Wandering, Mentally

My mind, although that should probably be musket smoke

I’ve been on holiday in the past week. It’s given me more available thinking time between glasses of wine and plates of fish. That is a bonus, it would seem, given that I have struggled to find time to prep and think about games recently. However, I found my mind wandering away from the actual game I’m running and dwelling on other tangential material. Adventures I’d not finished running for one reason or another, campaigns I’d like to bring to the table, that sort of thing. All of which is fine, and good,  but it doesn’t help when the actual game I’m running is about to start. So I have guided myself back mentally to do a little bit of prep everyday for the Grim North whether I like it or not. Generally it turns out I do, after all it is my creation and everyone likes their own brand. However it is important, I believe to allow the mind to wander a little bit too. It is an essential function of minds to do so if we intend to stay creative in the long term. So I’ve noted a few things down in the belief that ideas can often stop ruminating if they are captured in ink and commuted to the page 

It’s interesting, to me, where my attention goes in these moments and there is a definite theme. A few years ago, in the G+ days, I ran a few sessions of an English Civil War era game of Lamentations of the Flame Princess I had devised but I allowed it to fizzle out before it really got going. One of the players had to take a break from our sessions and I placed the game on “hiatus” until their return. Hiatus, the death of campaigns. I never picked it back up, moving on to other things but for whatever reason it has recaptured my imagination. I have no intention of binning off my current Grim North campaign to pick it back up but if I get time to run some extra sessions in the week…

Ha, there’s no time for that. 

However, in the Grim North this week; a new player joined and the PCs began to explore an abandoned mansion in the Patrician district with the goal of kicking out a bunch of squatters. Good times.