Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Feeling Disconnected from Roleplaying


Yeah, I'm suffering from withdrawal. I'm going to miss game night again tonight, after a couple weeks in a row of RPG goodness. Just getting slammed by work, ramping up the kids for the new school year, refinancing our mortgage, home repairs, on and on and on.

All of this has me feeling like I'm clinging to my current roleplaying career by a thread. I'm not giving up, but I'm also feeling a bit stretched. I haven't been able to give my roleplaying efforts (specifically my GMing efforts) a goodly amount of my brain power for some time now. And it's frustrating as all hell. Even my blog posting is down. That's what I get for having my priorities straight, right? ;-)

I'm feeling a bit dissatisfied by my GM performance of late. I am not being too hard on myself about it, but I'm lamenting the fact that I can give the level of detail I want to the setting: I'm using the Greyhawk world, and it has so much potential to be a rich and deep setting, of course.

I could be off base, and I'm sure my players will tell me different. And I know there's more to a campaign than injecting setting flavor into player's minds. But I always hold myself up to a high standard, and my current efforts (to my perception) are not able to make the rich Greyhawk setting more than just another medieval Europe-style campaign world.

Ok, that's enough bellyaching for now. Thanks for listening as usual. Now back to the grind...

2 comments:

  1. Don't be so hard on yourself! As one of your players, I think that you really nailed it this time. There seems to be a great balance between GM provided setting material and player feedback. You have an eclectic group of characters this time around making for complicated motivations and reactions that are difficult to anticipate. Everyone is having a great time because you have been able to roll with what the players are giving you. The party might not be the most balanced, but folks are really enjoying developing different aspects of their characters.

    This party hasn't had epic dungeon dives and boss fights that most people think of with D&D, but there have been some truly epic moments in your campaign. I loved the session where my assassin was able to craft a hallucinogen and use it to capture and turn over a seemingly innocent "bird man" a mysterious client. This campaign has had lots of these types of moments, where everyone has had a chance to develop their characters in some special way. I think this time around, it might feel like less effort for you because you are in the zone!

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    1. Bill, thanks very much for the pep talk! I wish I had time to write session recaps these days, because there ARE indeed some cool stuff happening in the current campaign. I definitely feel that I have gotten better with my GMing since we've all been playing together. Thanks again!

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