gotten to play in games a few times and while I do enjoy it, I am not very good at it. I tend to be a bit of a spotlight hog, I get bored easily when it is not my turn or when circumstances do not allow me to do much of anything...like when it is not my turn and the wizard who could have been plotting out his spell choice for the last three people's turns is having to look something up instead of just saying FIREBALL!! or whatever...for instance.

So I DM, I am always busy even if its just listening to the party make up an insane plan and trying to work out what is going to go wrong with it then holding myself back from telling them that unless it is something that their character would reasonably see instantly.

I also have a lot more fun with world building that making an infinite number of characters I will never play, though admittedly I do that too sometimes. 

At this point though I have run homebrew worlds, Forgotten Realms, Exandria, and iterations on the modern world, but with mutants, or magic, or superheroes or all the above.

I am leaning towards a new home brew but I also want to do something completely new based on Proactive Roleplaying. There was a video by GinnyDi and a book "The Game Master's Guide to Proactive Roleplaying" by Jonah and Tristan Fishel. This book and the video that introduced me to it were interesting not because the ideas presented were new but because they were familiar but formatted to the thinking of different people. I always sought to make my adventures about my player characters, I just never had anyone say that by explicitly asking your players to make their back stories have concrete goals built into the character that it would make that process a lot easier. 

So now I have an opportunity to integrate some of the ideas from the book into my own methods and create a campaign that is genuinely player driven rather than the tired old trope of the BBEG. There will probably still be some forms of big bad, and there will be evil and good, but depending on the players goals they might be heroes or they might be the BBEG of someone else's story. I can think of at least one player this might be true for.

Ah but where to hold it? At first I was inclined to put it into my homebrew world, and I eventually will try this, but my experience using the Forgotten Realms and Exandria has highlighted the fact that with an existing world with an extensive Wiki it is a bit easier for my players to find bits of the world that appeal to them and play with those.

I won't be running it for a few months. Likely not till the new rulebooks for 2024 drop, but I have been tinkering with ideas for the campaign in the back of my head and other places for a few months now, pretty much a few weeks after I stopped running the last one.

My other goal is to work on short form adventures that can ACTUALLY be completed in a single session. So far I have not had a lot of luck in this.

 Death has become a much more present companion of late. Maybe it was the deaths of multiple family members over the last few years, maybe the global pandemic, or even me getting to what most people see as the downhill side of the hill of life. 

I have always considered death as a companion on the road, that can show up at any time. I think maybe when we start thinking overmuch on the end it may be because we feel that the story so far has not been a good enough one. I don't know if I need a second chapter twist or a quiet evaluation of my goals. Option two is probably better, since blowing up your life may be exciting it is also not really all that much fun or healthy.

Learning to make steady, consistent steps and work hard is probably going to be more useful.

Drinking

I had in mind to write about bars and pubs but upon reflection I realize that I have spent far too little time in them to have an informed opinion.

Lightly Toasted

             Living in a land of endless sunshine seems pretty amazing. It does have a few drawbacks. Its very bright. Sometimes this is ok but it is tough to be properly morose in the blazing sun. This makes me wonder if there isn't some connection between fundamentalist religion and extremes of climate.
   Wine is fun too. I do miss Molson, it seems almost impossible to aquire here.

Dark Water

My dreams of late seem to be inhabited by the sort of dark fucked up stories you might get from guys like Faulkner and Vonnegut and M Night Shamaylan. I don't want to sound ungrateful but that shit is waking me up in a cold damn sweat. I just want to write good stories that people can enjoy. I do not want to be doomed to writing obscure and surreal but deeply subtexted 'literature' for the intellectual elite to sit around doing mental masturbation over. Fuck that. What is wrong with just telling a good and interesting story where people seem real even if they are not and you get a few thrills and a few laughs and maybe learn some cool shit whether you meant to or not.
Maybe you never get the muse you want. But always learn to be grateful for the muse you get. Could be worse. For a while they weren't talking to me at all.

I am sad and have good reason to be sad. Death, boredom, lack of sleep and lack of time with my wife are all reasons for being down.
The usual things don't seem to be pulling me out of the funk. Maybe some B-12 or a drinking binge.

Sleep is a refuge from the exhaustion of being. One can only hope that if death is not the start of a wild adventure in afterlife Disneyland that it is a gentle slip into an endless sleep.

I suppose to qualify as a blogger I should probably write something here more than a few times a year when I get insomnia. Ah well.
Death used to be a mystery to me in terms of experiencing it. This is sadly no longer the case. Less than a year ago I lost my father who was combination of John Wayne, Jimmie Stewart and Al Borland. Yesterday I lost my niece. She was a wee small baby but she affected the lives of everyone around her. Nobody is unimportant. There are no expendable people. Everyone matters and should be loved and treated with respect. I hope it doesn't take death for these ideas to hit home but sometimes it seems even death isn't enough. We lose thousands and go to war to lose thousands upon thousands in struggle instead of trying to understand what would drive young men to destroy themselves. I know introspection over action seems alien to a lot of us but without it we are at the mercy of those who value greed and power over either. Please start thinking before you leap to action...if only for a moment.