No Justice, so peace

A few weeks back, I cancelled my supers RPG campaign, The Justice Squad.

A day or two later, I wrote a very long, detailed, intricate, gut-spewing post about why I had done it, how bad I felt, etc., etc., etc.

I didn’t actually publish it, and I’m sort of glad, because I’d already done the intro to that riff in my note to the players, and even that was a bit melodramatic. Games get cancelled. Campaigns get cancelled. Life goes on.

I will GM again. And now, with a few weeks of Not Worrying About It under my belt, I’m in a better position to write down what I’ll do differently next time so that I don’t get into the same bind. Learning from the past — what a concept.

A lot of these overlap and interweave, but each is something I need to remember next time out (and something, if I can extend it, that every GM should consider when starting up a game).

1. Be realistic about the time commitment. The Justice Squad the the first game I’d run since Katherine was born, a year and a half earlier, and I wildly underestimated for most of a year how much my life — and free time, and ability to pull late-nighters — had changed since then. If I bite off more than I can chew, all I’ll get is a stomach-ache. Or something like that.
2. Be realistic about the number of players. I had seven players, more than I’d had in quite some time. (This was made even worse by having two NPCs on the team, and another NPC on stage most of the time.) The problem I had was that I wanted everyone from my previous Amber campaign, but I also wanted Jackie and Doyce. Juggling that many player characters, along with their subplots, was more than I could handle both in terms of prep and in-game. When everyone was on-stage, things dragged, I couldn’t give each character enough attention, etc. It also made scheduling a game together more difficult, particularly with some folks being further away, meaning we met less frequently.

3. Decide on rules. I spent way too much time agonizing over rules, and both that agonizing, and the uncertainty from game-to-game as to what I was doing, made things difficult for myself and for the players.

4. Be realistic about the scope. I had a novel (or two) worth of backstory, plots, subplots, story arcs, etc. That was great (and I may actually do a novel of it), but it also added to the “daunting” nature of the campaign for me. Keep it simple. Walk before you run. It’s fine to have some long-term plans, but if you try to dive into a Full-Blown Plot from the get-go, it just makes the whole process a lot more stressful.

5. Meet regularly, meet often. My Amber campaign met about every six weeks or so. I had problems even meeting that frequently with the Justice Squad. Infrequent meetings means a lot of things — it means new players never get familiar with the rules, the importance of each game becomes even greater (more pressure), game prep keeps getting put off, and if you have to cancel for some reason, it destroys your momentum even more. Momentum is important, for game prep, for enthusiasm (player and GM) and for getting folks committed to things. Lose momentum between games, and it just makes things all the tougher.

6. Keep it Simple, Stupid. Or at least don’t make it more difficult than it has to be. If you approach each game as a Massive, Do-or-Die, Heroic Effort to Make It the Best Game Ever, you’ll only give yourself an ulcer. Or you’ll find yourself trying to duck away from facing such a daunting task — which will make it even more stressful and daunting. Trust me on this. Make it fun, not a chore.

So … what next?

Like I said, I plan to GM again. Gotta get back on that horse, as they say. And I like GMing. I’m feeling positive about this. Really.

I’m not starting any time soon. We have the holiday season coming up, and that’s a bad time for everyone’s schedule. But come the New Year …

But I’ll pull this list out then. I’ll run something small — four, five people tops. I’ll try to meet more frequently, maybe every other week. I’ll work with a ruleset I know. I’ll try to deal with things from game to game, see where things are going, before I get too much into the Grand Scheme of Things.

And I’ll try to have fun. Because if it’s not fun, then somebody’s doing something wrong. Probably me.