Explanation of Hiatus

There has been quite a large gap since the last time I’ve posted on this account for various reasons. Relationship problems, motivation problems and job problems all coalesce to form The Block tm. that has made it so difficult to continue.

I don’t think there has ever been a moment where I haven’t been thinking about D&D or TTRPGs since I started playing 5e around 2020~ but along side this yearning for the perfect game, there’s also been dissatisfaction with games I’ve either run or participated in. You could liken it to the first time you take drugs and that euphoric feeling when you get a good game, so every session you play after that is “Chasing the Dragon”; kinda an ironic phrase given the game we are discussing.

There is a common adage by Malcolm Gladwell that 10,000 hours of deliberate practice is what’s required to become an expert or have world class expertise in a skill, and I’ve definitely not come anywhere near as close with D&D but there is an issue I’ve had of stewing over things I can do outside of playing to improve play experience. I think this form of “deliberate practice” has potentially done more to harm my experience of running games than it has to improve it. It’s a strange thing to feel that when you first started that you were more creative, narrative focused, and that most of your fond memories of playing come from the earliest iterations of your work.

A resentment within me has grown towards the game and it’s players that has overall soured my enjoyment of TTRPGs. I feel like I’ve lost sight of what makes the game fun and that maybe I’m holding onto this metaphorical Thorn Whip that’s flaying my hands the harder I grip – so to make things better I want to recount some of my favorite moments I’ve had historically within my D&D career.

Adventure 1: Isle of Melenat

So at the time of my D&D inception I was a huge fan of Fromsoftware and their Dark Souls series and had (and still do) an obsession with Dark Fantasy, the Japanese interpretation of European Fantasy (think stuff inspired from Wizardry/Lodoss War/early Final Fantasy), and anything that could cut me with it’s edge. Difficulty and Exploration were the primary pillars of the game and I wanted to evoke that in my first ever campaign.

I uplifted the Island of Melenat that Kings Field 2 (also produced by Fromsoft) takes place on as a cheeky reference to the players if they were familiar with the catalogue. It’s similar really only in name and the aspect that a black dragon god Guyra, who destroyed a black crystal, controls the powers of nature on the island.

I took this theme and made it such that Guyra was a type of Godzilla-like entity where he reeks a magical radiation that wilts the jungle life on the island and corrupts the inhabitants; his body trapped underneath a World Tree like a prison (think Illidan Stormrage from WoW). The water was also contaminated in such a way that it healed superficial wounds but was a highly addictive substance (the players who drank the water had to make CON saves each day to fend off cravings) and it made leaving the island highly dangerous as being without the cursed water you’d eventually go into insane and wither away.

The players were composed of new-found friends which turned into great friends I am still in touch with now. I believe the game originally started with just 3 players, and went up to 4 despite several invites of one-and-done-rs. They disembarked from a port town from the main continent and headed towards Melenat with rumors of mystery, treasure and a legendary Fountain of Youth.

It wasn’t long before their plans were cut short — an attack from a vicious Kraken tore apart their boat and left them shipwrecked. The disaster left them blacked-out and stranded on the beach of Melenat; swept ashore with nothing but their packs and the clothes on their backs.

I feel fortunate that I kept a lot of the notes and work ups I did for the game to immortalize it in memory. There are many D&D games I’ve participated in that I cannot recall the exact events of, specifically from the perspective of a player. It’s too often that a game only lasts 1-3 sessions, the investment is gone and any relics tossed into the garbage. So below I’ll post a few that I kept in my super special big DM binder!

There’s a lot more where these came from, but for now I just want to highlight some interesting things I noticed about my notes.

Digestible Reference Material

You could argue I got a little creative with the Stirge stat block but I think at the time I was just really enamored with all the strange creatures in the monster manual. At the bottom of that page I wrote:
“membranous bat wings, eight jointed legs that end in sharp pincers.”
It’s kinda amazing that nowadays I still use this form of note taking; departing from the text above it that reads like Read-Aloud text in the average module. It’s primarily inspired now from Old School Essentials module text but, at this time, I was completely unaware of the OSR or anything about old school D&D. It’s fascinating that I intuitively wrote a TLDR; version of the major text as a form of sticky note.

A Sense of Humor?

There are many little funny things that I think I wrote or included to entertain myself, a lot of those things being puns, jokes or weird in-references with the people I was running for.

Notable ones being: Roquefort, the town of the wererats, with characters named Brie, Pesto, Asiago, Manchego and Sosha.
If you somehow can’t see the correlation here — THEY ARE RAT PEOPLE WITH CHEESE NAMES IN CHEESE TOWN.

I believe that when I was adding these things there was an intention of potentially entertaining someone in the group. In the way that D&D content can be dodged and lost from character eyes, same thing with these bits. If they notice it then they appreciate it. Coincidentally, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson were known to add little easter eggs, jokes and references to their games like putting their initials in the shapes of dungeon walls. I think it’s good to take the piss out of your work as it really helps to remind you why you’re really playing D&D — to have fun and form happy memories with friends.

Opportunities for Learning

Oftentimes when I create content for D&D, I find that I’ll go down a rabbit hole of learning (what feels like) useless information that when culminated together can actually serve to flex understanding/investment in your adventure.
I think I may not be the only one, but prior to this game I had no idea the locations of a ship and the names. You hear phrases like Poop Deck and Crow’s Nest all the time in media but up until this point the names seemed ridiculous until I actually looked at a ship. The Crow’s Nest is all the way up the mast like a bird’s nest in a tree! THE POOP DECK IS WHERE THE SHIP’S METAPHORICAL ASSHOLE IS!
I don’t foresee ever getting on a traditional pirate ship in my lifetime (I fear the Deep) so to me this is useless knowledge BUT it became important within the scope of the game! There’s a sense of professionalism that comes from learning vocabulary to help convey game information so HIT THE BOOKS! You can find really cool words like proboscis– the formal name for the silly straw on a mosquito or stirges face!

I’ll try to post more often soon. Getting out of the rut of procrastination and overt perfectionism is the challenge of every artist so hopefully I will prevail and make more posts!

Thanks for the patience. -Dyl