Bees in the Belfry (part 1)

The silhouette of a long forgotten tower juts up from  the flattened plain.  The ground so cracked only the hardiest of plants cling desperately to the fissures in the landscapes surface as the blazing sun inches it’s way to the horizon. The light of the dipping did show that that the tower was a solid silhouette at least and the crumbled walls at it’s base offered shelter from the cold winds that the promise of night held.  

     As the sun dipped below the horizon and the soft hues of dusk began dominating the skyline Evie in the driver's seat watches for Arenel and Rin's guidance  as she cautiously maneuvers the horses and cart into the sheltering walls of what appeared to be an old entryway that lay in the shadow of the tower.

 Being closer to the tower now and not having the blaze of the setting sun in his eyes Rock notes that the tower is not nearly so solid as it  appeared from the distance. Parts of the walls chunked out and missing make the gnome fear for it’s stability if the night winds decided to gust.  In one part cautiousness and three parts curiosity he decides to investigate the tower closer and with a prayer to Selune lifts silently from the ground and glides towards the rickety structure.  

As the small cleric approaches the winds of the plains carry to him a soft buzzing.  The hairs on the back of his neck stand of their own accord as he slows his approach and stops dead just beyond the towers walls.  
Then he sees it.

Just inside a man sized opening.  A mass of honeycomb being crawled on by black and yellow bodies.  One of the black and yellow creatures peels away from the rest and begins an angry buzz in Rocks direction.  The little fellow turns, to late to avoid detection, and shoots like an arrow back towards the rest of the group...

LFG

Trying to find the motivation to write more stories.  Something new, something original.
Ha.
Most of the story ideas that have been banging around in my head have all been based on old Dungeons and Dragons games.  Which...that just doesn't work for me.  I didn't take enough notes back then.  And if I'm going to be writing any stories the way that I was I need someone else running the game so that I can focus on note taking.

As a DM, note taking of the events doesn't work very well because I'm too busy running the game.  Trying to keep events and actions flowing and keeping the players interested and engaged.  Also, as a DM, trying to write out to many details in advance pigeonholes the players and leaves them little to no choice in their actions.  So I need to find a DM that will let me sit with my computer out and up so that I can tap tap away as events take place.  I might even have to forgo playing.

But then again it brings me back to the concept of new and original.  Or telling my story.   

What ever the hell that is.

Na, just playing in a game isn't going to work if I'm going to tell a story that interests me.  I'll need to co-dm a game.  Let the other DM either run the bulk of the game while I take notes or the other way around.
(wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more) 

But then again I'll need to find someone that is willing to put that sort of time and effort into creating a story. Players that are willing to let me take their characters and give them voice beyond the table.

That's the hard part.

I've brought such an idea, writing out the adventures of the game using notes from, in the past.  More often than not the players are keen on the idea but throw in the caveat "I want to write my own character."  Which is great in theory, but no one ever picks up the ball and runs with it. And  me being me, I respect that.  The the story falls fallow and the ideas grow stale because the other players don't hold up their end of the story.  In that, no story comes from their side of the table. So the finished thing ends up lopsided with only one or two of the NPC's dominating the action

Except this one time, with this one player...
Have you met my wife?

And that's what I'm trying to find again.  Not a wife.
I have one of those, and after a few years of writing out stories from our various role playing adventures we ran into the same problem.  Lopsided, mostly, romance stories that either left the other players or the GM butthurt that we were writing as much and the story would get altered or the other characters left out.    
And we do write the romance angle quite a bit, I mean...well we're both hopeless in that regard.  Or I am and I steer the writing that way.  

I'm not really sure which but there are mountains of fluffy, directionless romance, in both of our respective writing piles because of it.  

Point is, I either need to find a group of people that want to write with me, or a group of people that will let me take the characters and story and craft it in my own words without the butt hurtness of having a character fall to the wayside in the narrative. Because...

Also, side note: finding a place to live where my neighbors don't have dogs that bark insistently just outside the window.  Nothing blows your train of thought like a  little yipper going to town just a few feet from where you're writing.  

