...The Curse of Strahd, coronavirus, of cabbages and kings

"The time has come", the Walrus said, "To talk of many things: Of shoes - and ships - and sealing wax - Of cabbages - and kings- And why the sea is boiling hot - And whether pigs have wings."

-- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass 

In my last post I talked about participating in a play-by-post game on GamersPlane.com. Today that game was canceled. The DM came down with covid19, and he's too sick to play. I feel really bad for the guy. You have to be pretty ill to be unable to do play-by-post. And... how is it totally normal-for-the-times that someone has to quit DMing a game due to contracting a life-threatening virus? 2020 is a dumpster fire on so many levels for so many people. 

I've been listening to a fair amount of Dungeons and Daddies, trying to catch up. It's a joy. With their improv skills, knowledge of the publishing industry/social media, and the quality of the show, it's no wonder they had something like 2500 Patreon members well before they hit 20 episodes.

But I find myself thinking during every episode... man, they are so lighthearted. They just riff off each other like the world isn't ending! They crack jokes like 2020 isn't an enormous pineapple upside down shit cake. How do they do it? How does it not creep into their humor? How does it not sap their energy?

And then I remember that I'm about a year behind. 

Every. Damn, Episode. You'd think I'd remember. Evidently I don't have two spare neurons to synapse together to log that bit o' data. Which really isn't surprising, I suppose. It's not like I had extra to spare at the start of... what superlative should I use to describe the last 9 months that could possibly convey how I feel about 2020? Visual arts to the rescue:

In their world... I'm on episode 22 or so... Kobe Bryant is still alive and Australia hasn't burned yet. Must be nice. (I know right? Doesn't that seem like 20 years ago?) I've said this elsewhere, but of all the things 2020 has stripped out of my life, I think what I miss most is my sense of humor. Listening to something that can still make me laugh is a bit of a gift. 

So anyway, it's almost Halloween, and I don't even have a pumpkin to carve this year, and I'm not putting out candy, either. Either you understand why, or you don't, and I don't have the energy for the people who don't. My kids and husband have been nudging me to DM again just for them, and with the release of the Revamped CoS (decent pun, I suppose) I thought it might be fun to start that campaign on Halloween night. What I said about missing my peers still stands, but I'm amongst the lucky subset of the population who are trapped in a house with people I get along with and like. (Love, too, of course, but I'm old enough to know that liking the people you love is not guaranteed.) If I just keep the game to family, I think it'll work. And if nothing else, it's in person with actual dice, which will be nice. Something about the feel of the dice in your hands and the sound of them rolling against felt covered wood is irreplaceable. 

So I bought the Curse of Strahd Revamped kit and read through the beginning and the "Death House" intro module. I shot a photo of a letter to be found on an NPC that was provided, printed it out and painted it up to look like someone died in the mud while holding it. (Don't look too closely at my photo if you don't want spoilers.) And I created a second document for the letter that can be found in the house during the campaign. Each letter took me about 10 minutes to do. If you want to learn how to make aged paper like that, click on the "maker bot" label to find the article where I share the video about my technique.

I've come to appreciate the tremendous potential of homebrew, but I'm going to save what creative gas I've got left in the tank for NaNoWriMo, which begins the day after Halloween. Between the dreadfulness of a first draft and the national election, with the thinly veiled threats of violence and dirty dealings by a regime wherein a voracious and inky abomination can pass for a soul, November seems like a good time to continue a gothic horror-themed game.