Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Now What?

My initial goal with this blog was to record a number of the campaign ideas that had been kicking around my head so that my gamer friends could see them. Also, so that I would not forget them which has unfortunately happened a number of times.  Writing a post a day pushed the pace for no particular reason other than my own personal project style.  Once I commit to a course of action, I like to pursue it to completion.  I have had my fill of unfinished projects in the past.  That is probably the same reason that I try to run games the way I do: with a definite story arc, a beginning, a middle, and an end goal.  Like Gordie Lachance in Stand By Me, the concept of the same characters having the repetitive adventures forever without growing, or changing (leveling up doesn't count here), or getting anywhere seems strange to me.
Wagon Train is a really cool show.  But did you ever notice that
 they never get anywhere?  They just keep wagon training.

The original goal is accomplished. Mostly.  There are still a few ideas kicking around that I don't have fully formed yet. Not enough to write five or six coherent paragraphs about in any event.  In addition, there is the one campaign that I have done a lot of thought about, but how to present it without the end result sounding like chaotic rambling is still eluding me.  The idea is there, and I think it is solid and could be a lot of fun, but it is not polished enough for public consumption.  Finally, every day I have new ideas about things and others in the hobby present ideas that I find intriguing.  There are thousands of games out there that I have never seen as well.  One of them could potentially be my next Autoduel, L5R, or Savage Mars.

That said, posting the occasional campaign pitch is a good way to kill any interest in this blog for both the reader and the author.  There needs to be something more, especially for my gamer friends who live far enough away that they will likely not get to actually play in one of those games. The focus will still be gaming.  This is a gaming blog and needs to remain so, with outside influences only brought in as they inform the topic.  The author of one of the gaming blogs I used to read regularly started salting his gaming posts with the occasional political/sociological diatribe.  The end result was cognitive dissonance for me: my enthusiasm for his gaming ideas and my repulsion at his misanthropy were impossible to reconcile.  So I quit reading him entirely.  I have ten regular readers, so alienating any one of them is probably not a good idea.

So the question remains: what do I do next.  Clearly, I need a new writing goal to strive toward.  When I have an assignment, I do the assignment.  And usually sooner rather than later. I hope to post twice a week, likely on Tuesdays and Thursdays on an ongoing basis.  Maybe an additional post here and there as interesting topic arise.  One of the ideas I have been kicking about is creating a fantasy world of my own.  Most of the fantasy gaming I have done in the past has been either mucking about in someone else's world or operating in some mythical "fantasy land" that only gets defined as we go. Perhaps one of the posts a week could be a column about one aspect of that world, with subsequent columns shaped by comments from my readers (and potential players).  This idea dovetails nicely into the unwrangled campaign that I mentioned above. The two ideas would likely work well together and could actually be the path to finally bring that idea to light. 

I am a firm believer that putting multiple brains on a problem can likely produce better results.  Since the people reading this are likely some of my favorite brains, that means your input is even more valued to me.  What could I write that you want to read?  Is there a campaign pitch that you want to know more about?  Is there a game you have always wanted to play and wanted to ask: "Hey Ken, what would you do with [insert favorite game]?"  Is there a different gaming topic that you are interested reading the opinion of from a long time slightly curmudgeonly hobbyist? Does the create a campaign idea sound good (or like total rubbish) to you?  Now is the time to tell me what you want out of this. 

2 comments:

  1. On the subject of gaming, I'm not sure my mind has much of value to contribute. But personally I like the idea of reading as you construct Kenland - or even better, Kensylvania! - one element at a time.

    "Strike up the music, the band has begun
    the Kensylvania Can Can"

    ReplyDelete
  2. I think you might have plenty to contribute. Certainly there is room for the opinion of an intelligent person who has NOT been a part of the hobby for most of their lives. The project that you are endorsing, and one that I admittedly proposed, would be a LOT of work. I would like to know that there is more than an audience of one before I undertook something that took that kind of commitment.

    ReplyDelete