Preparing an Imaginary Campaign

I’m preparing a campaign I have no players for. Admit it. You’ve done it too. Maybe more than once. This is my journey.

The summer of ‘18 was eye-opening. I learned what it actually means to be transgender. It sounded sort of uhm… familiar. For the first time in my life, I started asking questions about my identity — you know, the hard ones.

Who am I? Who do I want to be? What do I want…like out of life?

I always enjoyed playing women in RPGs but shied away from doing it too much — no one wants to be “that” creep. In my last campaign, I would obsess over scenes I wanted to run — with me playing women. It was just more interesting, more real.

Accepting who I am was oddly easy, but telling people is difficult. I found I was more genuine at the gaming table than in real life — and that made be feel like garbage. So, I quit role playing. At least until I felt better about being me.

A part of me worried this was the only reason I ever role played, but that’s been proven false. I long to tell stories again — collaborative ones where I have no idea what the players will do next. It’s exhilarating — it recharges me.

My last campaign was the definition of “toxic” — or at least my definition.

There were some really high highs in that game. I had a player literally tell me it was his favorite TV show. For him, the experience rivaled that of professional storytellers. Everyone was always up for playing — excited to play again.

But… and you knew there was going to be a but. At the table, we weren’t happy. We were frustrated, always in conflict, upset, and longing for those high highs we showed up for. Most of all though, we weren’t really friends — not at the table.

Despite all that, we remembered the good times and still wanted to play. We always wanted to play a game that hurt us. That’s what “toxic” is to me.

Anyhow, until the major turning point in ‘18, I can identify a single character flaw responsible for nearly everything I’ve screwed up in my life.

Solving the wrong problem.

I tried to fix our deteriorating group through the game. I made horrible mistakes with the game’s setup. I tried to fix those through the game as well. Make the game easier to play. Remove the need for so much conflict. This didn’t make things better. It was the wrong problem.

The problem was that I created a toxic game. I was prescriptive about how the game should be played, and I placed the players in constant conflict with each other. I was forging a group — not fostering it. And we broke.

The other problem was that we weren’t a group of friends any more. We tried to bend for each other, but it was just never going to happen. It’s healthy to bend a little, but I should have noticed sooner we were just too far apart.

Another problem — I didn’t expect a healthy amount of trust at the gaming table. I believe I internalized this from early gaming experiences, and some of the players were the same way. Some players, though, required trust in order to enjoy role playing. This is a perfectly mature expectation. One I wish I had adopted.

Those were the real problems. I told people who they should be. I put people against each other. Our group didn’t trust each other. At the gaming table, we weren’t friends.

So the role playing break ended up being good for lots of reasons. Thing is, I want back in. And I want to do it right.

I haven’t built the group yet, but working on the game has been a way for me to ease back into that headspace. Things got bad, and I had things to learn about me, so it’s nice to take things slow.

It’s given me time to focus on craft in a way I never really did before. I’m asking questions like “How are stories told?” and “Would this or that really be fun to play?”.

I want to be a better person, and I want to put a group together that has the potential to place trust in each other. I want to take cues from the players for how role playing is done — for the overall tone at the table. I want to create an environment we can play together, have fun together, and grow together. I won’t ever again target a specific group dynamic. Wow was that dumb.

So why is this game still imaginary? I mean, by my own goals, there’s only so much I can really prep without getting a feel for the group. Y’know, by playing a few sessions.

That’s where we come full circle. I want to gauge interest, but these are also friends I want to be out to. And I’m not. It’s stupid, but I want to use my new account names and email address. Maybe using the old ones just feels like sneaking around.

Or maybe I’m just sick and tired of solving the wrong problem. I need to tell them. It’s really that simple.

Heck, I don’t know who’d even really be interested at this point. People move on. Lives change. It’s… an odd intersection of anxieties.

So I’m preparing an imaginary campaign. At least I know I’m doing it. I know what I need to do. Maybe if I get real, and get lucky, it’ll turn into an actual campaign.

Thank you for reading~