Inside Baseball

My blog has slowed down a lot lately. So, I notice, has Oddysey's. I think it's for the same reason.

We're engaged in a one-on-one game which has recently undergone a few momentous transformations. These flowed naturally from the course of events and decisions that the PC made. And therein lies the difficulty.

We've fired off nearly daily emails to each other over these issues, not because the campaign is falling apart but because it is thriving. Oddysey and her character are delving deeper into the world, ferreting out details and such that I'd only vaguely outlined in my own head. Now those details are becoming integral parts of the game, strategies are being built around them, and decisions are being made that have serious social consequences.

So why aren't we writing about that? Because, quite simply, the amount of background material you'd need to make sense of what's happening is huge. This is not unusual in my campaigns. I drop a few seeds of such things, present my players with difficult challenges, and they usually rise to the occasion by taking such things and crafting clever ways to overcome those challenges. So far, so good, but these sorts of things build on each other over time. The variations in gift-giving customs between the elves of Ashwood and Malfanwys become a vital element of an adventure, but that doesn't make any sense to an outsider until they understand that elves even have gift-giving customs, and then you have to explain what gift-giving means to elves, and eventually, it's turtles all the way down.

We've been writing up some very neat stuff (and you should bug Oddysey about her brief discussion of how dwarves use jewelry to express social and marital status), but it's both taken up a lot of writing time and not produced much that is suitable for general consumption. I'm going to be combing through some of this older stuff to find gems that I think y'all would enjoy, but don't be surprised if blogging is light for another week or so.

Image credits: Sister72 and WordRidden.