So I had this amazing idea for a game over the weekend and Mrs. Monkey managed to swap a shift so we can game all day Friday and all day Saturday! This is all good news. I wrote a game in three days flat. It’s possibly the best game I’ve ever written as well.
It is ever thus… 
More sanity on the other side. I hope!
I find myself in the bizarre position of almost having caught up with everything I was doing. I find it best to stay on top of Over The Edge almost as soon as the current episode is finished. The following episode I then write up character briefings and a newspaper for. I haven’t put these into printable form yet but they’re written. Besides OTE isn’t due until March 8th now what with one thing and another.
Deliria takes care of itself. Once you’ve made the character’s initial history the game isn’t as briefing and extra intensive as OTE.
I’ve even written up all my materials for Con of the Dead 2 a one off I’m taking to the Spring 2008 games weekend and this with a bespoke system in tow!
Having said that over the course of writing this post I’ve thought of several things I could be doing…
If you ever believe you’ve run out of things you could write you’re in trouble. Actually if you can see an end to open projects in the next 12 months you’re obviously not trying hard enough
Once Games Weekend is past I will finally have some time to edit Starfall. Pressure is upon me to ge the job done… have successfully reclaimed some time for reading review submissions. So should have something to report shortly.
Like I may have mentioned I have never GMed a campaign before. I have GMed many one-offs and unlike a lot of things the difference between a series of one offs and a campaign is small. The main difference is the reinforcement of continuity in the campaign. I am starting to get to the point where people have been playing the same characters two or three times and the game is beginning to take shape. I imagine weekly players get to the stage where people have warmed into their characters a lot quicker. Although the monthly nature of play in my campaign means that people tend to make quantum leaps forward more frequently.
Anyhow. I’m starting to notice that a lot of time I could be spending doing other things I am now spending writing a wealth of gaming materials. It’s already quite a bulky archive. We have three editions of Al Amarja today (Al Amarja is the setting of Over The Edge), a tourist map of Al Amarja’s main conurbation The Edge, innumerable character briefings, a number of character histories, ephemera like pamphlets and leaflets and so on and so forth, then there’s the histories, map and a couple of other oddments for Deliria. It’s a whole heap of administration. Oh yes, and while we’re at it there’s my top secret GM notes and the character sheets for pregens. Character sheets are odd in that some systems seem to take no time at all to pregen characters and others the sheets are significant work in and of themselves. GM notes are perhaps the least productive use of time as around 60% of what’s in them never gets used.
Factor into all this that you need to read all the system documentation before you even begin making any of this stuff and you’ve got a significant overhead of time spent.
So the question I find myself asking is, is this all just frivolous fun? Well, it nearly is. I’m kind of finding a threshold with it about now. A point beyond which I just don’t want to venture at this point. I think being an actual GM running an actual campaign for an actual group is important to a game designer. I think it’s got to be clear what is actually expected of a GM in the course of running a game.
So I have to finish the process now. But I’m keenly aware that there’s a heap of other things sitting there, waiting for me. I really need to win a small fortune, just so that I can work 40-50 hours a week doing all the things I do when I’m not working 40 hours a week!
