Back down to reality.

[temporus]

The vacation winds down, and come the morning it is time to get back to work.  

We had a great trip down to Florida so that the Little Man could meet his great grandparents.  It was a bit hot, but he got a lot of pool time, which he enjoyed greatly.  We got back, and I was able to relax for my birthday.  Then yesterday was the GSHW meeting, where I got to meet Chris Cevasco, the editor of Paradox Magazine, and hear him talk about the magazine, which was very cool.   Today was the monthly D&D game with my old crew, the game is officially entering its 20th year of continuous play.  Pretty freaking amazing.

On my vacation, I promised myself, no work.  So no writing, no blogging, no nothing.  I even mostly avoided the real job, except for one small glitch that happened on Labor day, and I wasn't sure if anyone else was going to have the chance to get to it before Tuesday.   About the only thing I did that could be even remotely construed as "work related" was to read.  Because I think once you set your mind to becoming a writer, you can never completely disconnect your writer brain when you read.  But it was vacation, and vacation is for reading, so I just didn't care.

In the morning, it's back to work, which is fine.  I can only tune those demons out for so long before I get nagged by what I know is going on at the office without me.  And more importantly what isn't.  Also, that means tomorrow I have to get back on the horse, and get the writing moving again.  It'll be small steps, but I have to get ramped up again, even if the daily output is just a few paragraphs.

Time to read a last few chapters before the vacation is completely behind me.

Comments

[l-clausewitz.livejournal.com]

You know what? I read that the first time around as one single D&D campaign that has progressed on and on for twenty years straight. Fortunately that doesn't seem to ;Pbe your meaning.

[temporus.livejournal.com]

Actually, it's sort of complex. Yes, this specific "Campaign" has been running for twenty years straight. There is only one original player still in the game (other than the DM, who has been running it.) and it is not me, though the DM and I have been playing D&D together for ~ 24 years.

It is one continuous world with a continuous history, though the original characters have been retired. On occasion, however, they do, and can come out of retirement and show up. The DM has run for many groups over the years, and all the varying groups are in the same world. Think of it as a MMO, except that it's not online, and it's not really "Massive" though the number of players who have been in the world is not inconsequential. I'd hazard a guess of between 30-50 unique players.

Players have been known to cross over to different groups, bringing characters into different parties, or creating new ones, and having multiple characters. There was a time when two of the most powerful parties, played by essentially the same group of players, actually came to blows, due to in game politics. We had a rather massive battle of player versus player, which thankfully ended in enough of a stalemate that we were able to end the combat with only some loss of life.

I particularly enjoyed it because both of my characters can't stand the other, and roleplaying two characters who would more than happily kill the other is a fun challenge.

Currently we have a new group of characters started in a region of the world that is different from the others, and so we don't have real interaction with the old characters. However, some have reached such legendary proportions with their actions (one particular priest who is known far and wide for his anti-slavery crusade) that we actually pretended to be working with his people during the last adventure as a way of throwing off suscpicion as to who we really work for. A bit of subterfuge that I don't think he'd mind if word got back since we did free some captives who were on their way to being forced into slavery.

I played with this group in 1992 for a year, then disappeared for a few years, and joined back up in 1995, and have been playing with them consistently ever since.

Simultaneous to that, this same DM has been running a Champions campaign for just as long. (Technically slightly longer as that game started before he left for college, and the D&D game started after the start of the semester.) That game is run in a similar fashion.

[l-clausewitz.livejournal.com]

*shakes head* Sounds horrible...

[temporus.livejournal.com]

It probably sounds confusing. But actually it's quite fun. I'd try to explain it better but it might just be the kind of thing you have to participate in.

[l-clausewitz.livejournal.com]

Just wondering: have you ever toyed with the idea of chronicling it or finding somebody who might? Such long-running D&D campaigns were the inspirations for some popular fantasy series, like Raymond Feist's Riftwar saga and the Records of Lodoss Wars series. You'd probably be able to do better than them--even if you want to stay loyal to short stories, nobody says you can't do a series of related short stories instead.

(Or have you already started doing so?)

[temporus.livejournal.com]

No real plans to try to novelize it. First, it all takes place in the Forgotten Realms, so there'd be no profit to it, unless I managed to convince WotC to a writer for them. Which I'm not at this time interested in.

And while writing up adventures is fun, I just don't think that's for me. We try to chronicle the jist of all events. But it's not like reading a novel. More like reading a timeline and a bit of history. Even that, well, there's just never enough time to go put up everything we've done.