A few thoughts on Session 41…
As is often the case I was tired by the time we started at 7pm. I have learned that if I am tired I need to go ahead and run the game. The group will energize me. That is what happened. I sat down at my desk, somewhat grumpy because the cat was screaming at me for some attention and my office was a mess because I’ve been painting miniatures. I “found my center”, calmed myself, didn’t throw anything around, and holy smokes it was good to spend a couple of hours with the group. Good to hear everyone’s voices, good to have the laughing and interaction, good to use our imaginations. Gaming is just so – bloody – good.
It is always easier to prep for a session if the group is already in the middle of an adventure. This seems obvious. In that case you don’t have to “come up with an adventure,” you just have to continue what thy were already doing or add more stuff to what they were doing. “What might happen next?” Even so, after three weeks of delayed games due to my work imposing itself on my life, I have to admit that imposter syndrome and generalized worry about the game being “good enough” were both trying to crawl out of the dungeon I normally keep them in. I kept them there. I have learned to just tell them to shut the fuck up. I am an experienced GM and I can run a game for two hours. And that’s what I did. With the help of our group.
During their trip through the jungle I was having Roger, the navigator, make Nav rolls in each hex. If he made the roll, it took them only an hour to get through that hex and come out going the right direction. They would have a 1 in 6 chance of a random encounter in that hex. If he missed it, they would still get through, but they had to make two random encounter rolls. It’s not like they were going to go the wrong direction. The grav bikes have navigation programs and radar. The trick was to use the radar to figure out which paths to take.
I made two random encounter tables. One for the jungle in general, and another if they were within five kilometers of the rebel base.
I tried to balance the tables between 1)things that could and very well might kill them, 2)geographical challenges, and 3)non-aggressive/benign lifeforms.
During travel through about eight hexes they had two random encounters. The first was with the Jungle Floaters, which are little balloon-like creatures.
When I was creating and describing these creatures earlier that day my goal was to create something mysterious, possibly beautiful, that would take up the party’s time but was not aggressive.
When the encounter was happening, it occurred to me how “cinematic” it was. Five explorers on grav bikes, in a bioluminescent organic tunnel, encounter beautiful, weird, benign little creatures, and having to determine if they were actually a threat, and moving past them. When you envision it I think it is really a wondrous and beautiful scene that exemplifies the best part of science fiction/space opera.
If you try to do things like that all the time, just as with combat, I think it gets old. Wonder becomes less wondrous when it becomes common. Still, we can go through so many games, and even entire campaigns, without there being any real beauty.
As I have written here, I have spent the last three years immersing myself in the science fiction of the 1960s, 70s, 80s, and to a lesser extent the 90s. In particular, I’ve read a lot of the novels of Alan Dean Foster, set in the Humanx Commonweath. Foster is a master of creating vibrant worlds and ecologies, and I suspect all this reading has influenced me.
It may just be that the best thing you can do to improve your gamemastering is reading good inspirational material.
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