Where was I?...something about butt hurt players and yippie dogs....no...that's not right

Oh yeah,
Letting characters fall out of a narrative isn't done because a character is more or less interesting than any other. It comes from trying to keep the narrative moving at a good clip and sometimes you have to focus on a smaller group.
In film it's easier to do ensemble stories because you can have everyone on screen doing their own thing in the same shot. Where as from a writing stand point, for reading word format you have to tell the story from one or another characters perspective or get bogged down in the details of each characters motivation etc. is.  Why do you think that group stories always turn into sweeping epics?  Look at any series of books.  You get so much mileage out of the same story because the author is telling it from several different perspectives simultaneously.  

Ack, but I digress.

Long and short of it is that if ti is going to be an ensemble writing piece everyone has to  contribute in the writing department or their character gets left out of the story or side lined.  And if my wife and I  are left to our own devices and only have our characters to work with it devolves, very quickly, into mushy romantic stuff. 

Write what you know I guess.

Now, I'm going to go back to editing notes from some recent games I played in...and probably piss a few players off for not treating their characters the way that they would.

But maybe, just maybe, one day I'll be able to publish something without fear of retribution from old players thinking they didn't get a fair shake, or that they own the character even if they never wrote the character. *sigh* or I'll just have to come up with a whole new story.

But for now, editing. 

Prep Work

It's zero hour before this weeks D&D game and wouldn't you know it;  I'm pacing back and forth again.

I can't help but be excited.  This is the fourth run I've taken at playing through this campaign I'm running this evening.  And this time the players are half way through and seem as though they're going to work their way through the whole of it.

The first time I ran this adventure the players decided to go a completely different rout and gave up on it half way through to explore character hooks. At the time this didn't really bother me all that much since I used to abhor canned adventures. Preferring the fluid nature of character driven story lines and random encounters to rule the day.  And now, since I no longer spend nearly twenty hours of prep time on my adventures the way that I did when I was a little younger, having a steady through line of adventure and pre-made dungeons to explore along with my players has become a little more my speed.


The second time I ran this adventure path was for a Library group that I was DMing as part of a summer reading program.  This is rewarding in a way that other games are not, but also somewhat frustrating.  When doing the whole "paid GM" thing you only have a small window of opportunity to get adventuring done. Since most of the time these players have either never played outside of that instance or have little motivation to explore the books and game info on their own game sessions can be slowed down considerably with rules explanations and getting the idea across that; No this is not quite like an MMO and that the actions that their characters can take are much more robust than most digital offerings have.  Mostly because they're not limited by digital storage space and pre-planned responses.  The other reason that this adventure was never completed during a library run is because the goal of the Library games is more an educational one.  To teach the players how to play and run their own games while teaching the basic research skills necessary to play the game. This is doubly important since these games are meant to be  geared towards middle to highschoolers in an effort to help them apply these same skills to non game projects.  Which, so far, has worked.  For the adventure it means barely scratching the surface in the handful of weeks the program takes place and constantly reintroducing a rotating crop of players.

The third time...well...technically this is a continuation of the third time.
I started it with a group of new players, taught them the basics of the game and then dove in head first into the adventure.  They were making great headway and really enjoying the game.  But as often happens with role playing groups; life happened.  People moved, changed availability and the like.

So, now here I am with the remnants of two groups come together to pick up where the third group left off.

Last week we started by giving a brief introduction of "Last time on Dungeons and Dragons..." that detailed each of the characters journeys that led them to this point coupled with expositioning in the parts of the first half of the adventure some of them weren't there for.  And after taking a small detour to chase down a monster bounty that almost killed some of their number, they jumped onto the investigation train "In Character" to set themselves on the path of adventure.

So here I am, waiting for the players to show up, going over my notes from the previous sessions, the notes for the coming session, and generally being a Nervous Nelly about and doing the "Did I  do enough prep work" dance that always has me teed up before a game starts.

Which I think I did..hopefully.  But, as always with these table top games.  The pace is dictated a lot by where the players want to go and what they want to do and I'm simply here to provide the backdrop and the adventure paths for them to follow.