On Writing

I need to be a better, faster, writer.

 

It is important for my job and in some sense, important for my mental health. I am a serial procrastinator and the inability to just sit down and get shit done bothers me to the point of very deep self-doubt. Golden boy’s in bad shape, and all that.

 

The other reason I would like to be a better, faster, writer is for RPGs.

 

Being a GM can be a lot of writing, or at least it is for me. Why? It isn’t prep, really, because I’m a seat of the pants prepper. I like the improv aspect of being a GM and lean into that pretty heavily because I feel like it’s a GM strength of mine. Probably because writing prep isn’t. But when it comes to settings and putting together hacks of systems, I start to procrastinate, get frustrated with myself, and the doom spiral begins. I have a bunch of mostly-written systems and hacks sitting in a folder which for the most part were never played.

 Logging back into Blogger to post this forced me to confront my list of posts for this blog. I started this blog in Spring of 2022, wrote a little bit, then went dark. I started up again in Spring of 2023 because I was starting my Star Wars D6 campaign which lasted through the end of summer, roughly. It is now Spring of 2024. It is weird to see a pattern of my writing -- what is it about this time of year that gets me thinking about RPGs and inspires me to start writing? Why have I consistently stopped around the same time? 

It's time to fix that!

 

The way I will do that is to just force myself to write more. Pure and simple, this is a skill that must be built by repetition. It’s funny that in grade school, you write often; in college, you often write more (or at least I did, as a journalism major); and in law school, you basically stop writing altogether. I had few essays to write and they were few and far between. As an attorney now, I am forced to write more but am out of practice. Time to get back into it.

I have been playing in a very excellent campaign run by the inestimable @RetiredAdventurer and feel inspired to myself take up the mantle of GM once more. Dune (and the slow march of the seasons towards the hellscape of Arizona summer) makes me want to run something like Dark Sun. On the other hand, Planescape a la Homeward Bounders calls my name.

 

An astute reader would see that 2E rears its ugly head. I have never played 2E, and the other night came to a realization: I have never actually run D&D. I have never actually run a traditional high-fantasy game. Playing Baldur’s Gate 3 sorta makes me want to, and I think I have a couple buddies who are interested.

 

Decisions, decisions.