Good News, For Once

Taking advantage of the writing group to post here again. Hopefully this becomes a thing.

I got to interact with real people over the weekend. There's a Meetup group for local gamers to meet and schedule games that I've been a member of for a while now. We're slowly getting back into in-person events, including the monthly (or so) all-group meeting.

This time, it was a swap meet. Everyone brought all the stuff they were trying to get rid of. I brought my extra inventory of Adventures in Oz: Fantasy Roleplaying Beyond the Yellow Brick Road and my enormous Box O' Dice (I don't know if I've told the story here, but maybe I will some time). I only lightened my load by a few copies, though one person was nice enough to ask me to autograph their copy.

It felt good to interact with people after feeling isolated so long. And I picked up a few things I didn't have before. The majority of my gaming books are still in storage after nearly 5 years, so the opportunity to pick up some new stuff, even it if it was from someone cleaning out their closet, felt good too.

One of the regular features of these group meetings is that we'll typically play a game after the meeting's business is concluded. I'll typically bring Fiasco, since it's great for one-shot play and doesn't require any preparation, or play something that someone else brought to run.

This time, I presented an adventure in d20 Modern, which I had been working on for a while. I had written it during this writing group to keep my brain working and fighting the isolation doldrums. Inspired by the random scenario generator in Pandemonium: Adventures in Tabloid World and using the D20 Modern ruleset. The hook is that crop circles have appeared in a ritzy Florida golf course. I won't spoil it any more in case I run it again. It was fun.

But after so long running no-prep one-shots like Fiasco, or sandbox-style games like The Castle of The Mad Archmage, writing and running a scripted, play-through-the-story adventure was quite a change. My players had fun and laughed at the twist in the plot, so I'm prepared to call it a success.

In fact, I used the rest of my writing time to try to come up with a follow-up scenario. We'll see if it's ready by the next gaming group meeting. Or maybe I'll feel prepared enough to call it a campaign.