Had to move today’s post to Drafts for a bit as the events of the day presented themselves.
It was a historic day, readers, and it took a while for me to think about it. But it was also a day of personal joys and challenges in the game-writing world.
I started this post early in the morning with wanting to give praise to my players for their maturity with scheduling, and I will write about that. But the morning had me helping on a mail route that used to be my territory when I started out as a postman, and I came across two areas I wanted to make note of: my lunch tree and the House That Won’t Fall, as I call it.
Nowadays, I stay in my truck for mealtime so I can also write, but 11 (or 12? The memory is fuzzy) years ago, my customers learned that if the mailman is under that tree, they needed to leave him alone so he can eat.
I’ve been passing this house for a decade now, and it’s slowly fallen into this state of decay, but every time I see it, I’m always amazed it’s still standing. One of these days, a hurricane will finally knock it down. I’ll be sad when that day occurs.
Speaking of sad days, I’ve been mulling over the news from the United Kingdom. Queen Elizabeth II died today.
I’ve been ambivalent over this news. As a US American citizen, my national soul is tied to rebelling against the British monarchy. As a man of Irish descent, the memory of Royal British mistreatment of my people is at the forefront. But Queen Elizabeth II was an interesting woman with a great amount of history to her, and her stories were phenomenal to consider. It’s difficult for me to not be impressed and have respect for a woman who became Queen before my father was even born and still reigned when my daughter had just turned 6 years old, though I will be taking another look at her history to see how I feel about it with a different perspective.
The evening ended with my wanting to give praise to my players. The bane of a GameMaster is and will always be scheduling, especially in our adult years. I’m fairly strict with the Main Arc scheduling and the players understand that. If they can’t attend, they need to tell me in advance. I do have leniency for a couple of my players on the East Coast: they have infants and we start late for them, so they deserve sleep.
But we have a secondary set of sessions in the schedule, and there, the players thrive. Since everyone can’t always make the regular sessions, they will set aside time throughout the week for Side-Arc sessions. They can explore a different plot line and develop their characters.
Granted, it’s also putting a new challenge on my shoulders to come up with these plots, but as I view that as my area to really stretch my creativity (IE, I’m slightly insane with wanting to write so much), I see no problem with this. Unfortunately, those sessions are also plagued by exhaustion among us adults, so they don’t last long and often have to be broken into multiple segments, like this evenings’ with Gilga and Beak (expect Beaks’ Bio soon and Gilga’s once I get into Arc 2). We’ve set the follow-up for next week, and I’m looking forward to how they do.
With all of that said, it’s time I sought my bed before the desk becomes my pillow.
Stay safe out there, readers, and good night.
-JB Swift
Swift's Corner 