Friday, February 19, 2010

Like A Bad Golfer, I Have Poor Follow-Through

And no, that's not a Tiger Woods reference.

Following through on projects has always been my biggest failing. Most of my campaigns tend to end not because of a natural conclusion or because of some major Real Life unforeseen circumstance, but because my enthusiasm for them just...peters out. I haven't run a session in my Castles and Crusades campaign in months because of this. Once the characters all began to start slamming through the cannon fodder pretty easily, and once the party size hit eight players, I found that trying to keep track of all the combatants and spell effects and special abilities just became draining. I can see now why later editions of D&D specifically aim for something like a four-person group of PCs; running a group twice that size can be a daunting task.

Two weekends from now I'm actually going to be re-vitalizing my C&C game with what hopes to be a "mini-mega-dungeon" to cap off a major campaign arc. I hope the dungeon will last for at lest 4-6 sessions and see the players up a level (or maybe two, I tend to be generous with XP in the mid-levels) depending on how much fighting they do and what they are able to accomplish.

I've also not done any significant work on my T&B RPG in at least two months. The core rules sit at probably 95% completed, but I just can't work up the energy to do whatever it is I need to do in order to put it all together into a form that I can hand to someone and ask them to give it some serious thought. Never mind the fact that I'm already of the opinion that it's not really a game that's going to go anywhere with regards to a public release, so it's really just a hobby project of mine. Unfortunately, it must compete again all my other poorly followed-through projects, which means that none of them get the attention they deserve.

One thing I've considered is stepping away from the Core Rules and focusing instead on creating a setting-based RPG (Grapeshot & Grognards is currently leading that charge, no pun intended). I'll have to post some of the material I've worked on in that direction sometime soon. One area in which I've been placing a lot of thought is in working PCs into mass combat situations, especially the use of the Command skill and in handling mass casualties in units containing PCs.

One hobby that has been getting a lot of attention from me in the last couple of months is Warhammer 40K. Over at my buddy Darkwing's Arcadia Prime blog, he's posted some battle reports from our latest four-part campaign, featuring my "mostly done" Orks army taking on his Imperial Guard. I say "mostly done" because one never really finishes an army, you just get it to certain plateaus until you have the urge to buy a new model or add a new unit.

I've also been feverishly collecting and building models for my new Space Wolf army. While it's no coincidence that I'm building a Space Wolves force right after the new codex has been released, I don't consider myself a band-wagoner; my Orks are, for the large part, finally completed and painted, and before I even started collecting them years ago, I had considered building a Space Wolves army, but instead passed what minis I had purchased on to a friend who wanted to get into 40K. Thus, rather than have two of the same army being built within our little clique, I turned to Orks, and six years later, I'm turning back to Space Wolves.

So, more work to be done. I hope that posting here can pick up on my end over the next couple of months with my C&C campaign picking back up, and with more G&G work "on deck". I hope to also take some half-decent photos of my 40K miniatures and do a little blogging about wargaming.

6 comments:

Timeshadows said...

Nice to see that you are still alive and kickin'. :D

Unknown said...

Nice battle reports! I know well the curse of waning enthusiasm, and I think the best way to combat it is to do as you are doing, which is to say do something else for a while.

Dan Eldredge said...

It's about time that your 40k aspirations make their way onto T&B. You need to start showcasing this stuff.

Better that your blog has some new content than remain idle, even if that content doesn't strictly fit within your mission statement.

Timeshadows said...

So, what's the deal with your game?

Have you given up on T&B, or are you looking for new inspiration with this setting-specific application? :)


Word Verification: Refering

Jack Badelaire said...

Haven't given up on it as a whole, but I've pretty much given up on the idea of ever "publishing" it. I'm thinking the furthest it'll ever get is a PDF that I'd be willing to e-mail to whoever's interested.

However, the setting posts are T&B related. Rob Lang did make a good point a few months ago talking to me about this - if I ever was to attract any kind of attention with it, it can't be Yet Another Generic Light Pseudo-Fantasy RPG. Hundreds already exist, and I've no wish to just throw another one on the slush-pile.

So at some point down the line, I may draft up historical or fantasy "mini-rpgs" using the rules, or something along those lines.

And oddly enough, now that my Writing columns series is through, I hope to start a series posting pared down sections of the rules for commentary.

Timeshadows said...

Here's to hoping that goes well. :)