The Long Beginning

It has been too long since we last played. There have been skirmishes over the last couple of months, but nothing close to a game, let alone a campaign.

Now, the anxiety is creeping in on all of us. We want to play! We need to play! When are we going to play? Who's going to run... what characters are we going to use... are we continuing where we left off, or starting something new...

And sitting down to answer those questions, my mind goes blank. We spent all last summer thinking of new angles, new characters, only to sit here today with no idea how to begin? It doesn't seem right.

The trouble seems to be that we want everything at once. The further removed we get from regular play, the more we panic that it will never return. The response is to expect everything in one go. D&D doesn't work that way. Even at the best of times, there is often a slow build. It takes time to make characters, there are narrative conventions that need to be met before you reach the darkened cave, or roll your first initiative.

It is always difficult to begin, to get underway. But once that initial step is taken, it can be just as easy to play as it had been to avoid playing. Once one person starts running a game, others get inspired as their anxiety fades, and it becomes easier to get a second game underway, sometimes a third.

Running a game on Roll20 is daunting at times. It poses a unique challenge due to the technical elements, that sometimes overwhelm the general gaming aspects. For me, I feel like pre-game preparation is more critical. I need to know what we will encounter, estimate how far we will get in the session, then ready any pieces that are likely to be needed in connection with that.

Once in game, a major part of game play is maintaining a balance of play to keep the story moving. It is important not to become to weighed down by any one aspect - combat, conversation, exposition. Too much of one thing will bring the entire flow of the game to a halt. This is challenging, and very draining mentally.

At the end of these sessions, I have a splitting headache, and don't want to look at my computer for hours. Adding in the headaches that seem to come with online play - audio/video problems, freezing screens, images that don't load, increasing lag time - only increase the drain and exhaustion. I've learned that much of the difficulty comes from using a decade old laptop to host the game with a WebRTC client that bloats upload needs to accommodate multiple users.

Thinking about getting back into that is daunting, and requires tremendous willpower to fully embrace, but the game is worth the investment. The Roll20 system works so well for setting up and preparing a game, let alone running it, that I want to go back. But the headaches will come, and they need to be prepared for as well.

I'm trying to assess where we are in the campaign we're playing. I want to go back into it with a clearer idea of what we're trying to do, where we are trying to go, and what we hope to get out of the experience. I think it can be adapted and adjusted to keep it going, but not without some attention and proper preparation. Still, at some point soon, the best option is just going to be signing on and starting. That should break the jam of inertia and get us back to playing the game. And that is the critical point - games are meant to be played!