Just some personal musing and such today. About gaming, but not about how to game or what to do, but about how I've seen the way I run games change over the last few years.
I used to be really good at impromptu sessions. Would have a vague idea or two in my head and would toss out a couple ideas just to see where the players wanted to go and we would run with it. Then I would right some notes throughout the session, keeping track of new NPC names and the such. That was about the only reference I would use, notes about what popped up during these sessions that the players may come back around to.
This is how I ran games and it seemed to work really well.
Then we hit this thing called Covid-19. Not only did it just bring all my face to face gaming to a sudden screeching halt but it put it put me in the hospital as well. Spent some time in a drug induced coma hooked up to a ventilator. Things got scary for my wife as the doctors didn't think I was going to make it. Scary for me as well since I was locked in nightmare sleep mode and couldn't wake up from it. But my body bounced back and made it through.
The after affects of that is what changed things. Not the physical therapy, although that sucked, but the brain fog. That shit ain't no joke. At first I would not be able to come up with words every sentence or two and it took me a while to just say anything lengthy. Trying to remember stuff was hard as well. Initially the two big differences I noticed that a lot of peoples names, people I had known for years, were suddenly gone and I had to relearn them. Then it was my inability to do any sort of math in my head.
But a few months later after I was off the walker and crutches I sat down to try and run a game. That's when I noticed something else. My ability to run games off the cuff with no prep was greatly reduced. I just couldn't think quickly or would just go blank. Now since then it's gotten better but not by much.
So I've started using written adventures now. With my group I've ran the Land of the Free campaign for Cyberpunk 2020. Currently I'm running Tales of the Red: Street Stories for Cyberpunk RED. Been eyeballing Over the Edge once again since I own a bunch of the old adventures published for that. I still do some stuff of my own but I have to make notes beforehand or they turn out pretty badly.
Things have changed and I've adapted. But I wish I didn't have to. But I'm still here and I'm still running games. Not the way I used to though. Just talking about what's been swimming around in my head for the last few months.
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