Getting the Groove Back Over the Weekend

So my last post, I was complaining that I just wasn't feeling it with RPG stuff, and hadn't been for a bit. Part of the reason I wrote that and posted it publicly was to see if it would jump start my motivation to game/work on game stuff. And I think it did. Also, thanks to JB and Dick McGee for sympathizing with me. I think it did what I hoped it would, but not completely. A few things that happened over the weekend got me fired up again. 

My son started Korean high school this month, and hates it. I wasn't surprised. Korean high school is three years of suffering in order to get the highest possible score you can on the Korean version of the SAT test. Lots of stress, lots of late night cramming, lots of competition. So he asked if we could move up or scheduled plan for him to study in the U.S. My parents agreed, so we spent last week making arrangements. At the start of April, he and I will fly to Illinois and I'll get him set up to live with my folks for the next couple of years and finish high school there. Kinda stressful, but kind of exciting, too. 

And I was so busy with those arrangements on Friday that I completely forgot that I was supposed to get on Discord to make a new Call of Cthulhu character with the guys for Richard's new adventure. Luckily, Richard texted me, and after getting Steven ready for bed, and finishing up the translation of Flynn's high school class schedule, I joined up. 

I had no real idea what sort of PC I wanted to make, but everyone else did. I rolled for my abilities instead of using the standard array, and I'm glad I did. I rolled horribly overall, but Education was really good, so while my basic abilities are not good, I've got good skills for my super nerdy 1920s version of an FBI forensics/CIA analyst guy. And discussion with Richard about character generation and OD&D during the session gave me inspiration for my next blog post, about whether to roll and figure out the PC, or figure out the PC then try to build them. 

On Saturday, I finally got to watch Godzilla Minus One, and really liked it. Good film. It makes you actually care about the people in the film, while having some great (if not quite enough) monster smashing Tokyo mayhem. And that's tickling a few ideas that I might also be able to work into some game-able material. And possibly a blog post. 

Oh, and some of you may have heard that NASA put out a D&D (5E-ish) adventure! I downloaded it, read through it briefly, and unfortunately I don't think I'll be using it after all. 

On Sunday, I had my TS&R Jade session coming up, so I got off my ass in the morning and wrote up another location on the map, and have been working on some ideas for another one. I want to do a fairly Jacquaysed map, with lots of verticality and multiple pathways for this second location, so that may take a bit of time to do. But I'm hyped by the possibilities of that map and location. The location I did add is fairly simple, a barbarian encampment that could be attacked (type A treasure, after all!) or could become a resource since they specialize in animal training. If the party makes good relations with them, they could buy trained animals from them, or capture animals to take to them for training. 

And then the session was Flynn's final session before he heads to the U.S. We've got other things planned for the next two Sundays, so no more D&D. Going into the session, he was thinking of trying to go out with a bang, and get his PC killed in a fun and memorable way. But then in the game, he changed his mind and did his best to keep his PC and henchman alive, so that he can keep playing them whenever he comes back to visit. And after the session, we discussed some of the ways he could use the down time to improve his character (martial arts training, spell research, etc.) which we can do via emails or whatever while he's away. 

So, yeah, I've got my gaming groove back. I'm looking forward to getting some content up here on the blog, as well as working on the campaign and my TS&R GM book this week.