50,000 words later...

Much to my astonishment, I actually did succeed in writing 50,000 words during this, my first NaNoWriMo. No, the story is by no means finished. Nor is it anywhere near finished in form. I have a lot of work ahead of me before I would remotely consider showing it to another person. But I have proven to myself that I am capable of doing that work, and doing it in a short timeframe. I put the rest of my life on hold while I did this, and in the end, I needed to do that in order to best the writing dragon that my mind had conjured over the years. I learned a great deal in the process, but this is a blog about gaming, not writing, so I'll save it for another time and place.

I'm really here to say that I'm now busy picking up the pieces of my life that I set aside for the month of November. That includes this blog, a couple of sewing projects, impromptu dice tray shenanigans, some actual work, and of course, gaming.

Well, actually, that's a bit misleading. November was not game-free. I hosted two game sessions last month, but I didn't get the chance to write about them. They were both interesting (at least to me), in part because they were two entirely different sets of people and the contrast provided fodder for thought. One group is a family game that has some members multi-boxing because the campaigns I'm running for them really do benefit from a greater class spread than the group can naturally provide. (I'd try and modify the campaign, but it's a lot of work that I'm not familiar with, and the consensus was that my time was better spent elsewhere when an easy fix was at hand.) We had a temporary addition of two new-to-the-game players for a night who took over the second string characters, and that changed everything. The other was my regular gaming group that I normally write about here. I'm pretty far behind on posts - posts are going up that hail from several sessions behind where we're at now. I'm alright with that. It gives me a chance to look over my first impressions and assess whether they were on or off the mark. I benefit from the percolation time that good editing requires. So today I'll just make some general remarks about these two experiences.

So, the people who pinch hit for our family game were my in laws. They've never played D&D, never played a role playing game of any sort, aren't big on games in general, have never seen (nor have any interest in seeing) The Lord of the Rings, much less read the books or any book or movie in the genre, and generally have no idea why anyone would spend their time in this way, thinking about these things. In fact, they are quite religious and spend most of their free time (they are long since retired) doing charitable work or religious study, with the occasional round of golf. But it's amazing what being thrown into a VRBO away from home with your children and grandchildren will do to you. So one night during our Thanksgiving vacation, our usual family group of four sat down to play D&D, and they joined us.

It was interesting. My mother in law is quite shy and retiring, and my husband helped her with playing her character, since she took one of his. She came more out of her shell during our gaming session than she did during the rest of our trip. I couldn't tell if she was enjoying herself, but she seemed to have enthusiasm for making decisions as the arcane archer during the combat with a carrion crawler. My father-in-law took every opportunity he could find to bring up analogies regarding religion, no matter how tenuous the connection. This would have been awkward if it weren't for the fact that we all know him so well, and this was entirely predictable. What was not predictable was that he seemed engaged rather than critical, and he seemed interested in the mechanics of playing. I have no illusions - neither of them have any interest in repeating the experience. Not because it was a bad experience, but rather, because it is so alien to them, and they are elderly and set in their ways. I do know that it gave them real insight into their grandchildren, and perhaps their own son as well. I consider it a major accomplishment to get anyone from their generation (who isn't one of the very few gamers in that demographic) to play even a single session, especially those of their generation inclined to be less adventurous and to being creatures of habit.

And our regular group played a session as well. This group has come a long way ... well, sort of. Truth be told, the pace of advancement through Lost Mines is absolutely glacial, but I'm alright with that for now. The group is moving quickly in other, less tangible ways, and I really like the direction it's going. Several of the players have cottoned on to the idea that collaboration really does tend to propel you more efficiently than every-man-for-himself play. (I'd use the word chaotic, but I actually do not mean the alignment, because a player can be absolutely collaborative while playing a chaotic character. I've seen too many people fuzz that line between player behavior and character behavior when talking about the lawful/chaotic axis, and I don't want to do the same.) One person went so far as to totally rewrite his backstory awhile ago (with my blessing) so that he could engage in more easily explicable collaborative play. This is starting to pay off. He is setting the tone for the rest of the group in the way that a swing vote does, and the result is that the group acts in a more cohesive and therefore more coherent way, solving problems together rather than each person trying to be The Person Who Came Up With The Entire Idea (and who can therefore take credit). The short term downside to this is that decision making is taking awhile, because consensus is now desired along with that never ending hunt for the elusive "best" choice. But basically, they haven't played like this before, and they will be moving toward efficiency soon enough. They all want the story to proceed at a faster clip.

The upside of these laborious decisions is that we had a brunch-time game, and I had time to contemplate the tray that the smoked salmon arrived in. It was a rough pinewood tray, totally unfinished. But as I sat there dressing a bagel, I realized that it had tremendous potential as a nice sized dice tray. It's large, about 18" inches long by 12" wide (half a meter by ⅓ of a meter). The moment everyone left I dumped the leftover salmon onto a plate and ran off to the garage with it. It's really soft wood--sanding by hand generated the fluffiest clouds of sawdust. I took advantage of Black Friday deals and ordered some really nice royal blue felt. I had briefly considered painting quotes about travel on the sides but decided that would only draw attention to the shoddy small staple assembly. So I'm just staining it with walnut, I'll polyurethane the heck out of it and hopefully I'll have it ready for our next game session. It's big enough to put the center of the dining room table and everyone will have access to it.

When it's done I'll put up a post with step by step instructions on how to properly finish one of these. Wooden boxes are not terribly hard to come by, and it's a very easy project. I used to think these were a bit silly, but now that I'm playing again, those dice skitter off the table with some regularity and it is kind of annoying.