Run A Bad Session
I've been ruminating on a thought today, that I want to document not only for myself, but for anyone reading this who happens to be in any way, shape, or form, like me.
I, like a lot of people, want to make more things, create more in the world, this life, and have an influence on my community with the things I make. And even ignoring that, I want to make things because it damn well makes me happy, and the act of creation is beautiful, and pretty much the only way I know how to consistently feel alive in these tumultuous times. And yet, most days, I create nothing. I fought tooth and nail to drag myself kicking and screaming away from traditional social media, pursued free and open source projects, self-hosting, reducing, reusing, and recycling, and yet most days, I sit mindlessly scrolling through Discord, or a forum, or even reading blog posts. And without that constant buzz of social media draining the soul out of me, my soul is screaming to create. But I feel so out of practice, that I don't even know where to start. I've never been a visual artist, or a musician. I took drama as my mandatory arts credit in high school, and while I enjoyed it enough to take a second class, my priorities were towards what would end up being my Computer Science education. My medium of creativity has always been writing, and of course TTRPGs.
But instead of writing, instead of actually playing TTRPGs, I fall into the trap of planning out how I'm going to write, or preparing content for TTRPGs, but never actually doing the thing. And so I'm taking the opportunity to acknowledge this history of mine, and lets be real, probably yours, and offer you a clean slate, and here's what I want to do instead.
I've had 3-4 campaigns rattling around in my brain for years now. Some of them have had a first iteration played and then abandoned for whatever circumstantial reason. Most of them have been iterated on so many times that I've had to make several entirely new notes folders just to re-write the same ideas over and over again, feeling like I'm accomplishing something, when I've really only made some minor improvements, with absolutely no playtesting in years. So I'm going to message my friends and I'm going to pitch the campaigns to them. They've told me they're itching to play, and honestly, they'd play just about anything with me, they're angels, but I want to let them pick. And I'm going to challenge myself to book the first real playing session for as soon as I can afterwards, and throw a couple lines of ideas together, and improvise the crap out of it. The more I think, the less I play.
That's really the key to the thought. The thought is to stop thinking, and just do the things I want to do, to enjoy the things I enjoy. Make things that are stupid, and bad, and quick, and relatively easy, cheap, unpolished, and probably unpalatable. No more waiting on a final release, I want to live my life in beta.
So if you're sitting on something that you want to do, I challenge you to join me and do it, whether it sucks or not. In fact, I encourage it to suck, just to make sure you do it. Run a session with your players underprepared, play a solo session with yourself. Write a blog post, go for a walk, and drink some water.